CHAPTER VII.

DEATH PORTENTS.

Among the most important of the superstitions of Wales are the death portents and omens; and this is perhaps more or less true of every country. About a generation or two ago, there were to be found almost in every parish some old people who could tell before hand when a death was going to lake place; and even in the present day we hear of an old man or an old woman, here and there, possessing, or supposed to possess, an insight of this kind into the future.

Mrs. Lloyd, Ffynnonddagrau, Llangynog, Carmarthenshire, told me five years ago that there lived at Ffynnonddagrau, an old man named Thomas Harries, who always foretold every death in the parish as he possessed second sight. John Thomas, Pentre, who worked about the farms, called with my informant one day on his way home; he was in good health then, but on the very next day he was very ill and soon died. Harries had foretold the death of the poor man some days before he was taken