Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/225

 Rh will be said bye-and-bye), recourse was had to silver shot, which was obtained by cutting up some small silver coin. The hare came again as usual, and was shot with the silver charge. At that moment an old lady who lived at some distance, but had always been considered somewhat uncannie, was busy tamming, i. e. roughly carding wool for her spinning. She suddenly flung up both hands, gave a wild shriek, and crying out, “They have shot my familiar spirit,” fell down and died.

In another dale, he adds, higher up the course of the Esk, was a hare which baffled all the greyhounds that were slipped at her. They seemed to have no more chance with her than if they were coursing the wind. There was at the time a noted witch residing near, and her advice was asked about this wonderful hare. She seemed to have little to say about it, however, only she thought they had better let it be, and above all they must take care how they slipped a black dog at it. Nevertheless, either from recklessness or from distrust of their adviser, the party did go out coursing soon after with a black dog. The dog was slipped, and they perceived at once that the hare was at a disadvantage. She made as soon as possible for a stone wall, and attempted to escape through a “smout” or sheephole at the bottom. Just as she reached it, the hound threw himself upon her and caught her in the haunch, but was unable to hold her. She got through, and was seen no more. The sportsmen, either in bravado or from terror of the consequences, went straight to the house of the witch to say what had happened. They found her in bed, hurt, she said, by a fall; but the wound looked very much as if it had been produced by the teeth of a dog, and it was on a part of the person corresponding to that by which the hare had been seized before their eyes by the black hound. Whether this Wise-woman recovered from the effects of the accident, I do not know; but the Guisborough witch, who died within the memory of man, was lame for several years, in consequence, it was said, of a bite she received from a dog while slipping through the keyhole of her own door in the shape of a hare.

The witch of Hawkwell, in Northumberland, transformed herself into a hare, and the trap-hole in a door through which she