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Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

Chapter 109: THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD MOTHER APPEARING TO HER CHILDREN.
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About This Book

A compilation of folk beliefs, tales, and customs gathered across western and mid-Wales from elderly informants and local tradition. It presents translated Welsh narratives and organized material on fairies, mermaids and water‑horses, ghosts, witches and wizards, omens, animal superstitions, and popular spells, alongside accounts of wedding, birth, funeral, inheritance and sheep‑shearing customs, divination practices, augury, and prophecies. The emphasis is on literal fidelity to oral testimony and on preserving vanishing traditions rather than offering theoretical interpretation.

THE SPIRIT OF A DEAD MOTHER APPEARING TO HER CHILDREN.

The following story was related to me by Mr. Brutus Davies, who died at Aberystwyth about two years ago, and who vouched for the truth of the account:—

About seventy years ago a certain man who was working on the Estate of Col. —— in the parish of Llangeler, Carmarthenshire, had buried his first wife and had married again. He had several children from his first wife, but not one from the second. One particular day, the children went out to play as they often did. When they came to a certain spot which served them as a playground, they found some small cakes on the ground, which were very tempting to children; but just as they were going to eat them, the spirit of their dead mother appeared on the scene and addressed them as follows:—“My dear children, don’t eat those cakes, for there is poison in them!” When this strange occurrence became known in the neighbourhood, people suspected the step-mother of having intentionally and secretly placed the cakes on the children’s playground.

Sometimes we hear of the appearance of the ghost of a child, especially if a baby has been ill-treated or murdered, and the following story is well-known in the Northern part of Cardiganshire.