in the midst of it a brown
man, dressed in a smock-frock tied up with green ribbons, appeared,
standing in the door. He took the girl by the hand and led her out of
the house. She was seen no more that night, nor for many days
afterward, though her parents and neighbours hunted her far and wide.
By-and-by she was reported at a village some ten or twelve miles off
on the Shropshire border, where some shepherds had found her wandering
the hill. She was brought home but could give no good account of
herself, or would not. She said that she had followed her lover,
married him, and lost him. Nothing would comfort her, nothing could
keep her in the house. She was locked in, but made her way out; she
was presently sent to the lunatic asylum, but escaped from that. Then
she got away for good and all and never came back again. No trace of
her body could be found. What are you to make of a thing of the sort?
I give it for what it is worth, with this note only, that the
apparition was manifest to several persons, though not, I fancy, to
any but the girls concerned in the peascodding.

[Footnote 13: It is said to have been the base of a Roman terminal
statue, but I have not seen it.]

The Willow-lad's is another tale of the same kind. It was described in
1787 by the Reverend Samuel Jordan in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, if I
am not mistaken.

The Willow-lad was an apparition which was believed to appear in a
withy-bed on the banks of the Ouse near Huntingdon. He could only be
seen at dusk, and only by women. He had a sinister reputation, and to
say of a girl that she had been to the withy-bed was a broad hint that
she was no better than she should be. Yet, according to Mr. Jordan,
the girls did go there in numbers, and to such effect that by an order
of the Town Council the place was stubbed up. You had to go alone to
the withy-bed between sunset and sunrise of a moonless night, to lay
your hand upon a certain stump and say, and in a loud voice:--

Willow-boy, Willow-boy, come to me soon,
After the sun and before the moon.
Hide the stars and cover my head;
Let no man see me when I be wed.

One would like to know whether the Willow-lad's powers perished with
the withy-bed. They should not, but should have been turned to
malicious uses. There are many cases in Mr. Lawson's book of the
malefical effect upon the Dryads of cutting down the trees whose
spirit they are. And most people know Landor's idyll, or if they