Mr. Davies, schoolmaster, Llangedwyn, informed the writer that at one time hyssop was hung on the inside of the house door to protect the inmates from charms.
15. The seventh daughter could destroy charms. The seventh son was thought to possess supernatural power, and so also was the seventh daughter, but her influence seems to have been exerted against witchcraft.
16. The sign of the cross on the door made the inmates invulnerable, and when made with the finger on the breast it was a protection from evil.
The sign of the cross made on the person was once common in Wales, and the advice given by the aged when a person was in any difficulty was “ymgroesa,” cross yourself. The custom of crossing the door on leaving the house lingered long in many places, and, I think, it is not altogether given up in our days.
17. Invoking the aid of the Holy Trinity. This was resorted to, as seen in the charm given on page 270, when animals were witched.
The way to find out whether a Hag is a Witch or not.
It was generally supposed that a witch could not pray, and one way of testing her guilty connection with the evil one was to ascertain whether she could repeat the Lord’s
Prayer correctly. If she failed to do so, she was pronounced to be a witch. This test, as everyone knows, must have been a fallacious one, for there are good living illiterate people who are incapable of saying their Pader; but such was the test, and failure meant death.
Some fifty years ago, when the writer was a lad in school, he noticed a crowd in Short Bridge Street, Llanidloes, around an aged decrepit woman, apparently a stranger from the hill country, and on inquiring what was going on, he was told that the woman was a suspected witch, and that they were putting her to the test. I believe she was forced to go on her knees, and use the name of God, and say the Lord’s Prayer. However, the poor frightened thing got successfully through the ordeal, and I saw her walk away from her judges.
Another manner for discovering a witch was to weigh her against the Church Bible; if the Bible went up, she was set at liberty, if, on the other hand, she were lighter than the Bible, she was a witch, and forfeited her life.