years since, one Jane Wyatt,
my wife's sister, being nurse to Baronet Rud's three eldest children,
and (the lady being deceased) the lady of the house going late into a
chamber where the maid-servants lay, saw there no less than five of
these lights together. It happened awhile after, the chamber being newly
plastered, and a great grate of coal-fire therein kindled to hasten the
drying up of the plastering, that five of the maid-servants went there
to bed as they were wont; but in the morning they were all dead, being
suffocated in their sleep with the steam of the newly tempered lime and
coal. This was at Llangathen in Carmarthen."

So wrote the Rev. Mr Davis, and in an old number of _Frazer's Journal_ I
came across the following account of death-tokens, which, although not
exactly corpse-candles, might certainly be classed in the same category.
It ran thus:

"In a wild and retired district in North Wales, the following
occurrence took place, to the great astonishment of the mountaineers. We
can vouch for the truth of the statement, as many of our own teutu, or
clan, were witnesses of the facts. On a dark evening a few weeks ago,
some persons, with whom we are well acquainted, were returning to
Barmouth on the south or opposite side of the river. As they approached
the ferry house at Penthryn, which is directly opposite Barmouth, they
observed a light near the house, which they conjectured to be produced
by a bonfire, and greatly puzzled they were to discover the reason why
it should have been lighted. As they came nearer, however, it vanished;
and when they inquired at the house respecting it, they were surprised
to learn that not only had the people there displayed no light, but they
had not even seen one; nor could they perceive any signs of it on the
sands. On reaching Barmouth, the circumstance was mentioned, and the
fact corroborated by some of the people there, who had also plainly and
distinctly seen the light. It was settled, therefore, by some of the old
fishermen that this was a death-token; and, sure enough, the man who
kept the ferry at that time was drowned at high water a few nights
afterwards, on the very spot where the light was seen. He was landing
from the boat, when he fell into the water, and so perished. The same
winter the Barmouth people, as well as the inhabitants of the opposite
bank, were struck by the appearance of a number of small lights, which
were seen dancing in the air at a place cal