Suffolk. Superstitions in 1849.
A case has just occurred (says the Ipswich Express), at a village
a few miles from Rayleigh, which shows that if witches and their
familiars have fled from the land in a fright at the rough handling of
science, the mental cobwebs beneath which they flourished have not been
yet quite brushed away. A girl in the village had been long subject to
fits, and as family consultations and councils traced the mysterious
malady to witchcraft, "a cunning man," celebrated thereabouts, was
called in to counterplot the mischievous old hag, who was supposed to be
squatted in some dark corner, muttering her spells and enjoying the
writhings of her victim.
The conjuror, of course, undertook the job
for a consideration, and immediately set the village blacksmith blowing
and beating away to manufacture an air-tight iron bottle. After a sharp
struggle with the arts of the doomed witch, who kept maliciously poking
flaws and fissures in the hissing metal; this was completed, and being
filled with the parings of the patient's toe-nails, locks of her hair,
and fluid, was placed over a roaring fire, chained fast to the grate as
additional security against the tricks of the imps who were believed to
be hovering in dozens and in terror around it.
This charm was to blow the offending witch
through the air at a quicker rate than she ever travelled upon her own
broom-stick, or bring her to the hearth-stone pleading for forgiveness;
but of course we can understand without being very deeply read in the
occult science, that the spirit of steam would begin to grow rather
fidgetty at being shut up in an air-tight iron bottle; so at last,
without waiting for the appearance of the expected old lady, he jumped
out with a loud explosion, blowing away the grate-bars and the fire.
This was expected to do the girl good.
Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser, 31st March 1849.
