[Footnote 11: In Welsh folk-lore cross-roads always figure as likely spots for uncanny happenings.]
The old woman declared that some one would most surely soon be brought along that road to be buried, which came to pass very quickly after the light's appearance, this showing that it was indeed a corpse-candle. She also told Tom where the grave of this person would be in the churchyard, which he remembered, and found to be at the exact spot she described. Although this old woman in her day had seen scores of corpse-candles after nightfall, yet this was the most wonderful she ever saw, because of its direct connection with what followed. For its effect could be seen, and Tom the servant, who was an eye-witness of it all, bore testimony of the circumstances from the beginning to the end.
The two following incidents show how the identity of the doomed individual was known.
In old times I have heard numbers of elderly people assert that they could tell one whose was the "light" passing by, and could relate how this was possible; and with my own ears I have heard one man say how his fear of the thing decreased as he came to know its mystery. One way was to mind and be near running water, or any pond that happened to be conveniently near the road along which the light was coming.
As soon as the light was to be seen approaching, one should stop near the water or the running brook that the candle had to cross, and therein would be seen a reflection of the person whose light it was. Apparently the illumination of the light showed it in the water. There was always a mysterious light on the breast of the doomed individual. One man told me how he had seen the corpse-light after hearing a sound like a great report, whereupon running to some water he found out the person who was to be buried. Though he had seen other corpse-lights from time to time, yet he had never happened to be near water until a certain night. He had been very late, he said, at the smithy, having a ploughshare sharpened, and had a middling long way to return home from the forge. As he was going along the road, he saw a light in the far distance, coming towards him. He did not suspect any harm at the moment, and hastened along, keeping his eye on the light, until he got to the bottom of a slope, up which he had to go. He had a big old cape over him, and for convenience, he folded the skirts of it round his middle. As he straightened himself after doing this, he perceived the light just at his side, and realising that it was a corpse-candle, he determined to see whether the saying was false or true that one could see whose light it was. Now there happened to be a little brook crossing the road at that place. As the light went by he looked carefully into the water, and saw therein a woman he knew very well. He went home much frightened. A little time after, that woman was stricken with illness, and when she subsequently died it happened that her body was carried along that very road for burial. Afterwards he saw a man's light, and that time again it was near water. He resolved to try and know whose it was. He saw the light reflected in the water, and knew the person at once as the gamekeeper in that neighbourhood. Though the keeper was in good health at the time, yet very soon afterwards he fell ill and died, and his funeral too followed the course the "candle" had taken.