96 LOCAL WITCHCRAFT. 



Allow me to relate a little of my own experience with 

 regard to witchcraft. When first I lived at the Forest, I was 

 in very delicate health, which I still father unwittingly aggra- 

 vated by going to live in a damp house. A woman, who saw 

 me daily looking worse and worse, in spite of the doctor's 

 remedies, gravely told my wife, in quite a confidential manner, 

 that she was sure I was bewitched, and recommended her to 

 try to persuade me to go to a certain old woman, an unbe- 

 witcher, near the King's Mills, and tell her my case. As 

 drowning men will catch at straws, I decided to go, more out 

 of curiosity than otherwise, for I was as far from believing in 

 witchcraft as I am now. Having told the old woman my case, 

 she, of course, told me at once that I was bewitched; but, 

 strange to say, she would not, or could not, tell me who the 

 witch was. She gave me a pint and a half bottle full of a 

 liquid of her own preparing, with directions how to take it. 

 I found it to be a decoction of herbs in a bottle of cider or 

 something like it. Needless to say I did not take it. On 

 returning home I found that my officious neighbour had been 

 there, and had persuaded my wife to put two or three sprigs 

 of broom under the mattress of the bed, assuring her that 

 while I slept upon them the witch would have no power upon 

 me. Having heard this I went to bed, though not before 

 having removed the sticks in question from the bed and 

 thrown them out of window. Well, as it is a long road that 

 has no turning, in spite of having rejected both the unbe- 

 witcher's, and the greatest part of the doctor's drugs, I 

 gradually got better. One day, when pretty Avell recovered, 

 the neighbour in question came in, and began to congratulate 

 me upon my recovery, observing that it was quite clear I 

 should never have got better, but for the unbewitcher's drugs 

 and her own broom-sticks. I heard her to the end, and then, 

 getting up from my chair, I went to a cupboard, whence I 

 brought out the drugs in question, untouched, telling her at 

 the same time that if she wished to see the broom-sticks she 

 might come out with me and I would show them to her in 

 the corner where I had thrown them the very night they were 

 put under the bed. Needless to say, she never said another 

 word to me about witchcraft after that. 



I will now relate one more case of pretended witchcraft 

 which has quite lately come under my own observation, and 

 which will show that it is not only among the ignorant, or, I 

 should say, the uneducated, that this art — if art it is — gains 

 credit. A young man of my acquaintance, who had successively 

 served as pupil-teacher, assistant master, and lastly master, in 



