Folk-Lore of West and Mid-WalesDavies, Jonathan Ceredig
History
Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales
Davies, Jonathan Ceredig
Folklore -- Wales; Wales -- Social life and customs
According to Cadrawd, there was an old man in North Pembrokeshire, who
used to say that he obtained the power of bewitching in the following
manner:--The bread of his first Communion he pocketed. He made pretence
at eating it first of all, and then put it in his pocket. When he
went out from the service there was a dog meeting him by the gate,
to which he gave the bread, thus selling his soul to the Devil. Ever
after, he possessed the power to bewitch.
A SERVANT MAID WITCHED IN A CHAPEL.
An old woman of about eighty years of age, named Mrs. Mary Thomas,
Bengal, near Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, informed me about four
years ago, that when she was a young girl, the Gwaun Valley in that
county was full of witches, more especially of the descendants of
one particularly malicious old woman who in her time had proved a
terror to the neighbourhood. On one occasion, a well-known family
who practised the black art and were guilty of witchcraft, wanted to
become members of the Baptist Chapel at Caersalem, and at last they
were admitted; but after being received as members of the chapel, they
were ten times worse than before. One witch during Divine Service,
even on the very day she became a communicant, witched a young woman
who was a fellow servant of my informant at a farm called Gellifor,
near Cilgwyn. The witch was sitting behind, and in the very next
pew to the young woman she witched, which caused the unfortunate
girl to rush out from the chapel, and was seen running about the
road almost wild and mad. After she had been wild and ill for some
time, and every remedy having failed to recover her, her father at
last went to Cwrt-y-Cadno, over forty miles away in Carmarthenshire,
to consult Dr. Harries, a well-known wizard and a medical man. The
conjurer informed the man that his daughter had been witched in chapel
by an old woman who was a witch, and he showed him the whole scene in
a magic mirror! In order to unwitch the girl, and to prevent further
witchcraft, the wizard gave the father some paper with mystic words
written on it, which the young woman was to wear on her breast.
A GIRL WHO WAS BEWITCHED BY THE GYPSIES, NEAR CARMARTHEN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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