Note 109.1 — Chapter IX · WITCHCRAFT: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.

The Gipsy prescription, however, goes further. When the victim leaps over the flames he symbolises an immolation that actually takes, or used within recent times to take, place when cattle are bewitched. In the earlier half of the last century a witch was believed to have been burned to death at Ipswich by the process of burning alive a sheep she had bewitched. “It was curious,” says Mr. Zincke, “but it was as convincing as curious, that the hands and feet of the witch were the only parts of her that had not been incinerated. This was satisfactorily explained by the fact that the four feet of the sheep, by which it had been suspended over the fire, had not been destroyed in the flames that consumed its body.” The same writer knew a woman at Wherstead, in Suffolk, who had once baked alive a duck, one of a brood believed by her to be under a spell.109.1 In 1833 a man at Woodhurst, in Huntingdonshire, was persuaded by his neighbours to roast alive a pig belonging to a litter recently farrowed, all of which with the sow were bewitched. The sorceress was expected to appear during the ceremony, and doubtless to suffer with the tortured beast.109.2 More lately still, if a correspondent of the Diss Express can be trusted, an old woman at South Lopham burnt one of her hens on a Sunday at noon, about the year 1892, to put an end to a spell laid upon her fowls by a neighbour.110.1 Unhappily England does not enjoy a monopoly of this cruel prescription. It was certainly known in Germany. One of the directions in some folklore collected at Gernsbach, near Spire, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, is: “If your hens, ducks, pigs, etc., die fast, light a fire in the oven, and throw one of each kind in; the witch will perish with them.” While it is included by implication in the more general precept obtained at Pforzheim: “If a thing is bewitched, and you burn it, the witch is sure to come, wanting to borrow something; give it, and she is free; deny it, and she too must burn.”110.2 The same prescription is reported from Franconia.110.3 At the present day it is usual to wait until the bewitched animal be dead, and then its heart is taken and stuck with pins, and frequently burnt, cooked, or suspended in the chimney. Variants of the prescription deal in a similar manner with other portions of the body. All over the west of Europe this is the course taken; and immigrants from the Old World practise it in Pennsylvania and the Alleghanies. In some countries the ceremony is very elaborate, and great precautions are taken to prevent the witch from entering the house while it is proceeding, or from borrowing anything, lest the efficacy of the counter-spell be destroyed.110.4 Reginald Scot quotes a direction for grilling the intestines of a beast slain by witchcraft. They are to be trailed unto the house, and not taken in at the door but drawn under the threshold. “As they wax hot” on the gridiron, “so shall the witches entrailes be molested with extreame heat and paine.” The doors must be made fast; for if she can succeed in taking away a coal of the fire, her torments will cease. To this end she will make extraordinary efforts, darkening the house and troubling the air “with such horrible noise and earthquakes, that,” writes an eye-witness, “except the doore had been opened, we had thought the house would have fallen on our heads.”111.1 Sometimes the animal bewitched is shot, or it is deemed enough to beat it, or to fumigate it with herbs, or, among the Poles, with the ashes of a young snake caught on the festival of the Annunciation.111.2 In Germany, when a cow’s milk has been taken away by a witch, the animal’s nostrils are burnt with a hot iron and its name is changed.111.3 The milk or urine of a bewitched animal is beaten, pricked with a fork, cooked in a pot with pins and needles, or nails, or poured on the dunghill.111.4 When the milk only is affected, so that butter cannot be made, it is common to beat it, or thrust a red-hot poker into the churn, or to beat the churn. A farmer in the State of Vermont, who had churned nearly all day without making butter, “loaded his musket and fired the whole charge into the churn,” saying that “the witches had got into it.” The result was satisfactory, for shortly afterwards the butter came; but what was the effect of the shot upon the witches we are not told.112.1