Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/252

 230 propose to injure. They then invoke the evil spirit every day at noon for a week, and finally cut the figure with a sword, or strike it with an arrow from a bow. Again, an Indian tale runs thus: A sorceress falls in love with a prince, who rejects her advances. In revenge she surprises him in coming out of the bath, draws a bag from her girdle, and blows on it; a shower of pins flies out, which stick all over the body of the prince, and he forthwith becomes insensible. Many years afterwards a princess, losing her way in the jungle, discovers a ruined city and palace. She enters the palace, sees the prince extended on a couch, pulls the pins out of his body, and thus destroys the spell.

Witch-finders too used to torment their victims by thrusting pins into them, with the view of discovering upon them the devil’s stigma or mark, a spot which was supposed insensible to pain; and bewitched persons were said to vomit pins in large quantities. Throughout the North of England we have wishing-wells, where the passer-by may breathe his wish, and may rest assured of its fulfilment if only he drop a crooked pin into the water. The Worm Well at Lambton is one of these; there is another in Westmoreland, and another at Wooler, in Northumberland. Of this last a friend writes: “It is scarcely three months since I looked into the maiden or wishing-well at Wooler, and saw the crooked pins strewed over the bottom among the rough gravel.” Certainly at St. Helen’s Well, near Thorp Arch, in Yorkshire, the offering was a scrap of cloth fastened to an adjoining thorn, which presented a strange appearance under its burden of rags; and at the Cheese Well, on Minchmuir, in Peebleshire, it was a piece of cheese flung into the well; but the pin is used as a rule. The country girls imagine that the well is in charge of a fairy or spirit, who must be propitiated by some offering; the pin presents itself as the most ready and convenient, besides having a special suitableness as being made of metal.

Metallic substances are held throughout the North to counteract the influence of witchcraft and every kind of evil spirit. Thus, a knife or other utensil of steel is placed in the cradle of an unbaptized child in Sweden to protect it from all such dangers;