WITCHCRAFT IN DORSET. 39 



medicine," or, lastly, may be unconnected with witchcraft altogether 

 and adopted as a means to obtain a desired end. 



The general form in which expression was given to the belief 

 that persons were subject to the evil influence of some individual, 

 who was exerting that influence to work an injury to them or their 

 property, was that they were " overlooked." It was not only the 

 witches proper or " wise women," or the wizards or " cunning 

 men," who were believed capable of " overlooking " people or 

 animals. Sometimes an unusually ill-tempered, shrewish, or for 

 any reason particularly obnoxious, old woman (whose faults would 

 ordinarily have been expiated by the application of the ducking 

 stool or the " brank," the usual cures for a " scold ") would be 

 credited with such a power a belief often encouraged by the poor 

 creature as a means of protection against molestation and the petty 

 persecution of village children, who were restrained by the fear of 

 what might be the result of drawing her resentment directly upon 

 themselves. 



To this form of witchcraft Dorset and indeed the "West of 

 England generally is particularly prone, as the following instances 

 will shew. The first one is taken from certain correspondence in 

 the Times and Standard of a few years ago, and reproduced, if I 

 remember rightly, in the Dorset County CJironide, by which it 

 would appear that a man of about 50 years of age applied for relief 

 to the guardians of the Shaftesbury Union on the ground that he 

 was unable to work. The doctor had seen him and was unable to 

 specify any cause, though he said he was certainly incapable of 

 labour. He himself stated the cause to be that he had been " over- 

 looked" by his sister-in-law. His wife had been to a "wise 

 woman " at Stalbridge, a neighbouring village, who had relieved 

 him for a few days, but since then the spell had been too mighty 

 and he was as bad as ever. He declined medical aid as useless. 

 The afflicted man was a native of Gillingham, where there was a 

 school board and every appliance of education, yet that was not 

 enough to eradicate this most ancient of superstitions, as firmly 

 believed in as ever. 



