Welsh belief distinguished between the phantom that comes before a death and a plainer kind of double. Trevelyan calls the second the lledrith, an illusion, and says it did not always mean anything bad. Her best example comes from Cardiff in the 1860s.
Two men saw a well-known townsman, identified in her book only as Mr K, walking along Crockherbtown towards his house in Windsor Place. They watched him go in quickly. They had business with him and thought this a good chance, so they followed and knocked. The servant told them her master was not in. Puzzled, since they had just seen him enter, they asked for her mistress, who said the same thing.
They gave up and walked back along Crockherbtown. To their astonishment, their friend came up behind them, passed them quickly and stayed ahead of them, until he turned from Duke Street into High Street and disappeared.
Determined to have their meeting, they went to his place of business, were shown into his private office, and found him sitting quietly over his accounts. "Well, there is no mistake about it," one said. "You have played us a fine trick." Mr K looked up, amused, and asked what they meant. When they told him, he said he had come into the office at nine that morning and had not set foot outside since, and called someone to prove it. One of the two men said to the other in Welsh, "It was the Lledrith."
Mr K lived for many years after that and enjoyed telling the story, which he called "the Welsh Lledrith" or "unaccountable happening". Trevelyan had it from a family source.
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