Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/204

182 witched by an old woman of that place, and everybody declared that the only cure for her would be an application of the witch’s blood. The girl’s friends, therefore, laid wait for the poor old woman, seized her when she was alone and unprotected, scratched her with a nail till the blood flowed, and collected the blood. They carried it home, and smeared the sick girl with it, and the recovery, which took place in course of time, was attributed to this application.

It is sometimes held, however, that no blood flows when a witch is wounded. In a case of assault brought before a bench of magistrates in West Sussex, the defendant declared that she should never have molested the plaintiff had she not found out she was a witch. She had long had her suspicions how it was, and she watched for an opportunity to set her mind at rest. At last she managed to scratch her arm with a crooked pin, and when no blood came then she “up with her fist and gave it her well.”

There are still plenty of white witches in Devonshire, but one died a few years ago in the village of Bovey Tracey, who, unless she were greatly maligned, by no means deserved so favourable a designation. She was accused of “overlooking” her neighbours’ pigs, so that her son, if ever betrayed into a quarrel with her, used always to say before they parted, “Mother, mother, spare my pigs.” This son, a farm-labourer living in the adjoining parish of Hennock, came to a very remarkable end. While leading a cart through the river Teign, he stopped to rest his horse, and while arranging something about the cart it turned over upon him, so that he was imprisoned in the water and drowned. Neighbours remembered that he had “had words” with his mother when last they met, and were not slow in laying his death to her charge. But the most awful story about her is as follows: A man went to her asking for help to get rid of an enemy. The witch gave him a candle, and told him to take it into a secret