BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1930, Page 8

BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT

WILD FOLK OF WALES. FEAR OF “THE EVIL EYE.” Herefordshire has been up in arms at the suggestion made before the Licensing Commission that excessive drinking of home-mdde cider was a source of mental deficiency in the county. Hereford town says in effect: “It is nothing to do with us. The wild 1 folk of the Welsh mountain border country have brought this indictment on us.”

The medical officer of health for the county also spurns the suggestion, but at the same time deiends the people of the mountain district. In this, frankly, a correspondent says, he found him in a distinct minority.

Investigations made in the wild hillj<district along the border would seem to substantiate in some measure the tales heard in Hereford of a, race made up of isolated communities left far behind in the march of progress. Here scattered farmsteads stand cut off from the world and in many cases attempts oil the part of authority to approach them have resulted in flight “for fear of ‘the evil eye,’ ” and on at least two recent occasions there has been violence. In this wild country there is still a very lively belief in witchcraft and spells and a great faith in ' the efficacy of “the evil eye.”

A county council health visitor, who was chased down the mountain side by a man whose house she‘visited, told a remarkable tale. In the house to which she had been sent, she said, she found a woman who had been held prisoner in one room for 20 years because “she had been looked upon with ‘the evil eye.’”

“On my second visit to this homestead,” the woman "said, "one of the brothers who held the woman prisoner accused me of having ‘the evil eye’ and threatened me with a gun. When I turned and ran he chased me down the mountain, uttering terrible cries.” The medical officer of health for the county strongly resented the opinions expressed regarding the people. “Thev are by no means the decadent, feebleminded people they are made out to be by some in Hereford,” he said. “There are eases, of course, and we rather take the view that they are best left alone until they do any hurt to other people. Dull they may be, but not mentally deficient in the main. 1 have no difficulty in administering the Health Acts tip there and find the people very willing to respond. “As a stranger they would, of course, be nervous of you and refuse to speak. Superstitious, yes; but do you walk under ladders or omit to throw the spilled salt over your shoulder? Of course, you don’t.”