“The weather will be fine when the rooks play pitch-halfpenny—i.e. when, flying in flocks, some of them stoop down and pick up worms, imitating the action of a boy playing pitch-halfpenny.
“There will be severe winter and deep snow when snow-banks (i.e. white fleecy clouds) hang about the sky.”
In 1845, she knew there would be a failure of some crop, “because the evening star rode so low. The leading star (i.e. the last star in the Bear’s Tail) was above it all the summer the potato blight occurred.” She feared the failure would have been in the wheat, till she saw the man’s face in it, and then she was comfortable, and did not think of any other crop. Her opinion was, that the potato blight was caused by the lightning, because the turf burnt so sulphurously. “The lightning,” she says, “carries a burr round the moon, and makes the roke (fog) rise in the marshes, and smell strong.”
A failure in the “Ash Keys,” she pronounces a sign of a change in the government.
“If the hen moult before the cock,
We get a winter as hard as a rock;
If the cock moult before the hen,
We get a winter like a spring.
“She put plenty of salt in the water while washing clothes, to keep the thunder out, and to keep away foul spirits.”
Of Good Friday, she says,
“If work be done on that day, it will be so unlucky, that it will have to be done over again.”
The story of Heard’s Ghost she accompanies by an anecdote of one Finch, of Neatishead, who was walking along the road after dark, and saw a dog which he thought was Dick Allard’s, that had snapped and snarled at him at different times. Thinks he, “you have upset me two or three times; I will upset you now. You will not turn out of the road for me; and I will not turn out of the road for you.” Along came the dog, straight in the middle of the road, and Finch kicked at him, and his foot went through him, as through a sheet of paper—he could compare it to nothing else; he was quite astounded, and nearly fell backwards from the force of the kick.
She says that she has heard that the spirits of the dead haunt the places where treasures were hid by them when living, and that those of the Roman Catholics still frequent the spots where their remains were disturbed, and their graves and monuments destroyed. Alas! what a ghost-besieged city must poor Norwich be in such a case!