WIZARDS AND BUZZARDS

Waipa Post, Volume 81, Issue 3691, 29 November 1935, Page 9

WIZARDS AND BUZZARDS

RELICS OF DARKER DAYS. People who go to Cornwall for their holidays sometimes bring back with other local products a printed or pok-er-burnt copy of what purports to be an "Old Cornish Prayer"— which is a sort of charm against mysterious night terrors. But Lancashire and Yorkshire folk need not leave their own counties to discover a similar relic of darker days, says the Manchester Guardian. The Yorkshire version is most like the Cornish, and runs—From witches and wizards and longtailed buzzards, And creeping things that run in hedge bottoms. Good Lord, deliver us! But the Lancashire is racier of the soil— Fro' a' mak' witches an' wizarts and weasel-kin' (weasel's kin'?), And a' mak' a' feaw black things ut creepen up ditches, wi' gurt long tails, May the Lord deliver us! This was recited, says the author ot " Mostcn Folk Lore," as late as 1878 by an old woman before retiring to rest. It has the advantage that ths " feaw black things " are described so particularly by the reciter that there can be no mistake about the beast against whom protection is craved, and it cannot be confused with that other long-tailed terror called a "buzzard" which cannot be anything as ordinary as the bird, or., even the dor-beetle (or buzzard-clock) —a startling enough thing if it blunders against your face in its swift night flight. But Cornwall's " charm " may at present claim a monopoly of the " things that go bump in the night," though we all know them!