Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/273



Lime from Sea-Shells for Charms and Medical Purposes.—In south-east Ireland, where there is considerable superstition even among the well-educated classes, I have met (especially in the co. Wexford) small, minute lime-kilns, in which sea-shells were burnt. There appeared to be a generally floating tradition, which I never could get any way fixed down, that this lime had some sort of special virtues as a charm against something or another; all, however, was so very vague that nothing could be made out of it; still, some of the kilns were so small (not as big as a big pot) that the lime must have been made for some special purpose. All the kilns, however, are not of such small dimensions, as some of them were good sizeable kilns. I take it that the lime was once used sometimes as medicine, and at other times for white-washing the chimney corner, where the family generally assembled at night. Can any one tell if a similar custom has been remarked elsewhere? and, if so, what was the lime used for? and what is its charm? The sea-shells were in some cases carried long distances inland to be burned.

Witchcraft in Yorkshire.—The third volume of the North Riding Record Society, which has recently been issued, is occupied entirely with Quarter Sessions records of the earlier half of the seventeenth century. One case of witchcraft occurs therein which it may be well to note in the Folk-Lore Journal. On October the 1st, 1623, Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Crearey, of Northallerton, was indicted "for exercising certain most wicked arts"; she had, as it seemed to the justices, employed "inchantements and charmes on a black cow belonging to Edw. Bell, of Northallerton, by which the cow was sorely damaged, and the calf in her totally wasted and consumed " (p. 177).

Sentence seems to have been passed, or at least recorded, on October the 7th; it was that "she is to be sett on the pillorie,