I am able to give an illustration of one of the figures made by a witch of
these parts for causing some bodily injury to happen to her client's
enemy. The custom was a common one in the circles of witchcraft. A youth
having a rival for the hand of some attractive maiden and wishing him
every imaginary evil he would apply to "Aud Mother Migg" or one of the
other hags of the neighbourhood and explaining his position the witch
would prepare a small figure of the rival. The ingredients would be of the
same class as the magic cube already fully described (generally pitch,
beeswax, hog's lard, bullock's blood, and fat from a bullock's heart), and
in order to cause his rival to lose an eye, or to go lame, or deaf, or to
have any particular complaint in any particular part of his body the
jealous lover had merely to stick a pin in that portion of the little
brown figure. The ceremony was elaborate, especially in regard to the
disposal of that part of the mixture not used to make the figure, for in
every case the cunning old women worked on the imaginations of their
dupes. There can be no doubt that the morals of the country folk during
the eighteenth century were at an exceedingly low ebb. The practice of
compelling girls who had misconducted themselves to stand in church for
three Sundays was only given up at Pickering in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. Calvert describes how the miserable girl was first
required to go before the parson or the squire or anyone of the "quality"
to name the child's father, and "be otherwise questioned, and if it so
happened that the squire was one of the hard-drinking class it was more
than likely that he came well on in his cups. If so it would be more like
than otherwise that he would put the lass and all present to shame by the
coarse ... questions he would ask the poor wench. I have heard shame cried
aloud myself by those who then came together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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