Conjurers and Lunatics
About one hundred years ago there lived in the neighbourhood of Pencader, a wizard, named Phillips, who was very successful in curing lunatics. On one occasion, an old woman from Tregroes, near Llandyssul, took her son to him who had been insane from his birth. The wise man blew into the young man’s face, and informed his mother that he would be sane for twenty years, and so it happened; but after twenty years he became insane again as the wizard had predicted.
My informant was Mr. Rees, Maesymeillion, in the parish of Llandyssul, whose father’s uncle remembered the lunatic.
The wizard of Cwrt-y-Cadno was also very successful in curing lunatics. He would take the insane to the brink of the river and fire an old flint revolver which would frighten his patient to such a degree that he fell into the pool.