Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/84

68 be some confusion, and I cannot say whether this is another version of Carter's, which follows, or a separate story.]

The first floor in Pope's Tower (at Stanton Harcourt) contains the room where Lady Alice was murdered. When others were at mass she was cut to pieces and thrown out of the small window. It is said her ghost was seen often, and at last the spirit was laid in one of the ponds in the grounds, and ever since it is called Lady Alice's Pond.—(February, 1894.)

Nearly two hundred years ago a family of the name of Hall lived at the Manor Farm at Stanton Harcourt. Mr. Hall was in the habit of going to the "Harcourt Arms" Inn more often than his wife liked, and at last she found out that he went to visit the landlady, Mrs. Surman. Mrs. Hall expostulated with her husband, but to no purpose, and after some time she took a strong dose of poison. She was seen to go to the pump and rinse out the glass, when she fell dead in the yard. After her burial she "came again" and walked the farmyard and garden and the inn where her rival lived. She was at last laid in a pond, which they say never runs dry. If it did run dry the ghost would walk again.—(From the Burden family of Stanton Harcourt, August, 1894.)

Some hundred years ago the first Sir Christopher Willoughby, Lord of the Manor of March Baldon, died, and was buried there. After his death many people in the village were very much frightened by meeting the old gentleman taking his walks as usual, mostly at the fall of the day. He was seen most often in Dagelen Lane, leading from Nuneham Courtenay to Baldon, when he appeared to some of his old farm-labourers and others, dressed in his usual dress, a brown coat with bright shining buttons, walking with his hands in his pockets, as far as the lane gate by the church. He was also seen at the top of Muncle, at the white gates leading to Stadhampton Fields. The ghost was laid at last in the library of Baldon House.—(From Mrs. Almond, of Marsh Baldon, June, 1894.)

Some eighty years ago one of the sons of Squire Reade, of Ipsden House, fell in love with a very fine girl of the village,