He struck at them with his stick, but to no purpose; they tore away his silver shoe-buckles, and pushed him into the brook which ran by the wayside. On returning home, wet and tired, the man sent for the priest and related his adventure. ‘Ah,’ said the priest, ‘I see what it all is! Now, if you desire your wife and child to do well, take care you give nothing out of your house to any one who may beg at the door.’ The man promised to follow the advice, and for three weeks he did so, though the door was besieged by beggars of every age and condition. At last an old woman came and begged for a crust of bread so piteously that the wife, who was sitting up with the child in her lap, entreated her husband to give it. Against his better judgment he did so. Instantly the infant was torn from its mother’s arms by invisible hands, and dashed against the ceiling, while the mother received a shock which threw her into a corner. The priest was summoned, but could do nothing: he pronounced mother and child past human help, and, in fact, both died within a week.”
Danish witches transform themselves also into ducks. A huntsman, who used to pass the farm of Bailer, near Ostrel, observed, constantly in its neighbourhood, a hare or a wild duck, neither of which could he ever hit. At last he shot at the duck with a silver button from his jacket, and wounded it, but it fluttered away into the poultry-house. Going into the farm-kitchen to ask for the duck, he saw by the chimney an ugly old woman, with one shoe off, and blood streaming from her leg. She said she had fallen down and hurt herself, but the huntsman felt convinced he saw before him the witch he had shot, and hurried away with the utmost speed.[1]
But to return to our own country. The Rev. J. C. Atkinson has communicated to me some particulars respecting a noted Yorkshire witch, Nan Hardwick by name, which were communicated to him by an inhabitant of Danby. This old woman lived in one of the two lonely old-fashioned huts known as the Spital Houses, and her habit was to go every evening, a little before
- ↑ Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. ii. p. 191.
