CHARMS FOR WARTS.
There were and there are still, many charms in use for the purpose of removing warts; and the writer can prove from experience that there are cases of complete cures through the instrumentality of charms.
I remember once when I was a boy I had the misfortune of having two big warts right under my foot, which caused me a great deal of discomfort in walking. As I was complaining about this to my mother, she advised me to go and see a lady friend of hers, who was the wife of a very prominent gentleman in the neighbourhood. I went to the woman and told her everything about the warts. She told me to go home and take a small bit of flesh meat and rub the warts with it. Then I was to go out though the back door, the meat in one hand, and a spade in the other, and after proceeding to the middle of a field, dig a hole in the ground, and bury the meat in it. Perfect silence was to be observed during the ceremony, and everything to be done in secret, for if detected in the act of burying the meat, the charm lost its efficacy. I did everything as I was directed by the woman, and strange to say within two or three days the warts had disappeared.
Major Price Lewes, Tyglyn-Aeron, informed me that when he was a boy at Llanllear, an old woman in the neighbourhood charmed away warts from his hands.
A woman in the neighbourhood of Ystrad Meurig informed me that she got rid of her warts by washing her hands in the water in which the blacksmith cools iron.
Another way of charming away warts is to pick up small white stones from a brook,—one stone for each wait—and rub the warts with them. Then the stones are to be tied up in paper, and the person who has the warts is to go to the nearest cross roads, and throw the stones over his shoulders, and whoever picks up the parcel gets the warts. A young woman in the parish of Llanarth, in Cardiganshire, did this, and got rid of her warts. Soon after this an old woman who lives in the neighbourhood, passed by, and picked up the parcel of stones, thinking it contained some biscuits or sweets which one of the school children had lost on the way home from school. But to her great surprise, when she opened the paper, she only found small white stones! After this the old woman found her hands covered with warts; but she in her turn charmed them away by washing them with spittle from the mouth. My informant was the old woman herself.
Another charm for warts is to cut a slip of an elder tree, and make a notch in it for every wart. Rub the elder against each wart, and burn or bury it, and the warts will disappear.
In former times Holy Wells were much resorted to by those who desired to get rid of their warts, when a pin was dropped into the well, and a rag with which the warts had been rubbed, hanged on the nearest tree.