Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/259

 Rh turns is pronounced the fortunate one. I am assured that this rite has been a good deal practised there even by well-educated persons. It is remarkable that Eusebe de Salle, in his Peregrinations en Orient, states that he saw the book and key resorted to for the sake of ascertaining which of two parties spoke the truth. He was on a visit at the English consul’s when a servant, a Syrian Christian, declared that he had given into the possession of his mistress a certain jewel which yet she could not find. The question of his truthfulness was submitted to the ordeal of the Bible and the key. The servant repeated a prayer, then pronounced alternately his mistress’s name and his own. The Bible turned at her name, and he was considered clear of the offence. It is added that on a closer search the lady found her jewel.

But to return to the Tweedside. I am indebted to the Rev. R O. Bromfield for the history of another web of linen stolen a few years back from the banks of the same river. In this instance the owner was one Tarn Aldren, an elder in the Kirk, and he resorted to a Wise-woman at Berwick-upon-Tweed. She told him at once that the cloth was then hidden under a certain tree, which she described, and offered to evoke the forms of the thieves, and make them pass before him at that very moment. But honest Tarn demurred: he said he didna want to ken wha had stolen the claith, but where the claith was put, that he might get it back; and no doubt he entertained, too, a lurking fear of being brought too near the de’il. So away he went in all haste to the tree indicated, to search for his cloth below it, but, alas! he found it not. Seeing, however, or fancying he saw, some traces there of the bleaching composition, he maintained ever after, that, without any doubt, the cloth had once been on that spot.