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Overview
Sikes distinguishes the Cyhyraeth from the visible Gwrach y Rhibyn: this spirit is heard but not seen. Accounts along the Towy describe three cries that become successively quieter, resembling the groans of a dying person. Their movement through lanes or past windows can anticipate the route later taken by a funeral. One report attributes unfamiliar words to the sound, showing that it is not always merely an indistinct moan.
Coastal versions place the cry over the sea or along the sands, sometimes with lights understood as warnings of wrecks. In the St Mellons churchyard story, a boy hears it at three locations; a later burial supposedly moves between the same places before finding an available grave. These episodes give the presence a route and timing, but provide no stable physical description. Claims about whose death it foretells vary between narrators.
Origins & earliest records
The selected 1880 collection quotes and paraphrases earlier testimony associated with Edmund Jones, including named Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire places. Sikes also records regional explanations for its distribution. Those explanations belong to the collected belief itself; neither the locality of a story nor a later printed synthesis establishes the earliest existence of its oral form.
Records & interpretation
Descriptions of cries, funeral routes and later wrecks are narrative and testimonial evidence for a death-omen tradition. Sikes does not present a captured creature or a reproducible acoustic investigation. Keeping its invisibility explicit avoids importing the appearance of a banshee or winged hag merely because collectors sometimes place these omens beside one another.
In the literature
“This is a groaning spirit. It is never seen”
Book II, chapter VII; printed p. 219
Sikes distinguishes the invisible groaning portent from the visible Gwrach y Rhibyn.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions
Book II, chapter VII, pp. 219–222. Selected inspected witness; bibliography is not exhaustive.
- 02
British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions — Book II, chapter VII
London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1880. Original English compilation by Wirt Sikes; hosted Project Gutenberg transcription retains printed page anchors. Selected reports, quoted older authorities and the compiler’s comparative theories are distinguished.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions — Book II, chapter VII
London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1880. Original English compilation by Wirt Sikes; hosted Project Gutenberg transcription retains printed page anchors. Selected reports, quoted older authorities and the compiler’s comparative theories are distinguished.
- The cited accounts associate the invisible voice with a coming burial and describe a threefold warning that grows weaker and closer along the Towy; Sikes names Prosser and Coslet through his earlier authority.
Book II, chapter VII; pp. 219–221; Jones, David Prosser and Joshua Coslet reports
- Coastal reports pair moans moving along the channel with lights and later washed-up bodies; village versions place the groaning in empty streets, sometimes rattling shutters and doors.
Book II, chapter VII; p. 221; Glamorganshire coast and village variants
- A boy hears cries successively at three burial sites; the later funeral reportedly encounters objections at the first two graves before proceeding to the third, reproducing the route he described.
Book II, chapter VII; pp. 221–222; St. Mellons churchyard episode
Selected complete episodes read in the hosted primary compilation. Earlier Jones, Iolo MSS., Pughe and Vale of Glamorgan citations are attributed as Sikes’s sources; their original editions have not been independently checked here. The compiler’s broad comparative etymologies are not adopted as established modern scholarship.
Encyclopedia background
An additional attributed reference, separate from the editorial profile above.
Read the open encyclopedia overview
The cyhyraeth (Welsh pronunciation: [kəˈhəreθ]) is a ghostly spirit in Welsh mythology, a disembodied moaning voice that sounds before a person's death.
Legends associate the cyhyraeth with the area around the River Tywi in eastern Dyfed, as well as the coast of Glamorganshire. The noise is said to be "doleful and disagreeable", like the groans and sighs of someone deathly ill, and to sound three times (growing weaker and fainter each time) as a threefold warning before the person expires. Along the Glamorganshire coast, the cyhyraeth is said to be heard before a shipwreck, accompanied by a corpse-light.
Like the Irish banshee and the Scottish Cailleach, to which the cyhyraeth and the Gwrach y Rhibyn are closely related, the cyhyraeth also sounds for Welsh natives dying far from home.
Text from Wikipedia contributors, “Cyhyraeth”. CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted introduction; formatting changed. Retrieved 5 October 2026. The source article may have changed since retrieval.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textSikes, British Goblins: Book II, chapter VII, pp. 219–222Research access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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