WITCHES STILL.

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 14

WITCHES STILL.

The other day a dredging machine at work in the : River Moselle brought up from the bottom .a mass of Koman coins. .•■■.. They were stuck together in the shape of an urn. Long ago, the experts say, someone wrapped 150 coins in a cloth, stuffed it into a beautiful vase, and threw the whole into the riyer. Why! Because he was afraid of the river god, and wanted to bribe him with a gift. He believed that in return the god would not flood his fields or swamp his fishing-boat. It is easy to laugh'at such in idea now, but it is not so easy to laugh at the news that people living to-day are just as superstitious. Indeed, it would be easier to cry than to laugh at such stupidity. Yet recently a woman in Ireland found it necessary to summons a farmer who accused her of witchcraft. Tho farmer's cows fell sick, and he said Mrs. Hazelton had put a spell on them. He cured them by burning thatch under their noses, an infallible medicine for. bewitched, cattle, and afterwards tied red rags on their tails because that was supposed to protect them from further evil. Everyone in the district began to believe that Mrs. Hazelton had cast the evil eye on the cows, and no one would speak to her. So she brought an action for slander, and won it. But if she had lived a few generations ago she would have been in the dock, not in the witness-box. It is almost certain she would have been burned or drowned as a witcht