White Ladies: Ghost or Goddess?
Llyn Glasfryn – photo: Eric Jones
The White Ladies who appear all over Britain and in many other countries are often said to be the ghosts of murdered brides, or of girls who drowned themselves for unrequited love, and it’s true that they are often associated with water in Britain. In Germany they are more likely to haunt mountainsides, even appearing by day there, according to Jacob Grimm[1]. Despite grave clothes often being white in colour, we hear very little of male phantoms dressed in white, which should perhaps alert us to a possibility that these hauntings are not the usual run of the mill ghost stories, but something different and potentially much more interesting. When I discovered that Wales has not one but two kinds of White Lady I was even more intrigued. Could these phantoms be the fragmented remains of ancient traditions, eroded by centuries of Christian attempts at obliteration?
I make no apology for including Shropshire in Welsh folklore; it was part of the Welsh kingdom of Powys after the Romans left in the early 5th century, and remained part of Wales until Offa annexed the county over the course of the 8th century. And there in Shropshire the White Lady of Longnor lived in a pool thought to be bottomless; it’s said she would come out and dance on the village green, according to Hayward[2], who also tells us that another White Lady, at Oteley Hall near Ellesmere, was not inconvenienced by the building of a new hall in the 19th century, as the owners left part of the old hall, where she was known to walk, for her comfort.
The Augustinian Whiteladies Priory, also in Shropshire, came to the atttention of Henry VIII’s assessors in 1536 and the house was ordered to be closed. An old man, Hayward reports, told of haunting by the “Mother” of the nuns, who had been dragged away shrieking at the dissolution, declaring that she would haunt the place until the White Ladies came back and indeed, after a new nunnery was built nearby her ghost no longer appeared. Hayward’s informant also told her that a team of horses refused to plough land that had been the nuns’ cemetery.
Our two distinct types of White Lady In Wales are the Dynes Mewn Gwyn or “Lady in White”, similar to the phantoms common elsewhere, and y Ladi Wen: “The White Lady”, considered not to be the spirit of a particular person but marking a place where, perhaps, a tragedy occurred. I saw nothing but strongly felt her presence once, when walking in Cwrt, a hamlet where a battle was fought during the Wars of the Roses.[3] Perhaps y Ladi Wen is the type of haunting Langrish[4] is writing of when she notes that rather than terror most people who see her report a feeling of eerie sadness. A good example is told of a spot near Llanerfyl village, where an aristocratic lady in white silk haunted the place where several workmen were killed when a road was built.
Some Dynes Mewn Gwyn guard treasure, as does the famous Lady of Ogmore Castle, near Bridgend. The story goes that a man plucked up courage to greet the Lady one night and she showed him where the treasure was hidden, saying he may take half. He did so, but then returned later for the rest. This Lady had claws and demonstrated her displeasure by tearing him nearly to shreds and although he escaped he wasted away and later died.
Perhaps the best known tale is that of Ffynnon Grasi (Grace’s Well). As in other tales of lakes appearing overnight[5] Grasi forgot to replace the cover on the well one evening and all the water gushed out, so quietly that fairies dancing nearby didn’t notice until their feet got wet and their fairy circle was destroyed by the creation of Llyn Glasfryn. To punish Grasi they transformed her into a swan for six score years and then allowed her to take back her human shape but to this day, at about 2am on certain nights of the year, a tall lady in white silk walks up and down Cae’r Ladi – the Lady’s Field – weeping and wailing.
The nearby standing stone still bears traces of white paint on her face, according to Michael Dames[6], as the villagers used to dress the stone as Ceridwen. He goes on to say that both Ceridwen and the Welsh Venus, Gwener, are divine goddess versions of y Ladi Wen and notes in passing that Fynnon Wenestre – the Fountain of Venus – is a Welsh name for the sea. And rather a lovely one!
Dames goes on to tell us about the haunting of industrial towns in South Wales in the 19th century: the lady was often seen by night at crossroads, fords and in churchyards, wringing her hands as if in despair. I can’t help but wonder whether y Ladi Wen saw here not only the destruction of a way of life but also tragedies to come. There was a shocking number of mining accidents – over 6,000, each with anything between a handful and hundreds of deaths – in Wales in the 19th and 20th centuries, although these account for less than a fifth of mining-related deaths in Wales, the remaining 80% are people who died from mining-related illnesses.[7] Many of us will know of or remember the Aberfan disaster where 144 people were killed, 116 of them children. I have never forgotten the horror of hearing the first news of this back in 1966.
Perhaps y Ladi Wen represents that part of us which shudders at violent death; expressing the grief and sadness that a landscape accumulates when we kill and injure one another, whether intentionally in battle or murder, or as “collateral damage” when profit is put before people. Lacking any other category today we call her ghost or phantom, but perhaps before pagan myth went underground with the coming of Christianity, as Jane Beck[8] suggests, we would have recognised the Lady for who she really is: our own Mother Goddess, sharing our anguish at the seeming impossibility of putting a stop to all the cruelty.
Can we name our ghosts? Grimm identifies the German spectres as Holda and Berhta (whose name means white, bright, shining)[9]. In Wales many goddess and saint names include a syllable meaning “white” or “sacred”: gwen, or wen if mutated. Perhaps y Lady Wen could be Ceridwen, Gwener, Gwenfrewi or Branwen.
Geraldine Charles
18 December 2024
[1] Grimm, Jacob. (1882-8) Teutonic Mythology, available at: https://archive.org/details/teutonicmythol01grimuoft
[2] Hayward, L. H. (1938). Shropshire Folklore of Yesterday and To-Day. Folklore, 49(3), 223–243.
[3] Charles, G (2024). Two Mounts and a Circle: “The Irishman’s Church”, https://goddesstemplebala.co.uk/2024/06/21/two-mounds-and-a-circle-the-irishmans-church/
[4] Langrish, K. (2016). Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: Reflections on Fairy Tales. The Graystones Press.
[5] Charles, G (2023). The Undrowned Goddess, https://goddesstemplebala.co.uk/2023/02/01/the-undrowned-goddess/
[6] Dames, M. (2006). Taliesin’s Travels: a demi-god at large. Heart of Albion Press.
[7] https://www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/DisastersList.htm
[8] Jane C. Beck (1970) The White Lady of Great Britain and Ireland, Folklore, 81:4, 292-306
[9] Grimm, (note 1 above)