Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/219

 Collectanea. 209

the old farmer was never without it on his person. He assured my informant that he never had had a return of the toothache since he kept the jaw-bone in his pocket.

Witchcraft: 2vart-curi/ig : jise of saliva : p07i>ers of a wiich. — Last year uiy landlady in Glenluce, Wigtonshire, told me that when she was a little girl about forty years ago, there were two old women in the village who were always considered to be witches. One of them professed to cure warts, and would offer to come to the house to treat those who were affected. The patient was to go outside and pick up a stone without looking for it. The old woman then spat upon the stone and rubbed the warts with it, and those on the hands of my landlady all dis- appeared, she assured me, leaving impressions where they had been. After the warts had been rubbed with the stone, the patient was ordered to take it outside the house and throw it over her left shoulder.

There is a well-known tradesman in Stranraer who told me he knew a farmer only about fifteen years ago, perhaps less, who was terrified at an old woman who lived near him. He firmly believed that she was a witch, and whatever she asked for he always gave her, for fear of her displeasure. One day he was out on his farm when she came to the house and asked for a basket of straw. The farmer's wife said she could not give her any as her husband was away. The old woman went away muttering something, and presently, when the farmer came in, his wife told him what had happened. He was instantly seized vvith fear, and drove off as fast as he could with three times as much straw as the old woman had asked for, hoping thereby to avert the evil which he feared would ensue on the refusal of his wife to give her what she wanted. He overtook the woman just as she reached her cottage, and explained to her about the unfortunate incident, and having appeased her wrath he was relieved to find that no ill-results took place.

The same informant told me that the old woman who cured the warts often came in to see her mother in the evening, and once when she was frying some muskets for her husband's supper (the contents of a razor-shell) the old woman came in, and seeing the muskets frying on the fire, and her appetite being tempted by the

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