'Tis said that Betty owed her proficiency in the black art to her frequent conferences with Old Nick, (or her familiar, whatever his name might have been,) who almost nightly took the form of An' Mally Perase's black bull, and, under that shape, met the witch on the northern side of Burian churchyard. Much more is related of Betty's transactions, but nothing new in the annals of witchcraft; and enough has been stated to serve as an[65] example of the faith and practices in such matters long ago; indeed, we may say that such beliefs and doings are anything but extinct; something turns up, every now and then, to show that, notwithstanding all the teaching and preaching, faith in witchcraft, and other dreary superstitions, are nearly as rife as ever. We give the following instance as just related. A Modern Sancreed Witch. Only t'other day a farmer of Sancreed had three or four dairy-cows to let, and a woman who lived near by offered to take them, but as he didn't altogether like this woman he wouldn't close the bargain with her, and another neighbour soon agreed for the dairy. When the woman heard who had been preferred, she told everybody she met with that Jemmy—the man who took the cows—should rue the day that he ventured to cross her path. "For if I didn't know the right hour and minute," said she, "I would ill wish him every minute of the day till the spell was cast." A week or so after the first cow was in milking, Jemmy and his wife came to the farmer's house one night and said, "we believe that our cow must be ill-wished, for her milk is all bucked and gone to cruds (curds), with only a mere skin of cream on the pans; if you don't believe it come and see for yourself." The farmer and some of his family went home with the dairy-man, and found the milk like it often is in summer when the buck (spittle-fly) is on the grass, that, so it is believed, makes milk curdle then without becoming sour. The farmer and his wife couldn't tell what to think of milk being in that state early in spring; he took home the cow, however, and let the dairy-man have another, and when she was milked by Jemmy her milk 'runned' too, like that of the former one, which was then all right in the master's dairy. And so it continued with all the other cows Jemmy had; it was only for a day now and then, that any cream rose; other things went wrong with him and his family, and the farmer was at last obliged to take back his cows because there was no chance of his dairy-man making the rent. Meanwhile the woman who coveted them bragged how she had served Jemmy out for interfering. "The very night I heard that he had took the cows," said she, "I went on my knees under a white-thorn tree by the crossroads, and there, for best part of that night, I called on the[66] powers till they helped me to cast the spells that gave old Jemmy and his family plenty of junket and sour milk for a time." In fact she was proud to make her neighbours believe her to be a witch.