The Humorous Wizard

Dic Spot was a famous wizard who spent his time travelling through Mid and North Wales, though there are no accounts of him having travelled south of the principality. He offered cures for many illnesses and was quite successful at this and also at lifting curses. During those early times in Wales, it was necessary to visit the many holy places and wells to lift the curses. As travelling was so burdensome, and the threat of robbery or attack from wild animal was so great, he had very many customers for this side of his activities. Another of Dic's many functions, was to carry around curses written on pieces of paper. Sometimes he wrote the curses for the persons himself and in other cases monks, who felt the aggrieved person was justified in wanting to put a curse on their enemies, may have written them. Dic placed these curses in "cursing wells"; St. Eilian's well in North Wales was particularly favoured. The wizard himself occasionally put curses on people himself, if they had offended him in some way. He was not a malicious man, he was normally content to make the person(s) concerned do silly things so that everyone laughed and ridiculed them. One evening towards dusk he was making his way to Llanrwst, in Gwynedd. When he reached the small village of Henllan, near Denbigh, he decided to have a meal at the only inn there. Feeling rather tired and footsore he had already decided to spend the night at the inn. The landlord served him with some bread and cheese and a tankard of strong Welsh cwrw (Ale). After the meal he decided to ask what he owed before asking for a night's shelter. He was told the charge was 10 pence, sixpence for the meal and four pence for the cwrw, the outraged wizard stood up nearly overturning his table and shouted "Ten pence is it! You old villain, you must be joking!" He did not say anything else, but decided not to stay the night, and drawing his flowing cloak around him he prepared to leave. He stopped, sat down again then under the cover of his cloak, wrote something on a small piece of parchment. Bending down he placed this under the leg of the table, and stamped out in to the deepening dusk. The landlord and his wife went upstairs a few hours later leaving their overworked maid to clean up the bar. They had not been in bed for more than ten minutes when they heard the maid singing from downstairs. In actual fact she was shouting at the top of her voice "Six and four is ten" bang- bang thump. Then "Count it over again" more thumps and bangs. The landlord's wife shouted at him to go downstairs at once and stop the racket. Down he went and reached the door of the bar and saw inside the young girl still yelling and dancing up and down. He went through the door into the bar and tried to catch her but as soon as he entered he too had to join in the mad song and dance. Now it was the turn of the landlady to come down and find out what on earth was going on downstairs. To her furious horror she was her husband and the young girl hand in hand dancing to their mad song. Screaming at her husband the woman stormed into the bar and immediately joined into the singing "Six and four is ten. Count it over again", and leaped in to join the dance. The din echoed through the only street of Henllan, bringing the sleepy occupants of the cottages out to find the source of the noise. They all made for the inn and entered the bar, where they too joined in the dance singing over and over again "Six and four is ten, count it over again!" The situation was getting serious as the company was getting bruised and battered by their efforts. A spectator who had not entered the bar and who was familiar with the ways of wizards and witches suddenly remembered seeing Dic Spot leave the bar earlier, and guessed that he had put a curse on the Inn. He rushed home and saddled his horse, and galloped off in the direction he had seen Dic leave. About halfway to Llanrwst he saw Dic ambling along whistling a merry tune. He pulled the hors up beside him and begged Dic to rake the spell off, or innocent people would die of exhaustion. At first Dic ignored the man, but presently burst into loud laughter. Delighted with the success of his spell Dic could not speak for laughing, but eventually managed to say "serves the rogue right, overcharging people. Still I think he's probably learnt his lesson well enough by now. So listen carefully and I will tell you how to break the spell. "You must crawl into the bar and under the leg of one of the tables is a scrap of parchment. Remove it, and crawl back out of the inn, taking the paper with you. Do not stand up until you are out of the inn or you too will be forced to sing and dance." The man rode back quickly to Henllan and did as he was told, including the last instruction Dic shouted as he galloped off. This involved burning the scrap of parchment away from the inn. When this had been done and the parchment was no more than ashes the man returned to the inn and looked through the window. He saw all the dancers fast asleep on the floor. When they awoke in the morning they were all sore and stiff. The landlord never again overcharged any stranger, and even reduced his prices for the locals. Now and again in his long and successful magical career Dic used to exorcise evil spirits. It has been recorded that he had only one failure, and he would have chuckled at the sequel. There was a place in Anglesey where a particularly malevolent spirit was troubling the good people of the area. Dic was sent for and began to deal with the evil spirit. This spirit did not take kindly to Dic interfering in its enjoyment and gave Dic plenty of trouble by turning into various animal shapes, from a big black bull, to a fierce goat and even a badger. When Dic was close to giving up, he managed to "conjure" the spirit form into a small black fly. This he popped into a bottle, with lumps of iron wrapped around it. For some unrecorded reason Dic took the bottle many miles away to the banks of the river Cynon in Powys. Muttering his magical incantations he lowered the weighted bottle into the water and commanded that it should remain at the bottom for a thousand years, or until someone should divert the course of the river itself. Dic was quite sure no one would ever want to change the course of the river, but he reckoned without Liverpool's water board's need for water. In the year 1900 Lake Vyrnwy reservoir was constructed and this meant diverting the course of the river Cynon. In order to do this a rock near the edge of the river partly standing in the water needed to be blown up. Irish and Welsh labourers were engaged in the endeavour and all were highly superstitious so what transpired greatly scared them, especially as they had been told the legend of Dic and the evil spirits. The charge of dynamite was inserted into the rock and workmen and spectators were standing around while the man fired it. There was a terrific explosion but there were no pieces of rock flying around, as it seemed to have split clean in two and would require a second charge. When the smoke had cleared there, sitting on the half, which remained, was the largest Toad anyone present had ever seen. It gave a loud croak, which echoed all around and with an almost human gesture wiped the dust off its eyes and stared at the people gathered there. This proved to be too much for the crowd and people ran in all direction as far as they could from the evil toad. None of the workmen would approach the Toad, which remained, on the rock for the rest of the day. The next day when they were sure the Toad had vanished, construction work continued. The following night there was heard near the rock the sounds of chains being rattled, and about a week after the incident the same rattling noises came from opposite where the river was being diverted. Even to this day some reports have been made of strange rattling noises and the like coming from there, sometimes accompanied by a wailing sound. For nearly half a century after the incident, no local person would walk along the road leading to Welshpool after dark in case they heard what was known locally as "Cynon's Ghost" .

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