Note 67 — Chapter V · THE BLACK ART.
Reading edition
One favourite way of counteracting the spells of a witch is to draw blood from her. Thus, Professor Rhys, writing of Manxland, says: “There is a belief that if you can draw blood, however little, from a witch or one who has the Evil Eye, he loses his power of harming you; and I have been told that formerly this belief was sometimes acted on. Thus, on leaving church, for instance, the man who fancied himself in danger from another would go up to him, or walk by his side, and inflict on him a slight scratch or some other trivial wound, which elicited blood.”67 In the First Part of “Henry VI.” Talbot says to the Pucelle de Orleans,—