WEST COUNTRY WITCHES by Michael Howard

  In 1930 a correspondent writing to the Western Morning Post newspaper confidently asserted 'We live in an age when those old twilight beliefs are disappearing'. The beliefs in question were various aspects of popular superstition and the supernatural once widely accepted by people in the West Country. In response to this assertion, a correspondent called Padely Silvanus said he lived on the border of Dartmoor and could introduce the previous writer to a haunted bridge that nobody would cross at night. He could also take him to a dell where faeries were still seen to dance, a place on the moor where an earthbound spirit dwelt and caused terrible accidents, introduce them to a 'well-known and universally respected' lady who had seen a pixy and heard the Wish Hounds in full cry, and take them to visit a witch in her cottage, but at the risk of them being 'overlooked' (ill-wished or bewitched). Silvanus' letter encompassed the surviving belief in ghosts, faeries and witches that for cen