Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/191

Rh they were taking Him, and made wreaths and crosses of them, and they called it Palm Sunday."

"Cursed is the woman that wash and dry of a Good Friday."

People used to run for dresses and little things at Easter and Whitsuntide, but now we have a regular sort of fair, called the "Revels," at which there are races.

The Society knows, from Mr. Hartland's Gloucestershire Folklore, that we rejoice in a local variant of the Godiva story, and that from the reign of John the Commoners have had certain rights in the free wood of Hudnalls. The Society has also read that it was customary to throw bread and cheese to be scrambled for on Whit Sunday. The connection between the two is this: "The Lady did give it, and the bread and cheese was throwd a' Whitsun Sunday to keep this charter up. People did go round the houses to collect a penny each to buy the bread and cheese."

Ghosts there are in plenty. The Castle naturally has its White Lady and its Man in Armour. At Lindors there is a phantom fiddler. "Things with eyes like saucers" and men in "they old box-hats" are met in the lanes, and funerals are seen at three a.m. of a summer's morning.

Witchcraft is still a power, and I will begin by telling you how to become a witch; it is fairly easy, as all you need to do is to walk twelve times round a church backwards, at midnight. Then when you are a witch you can "run" as a hare or a rabbit. Witches used to tie the manes and tails of the horses at Lindors. If a witch be refused anything at a house, she will have revenge on the animals or children, and will cause them to bleed to death or become paralysed. To prevent a witch from coming into the house, nail a cross of quicken (hawthorn) behind the door, or a yew stick, and plant quicken-trees near your yards and pig-cotes. To find out a witch, get a piece of leather, and fill it with pins; stick them in different ways, and burn it. At the time of burning, the person who is the witch will come to the door.

There is now a very malevolent witch in the village of Whitebrook, who brings to sorrow those who do not cheerfully give her whatever she may ask for. One poor woman refused some request, whereupon the dame swore that the ungenerous creature should lose all her cows. Now, she had no cattle. But so great was the power of the curse that she went mad, and wanders about the