Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/530

 488 Miscellanea.

never a hare were seed before nor since; but 'twere this way. We were living to Bourne then, and a neighbour that had the palsy so terr'ble bad he couldn't walk nor guide hisself, and said as he were overlooked^ and twold it to a travelling man (a pedlar), and he said if we could say who 'twere as doned it he'd cure un. So the poor man said 'twere a woman as lived a long way off. ' Never mind,' says the travelling man, * I'll bring her here in the form o' a hare, and make her cure thee.' So he bid un get a odd number o' folk, and my father were one, to sit up at night and do what he twold un. And he did say as there were a bottle o' summat hanged up in chimney. And the fire were blinded off, and the travelling man were a-reading verses out of the Bible backward, when just as we was outside the string broke, and the bottle fell, and it broke, and what come o' the hare I can't say. The travelling man was for coming another night to finish the cure, for the man were a sight better already ; I seed him myself stand and kick out his lag ; but the passen heard o' it and put un off."

21. Whitechurch Vicarage, Blandford, 1897. Two years since, a cottager mother to parson :

" Oh ! sir, my girl's a took awful ! Her be overlooked for sure ! There her do lie like one dead."

Truly the maid did lie days and days in a sort of trance, and added an unpleasant habit of sometimes waking suddenly and seizing the nearest movable, and pitching it at the first person who appeared. Mr. Wynne, the parson, always had an anxious eye for what might happen on his visits. The cause of her ailing was said to be that while in service in Somerset she one day alone in the house was asked for help by a tramp. Afraid to leave him or let him in, she refused, and he blew in her face and said : " In a year and a day she would remember him." Well, the mother went to a wise woman and was told to get a pig's heart and stick into it fl« ou7ice of pins and burn it, " 'cause, you see, the devil he went into the swine." And duly did she get the pig's heart and the pins and burn the same, and the daughter was perfectly cured. Mr. Wynne saw and spoke to here in the village, sane and in good health.

22. At Houghton, near Blandford, the parson's wife said to the mother of a child that was choking with whooping cough : " Don't you have the doctor, or do something for the little girl ? " " 'Spose