hin his own
personal knowledge as believed in by others. One, whom he knew, under the
assumed name of one of his characters was constantly troubled by a hare,
which his conscience accused him was a witch "she stared at him so;" and
sometimes an ugly weasel would run through his yard; and sometimes a foul
big cat sit upon his barn, for which he had no manner of liking; and an
old woman of the place, whom he had been as careful to please as if she
had been his mother, still frowned upon him to his exceeding discomfort;
and a hog which overnight had eaten his meat with his fellows, quite
hearty and well, in the morning was stark dead; and five or six hens died
too, in a manner no one could understand, save by the power of witchcraft.
And once another of his friends went to a cunning man who lived twenty
miles off, complaining of his farm-yard losses: so the cunning man took a
glass, and bidding him look in it, showed him a certain suspected witch
therein, telling him that she had three or four imps, "some call them
puckrels," one of which was like a gray cat, another like a weasel, a
third like a mouse. There was also another cunning person--a woman--to
whom a father took a child that had long been lame and pained. The woman
told the man he had an ill neighbour, and that the child was forespoken.
"Marie, if he would go home and bring her some of the clothes which the
child lay in all night, she would tell him certainely." The father went
home and did as he was bid, when the wise woman informed him that the girl
was bewitched, counselled him what to do, and the "girle is well at this
day, and a pretie quicke girle," says George Giffard, with a sneer at his
neighbour's easy faith. Another had his wife much troubled; so he, too,
went off to a wise woman, who told him that his wife was haunted by a
fairy. As a counter-charm she was bidden to wear a part of St. John's
Gospel ever about her, against which the fairies could not stand, so fled.
Another good wife could not make her butter come: it was bewitched, and
for a whole week obstinately disregarded the laws of butter nature:
wherefore they heated a spit, red hot, and thrust it into the cream--and
it came at once. The next morning the good wife met the suspected
witch--"the old filth," she calls her with more emphasis than euphony.
"Lord, how sowerly she looked upon me, and mumbled as she went! Ah, quoth
she, you have an honest man to your husband. I hear how he doth use me!"