Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

STONE THROWING DEMONS OF NEWCASTLE. 345
is left to judge. The poor creature might have believed
herself a witch, and the expectation expressed that the
burning of the pigs' tails would kill the writch, might have
so wrought upon her mind as to produce the result.
The principal object of this ramble is to bring up some
of the strange developments which were made in early
times in what was once a part of Portsmouth, but after
wards became the town of Newcastle. Cotton Mather,;,vho lived in that.age, refers to the Stone-Throwing Devil
of Newcastle, and thus notices it:
"On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown by
an invisible hand upon the house of George Walton at
Portsmouth, [Newcastle.] -WVhereupon the people going
out found the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying
and falling thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a greaf force, but really affecting'em no more
than if a soft touch were given them. The glass windows
were broken by stones that came not without, but from
within; and other instruments were in like manner hurled
about. Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some
were as hot as if they came out of the fire; and marking
them they laid them on the table; but in a little while they
found some of them again flying about. The spit was carry'd up the chimney, and coming down with the point
forward, stuck in the back log, from whence one of the
company removing it, it wvas by an invisible hand thrown
out at the window. This disturbance continued from day
to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow zqhistling would be
heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse,
but nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay
in a boat onto a farm which he had there; but there the
stones found him out, and carrying fiom the house to the
boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him through
the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and
was heard of no more. The anchor leaped overboard sev23