cream was bewitched; and that they had heard say that if the cream was stirred with one twig of mountain-ash, and the cow beaten with the other, the charm would be broken, and the butter come without delay.
On the Borders, if you suspect a woman of bewitching your cow and hindering the butter from coming, order the dairymaid to press down the churn staff to the bottom of the churn, and keep it there. The witch will be drawn to your house, enter it, and sit down without power to rise. Now you are mistress of the occasion. Tax her with her guilt, and make her promise to let your butter come. This done, you may permit her to rise and go away, which she will do at once, making many protestations of innocence. The Irish mode of procedure is somewhat different. In Leinster, when witchcraft is suspected in the dairy the doors are shut, and the plough-irons thrust into the fire and connected with the churns by twigs of the mountain-ash or quickenberry. The witch, wherever she may be, finds her inside tortured by the red-hot coulter, and must come and present through the window a bit of bewitched butter, which being thrown into the churn undoes the mischief. In North Germany, again, they believe that if the butter does not come the dairy is bewitched, but the remedy there is to smoke the cows, churns, and pails, in secret and at nightfall. This will bring the witch to the door, asking admittance, but she must on no account be let in.[1]
- ↑ See Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. iii. p. 64. At Bratton-Clovelly, in Devonshire, a farmer’s cows were charmed, so that his milk yielded neither cream nor hutter. He declared on oath that he had put whole faggots on the fire, but the milk would not boil, a proof that it was bewitched. He therefore resorted to the white witch at Exeter, who advised him to make a fire with sticks gathered out of four parishes, and set the milk upon them. The witch would thereupon look in at the door or window, and the charm would be broken. The man did as ordered, collecting wood from the parishes of Lewtrenchard, Gennansweek, Broadwood Wigger, and Thrustleton. As soon as the milk was placed on the fire thus made, it boiled over; the witch peeped in at the window and muttered something, then went away, and the charm was broken. S. B. G.
It is curious to trace something analogous in Swedish Folk-Lore. If on Mid-summer Eve nine kinds of wood are collected, and formed into a pile and kindled, and some witch’s butter cast upon it, or if the fire be only beaten with nine kinds of wood, witches are forced to come forward and discover themselves. Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. ii. p. 106.
