There were various ways of proceeding in this charm. Yarn was always used and the measurement as above made, and sometimes the person was named and his age, and the Trinity was invoked, then the thread was put around the neck of the sick person, and left there for three nights, and afterwards buried in the name of the Trinity under ashes. If the thread shortened above the second joint of the middle finger there was little hope of recovery; should it lengthen that was a sign of recovery.
Clefyd yr Ede Wlan or Yarn Sickness.
About twenty years ago, when the writer was curate of Llanwnog, Montgomeryshire, a young Welsh married woman came to reside in the parish suffering from what appeared to be that fell disease, consumption. He visited her in her illness, and one day she appeared much elated as she had been told that she was improving in health. She told the narrator that she was suffering from Clwyf yr ede wlan or the woollen thread sickness, and she said that the yarn had lengthened, which was a sign that she was recovering. The charm was the same as that mentioned above, supplemented with a drink made of a quart of old beer, into which a piece of heated steel had been dipped, with an ounce of meadow saffron tied up in muslin soaked in it, taken in doses daily of a certain prescribed quantity, and the thread was measured daily, thrice I believe, to see if she was being cured or the reverse. Should the yarn shorten it was a sign
of death, if it lengthened it indicated a recovery. However, although the yarn in this case lengthened, the young woman died. The charm failed.
Sufficient has been said about charms to show how prevalent faith in their efficiency was. Ailments of all descriptions had their accompanying antidotes; but it is singularly strange that people professing the Christian religion should cling so tenaciously to paganism and its forms, so that even in our own days, such absurdities as charms find a resting-place in the minds of our rustic population, and often, even the better-educated classes resort to charms for obtaining cures for themselves and their animals.
But from ancient times, omens, charms, and auguries have held considerable sway over the destinies of men. That charming book, Plutarch’s Lives, abounds with instances of this kind. Indeed, an excellent collection of ancient Folk-lore could easily be compiled from extant classical authors. Most things die hard, and ideas that have once made a lodgment in the mind of man, particularly when they are connected in any way with his faith, die the very hardest of all. Thus it is that such beliefs as are treated of in this chapter still exist, and they have reached our days from distant periods, filtered somewhat in their transit, but still retaining their primitive qualities.
We have not as yet gathered together the fragments of the ancient religion of the Celts, and formed of them a consistent whole, but evidently we are to look for them in the sayings and doings of the people quite as much as in the writings of the ancients. If we could only ascertain what views were held respecting any particular matter in ancient times, we might undoubtedly find traces of them even in modern days. Let us take for instance only one subject, and see whether traces of it still exist. Cæsar in his
Commentaries states of the Druids that, “One of their principal maxims is that the soul never dies, but that after death it passes into the body of another being. This maxim they consider to be of the greatest utility to encourage virtue and to make them regardless of life.”
Now, is there anything that can be associated with such teaching still to be found? The various tales previously given of hags turning themselves and others into various kinds of animals prove that people believed that such transitions were in life possible, and they had only to go a step further and apply the same faith to the soul, and we arrive at the transmigration of souls.
It is not my intention to make too much of the following tale, for it may be only a shred, but still as such it is worthy of record. A few years ago I was staying at the Rectory, Erbistock, near Ruabon, and the rector, the Rev. P. W. Sparling, in course of conversation, said that a parishioner, one Betsy Roberts, told him that she knew before anyone told her, that a certain person died at such and such a time. The rector asked her how she came to know of the death if no one had informed her, and if she had not been to the house to ascertain the fact. Her answer was, “I knew because I saw a hare come from towards his house and cross over the road before me.” This was about all that the rector could elicit, but evidently the woman connected the appearance of the hare with the death of the man. The association of the live hare with the dead man was here a fact, and possibly in the birthplace of that woman such a connection of ideas was common. Furthermore, it has often been told me by people who have professed to have heard what they related, that being present in the death chamber of a friend they have heard a bird singing beautifully outside in the darkness, and that it stopped immediately