to the writer of an article on “Popular Mythology,” by a friend in Norfolk. A certain Lady N—— is there stated to have convinced Dr. Hutton of her possession of this mysterious gift, and to have by means of it indicated to him the existence of a spring of water in one of his fields adjoining the Woolwich College, which, in consequence of this discovery, he was enabled to sell to the College at a higher price. This power of hers Lady N—— repeatedly exhibited before credible witnesses, and the Quarterly Reviewer of that day (1820) held the fact incontrovertible. De Quincey, in two passages[1], affirms that he has frequently seen the process applied with success, and declares that, whatever science or scepticism may say, most of the tea-kettles in the Vale of Wrington, North Somersetshire, are filled by rabdomancy. In an ill-watered province this would make its professors an important class, though, as De Quincey allows, the affinity of their local appellation “jowsers,” with the slang verb “to chouse,” would argue some suspicion of the soundness of their pretensions. In the last number of the “Monthly Packet” (March, 1867), a curious story is told how the guests at an
- ↑ De Quincey’s Collected Works, i. p. 84; iii. p. 222.
