60 FOLK-LORE REMINISCENCES. 



The man was evidently very unhappy, and as I left he 

 told me confidentially that he would like a shift if I ever 

 had another farm that I could offer him. Anyway, things 

 have gone all right with my friend since the spell was broken. 

 He is now the picture of health, and I hope next Michaelmas 

 to be able to give him his desired " shift." I must not say 

 where, for fear his enemy may forestall him with another 

 " charm," and thus bring a catastrophy on his orchard and 

 his prospects. It has occurred to me whether the idea of 

 burying these reptiles under an apple tree in order to produce 

 an evil influence originates form the scene in the Garden of 

 Eden. 



At the end of 1912 I was being motored in the neighbour- 

 hood of Wimborne, and the chauffeur told me that west of 

 Wimborne the country side was full of superstition, and 

 that not long since a man whose old sow had been ill had 

 assured him that it had been bewitched by some one with 

 an evil eye. He went to a wise woman, who gave him a 

 charm which he had used, and he declared that he " had 

 seen a hare jump out of the old zow's mouth and run away 

 across the field over the hedge and disappear." I have 

 come across traces of this idea of the disappearing hare in 

 three other directions. I remember many years ago, alas, 

 before I took sufficient interest in these old traditions to 

 probe them further and record them, that the late Mr. Fred 

 Sidford, of Knighton Farm, Bishopstone, told me that old 

 people round Ebbesborne and Cranborne Chase used to talk 

 about seeing a greyhound coursing a hare along the hill side, 

 and just as the greyhound was about to catch the hare it 

 disappeared or turned into an old woman. 



An old schoolmaster of my acquaintance, in speaking to 

 me on the subject of one of my former papers, told me that 

 in his younger days he lived at a village near Somerton, and 

 that there was in the district a lot of superstitions. Somerton 

 boasted of a noted Wise Woman who was much sought 

 after. There was a certain hare which the greyhounds or 

 coursers, as they were locally called, used to find that always 



