FOLKLORE OF THE ALLEGHANIES. 395 



five pounds of butter to take home with me to burn in the fire to 

 cap the climax and burn out the spelh' 



" Then he want through his enchantments over the cow, and 

 took the money and the butter home with him. One day when he 

 had been drinking a little I asked him if he really burned all that 

 butter. ^ Divil a grain of it did I burn; I ate it with my pertaties.' 

 It was on that same trip when Mosey was curin' the cow that a 

 man who lived near by sent for him. ' I feel mighty quare, Mosey,' 

 says he, 'an' I can't describe exactly how I do feel!' 'You're 

 bewitched, sir,' says he, ' and badly bewitched ! ' (he always used 

 those words). 'Faith, an' I'll try and cure ye! Have ye got any 

 blue yarn about the house ? ' The man's wife went to look for some, 

 and she came back with a hank of blue yarn. Mosey wound off 

 enough of it to make a cord about the size of his finger; they twisted 

 it together, he pretending to put some enchantments on it, and then 

 he told the sick man to fasten it round his waist next to his skin. 

 ' Don't you lose it on peril of your life,' says he, ' or you're a dead 

 man! ' ' Peggy, get a needle and sew it on me! ' he says to his wife, 

 an' she done it. He gradually got well — may be he'd a got well any- 

 way. I can't vouch for that." 



When asked if such things were still happening, the cane-seller 

 replied : 



" Not three weeks ago a woman thought her cow was bewitched 

 because her butter wouldn't gather, and she het an old horseshoe hot 

 and dropped it in the churn of milk. When she churned again the 

 butter on that occasion gathered, and it was the same milk that was 

 in the churn to burn the witch. You can put that down for 

 June, '93." 



The Potts Creek neighborhood is said to be a center for the witch 

 superstition. It is also a favorite place for " bush meetings," to 

 which the natives come from a distance in their wagons with picnic 

 dinners of salt-risen corn pone and sliced bacon, and there they 

 listen approvingly to fervid exhortations that are based on orthodox 

 Baptist and Methodist doctrines. The West Virginia mountaineer 

 is profoundly religious in temperament, and considers that he has 

 scriptural ground for a belief in witchcraft. 



Prof. H. E. Armstrong has described how, by taking incidents from suit- 

 able story books, children aged respectively seven and a half, ten, and twelve 

 and a half years were set to work to test the physical facts mentioned, and 

 how, by the systematic use of the balance, measuring instruments, and sim- 

 ple apparatus, or even household utensils, a true spirit of scientific research 

 was engendered. Evidence of the good effect was exhibited in the note- 

 books made by the children, which demonstrate clearly how well the juvenile 

 investigators have mastered the scientific method of observation. 



