FOLK-LORE REMINISCENCES. 61 



ran straight in the direction of the Wise Woman's Cottage, 

 and then was suddenly lost. The people declared that when 

 they went into the Wise Women's cottage afterwards they 

 found her with her hair loose down her back and she " in a 

 bath o' sweat," thus proving conclusively that she was the 

 hare that they had been chasing.* 



In the Antiquary for April, 1915, was an article by Miss 

 Barbara C. Spooner on " The importance of Local Cave 

 Traditions." Amongst those quoted was the following : 

 " The Devil pipes to witches in the fuggo at the foot of Boleigh 

 Hill (Cornwall). Witches in the shape of hares enter, but 

 never come out the same way." See Bottrell's " Traditions 

 and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall." 



Now I venture to suggest that these superstitions may all 

 have been derived from the early British legend quoted by 

 Elton in his chapter on " Religion " in his book Origins of 

 English History, pages 253 4. I quote the following 

 passage : 



" The White Fairy Ceridwen makes war upon the prince of the 

 dwarfs. In one form of the story the Fairy becomes an old witch 

 and the dwarf is a boy who watches the boiling cauldron. Three 

 drops of the liquor of knowledge are tasted by Gwion. Pursued at 

 once by the hag " he changed himself into a hare and fled, but she 

 transformed herself into a greyhound and turned him ; and he ran 

 towards the river and became a fish, and she in the form of an otter 

 chased him under water till he was fain to become a bird of the air." 



" The first part of the legend appears in slightly different 



forms in the Irish Stories of Finn MacCumhal, and also among the 

 adventures of Sigurd in the ' Song of the Nibelungs.' 



I would here venture to quote another reference from 

 Elton which, although a little outside the scope of my paper, 



* The hare was frequently found on the land of a farmer whose 

 cattle had been doing badly and things generally going wrong, as the 

 result of the woman having bewitched him. This of course further 

 confirmed the identity of the hare. My informant tells me that the 

 farmer was so obsessed with the idea that he was bewitched that he 

 gave up his farm and migrated to Wales. 



