Another strange old death custom, if it ever existed, was the "Sin Eater."
It seems that the first to refer to the subject was Mr. John Aubrey, in 1686, who asserted that there was such a custom in Herefordshire and also in North Wales, and at the annual meeting of the Cambrian Archæological Association, which was held at Ludlow in August, 1852, Mr. Matthew Moggridge, of Swansea, made the following observation:--"When a person died, his friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who, on his arrival, placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s. 6d. and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for, as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony. He was utterly detested in the neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one irredeemably lost." The speaker then mentioned the Parish of Llandebie, in Carmarthenshire, where the above practice was said to have prevailed to a recent period. Mr. Allen, of Pembrokeshire, said that the plate and salt were known in that county, where also a lighted candle was stuck in the salt, and that the popular notion was that it kept away the evil spirit.
A few years ago, one Rhys read at Tregaron an interesting paper on that town and district, and after referring to the custom of keeping vigil over the dead, he makes the following statement: "There was also an old custom in the town (Tregaron) connected with the 'Sin-eater.' Where there was a corpse in the house the 'Sin-eater' was invited. The relatives of the dead prepared him a meal on the coffin, he was supposed to eat the sins of the dead man so as to make the deceased's journey upward lighter."
The late Chancellor D. Silvan Evans, and other well-informed Welshmen, have denied that any such custom as that of the Sin-eater ever existed in Wales, and Wirt Sikes, after diligent searching, failed to find any direct corroboration of it, and I may add that, though I venture no opinion of my own upon the subject, I have never come across in any part of Wales any old persons, either men or women, who had heard any tradition about it. On the other hand, the celebrated Welsh Novelist, Allen Raine, informed me a short time ago, that she knew a man at Carmarthen who had seen a "Sin-eater"; and the Rev. G. Eyre Evans showed me a portrait of a man that had seen one long ago in the Parish of Llanwenog.