Free Constable Through the Meadow by Nicholas Rhea

or nails, some rusted and others still clean; I could see what appeared to be human hairs and nail clippings too.
    And then I knew what it was.
    At that point, she arrived with a mug of hot tea and settled down at my side.
    ‘Well, Mr Rhea, have I discovered hidden treasure?’
    ‘Not really,’ I smiled, thanking her for the drink.
    ‘Oh.’ Her face showed just a hint of disappointment.
    ‘You’ve no idea what it is?’ I asked.
    ‘Not a clue,’ she was honest.
    ‘Well, suppose I asked you if your house is troubled by witches?’ I smiled at her. ‘What would you say?’
    ‘Witches? No, of course not!’ she laughed. ‘Why, was this a witch’s cottage?’
    ‘On the contrary, witches were not welcome here!’ I told her. ‘This little device was to stop them, to ward off witches and to prevent them from bewitching the house or its occupants. It’s obviously done a good job!’
    ‘Really?’ She opened her eyes wide with surprise and smiled at my attempt at joking. ‘I had no idea!’
    I explained my own interest in the folklore of the North York Moors and how, even until little more than a century or so ago, the country folk believed in witches and the power of the evil eye. Even today, some cottages contain witch posts whose original purpose was to protect the occupants from the attentions of witches, and there are other devices which served this purpose: for example, iron nails in beams or bedsteads, circular stones with holes in the centre, horseshoes on the walls of houses and outbuildings and even rowan trees planted close to the dwelling. All were used to deter witches.
    She listened as I explained, and when I had finished, asked, ‘So what is this bottle?’
    ‘It’s a witch bottle,’ I told her. ‘It was customary to bury them beneath the threshold, or sometimes under the hearth.’
    ‘Really?’ She picked it up and tried to identify the contents. ‘What’s inside?’
    ‘Do you really want to know?’ The ingredients were rather revolting and I wondered if she was squeamish.
    ‘Something odd, is there?’ she asked, suspicious of what was coming next.
    ‘Ordinary things, really,’ I smiled. ‘But gruesome at the same time.’
    She plonked the bottle on the table and stared at it, her pretty face screwed up in concentration.
    ‘Go on, Mr Rhea,’ she said at length. ‘Make me squirm!’
    ‘I’m not sure precisely what’s in this particular bottle,’ I said. ‘But the sort of ingredients they put in would include samples of human hair, nail cuttings and metal objects like pins or nails. They’d put urine in too, and human blood …’
    ‘Urggh …’ she shuddered.
    ‘And!’ I was in full flow now. ‘Some of them contained the liver of a live frog stuck full of pins, or the heart of a toad which had been pierced with the spikes from the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury.’
    She stared at the bottle on her table.
    ‘How revolting!’ she shuddered again. ‘Why did they make such horrible things?’
    ‘They really worried about the effect of witches on their children and cattle,’ I explained. ‘If things went wrong, things that couldn’t be easily explained, they would blame the local witch. She was usually some poor old woman who dabbled in herbs or reckoned to foretell the future. And to stop any evil that she might perpetrate, they made these bottles as safeguards .’
    ‘So the contents acted as a charm?’
    ‘Yes, they were put under the door to prevent entry by evil spirits or witches. The presence of iron has long been a means of keeping witches at bay, hence the horseshoes, nails, pins and so on. The hair and human nail-parings come from the most indestructible part of the human body, and they believed that if included in a bottle, their presence would stop the witch injuring the family. I’m not sure what the blood was for. The addition of the urine was a terrible thing – they believed this caused the witch’s death because she would be unable to pass water!’
    I