Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/246

 224 adopted the following means for discovering the witch. Having procured a pigeon, and tied its wings, every aperture to the house, even to the key-holes, was carefully stopped, and pins were run into the pigeon whilst alive by each member of the family, so as to pierce the poor bird’s heart. The pigeon was then roasted, and a watch kept at the window during the operation, for the first person who passed the door would, of course, be the guilty party. The good woman who appealed to me had the misfortune to be the first passer-by, and the family were firmly convinced she had exercised the ‘evil eye’ upon the dead horses, though she was a comely matron, not yet fifty years of age. This happened in a village close to the river Tees.”

The last instance I shall record took place at Whitby in the year 1827. A woman residing in that town was suffering from fever, attended with soreness and swelling of the throat. Among other remedies, camphorated spirits of wine were applied externally to the part affected; but the patient growing worse, her mother took up a notion that she was bewitched, and that the spell had been fixed by the spirits of wine. The old woman therefore determined to resort to what she called the ancient ordeal. She procured a sheep’s heart, stuck it full of new pins, and placed it on the fire to be burnt, watching anxiously all the time for the appearance of the witch who had troubled her daughter. She looked in vain, however, for no one appeared.

This superstition if not altogether without a parallel in the South of England. A publican at Dittisham, a pretty little village on the banks of the river Dart, lost several pigs in an unaccountable manner. Persuaded that they had been bewitched, he took out the heart of one of the victims, stuck it over with pins and placed it in front of the fire till it was charred to a cinder, in order, he said, to counteract the evil designs of the witch.

There are two or three points worth notice in these grisly rites for the discovery and baffling of witchcraft. First, the employment of mountain-ashwood for the roasting of the heart. Now the rowan, or mountain-ash, is ever the dread of witches, as we see by the old rhyme—