In 1868, according to Dr. Evans, an old cow-house in North Wales was torn down, and in its walls was found a tin box containing an exorcist’s formula. The box and its enclosed manuscript had been hidden there some years previously to ward off all evil spirits and witchcraft, for evidently the cattle had been dying of some strange malady which no doctors could cure. Because of its unique nature, and as an illustration of what Welsh exorcisms must have been like, we quote the contents of the manuscripts both as to spelling and punctuation as checked by Sir John Rhŷs with the original, except the undecipherable symbols which come after the archangels’ names:—
‘✠ Lignum sanctae crusis defendat me a malis presentibus preateritus & futuris; interioribus & exterioribus ✠ ✠ Daniel Evans ✠ ✠ Omnes spiritus laudet Dominum: Mosen habent & prophetas. Exergat Deus & disipenture inimiciessus ✠ · ✠ O Lord Jesus Christ I beseech thee to preserve me Daniel Evans; and all that I possess from the power of all evil men, women; spirits, or wizards, or hardness of heart, and this I will trust thou will do by the same power as thou didst cause the blind to see the lame to walk and they that were possesed with unclean spirits to be in their own minds Amen Amen ✠ ✠ ✠ ✠ pater pater pater Noster Noster Noster aia aia aia Jesus ✠ Christus ✠ Messyas ✠ Emmanuel ✠ Soter ✠ Sabaoth ✠ Elohim ✠ on ✠ Adonay ✠ Tetragrammaton ✠ Ag : : ✠ Panthon ✠ ... reaton ✠ Agios ✠ Jasper ✠ Melchor ✠ Balthasar Amen ✠ ✠ ✠ ✴ ♃ ✴ ♀ ✴ ☿ Δ ♄ Δ ♃ Δ
. ☉ ✴ ♃ ✴
✠ ✠ And by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Hevenly Angels
being our Redeemer and Saviour from
Gabriel [ symbols ] all witchcraft and from assaults of the
Michail [ symbols ] Devil Amen ✠ O Lord Jesus Christ
I beseech thee to preserve me and all that I possess from the power of all evil men; women; spirits; or wizards past, present, or to come inward and outward Amen ✠ ✠.’[203]
From India Mr. W. Crooke reports similar exorcisms and charms to cure and to protect cattle.[204] Thus there is employed in Northern India the Ajaypâl jantra, i. e. ‘the charm of the Invincible Protector,’ one of Vishnu’s titles, in his character as the earth-god Bhûmiya—in Scotland it would be the charm of the Invincible Fairy who presides over the flocks and to whom libations are poured—in order to exorcize diseased cattle or else to prevent cattle from becoming diseased. This Ajaypâl jantra is a rope of twisted straw, in which chips of wood are inserted. ‘In the centre of the rope is suspended an earthen platter, inside which an incantation is inscribed with charcoal, and beside it is hung a bag containing seven kinds of grain.’ The rope is stretched between two poles at the entrance of a village, and under it the cattle pass to and fro from pasture. The following is the incantation found on one of the earthen saucers:—‘O Lord of the Earth on which this cattle-pen stands, protect the cattle from death and disease! I know of none, save thee, who can deliver them.’ In the Morbihan, Lower Brittany, we seem to see the same folk-custom, somewhat changed to be sure; for on St. John’s Day, the christianized pagan sun-festival in honour of the summer solstice, in which fairies and spirits play so prominent a part in all Celtic countries, just outside a country village a great fire is lit in the centre of the main road and covered over with green branches, in order to produce plenty of smoke, and then on either side of this fire and through the exorcizing smoke are made to pass all the domestic animals in the district as a protection against disease and evil spirits, to secure their fruitful increase, and, in the case of cows, abundant milk supply. Mr. Milne, while making excavations in the Carnac country, discovered the image of a small bronze cow, now in the Carnac Museum, and this would seem to indicate that before Christian times there was in the Morbihan a cult of cattle, preserved even until now, no doubt, in the Christian fête of St. Cornely, just as in St. Cornely’s Fountain there is preserved a pagan holy well.
It ought now to be clear that both pre-Christian and Christian exorcisms among Celts have shaped the Fairy-Faith in a very fundamental manner. And anthropologically the whole subject of exorcism falls in line with the Psychological Theory of the nature and origin of the belief in fairies in Celtic countries.
Taboos
We find that taboos, or prohibitions of a religious and social character, are as common in the living Fairy-Faith as exorcisms. The chief one is the taboo against naming the fairies, which inevitably results in the use of euphemisms, such as ‘good people’, ‘gentry’, ‘people of peace’, Tylwyth Teg (‘Fair Folk’), or bonnes dames (‘good ladies’). A like sort of taboo, with its accompanying use of euphemisms, existed among the Ancients, e. g. among the Egyptians and Babylonians, and early Celts as well, in a highly developed form; and it exists now among the native peoples of Australia, Polynesia, Central Africa, America, in Indian systems of Yoga, among modern Greeks, and, in fact, almost everywhere where there are vestiges of a primitive culture.[205] And almost always such a taboo is bound up with animistic and magical elements, which seem to form its background, just as it is in our own evidence.