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Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

Chapter 254: WIZARD MARKING THE CULPRITS.
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About This Book

A compilation of folk beliefs, tales, and customs gathered across western and mid-Wales from elderly informants and local tradition. It presents translated Welsh narratives and organized material on fairies, mermaids and water‑horses, ghosts, witches and wizards, omens, animal superstitions, and popular spells, alongside accounts of wedding, birth, funeral, inheritance and sheep‑shearing customs, divination practices, augury, and prophecies. The emphasis is on literal fidelity to oral testimony and on preserving vanishing traditions rather than offering theoretical interpretation.

WIZARD MARKING THE CULPRITS.

It was believed in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, that Harries, Cwrtycadno, could mark out thieves, and also persons who had an “Evil Eye,” by causing a horn to grow out of their foreheads. A man in Tregaron had witched a woman, but the conjurer marked the mischievous person by putting a horn on his head.

A farmer from the parish of Llangwyryfon, in Cardiganshire, whose cattle had been witched by a neighbour who had an evil eye, went to Llangurig in Montgomeryshire, to consult, a well-known conjurer who only died a few years ago. The Wizard for the payment of 10s. showed a picture of the offender in a magic mirror, and offered to cause him to die of a strange disease. The farmer begged the conjurer not to do that; that he did not desire to kill his enemy, only to punish him, and he was punished. My informant was a farmer who lives near Talybont, Cardiganshire.

This Llangurig wizard was continually consulted by clients from Montgomeryshire, Cardiganshire, Radnorshire, and other counties. Not long ago, there was also a conjurer at Llanidloes, in the same county (Montgomeryshire), who was consulted on all cases of cursed fields, bewitched cattle, horses, pigs, churns, backward lovers, bewitched women, etc.