Note 768 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Footnote 768
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(return)
J.G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), p. 6: "In carrying out their unhallowed cantrips, witches assumed various shapes. They became gulls, cormorants, ravens, rats, mice, black sheep, swelling waves, whales, and very frequently cats and hares." To this list of animals into which witches can turn themselves may be added horses, dogs, wolves, foxes, pigs, owls, magpies, wild geese, ducks, serpents, toads, lizards, flies, wasps, and butterflies. See A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,2 (Berlin, 1869), p. 150 § 217; L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1867), i. 327 § 220; Ulrich Jahn, Hexenwesen und Zauberei in Pommern (Breslau, 1886), p. 7. In his Topography of Ireland (chap. 19), a work completed in 1187 A.D., Giraldus Cambrensis records that "it has also been a frequent complaint, from old times as well as in the present, that certain hags in Wales, as well as in Ireland and Scotland, changed themselves into the shape of hares, that, sucking teats under this counterfeit form, they might stealthily rob other people's milk." See The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, revised and edited by Thomas Wright (London, 1887), p. 83.