Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/227

 Miscellanea, 215

ran up and got into bed and lay shaking all night — thought every sound was the picksys coming after them. That was the last time Robin went poaching."

Witchcraft. — The power of many evilly-disposed persons, wh work harm to others, is supposed to lie, partly, in their " books " — mysterious books, often to be heard of, in the possession of some one else— and never to be seen !

Harm may be wrought to others by the agency of toads. One woman, in a neighbouring village, kept toads in her back kitchen for the purpose of injuring persons against whom she had a grudge. They are also supposed to forecast certain events, and an old woman (personally known to my informant's mother) who was bedridden, kept toads in her bed, and people used to come to her to have their fortunes told by them. By what means the toads accomplished either the ill-wishing or fortune-telling one is not told.

There is a belief in the evil eye, only it is called " overlooking " in these parts. Two neighbours near here have a long-standing quarrel. Sometimes when they are out in the yard together Mrs. A. looks at Mrs. J. in " such a way," that her knees tremble under her and she has to go indoors and have a cry. And for days afterwards she is bent " two double." [That is, head and shoulders stooping very badly.]

White witches, of course, can heal as well as hurt both man and beast. The white witch of the following "account, my in- formant declared to being acquainted with. One of the horses belonging to a certain farmer being ill, he sent for the witch to cure it. She stayed a few days in the house and the animal recovered. She then left the place. Soon afterwards a bullock fell ill, and the woman was again sent for, and she returned and effected a second cure. Again, another beast became sick, and so it happened after every time that she had left the house. Then they resolved to have her no more, thinking that she had been the cause of each fresh illness, and when she knew this, to revenge herself, the house was " troubled." Doors kept slamming when there was no wind, and they constantly heard the sound 01 a horse trotting overhead and on the stairs. In one bedroom a large heap of French beans was put to dry, and every night these used to rattle round and round the room. The man who slept there used to feel something running over his feet in bed, and