Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/254

 232 with pins, and let it stand upon the hearth close to the fire till the pins were red hot. When that came about they would prick the heart of the witch who brought this affliction on my poor girl, and she would be glad enough to take it off.’&thinsp;” A medical practitioner of the same neighbourhood (Mr. M. of Pulborough) told her, in illustration of this superstition, that during the repairing of a house in that village, on removing the hearthstone of one of the rooms, a bottle containing upwards of 200 pins was discovered, every pin being bent, and some of them much curved. On a bystander expressing his astonishment at this discovery, the workmen told him that they often found such things, and that they were deposited under the hearthstone at the building of a house to insure its safety from witchcraft.

We pass now to some Tweedside stories of recovery of property by the aid of local superstition. The following anecdote is recorded by the Rev. R. O. Bromfield, of Sprouston, and I am glad to give it in his own words:—

“Some time since, when calling at the house of one of my oldest parishioners, who had been a handloom weaver, he fell to speak of other days; and, amongst other things, he told me of the disappearance, some years back, on a fine summer’s evening, of a web of linen which had been laid to bleach by the riverside at the foot of the glebe. The fishermen, it seems, were burning the water in the Skerry, and the man who had charge of the web went off to see the salmon ‘leistered,’ and on his return the web was gone. Of course there was a sensation. The story was soon in everybody’s mouth, with abundant suspicions of as many persons as there were yards in the web of linen.

“The web belonged to a very important personage, no less than the howdie, or old village midwife, who was not disposed to sit down quietly under her loss. So she called in the aid of a Wise-man from Leetholm, and next day told her friend the weaver, my informant, that she had found the thief, for the Wiseman had turned the key. The weaver being anxious to see something of diablerie, the howdie brought the Wise-man to his house; and, the door being locked on all within (four in number), the magician proceeded as follows. He took a small key and