With that he disappeared, and never came back any more.
Mischievous Fairies
Dr. Johnson defines ‘Fairy’ thus: ‘A kind of fabled beings supposed to appear in a diminutive human form, and to dance in the meadows, and reward cleanliness in houses.’ The reward was bestowed in the form of a coin secretly placed in the shoe of the industrious servant, an ancient belief which was, we are told, long kept alive by mistresses, who would slip the expected coin into its place to encourage their servants to industry. But the fairies did not everywhere possess only this blameless reputation. Mischievous fairies were dreaded by the farmer’s wife lest they should get into the dairy and spoil the cream. To keep them away, every one who entered the dairy must stir up the cream with the mundle (Wor.). A tangled knot in a horse’s mane was proof of their having been in the stable, for this was the pixy-seat (Dev.). A trace of what Dr. Johnson calls ‘an odd superstitious opinion, that the fairies steal away children, and put others that are ugly and stupid in their places’, remains in the dialect saying: Bless th’ bairn, he must hev been chaanged (Lin.), used when a child, generally good-tempered, becomes suddenly irritable without any obvious reason. Country folk in Cornwall used to put a prayer-book under a child’s pillow as a charm to keep away the pixies. The still prevailing superstition that it is unlucky for a woman after child-birth to go into anybody’s house—some say even to cross her own threshold—before she goes to be churched, is no doubt a remnant of the old belief that the mother until kirk’t was not safe from the power of the fairies. People suddenly seized with rheumatism, lumbago, paralysis, or fits were supposed to have been shot at by malicious fairies, and when a prehistoric arrow-head of flint or stone was picked up, it was alleged to be the fairy weapon, the awf-shot or fairy-dart. A hole in a deal board occasioned by the dropping out of a shrunken knot, was regarded as the path of a fairy shaft, and called an awf-bore. In Northumberland and Cumberland a sudden attack of illness or disease is still spoken of as a shot, e.g. a shot of rheumatics. The phrase Plaze God and the pigs (w.Som.) is probably a reminiscence of the days when the pigseys or pixies were regarded as powers which had to be reckoned with in ordinary daily life. To laugh like a pixy (Dev. Cor.) is to laugh heartily, like the merry elves of yore when they danced in the meadows by moonlight.
Belief in Witchcraft
The belief in witches as active personalities belongs, together with the belief in fairies, to bygone generations, but its traces are with us still. On the one hand there are the old words and phrases, the husks of a once living seed, and on the other hand is the vague superstitious dread of an evil influence which is none the less real and potent because people have ceased to ascribe the dreaded ill-luck to witchcraft and the evil eye. Among the plants associated with witches are: Witch-bells (n.Cy.), the corn blue-bottle; Witch’s-milk (Lan.), the common mare’s-tail; Witch’s-needles (Nhb.), the shepherd’s needle; Witch’s-knot (Wm.), a bundle of matted twigs which forms on the branches of birches and thorns. The fungus which we have already noticed under the name Fairy-butter, is also known as Witch’s-butter (Nhp. w.Cy.); and the purple foxglove is sometimes called Witch’s-thimble (Sc. Nhb.). When horses break out into a sweat in the stable, they are said to have been hag-rided (Som.); and the tangled locks in their manes are the Witch’s-stirrups (Shr.). In parts of Surrey and Sussex a Fairy-ring is called a Hag-track. The shoulder-bones of a sheep are termed Hag-bones (Som.), because formerly witches were believed to ride on them, and consequently it was necessary to burn them. The ancient belief that the shells of eggs used by the household were appropriated by the witches for boats is still regarded in practice, the spoon must be thrust through the bottom, or the shell crushed to pieces before it is thrown away, cp. Sir Thomas Browne and his annotators: ‘To break the egg-shell after the meat is out, we are taught in our childhood, and practise it all our lives; which nevertheless is but a superstitious relique, according to the judgment of Pliny ...; and the intent hereof was to prevent witchcraft.’ ‘To keep the fairies out, as they say in Cumberland,’ Note (Jeff.); ‘Least they perchance might use them for boates (as they thought) to sayle in by night,’ Note (Wr.), Vulgar Errors, Book V, Chap. XXIII.
The Evil Eye
As ill as a witch (Chs.) is a phrase meaning very ill. As fause [false, i.e. cunning] as a Pendle witch (Lan.) is a saying which keeps on record the traditional association of Pendle Forest with witches. It was there that the old custom called Lating [seeking] the Witches used to be observed on All-hallows Eve, the night when the witches were said to meet in the Forest. Lighted candles were carried about the hills from eleven to twelve o’clock. If the witches failed to extinguish a light, the bearer was safe from their power for the season, but if the light went out, it portended evil. Persons or things under the supposed influence of witchcraft or the evil eye, were formerly said to be blinked (Sc. Irel. Chs. Shr. e.An.), a word which still remains in e.Anglia in the sense of soured, spoiled, used of beer. The very common word wisht (w. and sw. Cy.), meaning unlucky, uncanny, also physically weak, sickly, haggard, is no doubt originally wished, i.e. ill-wished, or bewitched. The terms overlooked (Sc. Irel. Yks. War. Shr. e.An. sw.Cy.), overseen (Hrf. Glo.), overshadowed (Dev.) were certainly used in their original sense of bewitched as late as the last two decades of the nineteenth century, cp. ‘The last witness said deceased had been “overshadowed” by some-one,’ n.Dev. Herald, June 25, 1896. A writer in to-day’s Times, Feb. 21, 1912, regards the belief in this form of witchcraft as still current: ‘We still hear of people in remote villages who complain of being overlooked, and who actually pine away under the belief that a spell has been cast upon them.’
Ill-Omens
A White Witch was a person, either man or woman, who was supposed to possess the power of removing the spell, and of inflicting punishment on the individual by whose malice the evil had been wrought. In return for pecuniary considerations, the white witch dispensed oracular wisdom, and remedies in the form of charms. As recently as the year 1890 a man who called himself ‘the White Witch of Exeter’ was convicted on a charge of obtaining money by means of palmistry. Mrs. Sarah Hewitt in her book on Devonshire customs and folk-lore—Nummits and Crummits—writes: ‘In cases of sickness, distress, or adversity, persons at the present time (A.D. 1898) make long expensive journeys to consult the white witch, and to gain relief by his (or her) aid.’ The miscellaneous articles and medicaments advocated by the white witch we shall notice later when we come to consider charms and cures. Meanwhile let us first look at some of the many ways in which the old fear of mysterious evil still shows itself, that fear which in spite of our advances in education and civilization still makes men regard trivial happenings with superstitious awe, and see omens of death and ill-luck in the commonest things.