At Droitwich, in Worcestershire, a boy, looking for his mother's cow, saw
a bush in a brake move as if something was there. Thinking it to be his
mother's cow he went to the place, but found no cow, only an old woman who
cried "Ooh!" and so frightened the lad that he could not speak
intelligibly. But no one knew what he meant by his strange mouthings and
mutterings, until one day, seeing the old woman eating porridge before Sir
Edward Barret's door, he rushed up to her, and flung her porridge in her
face, and otherwise behaved violently and ill. The neighbours, thinking
there was something in it, apprehended her as a witch, and took her to the
Checker Prison. At night, the mother of the boy, hearing a great noise
overhead, ran up stairs and found her son with the leg of a form in his
hand, fighting furiously with something in the window; but what it was she
could not see. He then put on his clothes and ran to the prison, midway
recovering his speech. When he got there he found that the gaoler had kept
the witch without food or sleep till she would say the Lord's Prayer and
"God bless the boy:" which pious exercise she had completed at the very
moment when his speech was restored. When the boy complained to the gaoler
of his negligence in letting her out to hurt and annoy him, the gaoler
answered that he had kept her very safe. "Nay," says the boy, "for she
came and sat in my chamber window, and grinned at me; whereupon I took up
a form and banged her:" the gaoler looked and they found the marks. She
was a Lancashire woman, who, when Duke Hamilton was defeated, and there
was a scarcity in those parts, "wandred abroad to get victuals." She was
hanged, poor half-starved vagrant!