64 OUTDOOR LIFE IN ENGLAND 



would induce them to go upstairs alone after dark 

 if they could possibly avoid doing so. Not long 

 ago the following story was told me by one of our 

 leading farmers, of another farmer whom he had 

 known intimately, and who lived in the next 

 village. A gipsy woman begged of him on one 

 of the village club days, and he gave her a piece 

 of tin which had been taken from the top of a 

 soda-water bottle. She at first, believing it to 

 be a sixpence, thanked him most profusely ; but 

 afterwards, discovering she had been tricked, 

 turned round and cursed him, telling him that he 

 would die before the year was out. He was a 

 man of a peculiarly robust constitution, a man 

 who, as my informant described it, had never 

 known a day's illness in his life. He, however, 

 took it so much to heart that he became positively 

 ill, and as the time for the completion of the year 

 drew nigh he became so terrified, and, in conse- 

 quence, so ill, that he really did die, and on the 

 very last day of the twelve months, although there 

 was absolutely nothing the matter with him but 

 what had arisen from the nervous state into which 

 he had thrown himself. 



But to return to my subject. An ash-tree in 

 which a shrew had been thus buried alive was 

 also termed in some districts 'rampike,' and the 

 same word was also used to denote any tree 

 which was beginning to decay at the top from 

 age. Drayton refers to this in the following 

 lines : 



