Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/173

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"There was a young man as worked for me when I was living in Herefordshire, as always wore a charm from a child. Couldn't do without it. When he was a little lad he was sent for a can of milk, and he came running, and slopped some of the milk over a door-stone in passing, and the woman came out and abused him; and it was always supposed she bewitched him, for he always seemed to pine afterwards. Nothing ailed him, only he didn't grow, nor thrive. Never complained, never said he was ill, only couldn't eat, and in the night he'd get out of bed and go into the garden and lay him down among the potatoes. And then his father or his mother would go and fetch him back, and he never knew where he was, or how he come there, and they'd get him back and cover him up in bed again. "And there was a man as worked with his father, and he says to him one day, he says, 'Tell thee what: if I was thee, I'd take Jack over to the Marsh Farm.' 'Ay?' he says; 'dost tha think as the oud man 'd do him any good?' 'To be sure,' he says; 'it's plain,' he says, 'what ails the lad, and doctor's stuff won't do nothing for him.'

"Well, the father said no more; but on the Sunday morning he got up and dressed himself, and he says, 'I think as I'll take Jack over to the Marsh Farm to-day.' So they went; and as soon as ever they come in the old farmer says, 'What! thou'st brought Jack,