Drawing Blood from a Witch.
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,—
“I’ll have a bout with thee;
Devil or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee;
Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch.”
And Hudibras says,—
“Till drawing blood o’ the Dames like witches,
They’re forthwith cur’d of their capriches.”
So at the present day in Mirzapur, when a woman is marked down as a witch, the Baiga or Ojha pricks her tongue with a needle, and the blood thus extracted is received on some rice, which she is compelled to eat. In another case she is pricked on the breast, tongue, and thighs, and given the blood to drink. The ceremony is most efficacious if performed on the banks of a running stream. This is probably a survival of the actual blood sacrifice of a witch.