WITCHCRAFT AND CHARMS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 37 (Supplement)

WITCHCRAFT AND CHARMS

There is said to be a revival of interest in witchcraft. Clever people are writing books on the subject, and comfortable people jot down the names on their library list, and find it an amusing topic for the dinner-table. Witchcraft will soon be as fashionable as table-turning. Down in Wales, says a newspaper correspondent, we do not talk of it very openly. In narrow “dingles," filled with the noise of streams and sodden with fallen leaves, out on the naked hills, where those who know best may lose their way in the driving mist and fall into bogs deep enough to swallow horse and man, the supernatural is too near to be treated lightly. If your cattle —representing half your capital—are struck by lightning the day after you shot a black rabbit, you are likely to avoid shooting another black rabbit for the rest of your life. Not many months ago a man in Mid Wales, believing himself to be bewitched, and therefore out of luck for ever, hanged himself. But the matter is not always so desperate. Curses may fall on the unwary or the unfortunate, but there is always the witch-doctor, with his remedies of herbs, ointments and charms. He is sent for in all sorts of emergencies—when the butter will not “come,” and your bewitched ducks go wandering away from home. When the dentist lives 10 miles away—and is, in any case, regarded with mistrust —it is simpler to ask the witch-doctor for a charm, worn in a little bag hanging round the neck. The bag is not meant to be opened, but I know of one that was, and the mystic words scribbled inside ran: St. Peter had the toothache. And the Lord said to the toothache: “Depart.” Here is a much-respected remedy for whooping-cough, although not the latest word in hygiene: Hairs pulled from the cross (note the cross) on a donkey’s back should be chopped fine, mixed with jam and swallowed by the patient. A Hair of the Dog. Warts are always tricky things; I am sure myself they are never cured except by a charm. Quite a good one is to rub your wart with a slug and then impale the slug on a rose-thorn. As the corpse of the slug gradually shrivels away the wart is quite likely to disappear. “A hair of the dog that bit him,” is an old saying, sometimes taken literally. A doctor (of medicine) found that a bitten child, whom he had treated, had been unbandaged by its father, and the wound dressed with a bunch of the dog’s hair.

But indeed we have not much faith in the faculty. Easy-going procrastination joins with disbelief, and often only when a case is past help will you hear Thomas Evans remark sadly to Evan Price: “Oh, no, no hope for her, poor thing. No hope at all. They've sent for the doctor!”