Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/367

 THE FOLK-LORE OF DRAYTON. 359

they got ofif sure enough next morning with a fair breeze, and then the skipper loosed one knot. On the boat sprang and the wind rose. Soon he loosed the second, and they tore over the waves, and were very soon over the Murch near Loch Inver. They got to the entrance of the harbour near the new stone house — ye ken it ? — on the right, and the skipper says, * We're a'richt now ; if the deil himself with- stands me I will loose the third ! ' He did loose it, and, though so near home, the boat only got ashore in little bits. She was altogether broken up. The men were all saved."

Some of the minor arts wherein fully accomplished witches were expected to be proficient are enumerated in Elenor Cobham's furious tirade * against Margaret of Anjou, who had called her " Beldam, Gib, Witch, Nightmare, Trot,-' in the belief that she (at one time a dabbler in magic) had worked evil spells against Henry VI., who " in his cradle," according to popular opinion, "had the curse, that where he was that side had still the worse." j- The " soft impeach- ment " of being a witch was, as we know, by no means rare. Piers Gaveston is made to complain that his mother was termed a witch, and condemned to suffer as one, merely because he was thought to have gained royal favour by inherited arts of sorcery. | Elenor Cobham was suspected of being in league with Margery Jordan, the Witch of Eye § and others, to melt a waxen image of the king with the view of ensuring the sympathetic dissolution of the unlucky monarch in proprid persona. She was also accused of being privy to the awful profanity of a Mass offered by a priest named Hun for the


 * Eng. Heroic Epis. [i. 300].

f Miseries of Qnsen Margaret [ii. 433]. See also Ihid. [ii. 422]. At St. Albans —

" Some think that Warwick had not lost the day, But that the king unto the field he brought; For with the worse that side went still away,

Which had King Henry with them when they fought. Upon his birth so sad a curse they lay As that he never prospered in aught. The queen wan two amongst the loss of many, Her husband absent ; present never any." \ Legend of Pierce Gaveston [n. Z^ii']. § Eng. Heroic. Epis. [i. 306].