WITCHCRAFT IN ESSEX.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 165, 14 July 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

WITCHCRAFT IN ESSEX.

TALES OF CHARMS AND SPELI.S. "TELLING BEES." A-list'nin' to the witch tales that Annie tells about. An' the gobble-uns that gets you If you don't watch out! —J. W. Uiley. Magic and witches still survive in Essex according to Airs. Charlotte C. Mason, who relates astonishing cases. A Eayleigh resident told Mrs. Mason of the bewitching of her grandmother at Southchurch by a hawker from whom she refused to buy goods.

From that hour she was never able to lie in bed, but always slept on the floor! Apparently there is no lack of "wise women" in Essex. At Chigwell ono revealed the whereabouts- of a lost purse, while at Woodham, Walter, a child, badly burned on the arms through falling on the fireplace, was cured by a wise woman.

She made the sign of the cross over the burns, muttered an incantation, ani then said, "Now, child, you will have no scar on your arm." The child is now a man, and has no trace of the burns, though tJiey were severe.

Mrs. Mason says that wart charms and charmers abound. "The sign of the cross made on the warts; a muttered incantation with the information that the warts would disappear without the knowledge of the sufferer, proved effectual in the case of a schoolboy at Woodham, whose hands were covered with them.

"Suddenly one day he became aware that not a single wart was left."

The custom of passing a child through an ash tree is still practised in Esbcx.

In 1924 a child of Fairstead was taken to Terling and passed through an aali, and was thus cured of rupture.

At one time there was quite a ritual over this cure. The young ash was cleft, and the undressed child passed through by the parents, and the tree bound up. As the tree healed the child recovered.

"Telling the bees" is practised at Stock and many other Essex places. Bees are supposed to be mortally offended if not told the important family happenings. The hives are knocked with the front door key when anyone dies, and crepe used to be put on them.