Folk Tales

Tell us the story now, Mary Thomas, the story of your mother's funeral.

Oh yes, I was living, I was telling you, in the Ysbyty area, Ysbyty Ystwyth, on a little smallholding, me and my mother and my father, and my sister, Wil Rogers' mother now, she lived on Llwyn Llwyd farm, here in the Ffair-rhos area. And I'd been with her now, when Wil, William Morgan, that was the time, when Wil, Wil Moc we called hm, Wil Rogers, was born. I'd been with my sister here for five weeks, going back to see my mother and my father only every now and then. I was staying with my sister here, you see. I spent a lot of time with my sister, as much as I did at home. And this evening I'd gone home to visit my mother and father in the Ysbyty area, and I'd come back over a little bank, you see, and down to the road that runs from Ysbyty to Ffair-rhos. And when I got back to my sister's house here, an old boy had come to visit them from the Sbyty area, from Ysguborie, and he had a little girl with him, that he'd brought up. And by the way, the little girl was my brother's daughter, but as they had no children they'd taken her on. And I got back to my sister's house now about nine o'clock at night. And this old man took the little girl home about ten. And they were going along the same road now, the Ysbyty road, as I'd come on, from Sbyty. And the next day, we heard the story the next day, that Enoc Sguborie and Peg, the little girl, had met with a funeral procession, by Pen-lan Fach, the ruins of an old house by the side of the road. They'd seen a funeral procession. Well! Right then, everybody said: 'Enoc's seen a funeral procession.'

In a couple of days' time then I went home to my mother and father's, having finished at Llwyn Llwyd, home for a couple of days to my father and mother's, and I said:

'Did you know that Enoc Sguborie met a funeral procession on the 'Sbyty road as he went home from Llwyn Llwyd the other night?' And my mother said to my father:

'Did you hear what she said, that Enoc, that he'd seen a funeral procession?' she said like that.

'O come, come,' said my father. 'I don't believe in any of that old nonsense. And Mam said:

'Don't you be so sure, indeed, it could be true.'

And that was on Friday night, and on Monday morning Mam died, and the funeral came up from Ysbyty, round and through Ffair-rhos and up to Ystrad-fflur. They had a hearse and a horse in those days. And the old boy, this Enoc Thomas from Sguborie, said it was in exactly the same spot -
the funeral procession came to meet him at one gate and finished at a gate further on then. And he said: 'I was in the funeral - the funeral procession I saw the other night was Mary Lloyd's.' And he saw the coffin and all. And it was Mam's funeral. And I'd just come on that road, you see, but the funeral procession was coming from my house, my home, behind me on the Ysbyty road, and he [Enoc] was leaving Llwyn Llwyd, and met the funeral, my mother's funeral. It was about a week after that my mother died suddenly, and the funeral procession came the same way... It was Mary Lloyd's funeral.

[WT] Tell us how she died.

Oh, she got up on Monday morning and, you know, she'd gone out, she was the one who looked after the cattle, now, she'd gone out to give [them] their feed - we'd had breakfast and a cup of tea at ten o' clock, and Mam was fine, nothing wrong with her, you see - and she went out, now, to put water in the butter churn, so she could churn butter, we had a little kitchen there in those days. And she took some out to the cattle, I went out after her in a bit. And I found her, she'd died in the hay shed, [died] there suddenly, you see.