Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/198

176 The “salt spell” of the southern counties is somewhat akin to the foregoing. A pinch of salt must be thrown into the fire on three successive Friday nights while these lines are repeated:

On the last night he will surely appear.

The following account of a spell cast for a similar purpose by a former vicar of Hennock, South Devon, was taken down from the lips of Robert Coombes, an old inhabitant of that place: “Passon Harris was a wonderful man; he knew a thing or two more than other people, and could cast a spell or recover stolen property. Passon Harris had a pretty housemaid, and she had a young man; but he deserted her and went off to North Devon. She cried all the week, and on Saturday evening her master found out what was the matter. ‘Never mind, my girl,’ said he, ‘depend upon it he will be glad to come back to you before tomorrow night.’ So Passon Harris laid a spell the next morning. But the young man never came back all day, and good reason too, for when he dressed himself in the morning he put his Common Prayer-book in his pocket ready for church, so the spell could not take effect any way. However at night, when he took off his coat and waistcoat to go to bed, the spell began to work. Off he started just as he was in his shirt-sleeves and ran all night as fast as he could, and when the girl came down in the morning who should she see at the back-door but her young man, panting and breathless.” It may be added that the tomb of “Passon Harris” is still to be seen in Hennock churchyard, and that he died about A.D. 1778.

But this is not all. Local superstition interferes in a yet more delicate matter—the quarrels of husband and wife, as the following narration shows, which was communicated to me by the late Mrs. Wilson, of Durham:—

About the year 1825 there lived at Bothal, in Cumberland, a farmer named Billy Briscoe, who had married a widow, and a