Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/234

 212 his legs close together, and squared himself so as to engross the entire width of the narrow gangway. The witch neither paused nor turned aside; she came straight on, and in a minute was in the rear of him who would have arrested her. How she went by him T. P. could never tell; he was still occupying the whole space, his legs were still close to each other, but, as far as he could pronounce upon any part of the transaction, he felt convinced she had passed between them.

The young man’s father, himself a T. P. too, was about this time overseer of the poor, and, witch though she was, “Au’d Nan Hardwick” applied for parish relief. T. P. stoutly refused her, though he knew well that he thus exposed himself to her illwill. One day, as he was leaving Castleton, he met her coming in the other direction. Between them ran the small stream which drains Danby Dale, now crossed by a “draught bridge,” then merely by a single stone, just wide enough to let one person pass at a time, with a “hemmel” or handrail on either side. T. P. reached the bridge first. No feeling of courtesy prompted him to stand back till Auld Nan had crossed, so he marched sturdily on to the middle of the bridge, but no further. There her power fell upon him, and he stood like a statue, unable to move hand or foot, till she was pleased to set him free—which was not at once.

This anecdote is curious as an instance of a spell undestroyed by the power of running water, and I believe a solitary one. The law is all but absolute, that every species of magic and witchcraft is annihilated by the force of a running stream. The Goblin Page might counterfeit the heir of Buccleugh:

And young Keeldar, in the ballad, secure in the protection of his plume of holly and rowan, and his casque of sand formed by