BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 22

BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT

A belief in'.,witchcraft still lingers In rural-England. On Easter Monday afternoon, writea a correspondent of a London daily, I was fishing a pleasant Sussex trout stream, not 40 miles from, London, in company with the Local innkeeper. The talk turned, as it will among fishermen, on good and bad luck, and my companion launched; into a story of persistent bad luck that had haunted the people of that hamlet a >ear or two ago. lUn'esa, death, bad crops—these misfortunes,.. it seems, came with unusual severity, until eventually he, with some others,, decided that they must be duo to the malignancy of a witch. Eventually this ■ person was discovered, chased along the road from her lair, and, according to the solemn assertion of my friend, ho then saw her turn into a peahen and escape. Wildly absurd as "the story sounded; I have no doubt whatever that: my! informant fully believed-.it.' A _little later he revealed another superstition. His apple crop, 1 he declared, was certain to be a bad one this year, Jor. ho'had neglected to '.'howl" his applo. trees. "Apple-howling:"-he .ex-, plained, iss done by a party of men who assemble with sticks on New Year's Eve' and solemnly beat the apple trees, at the same time repeating . an; old incantation designed to persaudo them to bear good fruit. : , This . supersitiion, I have since found, ib fairly widespread in rural -Kent and Sussex, and it would bo interesting to discover its origin* , -■ ' ■