Category: Readers Articles of Interest

WELSH TRADITIONS 7

Traditions associated with death and funerals

We’ll begin by going back to Pre-Christian and pre-Roman times to consider how the Celts buried their dead. The ancient Celtic religion – known as Celtic Paganism – was the religion of the Celtic peoples of Europe – and the priests of this religion were known as Druids – but very little is known about them.

Nicole Evelina writes -‘For a warrior people, it’s not surprising that to the Celts, the most honorable death was to die in battle. Depending on the time period and which tribe you were in, you might be buried, cremated or have your ashes buried. In pre-Christian times, many graves contained items needed for the next world, from chariots and weapons to food, wine, money and clothing. There is some evidence that the Celts practised human sacrifice, but not likely on a large scale.

The Celts believed in reincarnation. Some sources say they only believed you could come back in human form, but others argue you could be reincarnated as an animal or plant, too. Mythology seems to support this later theory as in our ancient tales, we learn that the Cauldron of Rebirth was able to revive the dead. Pre-Christian Celts believed in an after-death Otherworld (Annwn in Welsh mythology), a resting place between incarnations’.

We know that the body was washed before burial, wrapped in a thin shirt and laid out surrounded by burning candles. During this time feasts and games were held in honour of the deceased – and food and money would be left for him or her to use in the next life. This was the forerunner of the modern ‘wake’ of course. On the day of the funeral a Druid would visit to measure the corpse – to make sure that it would fit in the grave. He would also whisper instructions in his ear of how to reach the Other World’.

Bodies were cremated or buried in single cairns or graves – or in a burial chamber where multiple bodies were buried. We have two of these burial tombs – from an earlier time – near us here in Wenvoe namely the Cromlech at Tinkinswood and the smaller one at St Lythans. Both these date from the New Stone Age and are over 6,000 years old – about 1,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids in Egypt.

Coming a little closer to our own time, a number of traditions and rituals associated with death here in Wales have survived until relatively recently.

It was customary to announce a death by tolling the church bell – and in the counties of Anglesea and Arfon, the home of the deceased was known as a ‘tŷ corff’ (house of the corpse). A local woman would attend the house to prepare the body for burial and a carpenter would come to measure him/her before making the coffin. It was important to our forefathers that the honey bees be informed formally if there was a death in the house. It was generally believed that failure to do so would result in the mass death of the bees – or they would leave the hive.

Traditionally the room where a corpse lay before burial would be draped with white curtains and linen. Curtains were kept closed and mirrors were covered. Sweet-scented herbs were used to scent the room, and wax candles kept alight. In some parts of Wales, the family would sprinkle salt on a pewter plate and place it on the chest of the deceased – to ward off all evil spirits. The belief was that salt purified the soul. It is also known that in some areas a ‘sin eater’ would be invited to the house to eat the sins of the dead person, by dipping a piece of bread in the salt and eating it above the body. Thus the dead person would be relieved of all sins and would be assured of entry into heaven.

From the time of death, the house was never empty. Family members and friends would take it in turn to hold a vigil over the body every night until the day of the funeral. In some areas a wake would be held every night – with plenty of food and alcohol – but the proceedings were always carried out in a respectful manner. In the 19th Century, the deceased was often propped up during these wakes! It was also customary for gifts of butter, cake, tea, biscuits and sugar to be gifted to the family in mourning. By the 19th Century, under the influence of the Methodist Movement, the vigil or the pre funeral wake had become much more reverential – more like a prayer meeting. And a recognised singer would be invited to sing an elegy – an echo of the elegiac poems composed by the court poet during the age of the Welsh Kings and Princes.

On the morning of the burial, the mourners would arrive at the house, where the main mourner would be seated – dressed in back of course. Before the service black gloves would be handed round to the mourners; silk or kid for near-relatives and cotton for more distant members of the family. In Aberystwyth, for example, it was customary for a man to walk around the town ringing a Corpse Bell. He would walk along and every so often, stop and ring out one solemn stroke on his bell.

One particularly sad custom was that of baptising a newly born baby on his or her mother’s coffin, if she had died in childbirth – a common occurrence in earlier times, of course.

The Welsh have always carried their dead relatives to the churchyard, unlike the English who in general paid strangers to do this. At the end of the service a collection was made and the money would go to the priest – who would often pass the money to the family – if it was particularly impoverished. Another collection was made at the graveside when coins would be placed on the gravedigger’s shovel or spade – ‘spade money’ (arian rhaw) – which would pay for the burial. In the 1700s it was the custom to throw a sprig of rosemary into the grave, which by the 19th Century, was substituted by the placing of flowers on top of the grave.

There were a few superstitions surrounding death and funerals in Wales one of the most common being ‘cannwyll corff’ – a corpse candle. Before a death had been reported in an area, people would report seeing a candle moving along a particular path or roadway. They believed that this foretold the death of a local person – whose funeral procession would follow the route of the candle they had witnessed. If a corpse candle was seen glowing red it was thought to be foretelling the death of a man; a white glow showed the death of a woman and a small, weak light, that of a child.
There are also numerous accounts from all parts of Wales of people witnessing a phantom funeral procession – ‘toili’ – which, like the corpse candles, foretold of an imminent death in the area.
Omens of death were widely feared and taken very seriously indeed. In Port Talbot at the Morfa Colliery in 1890, workers noticed a strong scent of flowers. They believed this to be a sign of invisible death flowers and half the miners stayed in their homes. That day there was a huge explosion leaving 87 miners dead. If certain types of birds flew over the pit head, such as pigeons, robins or doves, it was also believed to be foretelling a disaster. They were dubbed ‘corpse birds’ and are reported to have been seen just before the explosion at Senghennydd Colliery in Glamorgan in 1913, in which 400 miners were killed. So seriously were these superstitions taken by Welsh miners, that if they passed a squinting woman on their way to the mine, they would turn back and go home to avoid bad luck.
Ann M. Jones

MONKNASH COASTGUARD ROCKET HOUSE

Just inland from the top of a precipitous Heritage Coast cliff near the village of Marcross in the Vale of Glamorgan there stands a small stone building with an almost semicircular stone flagged roof. One end of this building is completely open and faces the sea. It is yet another entity associated with shipping in the Bristol Channel.

As the title of this article suggests the building, which was constructed in the 1870s, was used to house the apparatus that could fire a thin rope to any ship in distress close to the shore in these hazardous waterways. If the mariners on such a vessel were to successfully receive the initial rope, then they would haul to themselves a thicker rope to which would be attached a breeches buoy to enable their rescue.

Rocket Houses became an essential part of the infrastructure of being able to effect rescues close to, or indeed on, lee shores which would have otherwise proved difficult for the life boats of the time.

The UK Coastguard Rocket Stations were strategically located along the coast to cover areas with high risk of shipwrecks and to provide timely assistance. There is some evidence that there was such a rocket station adjacent to the Watch House at the entrance to Barry Old Harbour. The equipment and techniques used evolved over time, but the primary goal remained the same: to save lives at sea

WHEN SEPTEMBER AND THE HUMBLE SPLIT PEA SAVED BRITAIN

September 1940 is arguably the most significant month in British history; when the tide turned in the Battle of Britain and Hitler’s plans to invade Britain during the Second World War were thwarted. The RAF victory over the Luftwaffe was famously ensured by our Spitfire planes and brave fighter pilots. A closer look leads to some surprising and fascinating insights.

The Spitfire was designed by R. J. Mitchell, who developed his expertise designing seaplanes to race in the Schneider Trophy competition. Mitchell never got to see how important his contribution was because he died of cancer in 1937 at the age of 42. Fast and manoeuvrable, the Mark V had a top speed of 369mph and could climb 20,000 feet in seven-and-a-half minutes, with a flight ceiling of 36,500 feet. All this was a tribute to the genius and ingenuity of the plane’s developers.

Amazingly, the humble split pea played a key role in the development of such an effective fighter. Flush riveting was used on the prototype Spitfire to ensure the smoothest possible surfaces and aerodynamic performance. However this proved difficult, expensive and time consuming in production. Thinking outside the box, engineers went to a local grocery and bought several bags of dried split peas and glued them on every flush rivet head to test the likely impact of using round head rivets. Unfortunately this reduced the Spitfire’s speed by around 22mph. Not giving up, they progressively scraped off the split peas to determine which flush rivets were most effective and where on the plane was it best to deploy them. The results were applied to production planes and with the various flush and round head rivets strategically placed, the speed and manoeuvrability of the planes was maximised.

Pilots were in many ways more important than the Spitfire planes. With the average life expectancy of a pilot at only four weeks and an urgent demand for new recruits, the RAF was forced to cut the training time from six months to just two weeks. Some recruits saw action with as little as nine hours experience. They included pilots of other nationalities, including Polish and Canadians. There were even a handful of American pilots, most notably Billy Fiske, a 29-year-old sportsman who had previously won a gold medal for bob sledding at the Winter Olympics.

The bravery of these pilots is legendary. Having lost both his legs early on in his RAF career, Douglas Bader re-trained, flying Spitfires and Hurricanes at RAF Duxford and re-entered the fray. One advantage that Bader had over his fellow fighter pilots in training was courtesy of his amputations. The high g-force experienced by pilots throughout combat often caused them to pass out as the blood was forced to drain from their brains and into their legs. Bader’s dual amputation meant that he didn’t lose as much blood to his lower extremities, allowing him to maintain blood pressure and stay conscious for longer. Promoted to wing commander he was credited with 22 aerial victories, over 10 shared and another 11 confirmed damaged enemy planes. Shot down over the French coast, he was captured and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner at Colditz until it was liberated in April 1945. He had been treated as something of a celebrity by his captors.

The Battle of Britain lasted from I July to 31 October. Other planes and factors, of course, played important roles in the battle. The development of radar for example, enabled the RAF to know when to scramble their pilots and get the Spitfires into the sky to defend London and the south east. However the contribution of the Spitfires and their pilots to our liberty cannot be overstated. Winston Churchill famously encapsulated this when he said ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’

By the time it ended, 544 Fighter Command pilots had been killed in the Battle, many flying Spitfires. 808 Spitfires took part with 326 lost and 589 damaged. The official Luftwaffe losses for the Battle totalled 2071. Spitfires saw action all over the world and continued in service after the Second World War.

NEW HOUSING PROPOSAL

A proposal to construct 30 dwellings consisting of 1 bedroom flats and 2, 3 and 4 bedroom houses on land between the Wenvoe garage and Pugh’s garden centre is under consideration. No formal planning application has been submitted at present.

A new access to the garden centre would be constructed directly off the present Port Road/St Andrews Road roundabout and the present access would become part of the development site. Burdonshill access would remain.

Full details of the proposal can be viewed at www.asbriplanning.co.uk and search in the consultations for statutory pre-statutory consultation