Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/529

 Miscellanea. 487

pay nothing for un, nor you mayn't take nothing for making on un. This is how I make un. You must take yer rod, yer zee — you allays makes nails off a iron rod — and you het un in the fire till he melt to a head. Then you takes un out and hammers un solid- like, and then you hets again and hammers till three times, and when his head be hammered the third time, he be a done.

" I hadn't no cause to ax un nothing, 'cause he knowed what 'twere all about so soon as ever he sot eyes on I. He telled I to get a strand o' new hemp avore 'twere made into ropes, an' a thread or two o' new scarlet silk, an' I were to braid 'em together long enough to bind about the body on the part where the pain were.

" So I went on hwome and twold my missis what farmer should say, and she done as he'd a twold o', an' she got better from thic same hour as she put it on. 'Tis a fine thing, that is, for I've used un since wi' Bill. Darned if they didn't begin to drive work wi' he so soon as the wold 'ooman got better. But there ! if I was to tell 'ee all I got in my head about such work, I should'nt make an end thease dree weeks. Why, there 's Jacob, my brother-in-law, have been brought to rale shipwrack wi' un. But he 'on't stop it. He've got Scott's Bible in six volumes, and he do make out that if you ' stop it ' you be a working witchcraft too. So he zes : ' Let un take their course.' And ' coursed un ' they have, pretty sharp, poor heart, be sure ! It do seem a bad job should be such works about, bid there be, and a terr'ble sight o' it too, there be, indeed."

A formal complaint of these things was made to the Dorchester magistrates, who, finding that the feeling of the Piddlehinton folk was strongly excited against the woman Hart, thought it better to remove her husband, the policeman, to another place.

19. Mr. Bridge, J.P., to his groom: "John, that mare in the field looks disgraceful ! All over dirt, and her mane knotted and ragged!" "Sakes! sir, don't 'ee know what be the matter wi' 'er. Why, her 's hag-rode every night into a solid sweat ! And they knots ? Why, they be the stirrups the hags do ride un wi' ! Poor creature, I do clane and clane her, but tidden no use ! "

20. From General Astell's coachman, Walter Churchill, " 'an honest, honourable, god-fearing man " :

" When I was a little chap 'bout eight, I and Jack Wolfral was taking a bit of a walk, and as we corned down drove we seed, both o' us, a hare sot by the stile of the churchyard, where sure,