Tolaethdeath Rapping Or Knocking

: DEATH PORTENTS.

The death rappings are said to be heard in carpenters' workshops, and

that they resembled the noise made by a carpenter when engaged in

coffin-making. A respectable miner's wife told me that a female friend

told her, she had often heard this noise in a carpenter's shop close by

her abode, and that one Sunday evening this friend came and told her that

the Tolaeth was at work then, and if she would come with her she should

hear it. She complied, and there she heard this peculiar sound, and was

thoroughly frightened. There was no one in the shop at the time, the

carpenter and his wife being in chapel. Sometimes this noise was heard

by the person who was to die, but generally by his neighbours. The

sounds were heard in houses even, and when this was the case the noise

resembled the noise made as the shroud is being nailed to the coffin.