Uncle Joe's Stories

by Baron Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen Brabourne

Such was he and such was his family at the time that the occurrences took place which I am about to relate.

Some years before the date at which our story commences, there had lived at the extreme south of the parish of Mersham a woman of the name of Betty Bartlet. She was not only a reputed witch, but the fact of her being so was testified to by a great number of credible witnesses who had either suffered in their own persons from her evil power, or had seen and heard things which could not have been had she been an ordinary and Christian woman.

She lived to a very great age—nobody knew exactly how old she was when she died; and, although the rumours respecting her career caused the clergyman of the Parish to entertain serious doubts as to the course he should pursue, she was eventually carried to Mersham churchyard to be therein interred.

But if I am correctly informed—and I obtained my information from highly respectable people—there were strange and terrible doings at her funeral.

She was carried on a waggon, from the cottage in which she had breathed her last, as far as the bridge over the river Stour, which flows, as all the world knows, a few hundred yards south of the church. There, from some unknown cause, the horses would not cross the bridge; and it was told me that they seemed quite exhausted with the short journey—little over three miles—which they had performed.

So the people unharnessed them from the waggon, placed all that remained of old Betty on the shoulders of eight stout bearers, and marched forward towards the churchyard. But not only was their burden wondrously heavy, but it seemed to grow heavier as they went on, and they had the greatest difficulty in making their way up the short hill, and so round to the right towards the churchyard. And just before they got to the gate, why or wherefore nobody could tell, one of the bearers stumbled, and in doing so tripped up another, and down came the whole concern with a great crash upon the ground. Everything connected with their burden suddenly disappeared: a vast cloud of black dust arose and blew all over the place, and out of the dust flew a great black bird, with a strange and awful croak, with which it terribly frightened the bystanders and bearers, as it flew off directly in the contrary direction to the churchyard.

What happened immediately afterwards Farmer Barrett never heard, or, at least, he never told me, but nobody ever doubted that the old witch had flown off in the shape of the black, fearsome bird, being unable to enter the holy ground of the churchyard. Be this as it may, the ancient woman left behind her three daughters, who had all inherited their mother's wickedness, and were witches every one of them. Their actual names were Betty, Jane, and Sarah, but they were popularly known as Skinny, Bony, and Humpy, the two elder sisters being thin and gaunt, whilst the youngest was shorter, and had a species of hump between her shoulders.

Every one in Mersham, and, for the matter of that, in the adjoining parishes also, knew these three sisters by sight, and avoided them as much as possible. No conceivable misfortune ever happened in that neighbourhood that was not attributed to their influence, and all that went wrong was immediately laid at their door.

The sisters were well aware of the awe with which the neighbours regarded them, and took good care that it should not diminish, never losing an opportunity of frightening those simple people with whom they came in contact. They lived in a long, low cottage—scarcely worthy of the name of cottage—so miserable was it both as regards the outside building and the inside accommodation. The roof was of thatch, and the dwelling itself was at one end built of Kentish rag-stone, but badly constructed, and all the rest of it was composed entirely of wood, and apparently afforded but poor shelter against wind and rain.

The women lived mostly at the stone-built end of their house, for there was their kitchen, such as it was; but very little was known of the interior of this place, inasmuch as nobody came near it who could possibly go another way. It was situate, however, barely half a mile from John Gower's cottage, a fact which caused him and his no little annoyance, inasmuch as the three Crones of Mersham, as they were usually called, were not the best of neighbours, and never very particular as far as other people's property was concerned.