to stow his goods, nor any mariner to sail in them; for
knowing what an uncomfortable, fatal, and losing voyage they should make
of it, they did all decline his service. In her son's house she hath her
constant haunts by day and night; but whether he did not, or would not
own if he did, see her, he always professed he never saw her. Sometimes
when in bed with his wife, she would cry out, 'Husband, look, there's
your mother!' And when he would turn to the right side, then was she
gone to the left; and when to the left side of the bed, then was she
gone to the right; only one evening their only child, a girl of about
five or six years old, lying in a ruckle-bed under them, cries out, 'Oh,
help me, father! help me, mother! for grandmother will choke me!' and
before they could get to their child's assistance she had murdered it;
they finding the poor girl dead, her throat having been pinched by two
fingers, which stopped her breath and strangled her. This was the sorest
of all their afflictions; their estate is gone, and now their child is
gone also; you may guess at their grief and great sorrow. One morning
after the child's funeral, her husband being abroad, about eleven in the
forenoon, Mrs. Leckie the younger goes up into her chamber to dress her
head, and as she was looking into the glass she spies her mother-in-law,
the old beldam, looking over her shoulder. This cast her into a great
horror; but recollecting her affrighted spirits, and recovering the
exercise of her reason, faith, and hope, having cast up a short and
silent prayer to God, she turns about, and bespeaks her: 'In the name of
God, mother, why do you trouble me?' 'Peace,' says the spectrum; 'I will
do thee no hurt.' 'What will you have of me?' says the daughter,"
&c.[86] Dunton, the narrator and probably the contriver of the story,
proceeds to inform us at length of a commission which the wife of Mr.
Leckie receives from the ghost to deliver to Atherton, Bishop of
Waterford, a guilty and unfortunate man, who afterwards died by the
hands of the executioner; but that part of the subject is too
disagreeable and tedious to enter upon.

[Footnote 86: "Apparition Evidence."]

So deep was the impression made by the story on the inhabitants of
Mynehead, that it is said the tradition of Mrs. Leckie still remains in
that port, and that mariners belonging to it often, amid tempestuous
weather, conceive they hear the whistle-call of the implacable hag who
was the s