Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/297

 young gentlewoman, she by enchantment caused the lady to lose herself in a wood, and there cast her in a deep sleep for a day and a night. In the meantime she personated the bride; but knowing it could not long continue, she cast him likewise into a deep sleep, and then fetched the young lady to his arms, that when they both awaked, they thought they had been all the time together.

Mother Cuthbert enchants several thieves, and takes away the money; with the manner of setting spells. Mother Cuthbert going along the road, she overheard some thieves bragging of a mighty purchase they had made, whereupon she resolved to herself that she would come in for a share; and accordingly she muttered some words, on which the horses began for to stumble, which made them [not the horses, but the thieves] curse and swear. At length they supposed they heard the rattling of clubs and staves, as if the whole city had been up in arms to seize them; and finding they could not spur their horses on, nor make them stir a foot, they got off, leaving the portmanteaus behind them, and ran away on foot. The prize she conveyed home, and hearing some poor people had been robbed, she gave them back what they had lost. The fright the rogues were put into was caused by enchantment, in which she was so good a proficient, that she would often set spells on the highway, so that any being robbed, the rogues had no power to get away. The description of a spell.—A spell is a piece of paper written with magical characters, fixed in a critical season of the moon and conjunction of the planets; or,