Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/203

 Rh witch, put it at once into your mouth, for fear the donor should spirit it away and supply its place with a round stone or slate, which otherwise she might do at pleasure. Accordingly, it may be observed that old people constantly put into their mouths the money which is paid them. If you want to stop a witch lay a straw across her path. She cannot step over it.”

To draw blood above the mouth from the person who has caused any witchery is the accredited mode of breaking the spell. The Rev. J. F. Bigge has recorded the following instance: A tenant of Sir Charles Monck, living at Belsay-bankfoot, had so many mischances that he felt no doubt his stock was bewitched. A cow broke her leg, a calf died, a horse got stuck, and so on. Who was his enemy? He settled that it must be a new servant of his own, quite a young lad, and by the advice of a skilled person he determined to break the spell, by drawing blood above the wizard’s mouth. So at foddering time the farmer purposely quarrelled with the poor boy about some trifle, and flying upon him, scratched his face and made his nose bleed. The plan was considered quite a success, for no further misfortune happened to the stock. And as recently as December 1868, a family at Framwellgate Moor, near Durham, applied to a police officer for his sanction to assault an old woman of the adjoining hamlet of Pity-me, alleging that she had bewitched their daughter, and that they “only wanted to draw blood from her to break the spell.” On this refusal they went to one Jonah Stoker, “a wise man,” and induced him to go with them to the old woman’s cottage. They seized her arm, wounded it till it bled, and then retired, quite satisfied that the spell was broken. Again, in the year 1870, a man eighty years of age was fined at Barnstaple, in Devonshire, for scratching with a needle the arm of a young girl. He pleaded that he had “suffered affliction” through her for five years, had had four complaints on him at once, had lost 14 canaries, and about 50 goldfinches, and that his neighbours told him this was the only way to break the spell and get out of her power. Another case in point has been communicated to me from Cheriton Bishop, a village near Exeter. Not many years ago a young girl in delicate health was thought to have been