the eye does exist in those persons who are
pointed out as in possession of the craft of the
wizard or witch. But an ancient man, who
lived in a lone house in a gorge near the church,
once actually disclosed to me in mysterious
whispers, and with many a gesture of alarm and
dread, a plan which he had heard from his
grandfather, and by which a person evilly inclined, and
anxious for more power than men ought to
possess, might at any time become a master of
the Evil Eye.

"Let him go to chancel," said he, "to sacrament,
and let him hide and bring away the bread
from the hands of the priest; then, next
midnight let him take it and carry it round the
church, widdershins, that is, from south to
north, crossing by east three times: the third
time there will meet him a big, ugly, venomous
toad, gaping and gasping with his mouth opened
wide, let him put the bread between the lips of
the ghastly creature, and as soon as ever it is
swallowed down his throat he will breathe three
times upon the man, and he will be made a
strong witch for evermore."

I did not fail to express the horror and
disgust with which I had listened to this
grandsire's tale, and to assure him that any man
capable of performing such an atrocious ceremony
and for such a purpose, must be by his very
nature fit for every evil desire, and
prepared, of his own mere impulse to form the
most unhallowed wishes for the harm of his
fellow-creatures, such as a demon only could
delight to fulfil. But the feats which are
supposed to be achieved by the witch—for the
question proposed by the sapient King Jamie
has been solved by the Cornish people, whether
the Devil doth not oftener dally with ancient
women than men, are invariably deeds of loss
and harm: Some felon sow, like her of Rokeby,
becomes the grunting mother of a large family
of farrows; all at once, like Medea, she hates
her own offspring with a fiendish hatred, and
spurns them all away from her milk. They pine
and squeal, and at last sit upright on their
hinder parts like pleading children, put their
little paws together in piteous fashion, and die
one by one. All this would never have come to
pass had not the dame, the day before, refused
a bottle of milk to one who " should have been
a woman," " but that her beard forbade them to
interpret that such she were." What graphic
tale of " things ill-wished" have I not heard
around and within this wild and lonely hamlet!
All at once a flock or herd would begin to pine
away with some strange and nameless disease,
the shepherd's ewes yeaned dead lambs, and
were found standing over their lost offspring,
aghast. Or his cows, " the milky mothers of
the herd, " would rush from field to field,
"quite mad," with their tails erect towards the
sky, like the bare poles of a ship in distress,
scudding before the gale; or the brown mare
would refuse to be harnessed, and signify her
intention to remain in the stall on a busy day,
to her master's infinite disgust. In the more
civilised part of my parish the well-to-do farmer
would have a remedy. He would mount his
horse one break of day on some secret expedition,
and be absent for another day or two. Then
he returns armed with a packet of white
powders, which he scatters carefully, one at every
gate on his farm, and his men hear him as he
goes muttering in solemn fashion some strange
set words, which turn out, when the scroll is
submitted to the schoolmaster afterwards, to
contain the blessings of the twenty-eighth
chapter of Deuteronomy, copied in writing for
his use. He has paid a visit, it appears, to a
distant town, and been closeted with a well-
known public character of the west, popularly
called the White Witch, and it is he who has
not only exposed the name and arts of the
parish practitioner of evil, but has supplied an
antidote in the shape of baffling powders and
"charms of might."

Some years agone a violent thunderstorm
passed over the hamlet of Holacombe, and
wrought great damage in its course. Trees were
rooted up, cattle killed, and a rick or two set on
fire. It so befel that I visited, the day after, one of
the chief agricultural inhabitants of the village,
and I found the farmer and his men standing by
a ditch, wherein lay, heels upward, a fine young
horse, quite dead. " Here, sir," he shouted, as
I came on, "only please to look; is not this a
sight to see?" I looked at the poor animal,
and uttered my sympathy and regret at the loss.
"One of the fearful results," I happened to
say, " of the storm and lightning yesterday."
"There, Jem," said he to one of his men,
triumphantly, " didn't I say the parson would
find it out?" " Yes, sir," he said, " it is as you
say; it is all that wretched old Cherry*
Parnell's doing, with her vengeance and her noise!"
I stared with astonishment at this unlooked-for
interpretation which he had put into my mouth,
and waited for him to explain. " You see, sir,"
he went on to say, "the case was this: old
Cherry came up to my place, tottering along
and mumbling that she wanted a fagot of wood.
I said to her, 'Cherry,' says I, 'I gave you
one two days agone, and another two days
before that, and I must say that I didn't make up
my woodrick altogether for you.' So she turned
away, looking very grany, and muttering
something about ' Hotter for me hereafter.' Well,
sir, last night I was in bed, I and my wife, and
all to once there busted a thunderbolt, and it
shaked the very room and house. Up we
started, and my wife says, 'O, father, old
Cherry's up. I wish I had gone after her with
that there fagot.' I confess I thought in my
mind I wished she had; but it was too late
then, and I would try to hope for the best.
But now, sir, you see with your own eyes what
that revengeful old woman hath been and done.
And I do think, sir," he went on to say, changing
his tone to a kind of indignant growl, "I do
think that when I call to mind how I've paid
tithe and rates faithfully all these years, and
kept my place in church before your reverence

*Charity is the full name.