Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/119

 Miscellanea. 109

I was a poor woman and if I would give her sixpence she would be quite satisfied, but it must be a silver sixpence. So I gave it her.

" I missed the carrier, and had to stop that night at Dorchester with my brother, and the next day being Sunday I had to travel on foot all the way home, from ten in the morning until seven at night, for we lost our way. We had no horse-shoe in the house when I got home, and my husband did not hurry to get one, he not thinking much of it. On Monday morning I did what ' the old woman ' had told me, and at night and when he was gone to stable I put the children to bed. When he was coming in Elizabeth began to scream and almost jumped over the banisters. My husband fetched her down-stairs. He had never seen her so bad as this before ; so, as soon as she was quiet, and before he went to bed, he put up the horse-shoe on the back of the door at the bottom of the garret stairs.

" This was the last fright the child had, and then she began to improve, and before the week was out she was playing with the other children just as before. The neighbours noticed the differ- ence in the child, and Mr. Garland, our master, quite believed about it all.

" On Wednesday Mrs. Rigg, the dark woman, came up to my house and said : ' Oh, Mrs. Pitman, we had a few coals from you, and would you like a few taties for them ? ' I was afraid, and did not like to have them, and said it was a long time ago and she was welcome to the coals ; but she pressed me. When Eliza- beth went to fetch the taties Mrs. Rigg gave her a needle which she had borrowed from me, and darned it into her sun-bonnet. She would not let her take it in her hand, because if you can prick the person who has hurt you so as to fetch blood she can never do you any harm.

" After this Mrs. Rigg's child was ill, and they said I had done her some harm, but I had not. Indeed, ' the old woman ' had said it should be turned to the opposite on herself and her family. Mary Rigg was about forty, and she had two children. It was said that her husband could not stop at his work if he had offended her, she could make him so miserable."

25. Mrs. Pitman also relates the following : " It is the custom in Dorset that when labourers are changing places they are fetched, bag and baggage, by their new master on Lady Day,