“You may laugh as much as you please,” replied Aunt Judith, with spirit, “but I tell you what I actually saw with my own eyes. We did not stay longer in that house than we could find another place; but before we left something took place which perhaps you’ll not find it so easy to explain. 174 Young William Stout’s folks had been so troubled about him, and the doctors said they could do nothing, that they determined to try a ‘project.’”
I may as well explain what Aunt Judith’s modesty prevented her from doing; that a “project” was to inclose a certain liquid emanation of the afflicted person in a phial tightly stopped, and to put it over the fire in a pot to boil. Of course, as in the case of the sympathetic remedies described by Sir Kenelm Digby and practised by him, as the contents of the phial boil, the witch burns, and she is inevitably detected by the scorching she gets and the scars it leaves behind. It is from this circumstance, undoubtedly, that the nursery rhyme derives its authority,—
| “Hinx minx, the old witch winks, The fat begins to fry,” etc. |
This is precisely the operation of the process in question.
“Accordingly,” continued Aunt Judith, 175 “the Stout folks made all their preparations, in company with some trusty neighbors; the doors were fastened, and exactly at twelve o’clock the ‘project’ was begun. Everything went on well; but, as often happens in such cases, something was forgotten, or the witches’ master interferes; for it seemed, after a while, that more water was wanted, and one of the company took the pail to go to the well for it. As he cautiously opened the door, there to their horror stood Granny Holt, in the darkness of midnight! She came in grinning and complimenting, and without expressing surprise at finding so many persons together, at such an unusual hour, or making any inquiry as to the reason, she said, ‘one of their folks was taken sick and seeing a light there, she had come over to beg some herbs.’ There was the end of the project, and I don’t know as it was ever tried again.”
“Were you there, yourself?” asked Uncle Richard. 176
“No, I can only swear to the black cat and the burnt pies; but everybody in our neighborhood knew all about the project and Granny Holt’s breaking it up.”
We had become pretty well stirred up by this time, but as is likely to be the case under such circumstances, were eager for whatever other marvel might be forthcoming; for no matter how intelligent or incredulous the circle of hearers may be, there is something strangely fascinating in these weird stories. People may affect indifference “amidst the blazing light of the nineteenth century;” but I think that of a dark night, in a lonely spot, the starting up of so familiar a creature as a white horse, for instance, would set the strongest nerves into perturbation, at the idea of something ghostly. Indeed, Addison declared in his day, that there “was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it; the churchyards were haunted; nor was there a peasant who had not seen a spirit.” 177
“Well, Aunt Judith,” said Uncle Richard, “these wonderful things seem to have very much gone by, in our day, or else people, for some reason, take less notice of them than formerly. Witches, nowadays, are characters entirely unknown, except,” he gallantly remarked, “for the sometimes really inexplicable fascinations of members of your own sex; and, except in one singular instance, I have known of no appearances which could not be rationally accounted for. I have heard my father, however, tell of one which, according to the tradition, manifested itself, one hundred years ago or more, upon a bridge, over the Ipswich River, in our Essex County town of Topsfield, and was the terror of all the country round. He appeared in the shape of a monstrous hog, taking his station, at night, in the very centre of the bridge; and those who had occasion to cross it, on horseback or on foot, were either fain to turn back, as he encountered 178 them, bristling and snarling, or rushed by, if their occasion demanded it, in a state of extraordinary trepidation. At length, Parson Capen, the worthy minister of the town, riding up to the bridge one evening, saw the spectre in his usual position. Nothing daunted, in virtue of his holy office, the good man thus accosted him: ‘You that were once an angel of light, ain’t you ashamed to appear in the shape of a dirty swine?’ This expostulation was too much for the foul fiend, who at once jumped over the railing of the bridge into the river, and was no more seen.”
Amongst others of the few guests of the evening was a young gentleman, a member of one of the learned professions, who was accounted an intellectual person and was of rather grave demeanor. Though known to have been the author of occasional verses which gained applause, he would not have been thought likely to be the subject of any extraordinary hallucination. 179 He was an intimate friend of our family, and on certain occasions of unusual excitement, if not danger, in the midst of the various adventures of young people, had shown a singular firmness of nerve and presence of mind, and was thought to be in fact insensible to fear. He had listened to the story of the bold lad who saw the supposed apparition on the gate-post, and to that of the Topsfield spectre, with much the same interest as that which Marmion exhibited at Sir David Lindesay’s narrative of the appearance of the beloved Apostle to King James in Linlithgow. Apparently induced by a similar irresistible impulse to that which drew from the redoubted warrior of Scott’s fascinating poem the rehearsal of his nocturnal adventure, our guest volunteered a relation quite as remarkable.