Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/227

 Collectanea. 1 89

" Yes, there was a man saw Mrs. and Mr. Smith, a-feeding the imps out of a box ; that was when her husband was aHve.

There was my cousin, Jim D ; everybody knows he drank,

but not so bad as some, not by a long way. He was coming home one night, and do what he would he could not reach home. He could walk straight in any other direction, but directly he tried to walk home something seemed to stop him, a-pulling of him back. He climbed hedges, he tried every way, and a fine state of mind he was in lest the police should catch him roaming about, and think he was up to mischief. All at once he thought he saw a woman on a horse, and when he come close, he saw it was the old girl on a hurdle ! That's how she used to go about at night. Another man he saw her a-flying over hedges and ditches on her hurdle."

"There was my brother's little girl Florry as was very ill.

They lived over at T. There was a witch there. Miss.

Well, they put the child's illness down to her. So ray brother he got a bottle and filled it with water and put in some of the child's hair and a lot of other things as I can't remember, then they corked it up and put it on the fire to boil. Then when the bottle burst that would hurt the witch — that is, if you did not speak to her ; and she came and she did her best to make them speak. There was a woman here as Mrs. Smith had a spite against. She did not leave her house for years and years, but directly Mrs. Smith died she was all right again, and so we always says as she was bewitched. Then there was a little niece of mine staying here with her mother. She was on her mother's lap sitting near the fire, and she looks up the chimney and starts screaming awful, and nothing would pacify her. They took her out of the house cause they couldn't bear the noise, but directly she was brought back she would look up the chimney and start screaming again, so we thinks she must have seen something up the chimney, and it was Mrs. Smith's doing."

"What was she like to talk to?" I asked.

"Oh, she was always very nice to us. My mother, she told her plain, that if she tried any of her tricks on our animals, she would just mark them so that it would come out on her,