WITCHCRAFT.
"A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng on my memory,
Of calling shapes and beck'ning shadows dire,
And aery tongues, that syllable men's names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses."
A lingering belief in witchcraft still remains among the most ignorant of our population, both rural and urban. Some particulars relative to the existence of this superstition in this county in the seventeenth century will be found among the county records in the early part of this volume. The law against witchcraft, passed in the time of James I, being very stringent, the driving out evil spirits, allaying of ghosts, and abjuring witches, became, for nearly a century, a profitable employment. Witch-finders existed as public officers; and beside the public executions which disgraced every assizes, multitudes of accused were destroyed by popular resentment, while others were drowned by the test applied, for if, on being thrown into the water, they did not sink, they were presumed witches, and either killed on the spot or reserved for burning at the assizes. In the year 1649, four persons were tried at Worcester for this supposed offence, and all were executed, two of them confessing their crime, viz.: Margaret Landis and Susan Cook; Rebecca West and Rose Holybred died obstinate. The custom at Worcester was to duck the accused in the Severn (Cooken Street, or "Cucken Street," as it is spelt in some old maps, being no doubt the line of route on these occasions).
Baxter, in his "World of Spirits," speaks of those men who told of things stolen and lost, and who showed the face of a thief in a glass, and caused the goods to be brought back, who were commonly called "white witches." "When I lived (he says) at Dudley, Hodges, at Sedgley, two miles off, was long and commonly accounted such a one; and when I lived at Kederminster, one of my neighbours affirmed that, having his yarn stolen, he went to Hodges, ten miles off, and he told him that at such an hour he should have it brought home again and put in at the window, and so it was; and as I remember he showed him the person's face in a glass. Yet I do not think that Hodges made any known contract with the devil, but thought it an effect of art."
About the year 1672 a prebend of Worcester (Joseph Glanville) seriously wrote a book, entitled, "Some considerations touching the being of Witches and Witchcraft," which engaged him in a controversy that lasted as long as his life. The statute 9th George II, chap. 5 (1736), at length repealed the disgraceful Witch Act, and stopped all legal prosecutions against persons charged with conjuration, sorcery, &c.; yet what has once taken so firm a hold of the popular mind is not to be so easily eradicated; and Dr. Nash, who wrote his "Worcestershire" towards the close of the last century, asserts that not many years previously a poor woman, who happened to be very ugly, was almost drowned in the neighbourhood of Worcester, upon a supposition of witchcraft; and had not Mr. Lygon, a gentleman of singular humanity and influence, interfered in her behalf, she would certainly have been drowned, upon a presumption that a witch could not sink. Later still, Mr. Allies informs us, that when the late Mr. Spooner kept a pack of hounds, whenever they passed through a certain field in Leigh Sinton, the hounds would invariably run after something which nobody could see, until they came to the cottage of an old woman named Cofield, when they would turn back again, the old witch having then got safely into her own "sanctum." The exploits of Mrs. Swan, of Kidderminster, who pretended to discover stolen property for everybody else except what she herself had lost, and who died in an awfully tempestuous night in November, 1850, when her cats so mysteriously disappeared, cannot yet be forgotten; nor the recent existence of "the wise man of Dudley," and many others of the same class, though not quite so celebrated, who are now living. Some of the Mathon people still believe that witchcraft makes their pigs waste away; and, when convinced of the fact, they kill the animal, and burn a part of the flesh, to prevent any ill effects to those who eat the remainder. Mr. Lees informs us of a pear tree in Wyre Forest, the fruit of which is even now hung up in the houses of the peasantry as a protection against witchcraft. The witch elm (Ulmus montana) was the one commonly employed for the purpose, as most easily attainable. That was good; the mountain ash or witten tree was better; and the sorb tree or true service (Pyrus domestica) was the strongest of all. Nine withes of witch hazel, banded together, is used as a rustic appliance to guard against witching influence. There is a place called "Witchery Hole," in Little Shelsley, concerning which, whenever a violent wind blows from the north, the people say, "The wind comes from Witchery Hole," insinuating that certain "broomstick hags" had something to do with raising the wind. For a baker to cross the flour before he commences baking is regarded as a security against the witch entering the bread. The horse-shoe is still seen over doors, in many places, and fastened to bedsteads to keep witches away. At the Police Office, at Stourbridge, only a few months ago, a woman named Wassall charged a Mrs. Cartwright, a poor woman afflicted with paralysis, with threatening to do her some bodily injury. The defendant alleged that the affliction under which she was suffering was caused by the complainant, who had bewitched her; and that when she begged her to remove the spell, complainant told her it had been upon her for twelve weeks, and it should continue six weeks longer. Finding entreaties vain, the defendant made use of some idle threat, which led to the summons. A "charm" was shown to the Court, which the deluded creature had worn by the advice of a "wise" man to remove the spell; it was a small black silk bag, containing pieces cut out from the Prayer Book and Bible, and some hair, evidently from a cat's back. The Bench endeavoured to assuage the fears of the poor woman, and told her not to impute her affliction to the evil machinations of any one, at the same time severely lecturing the complainant for practising such deceit upon an ignorant and afflicted fellow-creature.
There were reputed witches at Malvern in the last generation; and at Colwall the common people are said even now to dislike peewits (lapwings) which visit that place, believing that their cry is "bewitch'd, bewitch'd;" and should any person capture one of these birds he is strongly recommended not to keep it for fear of misfortune or accident. Peewits are believed to be departed spirits who still haunt the earth in consequence of something that troubles them.