Wilfred Middlebrook, in The Changing Face Of Warminster, first written in 1960, updated in 1971, noted:
In his Regional Survey Of Warminster And District [1920s & 1930s] Victor Manley cites the case of a woman still living on the Common at the time, who had earlier been sentenced for prostitution. Whilst in prison her neighbours made a full-size effigy of her and sat it in a chair on her doorstep all one day, then burnt it in the evening.
Such practices savoured of witchcraft, and Manley proceeds to quote an incantation over a sick child suffering from burns: “Four holy angels from the north. Out fire, in frost. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.”
This is an example of white witchcraft, or healing of which I had an example during my boyhood days in the Lancashire Pendle Forest witch district. I was suffering from a large boil on the back of my neck, which refused to respond to the usual remedies of sugar poultices and the like, so my mother said “Call round the back-to-back houses and see old Mary o’t’one arm.” The tiny cottage door was opened by a wizened old woman who had indeed only one arm. “What’s troubling thee lad?” she asked, so I told her. On the hob was an iron pan full of a concoction of herbs, and this she put on the fire. How she managed the operation with her handicap I never really knew but I have a feeling that she took the pan from the fire under the stump of her missing arm. My next recollection was a large wooden ladle full of scalding herbs being slapped on the back of my neck, and the old crone had it bandaged in a trice. Black or white magic, perhaps, but it worked!