Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/436



anyone tell me more about the "Bee" and the "Hobthirst" mentioned in the following tales? They were told me by Mr. Elijah Cope, an itinerant preacher, who assures me that many such stories are current in the moorlands of Staffordshire. I give, as nearly as possible, exactly what he said.

"He is an old farmer. I was out walking and got on his land, and he took down the bars and took me through up to his house. I said to him: 'And how old are you, Mr. Miller?' 'Oh, I'm getting on. I'm none so young as I was.' 'But how old are you?' 'Well, I'm ninety-six.' 'And you've been living here a long time?' 'Oh, ay; my people have lived here seven hundred years.' 'And have you ever seen any fairies hereabouts?' 'Many and many, but not so many of late. There used to be a many, and they were good to folk, but folk were none so good to them. And so, by what I understand, they went away.' 'You'll soon be mowing?' 'Ay; but mowing's not what it was. My father would mow twenty acres in a day.' 'Twenty acres! One acre's good work.' 'Ah, but then he had a bee in his scythe.' I knew what a bee was, but I thought I'd ask him. 'What is a bee?,' [sic] 'Oh, it's just a lost spirit.' 'And where did he get it?' 'He got it at Oxford. There was a man there kept them and fed them on the blood out of the veins of his arm. But I've one in the house. I'll show you.' He produced a slip of parchment about an inch broad by two long, 'And how did he use it?' 'He just fastened it on to his scythe and it went cutting through everything, staves driven into the field and all, and he had to keep running about to keep up with it. The people put these bees on their churns to make the butter come, but it's better to use a Hobthirst for the churn than a real fairy.'

"An old woman who comes to do a bit of cleaning in my house was telling me of a woman she knew who was a witch. She said the witch was a very wicked old woman and could change herself into a dog, or a cat, or a rabbit. She (my old woman) had noticed that when the cat was in her cottage she never could make her oat-cake right. It stuck to the pan and burned. One day she got into a temper and threw the leaven over the cat. The cat ran out and she after it, and it ran into