instead of some un else.” Next morning the old woman does not get up. She calls to Jack, he goes to her, “My leg is worser, gie me some tea, and then goa to the wise man at the town an’ ask him what’s the matter wi’ me, for I feel that queer. Get my stocking out o’ yon chest, and I’ll gie thee a crown to gie him for his fee.” To be brief, Jack attends to her wants, gets his breakfast, and walks off some miles to the neighbouring town. There he has a jug of ale, to refresh him after his walk, and so goes to the wise man. He finds him at home, and tells his errand. The wise man takes him into a back room, tells him to sit down, while he lays out a big book on the table, and opens it at random. Jack cannot read, but he would not be any wiser in this case, if he could, for the page is covered with curious characters, which none but the wise man can read, and a sceptic might suggest that he cannot either. The latter then turns to a cupboard in the corner of the room, opens the door of it, put his head inside, and _sotto voce_, mumbles something. Having done this for a moment or two, as if conversing with some “familiar spirit” in an unknown tongue, he throws the cupboard door wide open, whereupon out flies a large “bumble-bee,” which circles, buzzing, round the room, and at length settles on the open book. The wise man examines the particular letters, or characters, on which the bee has settled. Having studied them carefully, he says to Jack, “When did your mother first feel the pain?” “Last night,” says Jack,” afore I came home to supper.” “When did you shoot that hare?” asks the wise man. “I did not shoot a hare at all,” replied Jack. The wise man consults the characters again, and then says “No! I see you did not, but it was your gun that shot her.” At this Jack is astonished, and tells the whole particulars. The wise man says, “your good spirit kept you from shooting, because she was your own mother, but your mate shot her with your own gun. Don’t you know that your mother’s a witch, and goes out as a hare whenever she likes? Why, I heard of her running across the road in front of a team of horses, in her form of a hare and they were so scared that they nearly dragged the waggon into a dyke. However,” he adds,” she’ll soon be well again. Here’s the remedy: Catch a hedgehog, take a comb, and with it saw off one of its legs, and tell her to rub her leg well with the hedgehog’s leg, and the pain will soon go.” Jack journeyed home in high spirits, taking a pot or two on the way, by way of self-congratulation; and my informant deponeth that all came about as the wise man foretold.