Cyhyraeth

The Cyhyraeth ('the skeleton' in some interpretations, from the Welsh word for joints or bones) occupies a specific role in Welsh folklore that is both similar to and distinct from the Irish Banshee. Where the Banshee is associated with particular families and takes a visible form, the Cyhyraeth is purely acoustic — a sound without a body, heard in the night but never seen.

The cry sounds three times, always diminishing: the first call loud, the second quieter, the third barely a whisper, as if whatever makes it is retreating toward the world of the dead. Witnesses described it as a faint, moaning, drawn-out groan — sometimes confused at first for the wind in trees, but always recognisable in retrospect. Hearing it three times meant a death in the household or among the hearers was imminent.

The strongest Cyhyraeth tradition comes from coastal Glamorgan, particularly around the Gower Peninsula and the Vale of Glamorgan, where it was associated with storms and shipwrecks: the sound heard offshore before a vessel came in to grief. The folklorist John Rhys collected extensive accounts in the 1880s and noted that the belief was still very much alive in the farming communities along the Bristol Channel coast.