These being all gotten together on the eve of that day make a stiff dough of wheaten meal to the which you will add all the other powders working them to a stiff mass and into cubes of one inch square, to be pressed to a hollow, then they are to be set away to dry in a warm place for seven months to the day when with a sharp screever you shall deeply screeve the like of these upon each side, but be you mindful to screeve in the order as here ordered always turning the cube over and towards the left hand, the fifth side by turning the cube towards you, the sixth from you and thus you make your magic cube.”

“The proper way to draw the virtue from and read a forecast with such cubes,” says Calvert, “as yet I know not, but I learn that one Jane Craggs, a mantu maker of Helmsley, not only owns a cube but does at times play the craft for the entertainment of her lady visitors who wish their fortunes casting.  I learn from Betty [Ellis] that these cubes were tossed upon the table and then used by the consultation of a book like unto that of the witche’s garter but this book Betty kens nothing of its whereabouts.  She aims one of her grandchilder must have gone off with it.”

In the chapter devoted to Tudor times I have given an Elizabethan cure for an “ill caste” by a witch, but Calvert also tells us of a method for removing the spell from a “witch-held” house.  “Of one thing I hear,” he says, “which be minded unto this present day the which be that a bunch of yarrow gathered from off a grave and be cast within a sheet that hath covered the dead and this be setten fire to and cast within the door of any house thought to be witch held or having gotten upon it a spell of ill-luck, it shall be at once cleansed from whatsoever ill there be come again it as I hear even fevers and the like are on the instant driven forth.  And this,” he quaintly adds, “be worth while of a trial.”

Of the awesome sights to be seen at night time Calvert gives many details.

“There be over anenst Cropton towards Westwood seen now and again at times wide asunder a man rushing fra those happening to cross his road with flaming mouth and having empty eye sockets, a truly terrible apparition for to come across of a sudden.

“At Bog Hall at times there is seen a plain specter of a man in bright armour who doth show himself thus apparrelled both on the landing and in a certain room.

“At that point where the Hodge and Dove mix their waters there is to be seen on Hallow Een a lovely maiden robed in white and having long golden hair down about her waist there standing with her bare arm thrown about her companion’s neck which is a most lovely white doe, but she allowed none to come near to her.

“To the west of Brown Howe and standing by a boulder there be seen of a summer’s eve a maiden there seated a-combing out her jet black tresses so as to hide her bare breast and shoulders, she looking to be much shamed to there do her toilet.