“Overlooked?” I said, and turned to Burbidge puzzled.
After a pause, Burbidge, seeing that I did not realize the full importance of his statement, repeated, “Overlooked, and by a black witch too.” And then he lowered his voice and added, “For all their education, parsons, newspapers and what not, there be black witches, and some of ’em has hearts as black as hell, and can suck the very life out of a fellow.”
“But surely your brother doesn’t believe that now?”
“Doesn’t he,” answered Burbidge. “My brother knows better than to disbelieve in devils and witches. You don’t catch him going against the Word of God like that. Yer might as well try to stir a puddin’ with an awl, or to repeat a verse of Hebrew under a moonless sky, as tear up the old belief in the old Shropshire folk. The devil he won’t go out of Shropshire for all the papers daily, and weekly, as ever town people read or write; no, not even to make place for trains, and motors. He ’ave his place here, and he’ll keep his wenches, the witches, near him.”
“But what has happened to your brother?” I asked, as soon as I could get a word in.
“Why, just the same as has been happening for years, and thousands of years to others, and which will happen, whether Shropshire be ruled by a king or a queen, and which be Gospel truth whatever they say, and which may come dwang-swang to any Christian man.”
And thereupon I heard the story of how old Benjamin Burbidge had been bewitched. I listened amazed, for the tale was more like an incident in some witch’s trial in James I.’s time than a story of modern life.
BECKY SMOUT, THE WITCH
“Yer must know,” continued our old gardener, “as Benjamin war waggoner at Bottomly Farm—and he have a-been so for years and years. And a fine team his war—a team of roans and all mares—to get foals off at the close. Well, and fat they war, and for all he war old, horse and harness Benjamin minded surely. His horses were to him like gold, and he put in elbow grease as if he war a lusty lad of twenty in minding ’em. Well, one day his granddaughter Sally, who keeps house for him, war mixin’ meal for the poultry, when up comes Becky Smout as they call her there, an old gangrel body, weazen, dark as walnut juice, and the look of a vixen in her eyes. Some folks say she came to Shropshire on a broomstick, and some seventy year agone from Silverton on the Clee-side. ’Tis a land of witches that Clee Hill, and allus have been a stronghold of the devil, as old Parson Jackson used to say. When Becky saw the poultry meat, her belly craved for it. Her held out both hands ape-like and her cried out, ‘Let it be a howgy sup, my wench.’ But Sal war in a temper it seems. ‘Let be,’ she sang out; ‘dost think I’ve nought to do but to cram thy belly as if thee were a yule-tide hog;’ and folks say with both bowl, and spoon, Sal flung out in a fanteag, because it seems Benjamin had promised her for her own gewgaws what her could make by the sale of the fat hens and the widdies come Christmas. And Becky her let her rage and never, they say, spoke one single word, but looked at her darkly, speered round, and wrote some devil’s characters in the dust outside the door; and as she passed down the lane they heard her laughin’, laughin’ like an ecall on an April morning, fit to split her sides in half. The next morning, when Sal got out to feed her poultry, she picked up the speckled hen, and a morning or two arter she found the yellow cock all stiff and cold with a kind of white froth round his mouth. And after that, her war all of a tremble, war Sal. Her began to hear voices, and to see things as folks shouldn’t see, and to hear bits of noises everywhere. And a kind of sweat seemed to ooze out from her hands and feet, and her felt cold and hot all to a time, and the doctor’s physic did her no good, nor could any of Mrs. Benson’s draughts ease her. And they sent her off to the sea to stay with a sister at Rhyl; but Sal her came back queerer than ever, and her wouldn’t speak, but would sit gaping and blinking as if her couldn’t mak’ nothin’ out, nor understood nought. And all the while Becky would prance about aunty-pranty, and speer over the hedge, and laugh and jabber and talk a heathen tongue.”
“What is that?” I asked.