Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
Tolaeth
Sikes defines the Tolaeth as a sound resembling an earthly noise but heard before a funeral or catastrophe. Its forms include sawing and hammering before coffin-making, footsteps, knocks and an unseen procession. Another form speaks intelligible words: a voice announces the cracking and breaking of a house beam as a sick man dies. The warning can therefore be imitation or speech, without requiring a visible apparition.
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In the sources
Principal account
TraditionalSikes defines the Tolaeth as a sound resembling an earthly noise but heard before a funeral or catastrophe. Its forms include sawing and hammering before coffin-making, footsteps, knocks and an unseen procession.
Further detail
TraditionalAnother form speaks intelligible words: a voice announces the cracking and breaking of a house beam as a sick man dies. The warning can therefore be imitation or speech, without requiring a visible apparition.
Context & interpretation
The entry follows Sikes’s description of the Tolaeth’s several forms. These are reported warning experiences in folklore, without treating every unexplained noise as a portent or conflating them with the Cyhyraeth’s groan.
Original passages
Source 1
British Goblins
imitating some earthly soundOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880), active reader leaf 240
Exact passage checked against active scan text and its original-leaf mapping; whitespace and scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0044-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0044-E001-P0240
- Original scan leaf
- 241
- Recorded leaf number
- 241
- Current Reader position
- 239
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed
Source 2
British Goblins
a Voice which speaksOpen this page in the book
Passage & edition details
Location recorded at citation review: Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880), active reader leaf 244
Exact passage checked against active scan text and its original-leaf mapping; whitespace and scan line breaks normalised.
- Edition
- IMJ-0044-E001
- Reader page
- IMJ-0044-E001-P0244
- Original scan leaf
- 245
- Recorded leaf number
- 245
- Current Reader position
- 243
- Reader verification
- Source-preserving update confirmed