V. Five is the clock! five virgins were discarded,
When five with wedding garments were rewarded.
VI. The clock is six, and I go off my station;
Now, brethren, watch yourselves for your salvation.
A DOG EXTINGUISHING A FIRE.
On the evening of the 21st February, 1822, the shop of Mr. Coxon, chandler, at the Folly, Sandgate, in Newcastle, was left in charge of his daughter, about nine years of age, and a large mastiff, which is generally kept there as a safeguard since an attempt was made to rob the shop. The child had on a straw bonnet lined with silk, which took fire from coming too near the candle. She endeavoured to pull it off, but being tied, she could not effect her purpose, and in her terror shrieked out, on which the mastiff instantly sprang to her assistance, and with mouth and paws completely smothered out the flame by pressing the bonnet together. The lining of the bonnet and the child's hair only were burnt.
CAMBRIDGE CLODS.
About sixty years since, two characters, equally singular in their way, resided at Cambridge: Paris, a well-known bookseller, and Jackson, a bookbinder, and principal bass-singer at Trinity College Chapel in that University; these two gentlemen, who were both remarkably corpulent, were such small consumers in the article of bread, that their abstemiousness in that particular was generally noticed; but, to make amends, they gave way to the greatest excess and indulgence of their appetites in meat, poultry, and fish, of almost every description. So one day, having taken an excursion, in walking a few miles from home, they were overtaken by hunger, and, on entering a public-house, the only provision they could procure was a clod of beef, weighing near fourteen pounds, which had been a day or two in salt; and this these two moderate bread consumers contrived to manage between them broiled, assisted by a due proportion of buttered potatoes and pickles. The landlord of the house, having some knowledge of his guests, the story got into circulation, and the two worthies were ever after denominated the Cambridge Clods!
WITCH-TESTING AT NEWCASTLE IN 1649.
March 26.—Mention occurs of a petition in the common council books of Newcastle, of this date, and signed, no doubt, by the inhabitants, concerning witches, the purport of which appears, from what followed, to have been to cause all such persons as were suspected of that crime to be apprehended and brought to trial. In consequence of this, the magistrates sent two of their sergeants, viz.—Thomas Shevill and Cuthbert Nicholson, into Scotland, to agree with a Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to find out witches, by pricking them with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such who should be brought to him, and to have twenty shillings a piece, for all he should condemn as witches, and free passage thither and back again. When the sergeants had brought the said witch-finder on horseback to town, the magistrates sent their bellman through the town, ringing his bell and crying, all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for, and tried by the person appointed. Thirty women were brought into the town-hall, and stripped, and then openly had pins thrust into their bodies, and most of them were found guilty. The said reputed witch-finder acquainted Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Hobson, deputy-governor of Newcastle, that he knew women whether they were witches or no by their looks; and when the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman, the said colonel replied, and said, surely this woman is none, and need not be tried, but the Scotchman said she was, and, therefore, he would try her; and presently, in the sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the waist, with her cloathes over her head, by which fright and shame all her blood contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran a pin into her thigh, and then suddenly let her cloathes fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her body, but did not bleed! but she being amazed, replied little; then he put his hands up her cloathes and pulled out the pin, and set her aside as a guilty person, and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty. Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of the aforesaid woman, by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that woman to be brought again, and her cloathes pulled up to her thigh, and required the Scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil. The witch-finder set aside twenty-seven out of the thirty suspected persons, and in consequence, fourteen witches and one wizard, belonging to Newcastle, were executed on the town moor.