I find all sorts of "useful notes" which probably should have been recycled years ago. However, still of interest to some of us and once I have committed them to the blog, they can go, though I will probably keep the old Georgian recipes, which I shall share tomorrow. This piece is from November 1875 "Bye-Gones" - noted when doing research at Carmarthen Archives some years ago.
"Within the memory of our fathers, in Shropshire, in those villages adjoining to Wales, when a person died, there was notice given to an old "sire" (for so they called him) who went to where the deceased lay and stood before the door of the house, when some of the family came out and furnishing him with a cricket (or stool) on which he sat down facing the door. Then they gave him a groat, which he put in his pocket; a crust of bread, which he ate; a full bowl of ale, which he drank off at a draught. Then he got up from his cricket and pronounced with a composed gesture, "the ease and rest of the soul departed, for which he could pawn his own soul."
It sounds rather like a variation of a sin eater.
On the other side of the page was this:
"Death Bed Customs - a case is related of a woman who died, in 1803, at a farmhouse called Southern Pills, in the Parish of Lawrenny, Pembroke; that on her death-bed the nurse snatched the pillow from under her head. I have heard of this custom in other places. What was the reason for it? and is it a universal superstition in Great Britain that people cannot die easy if there are pigeon's feathers in their pillows? I knew an intelligent lady in Oswestry who did not doubt the fact, and who believe that it would one day be scientifically explained!"
To follow it, a scribbling of mine from a visit to Carn Ingli in Pembrokeshire:
"The dead bracken was the colour of ground cloves on the hillsides of Carn Ingli; the rocks that strewed the peak lay gunmetal grey. Then through the lowering clouds about it came a strong ray of light which lit up the peal like the hand of God, catching every drop of moisture so that it seemed to glow like a prism, refracting the light and shattering it into a trillion fragments. No wonder St Brannock climbed up there to commune with the Angels . . . "
Well, a few hours closer to get-the-car-back-day . . .
