sh married woman came to reside in the parish
suffering from what appeared to be that fell disease, consumption. He
visited her in her illness, and one day she appeared much elated as she
had been told that she was improving in health. She told the narrator
that she was suffering from _Clwyf yr ede wlan_ or the woollen thread
sickness, and she said that the yarn had _lengthened_, which was a sign
that she was recovering. The charm was the same as that mentioned above,
supplemented with a drink made of a quart of old beer, into which a piece
of heated steel had been dipped, with an ounce of meadow saffron tied up
in muslin soaked in it, taken in doses daily of a certain prescribed
quantity, and the thread was measured daily, thrice I believe, to see if
she was being cured or the reverse. Should the yarn shorten it was a
sign of death, if it lengthened it indicated a recovery. However,
although the yarn in this case lengthened, the young woman died. The
charm failed.

Sufficient has been said about charms to show how prevalent faith in
their efficiency was. Ailments of all descriptions had their
accompanying antidotes; but it is singularly strange that people
professing the Christian religion should cling so tenaciously to paganism
and its forms, so that even in our own days, such absurdities as charms
find a resting-place in the minds of our rustic population, and often,
even the better-educated classes resort to charms for obtaining cures for
themselves and their animals.

But from ancient times, omens, charms, and auguries have held
considerable sway over the destinies of men. That charming book,
_Plutarch's Lives_, abounds with instances of this kind. Indeed, an
excellent collection of ancient Folk-lore could easily be compiled from
extant classical authors. Most things die hard, and ideas that have once
made a lodgment in the mind of man, particularly when they are connected
in any way with his faith, die the very hardest of all. Thus it is that
such beliefs as are treated of in this chapter still exist, and they have
reached our days from distant periods, filtered somewhat in their
transit, but still retaining their primitive qualities.

We have not as yet gathered together the fragments of the ancient
religion of the Celts, and formed of them a consistent whole, but
evidently we are to look for them in the sayings and doings of the people
quite as much as in the writings of the ancients. If we could o