Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

Perhaps the following account of superstitions now entertained in some parts of Somersetshire, will be interesting to the inquirers into the history of witchcraft. I was lately informed by a member of my congregation that two children living near his house were bewitched. I made inquiries into the matter, and found that witchcraft is by far less uncommon than I had imagined. I can hardly adduce the two children as an authenticated case, because the medical gentleman who attended them pronounced their illness to be a kind of ague: but I leave the two following cases on record in N. & Q. as memorable instances of witchcraft in the nineteenth century.
A cottager, who does not live five minutes' walk from my house, found his pig seized with a strange and unaccountable disorder. He, being a sensible man, instead of asking the advice of a veterinary surgeon, immediately went to the white witch (a gentleman who drives a flourishing trade in this neighbourhood). He received his directions, and went home and implicitly followed them. In perfect silence, he went to the pigsty; and lancing each foot and both ears of the pig, he allowed the blood to run into a piece of common dowlas. Then taking two large pins, he pierced the dowlas in opposite directions; and still keeping silence, entered his cottage, locked the door, placed the bloody rag upon the fire, heaped up some turf over it, and reading a few verses of the Bible, waited till the dowlas was burned. As soon as this was done, he returned to the pigsty; found his pig perfectly restored to health, and, mirabile dictu! as the white witch had predicted, the old woman, who it was supposed had bewitched the pig, came to inquire after the pig's health. The animal never suffered a day's illness afterwards. My informant was the owner of the pig himself.
Perhaps, when I heard this story, there may have been a lurking expression of doubt upon my face, so that my friend thought it necessary to give me farther proof. Some time ago a lane in this town began to be looked upon with a mysterious awe, for every evening a strange white rabbit