The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1904-05-14

thing and imagine whole lot more.
They will tell tales of witches and
spells and incantations and charms
till ones blood runs cold, of the harm
wrought by the evil eye, of the pain
killed by pow-wow, of a miraculous
cure by seventh sou.
Of course, this belief creeps into the
homes as the country folk come there.
1t is met occasionally in the courts,
or, rather, in the very informal court
which justice of the peace holds.
1t rarely gets any higher UP, and even
there there are no accusations of
witchcraft; it merely crops up in the
evidence informally-that this one
was under a spell or that one had
supernatural power. In criminal
cases it is offered as an excuse, with
full knowledge that it will not be
6f1fRta 81 ne fact Mai s!5llsA
as absurd. But even among people
who ought to know better the belief
in the pow-wow prevails. Even one
of the justices of the peace told the
writer how he was "pow-wowed" as
boy, when he had seriously burnt his
hand. He was taken to an old Ger
man woman who had the power to
pow-wow, and she made mysterious
passes over his burnt hand and NUT
tered mystical words. And forthwith
the pain of the hand was less and it
healed almost Immediately.
At St. Clair, little village about
six miles from Pottsville, an old man
not long ago lost his son. He openly
declares that the young mans death
was caused by witchcraft, and even
designates certain one of his neigh
bors as having cast the spell. The
other neighbors see nothing impossi-
BILE in the accusation, though they
know that it would be thrown out of
court. In the same neighborhood
there lived for years, perchance lives
yet, an old crone, known as "Mother
Leatherbreeches, who was regarded
as a very powerful witch. No one
would own up to belief in her if
questioned by an unbeliever, but she
certainly lived on the fat Of the land
without other means of support than
faith and fear on the part of her word.
1t was believed that she could and
would, for consideration, cast spell
on anybody, cause people to have fits
and go into declines, bring on vast
ing diseases and insanity, make dogs
go mad, prevent hens from laying,
and generally play hob with anyone
who had incurred her displeasure, or
against whom her Vaccinations were
directed for value received. Her love
philters brought good prices, and half
Of her neighborhood wore uncanny
charms which she had provided at
what must have been considerable
personal profit. The children hid
from her and their elders feared her
anger.
while there are no witches nowadays
there were witches in their grand
fathers day, most certainly there
were. Judge David c. Henning, of
Pottsville, himself of Pennsylvania
German stock, tells of meeting an old
Schuylkill county farmer, and, by ad-
dressing him in his own tongue, get
ting him to declare the faith that was
in him on the subject of witchcraft.
They sat on fallen tree by the road
side in the shadow of Blue mountain,
and the old fellow said:
mo, I have never seen witch ;
and l don't believe there are any
witches nowadays-not real witches.
Some people say they have power to
pow-wow still, and I don't know,
perhaps they have. But they are not
real witches. In my grandmother S
day there were real witches. She
often told me about them when / was
a boy. She knew some of them well.
There was Peter Klein, he was real
witch man, and he could change him.
self into animals and trees and things.
You've heard of Patas- Z laisa -casxa1sz