Moreover, the true White Witch is consulted not for maladies only, but for the discovery of who has cast the evil eye, “overlooked” and “ill-wished” some one who has lost a cow, or has been out of sorts, or has sickness in his pig-sty. The mode of proceeding was amusingly described in the Letters of Nathan Hogg, in 1847. Nathan in the form of a story gives an account of what was the general method of the White Witch Tucker in Exeter. A farmer whose conviction was that disorders and disasters at home were the result of the ill-wishing of a red-cloaked Nan Tap, consulted Tucker as to how the old woman was to be “driven” and rendered powerless.
I modify the broad dialect, which would not be generally intelligible.
When into Exeter he had got
To Master Tucker’s door he sot;
He rung’d the bell, the message sent,
Pulled off his hat, and in he went,
And seed a fellow in a room
That seem’d in such a fret and fume.
He said he’d lost a calf and cow,
And com’d in there to know as how,