There is yet another class of subjects connected with old village life, of absorbing interest and importance. I refer to the old superstitions and folklore which still linger on in the recollections of the "oldest inhabitant," and which ought to be at once treasured up, lest they should be altogether lost. The generation of those who believed firmly in the power of the "evil eye" of the witch, and who feared to disturb the revels of the fairies on their rings and mounds, is only just passing away. An old gipsy has told me some strange stories of the superstitions of former days. He has told me of the witch at Farnham who made the cows wild and prevented them from giving milk; of another witch who lived at Henley-on-Thames, and who when thrown into the river "floated like a cork." Here we have a survival of the old Saxon method of trying culprits by the water ordeal, often used in examining witches. This particular witch could turn herself into a hare, so my venerable gipsy friend, aged one hundred and six years, informed me, and the dogs hunted her. He told me of the Tadley witch, who "wished" several people, and greatly injured them. It seems to have been a common practice of the old witches to turn themselves into hares, in order to vex the squires, justices, and country parsons, who were fond of hunting, as the old dames could elude the speed of the swiftest dogs. An old writer states "that never hunters nor their dogs may be bewitched, they cleave an oaken branch, and both they and their dogs pass over it." Mary Dore, a witch of Beaulieu, Hampshire, used to turn herself into a hare in order to escape detection when caught in the act of wood-stealing, to which she was somewhat addicted.