Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/360

338 of prayer calculated to satisfy the popular mind, after which, it is said, she never appeared again. The names of the clergymen are still remembered in the neighbourhood.

Madam S. is said to have haunted the place in consequence of a threat she had uttered when objecting to the marriage of a daughter. The daughter married, and the mother haunted her. This laying of a ghost, however, is not always an easy task. Homersfield, in Suffolk, was a haunted house, and a priest was sent for to lay the unquiet spirit that so tormented the inmates. He came, book in hand, but to no purpose, for the instant he began to read a prayer the ghost got a line ahead of him. At last one of the family hit on this devise. The next time, as soon as the priest began his exorcism, two pigeons were let loose, the spirit stopped to look at them, the priest got before him in his prayer, and the work was accomplished—the ghost has never again been heard of.