WESSEX WITCHES, WITCHERY, AND

WITCHCRAFT

INTRODUCTION.

It was just a casual word, dropped by a chance acquaintance, which first aroused in me an active interest in witchcraft. The subject had always exercised a fascination over me-chiefly from the mystery which underlies everything in connection with it, baffling science to frame laws which can adequately define it, and leaving us free to place our individual construction on its causes and effects. It is a fundamental truth that everything in the universe must be governed by laws, but in investigating witchcraft we are stopped at the outset by finding that like causes do not produce like effects, that the unravelling of one mystery in no way helps towards the solution of a second.

A few years ago I should have used the word 'superstition,' in connection with witchcraft, as a mere matter of course; but now, having listened to so many stories bearing on this subject, having interviewed so many people who have themselves been under the spell, having even conversed with those supposed to be gifted with a power emanating direct from the devil himself, I am disposed to question the appropriateness of applying this word to a belief which, strange though we may consider it in this century of advanced education and civilisation, does nevertheless hold a firm place in the hearts and minds of many of the less sophisticated, as well as in the intellects of some of the more thoroughly educated people.

Credence in the supernatural dates from prehistoric times, and we may easily trace instances of this from the time when Moses thundered his denunciation 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' almost without a gap down to the present day; but it was probably in medieval times that witchcraft was most indulged in, most feared, and more often visited with gruesome results-as far as the witches were concerned.

It will be remembered that John Knox was once accused of being a wizard; and for what? Because nothing but sorcery, so it was

said, could account for Lord Ochiltree's daughter, 'ane damosil of nobil blude,' falling in love with him, 'ane old, decrepit creature of maist base degree of ony that could be found in the countrey.' In the year 1537 Lady Janet Douglas was burned at Edinburgh, with the taint of being a witch. It often happened in those days that a person became famous through being able to identify certain marks on certain people, which were supposed to go with, and be inseparable from, the properties of witchcraft. Mr. John Bell, a minister of the Gospel at Gladsmuir, in his Discourse on Witchcraft, said: Sometimes it is like a little teate, sometimes but a bluwish spot, and I myself have seen it in the body of a confessing witch, like unto a little powder-mark of a blea color, somewhat hard, and withall insensible, so as it did not bleed when I pricked it'!

Many of our poets have taken the subject as their theme, most of them treating it as being full of horrible, revolting incidents. Rowe's lines are particularly suggestive of morbid imagination:

At length in murmurs hoarse her voice was heard;

Her voice beyond all plants, all magic, fear'd,

And by the lowest Stygian gods revered:

Her gabbling tongue a muttering tone confounds,
Discordant, and unlike to human sounds;

It seem'd of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;
The doleful screechings of the midnight owl;
The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion's roar;
The sound of billows beating on the shore;

The groan of winds among the leafy wood,
And burst of thunder from the rending cloud,

'Twas these, all these in one.

Practically all prose writers who have touched the subject have been to the pains of condemning witchcraft in no half-hearted terms. Gilfillan speaks of a witch as A borderer between earth and hell,' while Martin Luther, with his intolerance of the thoughts of others, his prejudice regarding things which he was either ignorant of, or did not personally agree with, says: Witchcraft we may justly designate high treason against Divine Majesty, a direct revolt against the infinite power of God.' Goethe, showing a broader grasp of the subject, gives this definition: The demonic is that which cannot be explained by reason or understanding, which is not in one's nature, yet to which it is subject.' Goldsmith, in a little essay on Deceit and Falsehood, evidently has it in his heart to pity the supposed witches who, either rightly or wrongly, suffered the extreme penalty for acts which they may, or may not, have been the cause of. In sarcastic strain he ends his essay:

If we enquire what are the common marks and symptoms by which witches are discovered to be such, we shall see how reasonably and mercifully those poor creatures were burned and hanged who unhappily fell under that name. In the first place, the old woman must be prodigiously ugly; her eyes hollow and red; her face shrivelled; she goes double, and her voice trembles. It frequently

happens that this rueful figure frightens a child into the palpitation of the heart; home he runs, and tells his mamma that Goody such a one looked at him, and he is very ill. The good woman cries out, her dear baby is bewitched, and sends for the parson and the constable. It is, moreover, necessary that she be very poor. It is true, her master, Satan, has mines and hidden treasures in his gift; but no matter, she is, for all that, very poor, and lives on alms. She goes to Sisly the cook-maid for a dish of broth, or the heel of a loaf, and Sisly denies them to her. The old woman goes away muttering, and perhaps in less than a month's time, Sisly hears the voice of a cat and sprains her ankles, which are certain signs that she is bewitched. . . .

The old woman has always for her companion an old grey cat, which is a disguised devil too, and confederate with Goody in works of darkness. They frequently go journeys into Egypt upon a broom-staff in half an hour's time, and now and then Goody and her cat change shapes. . . .

...

There is a famous way of trying witches recommended by King James the First. The old woman is tied hand and foot and thrown into the river, and if she swims she is guilty, and taken out and burned; but if she is innocent she sinks, and is only drowned.

Then, drawing attention to the improved conditions which existed in his own time, he concludes with the words: 'An old woman may be miserable now, and not be hanged for it.'

Until a few years ago, when I commenced serious investigations, I had looked on witchcraft as a defunct, historical delusion; and I was surprised, not to say startled, when I discovered that it was far from dead, but existed still as a firmly rooted belief amongst a large proportion of the older people. 'Do I b'lieve in them witches?' said an old man to me once. Why, of course I do; don't they speak o't in the Bible? And if s'be as such things did come about then, why shouldn't we find 'em now?'

I have spent many a pleasant hour listening to some of these mysterious tales, chiefly from the lips of the older men and women, but occasionally from people of less than middle age. They tell them, too, with such perfect sincerity, such ingenuous wholeheartedness, that to doubt the narrators' actual belief in their statements would be simply narrow-minded bigotry.

Since the time when laws were framed to protect reputed witches from receiving the summary justice with which their acts were formerly met, at the same time punishing those who set themselves up as witch doctors' or 'conjurers,' the people have maintained a discreet reserve on the subject; and it is only by gaining their complete confidence that they can be induced to speak out plainly. However, by unconditionally promising that, in any second-hand expression of their stories, neither names nor localities shall be mentioned, I have usually found it a comparatively easy task to obtain from them the fullest particulars, even including the names of people still living, and the places of their residence.

Some of these stories are of a character which will scarcely bear repetition, not because they are obscene, but because they are frank

in unconventional details! are absolutely true, and the licence which I have allowed myself is merely that of weaving them into sufficient consecutiveness to merit the name 'story' being applied with significance. Many of the narrators being still alive, I have altered all the original names, both of people and places, in order that actual identification may be a matter of impossibility.

The main facts of those that I re-tell

The ancient language of Wessex (some people prefer to call it a dialect) is rapidly becoming extinct; in fact, it is open to doubt whether anyone now living can give us more than a faint approximation of the original, excepting, perhaps, Thomas Hardy in his inimitable Wessex novels. Some words still in use bear the true ring, and a few of the idioms are retained, but the contamination of board-school education has ruined all chance of our ever hearing it again in its purity or completeness. The everyday speech of Wessex, which passes muster as a dialect, is but a fragmentary relic of a bygone language-dead as its originators.

The difficulty attending all attempts to reproduce even the present-day mixture is necessarily great, many of the voice inflections being so subtle in character as to defy ordinary spelling; unless, indeed, we resort to the unlimited use of accents and diphthongs-a procedure which would prove tedious, both to reader and writer. The orthography used in the following stories is based on the phonetic value of what may be heard at the present time, and I accordingly offer no apology for any spelling which may not be identical with that of other writers.

THE EPISODE AT WOODLANDS.

Widow Cotton had lived for many years in the village of Riverton, and was looked on by most of her neighbours as a being gifted with abnormal powers-a person to be feared and revered in the same breath. She had been a martyr to chronic rheumatism for fifteen years, the last ten she had been entirely bed-ridden. Her age was a mystery, even to herself, but it is certain that she cannot have been far short of ninety; her unimpaired memory of events which happened during the early part of last century giving colour to the supposition.

She was regarded as an authority on such matters as manorial boundaries, and it was by asking some trivial question about a rightof-way that I first made her acquaintance. From then on I used to pay her occasional visits, taking her papers to read, or spending an hour or two in chatting with her. From ordinary, everyday subjects I gradually led her on to talk of witches and witchcraft; naturally reticent, like most of her class on this subject, it was some time before I was able to induce her to speak openly and without

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restraint, but after a time I gained her confidence and drew from her many a tale of weird, scarce-credible fact.

Once, soon after I first knew her, I asked some rather leading question, and instead of replying she eyed me suspiciously for a moment or two and then said, 'Have'ee ever heerd anybody say as how I be mixed up wi' witches an' their ways?'

Very honesty made me admit that I had heard people say she knew more than most of her neighbours about such things; and I believe this very admission made her trust me the more, for she must have known what the common talk about her was.

'Tidn' true then,' she said; 'I bain't no wiser nor what others be; 'tis a cruel lie, that's what 'tis, to make out such wicked stories about a poor wold bed-ridden 'oman like I. I've a-kep' my eyes and years open goin' dhrough life, whereas most o' the folk hereabout do keep their mouths agape, an' their eyes and years closed.'

One evening I found her in a rare humour for talking, and on asking her if she knew of any case of 'overlooking' near Riverton, she gave me the following story:

Tmust be close on sixty year ago, when I wer' still but a young 'oman, that me and my husband went to live wi' Varmer Voot to 'Oodlands. My husband wer' carter, an' as ther' wadn' a house empty there-right we was forced to go and live into a house joinin' 'Oodlands Dairy, best part o' a mile from the varm. These dairy wer' let to a dairyman name o' Lock; he, an's wife, an's eldest daughter did do all the work, for 'twer' but a small dairy, look, an' so the two cottages what did go wi' the dairy was lef' empty. The one we went to live in, an' the t'other wer' rented to Varmer Tuck's shepherd-Varmer Tuck's land joinin' on to Maester's.

'We was all very good friends indeed, an' did use to meet very often evenin's an' talk an' chat together, an' never s'much's a breath o' wind come between us. Well, one marnin', bout of a ten o'clock, Mrs. Lock come into kitchen an' vlings herself down into chair, dhrows her apron over her head, an' sets-to cryin' fit to empt' herself.

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"Why, whatever have a-upset 'ee?" says I. "Don't'ee take on so," I says, "ther's a good 'oman; tell I what 'tis what do worry'ee." Sarah," says she, twixt her bouts o' sobbin', "'tis hagrod, that's what we be. I ain't said nothin' to nobody about it 'cos I doesn' dare to speak o't; but ther', tidn' no mortal use to bide still no longer, for we be just losin' everything. Dhree pigs be dead an' buried, an' now the mare be took curious-like, an' we be feared she'll make a die o't, too."

'I quieted her down all's ever I could, an' by'm'by she got more cheerfuller-like an' went on whome again. The same evenin' I telled Shep's wife about 'en, an' 'stead o' she sayin' anything, she just bed quiet an' said nothin' at all. I never thought upon it then, but