WITCH LORE
ONE LOVED UMBRELLAS C. J. Pennethorne Hughes was once programme director of the BBC’s West Region and during its recent jubilee returned there toi give a talk on folk lore of the West Country, which he lias studied closely.
He touched on many superstitions and old beliefs that are still extant and one of the subjects he referred to was witches. White witches, with their cures and their advice, still do exist in the West Country, he said, although clinics, health visitors and the free medical attention of to-day will do much to diminish the dwindling practise of consulting the witch which was once prevalent amongst the unsophisticated. He told a, delightful story of an old lady who was locally reputed to be a witch in Malmesbury, where lie went to live in 1926. His father was the new rector, and Pennethorne Hughes recalled how one day he “opened the door to answer a very aggressive knock. An old dame of unfortunate appearance was outside, who pushed a bit of paper at me. 'She wouldn’t say anything, so I opened it, and it read ‘I am eighty-one and have had no rabbit. What about it?’
“Of course the explanation was quite simple. She was deaf and dumb and had been by mistake left out of the annual hand-out of game for ( old people from the local estate, which it fell to my father io organise (another custom gone west, I should think). She was locally regarded as a witch, so that when the poor old thing died, not long afterwards, it was some days before anyone was bold enpugh to open up her cottage at Brook End, and find her. "When they did, incidentally, there ivere no broomsticks, but a remarkable collection of umbrellas which had mysteriously disappeared during the preceding years.”
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Bibliographic details
Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 159, 18 April 1949, Page 6
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304WITCH LORE Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 159, 18 April 1949, Page 6
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