positive proof that they were bewitched, and unless the spell could be
broken, nothing, it was said, could save them from death.

9. It was generally thought that if a witch said the word "God" to a
child or person, whom she had bewitched, it would "undo her work."

My friend Mr. Edward Hamer, in his "Parochial Account of Llanidloes,"
published in _The Montgomeryshire Collections_, vol. x., p. 242, records
an instance of this belief. His words are:--

"About fifty years ago the narrator was walking up Long Bridge
Street, when he saw a large crowd in one of the yards leading from
the street to a factory. Upon making his way to the centre of this
crowd, he saw an old woman in a 'fit,' real or feigned, he could not
say, but he believed the latter, and over her stood an angry,
middle-aged man, gesticulating violently, and threatening the old
dame, that he would hang her from an adjacent beam if she would not
pronounce the word 'God' to a child which was held in its mother's
arms before her. It was in vain that the old woman protested her
innocence; in vain that she said that by complying with his request
she would stand before them a confessed witch; in vain that she fell
into one fit after another, and prayed to be allowed to depart; not a
sympathising face could she for some time see in the crowd, until the
wife of a manufacturer, who lived close by, appeared on the scene,
who also pleaded in vain on her behalf. Terrified beyond all
measure, and scarcely knowing what she did, the old woman mumbled
something to the child. It smiled. The angry parents were satisfied
the spell was broken, the crowd dispersed, and the old woman was
allowed to depart quietly."

10. The earth from a churchyard sprinkled over any place preserved it
from spells.

Mr. Roberts, Plas Einion, Llanfair D. Clwyd, a very aged farmer, told me
that when a certain main or cock fighting had been arranged, his father's
servant man, suspecting unfair play, and believing that his master's
birds had been bewitched, went to the churchyard and carried therefrom a
quantity of consecrated earth, with which he slyly sprinkled the cock
pit, and thus he averted the evil, and broke the spell, and all the birds
fought, and won, according to their deserts.

11. Anything taken into a church belonging to a farm supposed to be
cursed broke the spell or curse laid upon the place from