MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN HOPKINTON.
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��sent generation. A respectable lady, who died only a few years ago, related that, being on a solitary journey, she was accosted by an old woman who begged for the favor of conveyance. For some reason satisfactory to herself, the person accosted declined to grant the favor, but only to receive the vituperations of the stranger wayfarer, who avowed the refusing party would one day suffer for her stolidness. A while after the berat- ed woman was journeying the same way again, when, being near the spot where she encountered the offended stranger, her horse balked and could not be induced to proceed further, and her journey in that direction was ended. The suggestion of witchcraft naturally came in as an aid to the solution of the problem.
The witchcraft of the midnight hour oppressed the innocent sleeper and made his couch a bed of horrors, wherein hags, specters and hob-goblins subjected him to a variety of tortures, if, by the exertion of mysterious powers, they did not even for the time being transmute him into the form of some beast of burden, drive him abroad under the expanse of heaven, and train him to severe discipline. Persons cap- able of this kind of obsession were to all appearences more fond of turning the objects of their torture into horses, riding them abroad with presumable gusto. Witches of this class were sup- posed to have at ordinary times, in some special repository, a bridle reserved for such abominable excursions. This bri- dle was supposed to be of blue, green, or some other fantastic color. Not far from the residence of the writer there once lived a woman who was reputed to possess a bridle of this kind.
Ghosts and witches are naturally con- temporaneous, though, if anything, the former are more inclined to favorite places of resort, from which they sel- dom stray. Many towns in New Eng- land can show the once special haunts of ghostly inhabitants. Hopkinton has its former ghostly stalking place. Upon the northern brow of Putney's Hill, sometimes known as Gould's Hill, is a patch of forest long recognized as the
��"Lookout." From the reputed pres- ence of ghosts, it received this appel- lation. Spectral appearances in differ- ent forms, manifested both by day and by night, were apprehended in this locality. The writer remembers a re- spectable man who believed to his dying day that he there saw an apparition in broad daylight. There is living in this town today an old and respectable gen- tleman who once averred that, passing the Lookout in the evening, returning from his day's work, he saw several balls of spectral fire appear and stand before him, keeping in his advance as he main- tained his distressful march home.
There appear to have been but two great witches in this town. They were "Witch Burbank," whose home was in the vicinity of Contoocook village, and "Witch Webber," who lived on the southern part of Beech Hill. Witch Webber seems to have been willing to be recognized as a person of occult gifts, and her exploits also appear to have been more remarkable in reputed character. We judge so since Witch Webber is traditionally claimed to have acknowledged a journey to Lynn, Mass., where the famous Moll Pitcher resided, to attend a mutual convention of weird sisters. Witch Webber's statement of a journey to Lynn was confirmed, in the mind of one man at least, in a sin- gular manner. In sailing through the air on the way to her destination, the witch averred that, in passing a barn on Dimond Hill,* she stubbed her toe on the roof and detached a few shingles by the suddenness of the contact. The owner of the premises, hearing the report of the exploit, mounted a ladder and examined the roof of his barn, finding, in the palpable evidence of a few lost shingles, a fact to himself satisfactory and indubitable that the witche's words were true.
We have discovered but little evi- dence that incantations for the defeat of witchcraft or the destruction of witches were practiced to any great ex.
- Witch Webber was not a geographer,
or she would not have taken an air-line route to Lynn by the way of Dimond Hill.
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