Mary Dore, the witch of Beaulieu

Warner’s Topographical Remarks on south west Hampshire, of 1793, told of Mary Dore, the parish witch of Beaulieu, who had died about fifty years before. Her spells were used mainly to get herself out of trouble. Warner spoke to a countryman whose father had more than once seen her turn herself into a hare or a cat when she was about to be caught stealing wood. Witches were often believed to take the shape of hares to lead huntsmen astray, and Scot wrote that hunters split an oak branch and passed themselves and their hounds through it so they could not be bewitched.