Forspeak

One is said to forspeak another, when he so commends him as to have a supposed influence in making him practically belie the commendation. If one highly praises a child for sweetness of temper, and the child soon after betrays ill humour; the person, who bestowed the praise, is said to have forspokin the bairn.

"I take ye a' to witness, gude people," said Mortheugh, "that she threatens me wi' mischief, and forespeaks me. If onything but gude happens to me or my fiddle this night, I'll make it the blackest night's job she ever stirred in. [...]"

When a healthy child suddenly becomes sickly, and no one can account for the change, the child is said to be "forespoken." Or when a stout man or woman becomes hypochondriac, or affected with nervous complaints, he or she is "forespoken." Some one has perhaps said "He's a bonny bairn," or "Thou ar' lookin weel the day;" but they have spoken with an ill tongue. They have neglected to add, "God save the bairn," or, "Safe be thou," &c.

This Examinat confesseth that shee came to Ioane Gylles house, her Child being sicke, and that shee intreated this Examinat to look on the Child, and to tell her whether it was forspoken or no, and this Examinat said it was forspoken; but when the said Child died she cannot tell.

Some call me witch, / And being ignorant of myself, they go / About to teach me how to be one; urging / That my bad tongue—by their bad usage made so— / Forspeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, / Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the cunning man’s medical dealings was his readiness to diagnose a supernatural cause for the patient’s malady by saying that he was haunted by an evil spirit, a ghost, or ‘fairy’, or that he had been ‘overlooked’, ‘forspoken’, or, in plainer language, bewitched. Thus if any inhabitant of mid-sixteenth-century Maidstone suspected that he had been forspoken, he would go off for advice to one Kiterell, a sorcerer who lived at Bethersden, and specialised in such things: …

How are my powres fore-spoke? what strange distaste is this?

"Dinna forespeak them, woman! dinna forespeak them!" said the man with a dark frown, and with equal earnestness, but with a tinge of superstitious alarm in his voice and manner. "They wud fain hae your good word, an' no your evil tongue with them; and so come, good wife, tell us what ken ye—what's biding them?—come, what have they to do?"