In the last century, the fishermen were mostly ignorant of everything unconnected with their own business. Few of them could read, and none of the grown-up people could write. Some of the lads could read and write a little; but as they went to sea in the night, and took their repose in the day, they were not placed in favourable circumstances for the development of the social faculties. No instance of intellectual talent--no single person displaying a tendency towards any art or science--occurred among them. Music and song, no doubt, contributed to the enjoyment of their merry meetings; but the music was confined to a fiddle, and their collection of songs scarcely extended beyond The Praise of Paul Jones, The Waefu’ Ballad of Captain Glen, and the Christmas carol of By Southend. As for the women--toiling, as they were, incessantly--they had no time for mental improvement. But as they grew old they gained practical knowledge and experience. Many of them had a knowledge of simple remedies for curing diseases, which obtained for their prescriptions a preference to those of medical men. Some of them were supposed to be invested with supernatural powers, which made it dangerous to offend them. I may interpose here a general remark. The superstitions which were sweepingly condemned by the philosophy of the eighteenth century as falsehood and imposture, the philosophy of the nineteenth finds to be true in a sense. Instead of rejecting it in a heap, the student of the present day shakes and washes the rubbish, and separates the grains of truth from it. What, I may be asked, was it true that old fish-crones possessed the powers of witchcraft? I have not a doubt of it. The word witchcraft comes from wiccian, whence witchery, wickedness. It means evil influence. Gifted with the power of reading characters and actions, of seeing consequences and calculating results, and capable of imparting a bias, laying a snare, adapting a temptation, planning a vengeance, or instilling a physical or moral poison; and years give all these powers to malignant intelligence.