Witches and Warlocks of Wales

Wales has always been known for it’s poets and witches, the most famous of all of the male witches was of course Merlin, born in Carmarthen, so legend has it. The first female witch mentioned in Welsh legends is Ceridwen a sorceress who was supposed to have given birth to Taliesin, who she placed in a reed basket and floated down the river Dovey, where the child was found by Prince Elphin who adopted him. There were at least two cannibal witches and many gallows witches. The latter used to make charms and potions from the felon’s dead bodies. Unlike Scotland and England during the Penal Witchcraft act (1563 to 1736) years, the Welsh do not seem to have had more than three witches put to death by means of being found guilty at an Assize trial, or any other method of being found guilty. The only positive records of witches being put to death, seems to have been a trial held in Chester in 1656. It was there that Cromwell’s lord Chief justice, John Bradshaw (who sentenced King Charles I to death) inflicted the death penalty on four welsh witches. Three were hanged at Bougton Chester, on 15th October 1656. The fourth one escaped into the Wrexham area and was never heard from again. This aloofness by Wales from the Witchcraft Act seems fantastic in relation to the number of witches burned or hanged in England and Scotland. In England and Wales it was required to prove in law that the witch had injured a human being or a domestic animal by the use of “Black Magic”. In the other two countries of Scotland and Ireland the relevant act stated the alleged traffic with the Devil was sufficient to merit the death sentence. The trafficker being deemed a witch by association. Scotland is reputed to have hung thousand men and women accused of witchcraft, and burned 4,400 at the stake. There is a tale, unsupported by any recorded trial of a witch in the sixteenth century having been burned alive in the town centre at Dolgellau, Gwynedd. There have not been many accounts of the public taking the law into their own hands and stoning a suspected Witch to death in Wales. The Welsh seem to have from ancient times all kinds of methods(obviously successful from the lack of witch trials) of dealing with male and female witches by rendering their curses harmless in many cases and taking away their powers of evil. The male and female witches of Wales were divided into three main classes. 1. The Black witches male and female, those who had traded their soul to the Devil in exchange for magical powers, using them for evil and cursing. Quick to take umbrage, they were liberal with their curses, and also raised the dead in the manner of Zombies to serve them. 2. The White witches, who used their powers for the lifting of curses and for healing. They sold Love potions and foretold the future, and were widely consulted by the gentry of the time as well as ordinary folk. They could when roused to extreme anger curse people. 3. The third type of witch was also a practising White witch, always male and called by the Welsh a “Dyn Hysbys”,(Wizard or wise man). He was able as a result of his studies of magical books to exorcise spirits and ghosts. He could also cure diseases and lift curses, and usually travelled the countryside selling his potions and magical powers. In addition to these three kinds of witches there were men who could exorcise spirits by means of the Cross and the Trinity and passages from the old Testament. They were classed as wise men and conjurors, but never referred to as witches, and were many times more successful at exorcising evil spirits than the clergy. There were all kinds of protective charms against a Black Witch entering a house or an outbuilding. These are far too numerous to mention, but the principal forms of protection were the following. Iron particularly a horseshoe, was supposed to be one of the strongest. Yet it is strange in all of witchcraft, whether for adults or children, Witch or Wizard always seems to be stirring (like the witches in Macbeth) some concoction in a cauldron. Many people of the superstitious kind nailed branches of Yew taken from the churchyard, sprigs of the sacred Rowan tree, brooms and sprigs of Vervain, above the doors of their homes and outbuildings. Salt blessed by the church was often sprinkled on the floor of houses or outbuildings, the salt was used against poltergeists in particular. An interesting feature of the protection used against cats by many aviculturists goes back into time. Branches of the prickly broom are stacked around their aviaries and on top to discourage cats from jumping at the birds. Could it stem from the supposition that witches could turn themselves into cats which were supposed to be their familiars? Quite apart from the powers of witches especially in Wales in the olden days, and indeed right up to the late 1800’s, there were stories of men and women who could cure diseases and lift curses and had the power of second sight. They were the seventh daughter born with no brothers in between her birth and that of her sisters. Or the seventh son born with no daughters in between his birth and that of his six brothers. Now and then a man or woman could cure shingles which is known in Welsh as “Yr Eryr” (Eagles disease). This was said of anyone who had eaten of the flesh of an eagle to obtain that power. The most awesome curse of Wales the “Stile curse”, was uttered by a group of male and female witches who lived in Llanddona in Anglesey. “May he wander for ages many, And at every step a stile, At every stile a fall, At every fall a broken bone, not the largest nor the least bone, but the chief neck bone every time”. It seems to have applied only to a male and sounded much more fearsome in Welsh than in English. It was used with variations and as senseless as the jingle sounds it frightened many people of those superstitious times. It was possibly the variations they feared, as surely as the chief neck bone was broken that would be the end of the person who was cursed. So great was their fear of this great Welsh curse that they would grant every whim of the Anglesey witches. Th following chapters will lead you through some of the ruins of the witches’ dwellings and in some instances o the still standing buildings. Whether you believe in witches or not you will not fail to be “bewitched” by the beautiful scenery which the Welsh witches walked and performed their magic. View the forbidding mountains, the bleak moor lands dark lakes and bottomless tarns. Imagine yourself back in those superstitious days, when the welsh witches and warlocks held their sway, and ask yourself how much truth was there in the strange old legends of Wales, Celtic land of mystery and superstition. Even today there are strong witch covens in Wales, mainly in the North where the braver members of the local communities whisper tales of human sacrifice. Do not wonder about them, remembering that witchcraft is the old religion, as old as time itself, concentrate instead on the traditional stories.

back to Mainpage
Map
A shopkeeper Witch
Ala
Bethan's Harvest Visit
Cadi
Canrig Bwt-Cannibal Witch
Huw's Magic Books
Nansi Goch
No butter
Raven Skies
The Eviction
The Evil Erwena
The Expensive Pig
The Greater Power
The Humerous Wizard
The Llanddona WItch Tribe
The Magical Horn
The Marsh Witch
The Mystery of the Inn