After finishing the beer:  “Friend,” he said, “thou art not well.”  “I said, ‘No, truly Sir, I have not been well this many yeares.’  He said, ‘What is thy disease?’ I said, ’A deep consumption, Sir; our doctors say, past cure:  for, truly, I am a very poor man, and not able to follow doctors’ councell.’  ‘Then,’ said he, ’I will tell thee what thou shalt do; and, by the help and power of Almighty God above, thou shalt be well.  To-morrow, when thou risest up, go into thy garden, and get there two leaves of red sage, and one of bloodworte, and put them into a cup of thy small beere.  Drink as often as need require, and when the cup is empty fill it again, and put in fresh leaves every fourth day, and thou shalt see, through our Lord’s great goodness and mercy, before twelve dayes shall be past, thy disease shall be cured and thy body altered.’”

After this simple prescription, Wallis pressed him to eat:  “But he said, ’No, friend, I will not eat; the Lord Jesus is sufficient for me.  Very seldom doe I drinke any beere neither, but that which comes from the rocke.  So, friend, the Lord God be with thee.’”

So saying, he departed, and was never more heard of; but the patient got well within the given time, and for many a long day there was war hot and fierce among the divines of Stamford, as to whether the stranger was an angel or a devil.  His dress has been minutely described by honest Sam.  His coat was purple, and buttoned down to the waist; “his britches of the same couler, all new to see to”; his stockings were very white, but whether linen or jersey, deponent knoweth not; his beard and head were white, and he had a white stick in his hand.  The day was rainy from morning to night, “but he had not one spot of dirt upon his cloathes.”

Aubrey gives an almost exactly similar relation, the scene of which he places in the Staffordshire Moorlands.  The Jew there appears in a “purple shag gown,” and prescribes balm-leaves.

LIII

BENDITH EU MAMMAU[15]

By EDMUND JONES

They appeared diverse ways, but their most frequent way of appearing was like dancing-companies with musick, or in the form of funerals.  When they appeared like dancing-companies, they were desirous to entice persons into their company, and some were drawn among them and remained among them some time, usually a whole year; as did Edmund William Rees, a man whom I well knew, and was a neighbour, who came back at the year’s end, and looked very bad.  But either they were not able to give much account of themselves, or they durst not give it, only said they had been dancing, and that the time was short.  But there were some others who went with them at night, and returned sometimes at night, and sometimes the next morning; especially those persons who took upon them to cure the hurts received from the fairies, as Charles Hugh of Coed yr Pame, in Langybi parish, and Rissiart Cap Dee, of Aberystruth; for the former of these must certainly converse with them, for how else could he declare the words which his visitors had spoken a day or days before they came to him, to their great surprise and wonder?