But such an old
woman, a reputed witch, was found dead in her bed that very night, with
her back broken, as I have heard some years ago credibly reported."[776]
In Yorkshire during the latter half of the nineteenth century a parish
clergyman was told a circumstantial story of an old witch named Nanny,
who was hunted in the form of a hare for several miles over the
Westerdale moors and kept well away from the dogs, till a black one
joined the pack and succeeded in taking a bit out of one of the hare's
legs. That was the end of the chase, and immediately afterwards the
sportsmen found old Nanny laid up in bed with a sore leg. On examining
the wounded limb they discovered that the hurt was precisely in that
part of it which in the hare had been bitten by the black dog and, what
was still more significant, the wound had all the appearance of having
been inflicted by a dog's teeth. So they put two and two together.[777]
The same sort of thing is often reported in Lincolnshire. "One night,"
said a servant from Kirton Lindsey, "my father and brother saw a cat in
front of them. Father knew it was a witch, and took a stone and hammered
it. Next day the witch had her face all tied up, and shortly afterwards
died." Again, a Bardney bumpkin told how a witch in his neighbourhood
could take all sorts of shapes. One night a man shot a hare, and when he
went to the witch's house he found her plastering a wound just where he
had shot the hare.
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