There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold weather.  I sent for the ‘dangur’ mates, and asked them to have it dug up next day.  They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in rather a strange manner, but departed.  In the evening back they came, to tell me that the dangurs would not dig up the field.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Well you see, Sahib,’ said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and chief spokesman of the village, ’this field has been used for years as a burning ghaut’ (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were buried).

‘Well?’ said I.

’Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the “Bhoots” (ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to dig up the land.’

’Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will see.’

Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs all assembled, but no digging going on.  I called them together, told them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for ever.  I then got a branch of a bael[1] tree that grew close by, dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first gibberish that came into my recollection.  My incantation or spell was as follows, an old Scotch rhyme I had often repeated when a child at school—­

  ’Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, feg,
  Ell, dell, domun’s egg;
  Irky, birky, story, rock,
  An, tan, toose, Jock;
  Black fish! white troot! 
  “Gibbie Gaw, ye’re oot."’

It had the desired effect.  No sooner was my charm uttered, than, after a few encouraging words to the men, telling them that there was now no fear, that my charm was powerful enough to lay all the spirits in the country, and that I would take all the responsibility, they set to work with a will, and had the whole field dug up by the evening.

I have seen many such cases.  A blight attacks the melon or cucumber beds; a fierce wind rises during the night, and shakes half the mangoes off the trees; the youngest child is attacked with teething convulsions; the plough-bullock is accidentally lamed, or the favourite cow refuses to give milk.  In every case it is some ‘Dyne,’ or witch, that has been at work with her damnable spells and charms.  I remember a case in which a poor little child had bad convulsions.  The ‘Ojah,’ or witch-finder, in this case a fat, greasy, oleaginous knave, was sent for.  Full of importance and blowing like a porpoise, he came and caused the child to be brought to him, under a tree near the village.  I was passing at the time, and stopped out of curiosity.  He spread