Phantom funerals, the belief that a coming burial could be seen or heard in advance on the road it would take, were widely reported across Wales. Marie Trevelyan collected a cluster from the flat country around St Athan, Boverton and Gileston, and this one carries a date.
In 1836, she writes, the daughter of a farmer at Gileston went out late for a walk towards a spot called The Leys, down towards the sea. When she came back she dropped fainting into a deep armchair. Once she had come round she told her family that she had found herself surrounded by water and by a great crowd of people who were carrying a coffin in a boat. They brought it ashore at the back door of the farm. There was no sound at all, but she saw them clearly.
Her relatives went out to look. The night was fine and the moon so bright that the smallest thing would have been visible, and there was neither crowd nor coffin at the back door. Her father said, "Who ever heard of a funeral at ten o'clock at night?" and that was the end of it for the time being.
Then came one of the great tides of the Severn Sea. The water ran inland for miles, covering the low ground from Aberthaw to The Leys and flooding Gileston Lane. A person who had died in an old house on The Leys was to be buried that very afternoon. The usual route to Gileston church was under water, so the bearers put the coffin in a boat, rowed it across and laid it down at the back door of the farm, where they waited with it until more boats could fetch the mourners. The family took this as the fulfilment of the girl's vision.
Comments