The man’s meaning was that Betty had “peculiar powers.” A widow of sixty or more, she attended no place of worship, and rarely covered her grey head with anything more than a shawl. Besides her allowance from the parish, she managed to make a little money by selling ointments for wounds and sores, and many a cure has been wrought by means of her home-made compounds. My first meeting with her was on the Feast of St. Thomas, called in those parts “Mumping Day.” At my door stood Old Betty asking for a bit of silver, and a few yards behind her came several other widows. Hesitatingly I stood just over the threshold, when suddenly, before I could step aside, a lot of soft snow slid from the house-roof with a splash upon my bare head, while Old Betty and her companions laughed loud and long. The village gossips duly spread it abroad that Betty had, by her “peculiar powers,” brought down the snow upon the parson’s head. Anyway, I resolved for the future to be more prompt in the exercise of that unfailing charm against Betty’s witchcraft—a silver shilling.
“Did you ever see my Aunt Sarah at Blackpool?” said Juli.
“Yes, I once had tea in her tent on the South Shore. Did she and her rom (husband), Edward, ever travel on this side of England?”
“Sartinly, they did. Ned’s daddy, Tyso, lies buried in your country. Poor old man, many’s the time I’ve heard the tale about him and the shepherd boy.”
“Well, Tyso was once hatshin (camping) on a Norfolk common and got a-talking with a boy tending sheep. Says the boy to Tyso—
“‘I can tell you where there’s a buried box full o’ money.’
“‘Show me the place,’ says Tyso.
“The boy took him to a little low, green hill, and then they fetches a spade and digs into it. Sure enough they bared the lid of an old iron chest with a ring on top, and both of ’em tugged hard at the ring, but the box wouldn’t budge an inch. Just then Tyso swore, and the ring slipped outen their hands, and down went the box and they never see’d it no more.”
“One time the Herrens (Herons) used to come about here a good deal. There was handsome William, a wery notified man he were. Then there was Old Niabai and Crowy. Their son Isaac had a boy born at Lynn close by here—that was Îza. You’ll know him sure-ly. I’ve often met Ike’s half-brother Manful in Lynn. I can see him now, a little doubled-up old man. I ’spects you’s heard tell of Manful’s diamond? One day in a public, he catch’d sight of something shining among the sand—they sanded the slab floors in them days—and, whatever the thing was, it shone like a bit of cut-glass, and at first he thought it wasn’t worth stooping for, but when the taproom was empty he picked it up, and dawdi! if it wasn’t a diamond as big as a cobnut. So away he takes it to a pawnbroker’s shop, and the head man told him it were worth hundreds of pounds. My dear old dad once saw it with his own eyes.”