Well they do say the pen is mightier than the sword, so words might have been a way of harnessing the magic and making it stronger, rather than letting it run wild. It probably made it easier to deal with Muggles in that regard, since untamed magic was most likely sporadic.

There's a theory that we build walls around our inhibitions as we grow older and as we become more logical we're less likely to believe in things like faeries and the like, which would definitely make it more difficult to draw on our latent magical abilities if that's the case.

I've still got my notes on the source material. Did you want to borrow it?