Noake tells of an early Victorian faith healer, a labouring man of Stoke Prior, practising the art of healing 'by a charm', cases of thrush in children. He would put his finger into his own mouth and then into the child's, rubbing the gums and mumbling something ending with 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost', then set the child down....
Belief in charms survived well into the present century, especially for the cure of mysterious troubles that poultices and physic did not seem to touch, such as warts, skin diseases and fits. The charmer blew three times round the head of the patient, made mystic passes with his hands over the part afflicted and repeated an incantation in a low mumbling voice with the express intention that the words should not be understood....
Until the coming of the motor-car there were many villages in Worcestershire hidden away among wooded hills where life went on seemingly unchanged, as it had done for centuries. They were insignificant, out-of-the-world little places, inhabited by quaint old-fashioned folk, whose manners and customs were traditional and superstitious........
Long before Christianity, the Celts worshipped at curiously shaped rocks, not in temples, but in the open air, and on hill-tops. These stones were believed to have magical properties, and on Bredon Hill two groups of stones, of great antiquity, were used for religious and super superstitious purposes..........
Folklore is the study of beliefs and practices once firmly held. Few now believe in charms, in giants and fairies, but less than a century ago people in lonely places believed in them....
The Power of a witch to bring wagons to a halt was told by Edward Corbett in one of his local fairy tales. Two old women, who lived in Salt Lane (Castle St),