Thread by @delythbadder

Sometimes you stumble upon the Holy Grail of folklore finds (short of finding the Grail itself).

A while back, I was contacted by an antiques dealer in Ceredigion who’d found two envelopes tucked away in the back of an old chest of drawers on which they wanted my opinion…
[🧵]

While the envelopes had already been opened at some point in the past, scrawled in black ink was an ominous warning: ‘not to bee open at all’.

Inside, were folded three brittle and yellowed sheets of paper, each covered in the same crabbed handwriting…

An apotropaic charm, repeated with near identical wording on each separate sheet, calling for the protection of the farm’s livestock ‘from all witchcraft’.

Complete with astrological symbols, an ABRACADABRA triangle and magical seal, this is the work of an early C20th conjuror.

Interestingly, although this is a fairly common layout for Welsh charms in this period, the handwriting and the wording almost exactly mirrors the charm found in Pentrenant, Powys, by Richard Merrifield, as seen in ‘The Archaeology of Ritual Magic’ (1987), shown here [📷].

It also mirrors a charm housed @NLWales, collected by W Ll Davies [📷] and published in 1938, and another donated to @AmgueddfaCymru in 1916.

Museum curator Iorwerth C Peate claimed these charms were all written by a highly sought dyn hysbys (cunning man) from Llangurig, Powys.

Travelling conjurors and cunning folk were extremely prevalent across mid Wales during this time, and so it’s highly likely this Ceredigion charm was written by the very same Llangurig conjuror.

They may well have been purchased separately by the farmer over a number of years.

In any case, I’m delighted to say that the wonderful @WelshVernacular have given these charms a new home with me in Carreg Wen’s library while I continue my research.

If anyone knows of the whereabouts of any further suspiciously similar examples, I’d love to hear from you 💫