When the cows are first driven to pasture in spring they should be made to step over a ploughshare placed across the threshold of the byre. Three new-laid eggs, deposited each at the junction of a different cross-road, will likewise bring luck to the herd.
If a swallow flies under a cow feeding in the meadow it is believed that the milk will turn bloody. In some villages the skin of a weasel is kept in every byre, with which to rub the udder when the milk is bloody.
The ancient belief that certain old village matrons have the power surreptitiously to purloin their neighbors’ milk is prevalent throughout Transylvania, as I have had occasion over and over again to learn. “They mostly do it out of revenge,” I was informed by a village oracle, to whom I owe much information on this and other subjects, “and are apt to molest those houses whose children have mocked at or played tricks upon them; but just leave them alone, and they are not likely to do you any harm.”
In former days, however, people in Transylvania were by no means inclined to “leave alone” those suspected of such occult proficiency, and witch-burning was a thing of quite every-day occurrence. In the neighborhood of Reps alone, in the seventeenth century, the number of unfortunates who thus perished in the flames was upwards of twenty-five; and in 1697, Michael Hirling, member of the Schässburg Council, has, with significant brevity, noted down in his diary under such and such a date, “Went to Keisd, burned a witch,” just as a sportsman of to-day might note down in his game-book that he shot a hare or a pheasant.
The widow of the Saxon Comes and Royal Judge Valentin Seraphim had a similar fate in 1659 at Hermanstadt, and there is mention of another witch destroyed in 1669 in the same town. The very last witch-burning in Transylvania took place at Maros-Vasharhely in 1752.
The following is an extract from the account of a witch’s trial at Mühlbach in the last century:
“A woman had engaged two laborers by the day to assist her in working in the vineyard. After the mid-day meal all three lay down to rest a little, as is customary. An hour later the workmen got up and wanted to wake the woman, who lay there immovable on her back, with open mouth; but their efforts to rouse her were all in vain, for she neither seemed to feel them when they shook her, nor to hear them shouting in her ear. So the men let her lie, and went about their work. Coming back to the spot about sunset, they found the woman still lying as they had left her, like a corpse. And as they gazed at her wonderingly, a big fly came buzzing past, which one of the men caught and shut up in his leathern pouch. Then they renewed their attempts to awake the woman, but with no better success than before. After about an hour they released the fly, which straightway flew into the mouth of the sleeping woman, who immediately woke up and opened her eyes. On seeing this the two workmen had no further doubt that she was a witch.”
Also, in the year 1734, an Austrian officer who had been in Transylvania related the following story as authentic: Once when the roll was called on Sunday morning a soldier was missing. The corporal being sent to fetch him, the soldier called down from the window of the house where he was billeted, “I cannot go to church, for I have only one boot.” Hereupon the corporal went up-stairs, and the soldier explained how, seeking for something wherewith to grease his boots in the absence of the Saxon housewife, he had found some ointment in an old broken pot concealed in a corner; but scarcely had he rubbed the first boot with it, when the boot flew out of his hand and straight up the chimney. In the corporal’s presence the soldier now proceeded to grease the second boot, which disappeared in the same way as the first.
The corporal reported these circumstances to his officer, “who had no difficulty in discerning the Saxon housewife to be a dangerous and malignant witch, of whom there are but too many in the land.”