Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/216

 194 since.” In the North, a self-bored stone is also considered efficacious against witchcraft and the evil eye; in the South, a copy of the apocryphal letter of our Lord to Abgarus, King of Edessa, is often pasted on cottage walls for the same purpose. I have in my possession one of these letters, curiously interpolated with Methodist hymns, which was bought from a pedlar by the Rector of Kenn, near Exeter.

The next story relates how the miller of Holdean Mill, Berwickshire, received some uncannie visitants, of what precise nature it does not specify. It is to this effect. While the miller was drying a melder of oats belonging to a neighbouring farmer, tired with the fatigues of the day, he threw himself down upon some straw in the kiln-barn, and soon fell fast asleep. After a time he was awakened by a confused noise, as if the killogee were full of people, all speaking together; on which he pulled aside the straw from the banks of the kiln, and, looking down, observed a number of feet and legs paddling among the ashes, as if enjoying the warmth from the scarcely-extinguished fires. As he listened, he distinctly heard the words, “What think ye o’ my feeties?”—a second voice answering, “An’ what think ye o’ mine?” Nothing daunted, though much astonished, the stouthearted miller took up his “beer-mell,” a large wooden hammer, and threw it down among them, so that the ashes flew about; while he cried out with a loud voice, “What think ye o’ my meikle mell amang a’ thae legs o’ yourn?” A hideous rout at once emerged from the kiln amid yells and cries, which passed into wild laughter; and finally these words reached the miller’s ears, sung in a mocking tone:

I may perhaps be permitted here to introduce a very remarkable story communicated to me by Mr. Baring Gould. He