290 Collectanea.
a common saying, " Don't stay out late, or you'll see the white cat."— (1898.)
Old Mrs. Joseph Cooper, aged ninety-one, of Barton, near Headington, remembers when she was a child a woman called Miriam Russell, who was a witch, and the terror of the place. She was often seen riding about in a dough-cover [a bin for kneading dough]. She once went to ask for something of a family named Powell, who lived at Stovvford Farm, and on being denied said she would remember them. A few days after, the cows and calves all suddenly ran about as if they were going mad, and several calves were found at last on the top of the thatched barn. Old Miriam made it known that this was her work. The Powells then willingly gave her what she wanted, and then the cows were quiet and the calves came down off the barn.
Although Miriam was so formidable, she is said to have been very fond of children. — (August, 1897.)
Some forty years ago there lived at Salford, near Chipping Norton, an old woman named Dolly Henderson, a notable witch. One day she fell out with a woman named Ann Hulver, and bewitched her, so that she was very ill for a long time and could get no cure. At last she went to a cunning man named Manning, who told her that she would meet a woman as she went home, and that she was the person who had caused her illness, but she was not to speak to her, or say anything to anyone about her. But she did ; she told some women that worked in the fields what the man said, and so she got worse and worse till she was like a skeleton. About this time a boy was also be- witched by old Dolly, and his brother threw a thorn stick at her, which tore her arm and made it bleed a good deal. The woman and the boy then soon got well, but the old witch died, and the terror of the village was got rid of, — (From Mrs. Jinny Bigerstaff, of Salford, aged 63, who knew the people mentioned.^ — (9th October, 1897.)
' Salford is at the foot of the hill on which the Rollright Stones stand. Mr. A.J. Evans (^F. L., vi., 20), mentions the belief current in Long Compton — which is just on the other side of the hill — that the drawing of a witch's blood breaks the spell that she may have cast over her victim. As late as 1S75 ^^ inhabitant of that village was convicted of manslaughter for stabbing an old woman with a pitchfork, causing her death. He gave as his motive that she was a witch — one of sixteen witches in the village- and that he was trying to break her spells. Vide an article in the Birmingham iVeekly Post, on " Manners and Customs of Shakespeare's Greenwood," by Mr. George Morley, quoted in the Oxford Ttines, 22nd July, 1899.
