Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/447

 Collectanea. 427

From that day one of the boys was taken with fits ; such terrible ones that he had to be strapped into bed. He got better event- ually, but not for a long time.

The belief in witches is constantly justified by reference to the story of the Witch of Endor. " We knows as there was such things because we reads of 'em in the Bible " ; and though they generally say " there are no such things nowadays," you feel at the same time that they are not quite so certain of it as they make out. They are not very fond of talking about witches. One old woman remarked that she would sooner talk of something else than "them nasty ole black witches." With curious chronological confusion another old woman said that she thought " our Saviour did away with all them things." Another curious instance of chronological ignorance, coming from a woman of really unusual natural intelli- gence was this. She had some coins which she had dug up in a field and wished to sell. One of them she had been told was a Queen Anne farthing. " That is very old," she said : " before the flood."

One old woman told me that her mother when she was a girl had been instructed by a gipsy how to gain the power to injure people. The recipe was this : " When you go to the Sacrament do not eat the bread, but carry it away in your hand. Go into the churchyard and walk round it three times saying the Belief and the Lord's Prayer backwards. Then you will see a great black toad, which is old Satan. Give it the bread to eat, and after that you can do anything you wish to people." ^

A story is told in South Berks of two witches being buried " quick." One, it is said, lived a day longer than the other, because a man in passing threw her the core of an apple to eat. This story is told by people in different villages, and the same spot for the occurrence is always named. It is said that the holes can still be seen, and that nothing will grow over them. I have not been to the place, so cannot vouch personally for the truth of the statement.

At Cottington Hill, one of the highest in the neighbourhood, in Kingsclere, just over the border of Berkshire, it is said that there were at one time at that place alone enough witches and wizards to draw a ton load up it.

' Cf. Folk- Lore, xii., i68.