Since the above was written, a paragraph from the Carnatic Telegraph has "gone the round of the press," relating to the "casting out of devils," as at present practised in India. From this, it appears that the cock is, with the Hindoos as with the Lancashire peasant, a most potent instrument in the subjugation of troublesome spirits. The Hindoo exorcist tied his patient's hair in a knot, and then with a nail attached it to a tree. Muttering some "incantatory" stanzas, he seized a live cock, and, holding it over the poor girl's head with one hand, he, with the other, cut its throat. The blood-stained knot of hair was left attached to the tree, which was supposed to detain the demon. It is firmly believed that one "or a legion thus exorcised will haunt that tree till he or they shall choose to take possession of some other unfortunate."
In a work published in 1869, entitled "Count Teleki; a Story of Modern Jewish Life and Customs, by Eca," the author describes a ceremony called the "Keparoth or atoning sacrifice," in which the common barn-door fowl plays an important part. The penitent "whirled a cock around his head, saying, 'This is my atonement, this is my ransom. This cock goeth to death, but may I be gathered and enter into a long and happy life and into peace.' This he repeated three times.... The sacrifice consists of a cock for the male, and a hen for a female. A white fowl is preferred to any other, in allusion to the words of the prophet, 'Though your sins be as scarlet they shall become white as snow.' A pregnant woman takes three, two hens and one cock, one hen for herself and the other two for the unborn infant—the hen lest it should be a girl, and the cock lest it should be a boy." The fowls are immediately afterwards handed over to the Jewish butcher to be killed.
A yet very prevalent superstition asserts that a person at the point of death finds serious difficulty in "shuffling off this mortal coil" should there happen to be any game cock feathers in the bed on which he lies. Pigeons' feathers are likewise said to prolong the agonies of death.
In France, a black cock is the chief instrument employed to raise the devil, and extract from the fiend sums of money. The incantation must be performed at a locality where four roads meet or two cross each other.
Mr. Wilkinson, referring to the Hothersall Hall boggart, says it "is understood to have been 'laid' under the roots of a large laurel tree, at the end of the house, and will not be able to molest the family so long as that tree exists. It is a common opinion in that part of the country that the roots have to be moistened with milk on certain occasions, in order to prolong its existence, and also to preserve the power of the spell under which the goblin is laid."
The laurel here appears to be invested with the mythical properties of the ash and the rowan trees, which were supposed to possess irresistible power over "witches, fairies, and other imps of darkness." The author of "Choice Notes" quotes an Aberdeenshire couplet, which asserts that
Rowan, ash, and red thread
Keep the devils frae their speed.
and further adds:—"It is a common practice with the housewives in the same district to tie a piece of red worsted thread round their cows' tails previous to turning them out to grass for the first time in the spring. It secures their cattle, they say, from an evil eye, from being elfshot by fairies, etc." The red thread is here, like the berries of the rowan, the mutch of the woodpecker, the red breast of the robin, etc., in the Aryan myths, typical of the lightning.
In many nooks and corners of Lancashire, and some other parts of England, other stories may be found, many of which point to the Puck or Robin Goodfellow of the fairy mythology as their most probable prototype.
Roby says:—"The English Puck (the Lancashire Boggart), the Scotch Bogie, the French Goblin, the Gobelinus of the Middle Ages, and the German Kobold, are probably only varied names for the Grecian Khobalus,—whose sole delight consists in perplexing the human race, and evoking those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of the timid. So, also, the German Spuck, and the Danish Spogel, correspond to the northern Spog; whilst the German Hudkin, and the Icelandic Puki, exactly answer to the character of the English Robin Goodfellow."