Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/214

 192 almost dying, and begged him to send for a doctor. He accordingly aroused his apprentices; the elder one went out, and soon returned with one whom he had chanced to meet already abroad. The doctor wished to feel his patient’s pulse, but she resolutely hid her hands, and refused to show them. The village Esculapius was perplexed; but the husband, impatient at her obstinacy, pulled off the bed-clothes, and found, to his horror, that horseshoes were tightly nailed to both hands! On further examination, her sides appeared galled with kicks, the same that the apprentice had given her during his ride up and down the ploughed field.

The brothers now came forward, and related all that had passed. On the following day the witch was tried by the magistrates of Selkirk, and condemned to be burned to death on a stone at the Bullsheugh, a sentence which was promptly carried into effect. It is added that the younger apprentice was at last restored to health by eating butter made from the milk of cows fed in kirkyards, a sovereign remedy for consumption brought on through being witch-ridden.

A similar story is told in Iceland, and is translated in Powell’s Legends of Iceland, p. 85. It appears again in Belgium in the following form:—

At a large farm at Bollebeck dwelt a serving-man, who, though well-fed by the farmer’s wife, grew thinner every day. His fellow-servants questioned him as to the cause of this, but to no purpose, till at length the shepherd, who was his best friend, drew the following history from him. His mistress was a witch, and used to come at night to his bedside, throw a bridle over his head, turn him into a horse, and ride him about all night. “This seems to me incredible,” said the shepherd, “but let me lie in thy bed to-night. I should like to try the thing for once.” The man agreed, and the shepherd took his place in bed.

About ten o’clock the farmer’s wife came in, and would have thrown the bridle over him, but the shepherd was too quick for her. He snatched it out of her hand, and threw it over her, on which she was instantly changed into a mare. He rode her about the fields all night, then brought her home and led her to the