he funeral actually took place the ground was
covered with snow, and the drift caused the procession to proceed along
the fields and over the hedges and churchyard wall, as indicated by the
corpse candle.

It was ill jesting with the corpse candle. The Rev. J. Jenkins, Vicar of
Hirnant, told me that a drunken sailor at Borth said he went up to a
corpse candle and attempted to light his pipe at it, but he was whisked
away, and when he came to himself he discovered that he was far off the
road in the bog.

The Rev. Edmund Jones, in his book entitled _A Relation of Ghosts and
Apparitions_, _etc_., states:--

"Some have seen the resemblance of a skull carrying the candle;
others the shape of the person that is to die carrying the candle
between his fore-fingers, holding the light before his face. Some
have said that they saw the shape of those who were to be at the
burying."

Those who have followed the light state that it proceeded to the church,
lit up the building, emerged therefrom, and then hovered awhile over a
certain spot in the churchyard, and then sank into the earth at the place
where the deceased was to be buried.

There is a tradition that St. David, by prayer, obtained the corpse
candle as a sign to the living of the reality of another world, and that
originally it was confined to his diocese. This tradition finds no place
in the Life of the Saint, as given in the _Cambro-British Saints_, and
there are there many wonderful things recorded of that saint.

It was thought possible for a man to meet his own Candle. There is a
tale of a person who met a Candle and struck it with his walking-stick,
when it became sparks, which, however, re-united. The man was greatly
frightened, became sick, and died. At the spot where he had struck the
candle the bier broke and the coffin fell to the ground, thus
corroborating the man's tale.

I will now record one tale not of the usual kind, which was told me by a
person who is alive.

_Tale of a Corpse Candle_.

My informant told me that one John Roberts, Felin-y-Wig, was in the habit
of sitting up a short time after his family had retired to rest to smoke
a quiet pipe, and the last thing he usually did before retiring for the
night was to take a peep into the night. One evening, whilst peering
around, he saw in the distance a light, where he knew there was no house,
and on further notice he observed that it was slowly going along the r