Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/163

Rh trout’s head into the mouth of the sufferer, and, as they say, letting the trout breathe into the child’s mouth; or making porridge over a stream running from north to south. This last rite was performed not very long ago at a streamlet, near a spring-head, which runs for above fifty yards due south, through a field called Fool or Foul Hoggers, near West Belsay. A girdle was placed over this stream, a fire made upon the girdle, and porridge cooked upon it, and the number of candidates was so great that each patient got but one spoonful as a dose. This story was related to the Rev. J. F. Bigge by one of the recipients; it took place when she was a girl.

The belief in the efficacy of south-running water is apparently of very old date. Mention is made of it in a case of witchcraft recorded in a Book of Depositions from the year 1565 to 1573, extracted in Depositions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham, which forms vol. xxi. of the publications of the Surtees Society. The alleged witch was one Jennet Pereson, who was supposed to use witchcraft in measuring belts to preserve folks from the fairy, and who took at one time 6d. at another 3d. to heal persons taken with the fairy. Of her a girl named Catherine Fenwicke deposed thus: "She saithe that about two yeres ago, hir cosyn Edward Wyddrington had a child seke, and Jenkyn Pereson wyfe axed of Thomas Blackberd, then this deponent’s mother’s servaunte, how Byngemen (Benjamin) the child did, and bade the said Blackberd comme and speke with hir. And upon the same this deponent went unto him; and the said Pereson wyfe said the child was taken with the farye, and bade her send 2 for south-rowninge (south-running) water, and theis 2 shull not speak by the waye, and that the child shuld be washed in that water, and dip the shirt in the water, and so hang it upon a hedge all that night, and that on the morrow the shirt should be gone and the child shud recover health: but the shirt was not gone, as she said. And this deponent paid to Pereson's wyfe 3d. for her paynes; otherwais she knoweth not whether she is a wytche or not."

Another plan consists in tying round the child's neck a hairy caterpillar in a small bag. As the insect dies the cough vanishes.