In the old trials for witchcraft in this country we have full accounts of the proceedings then regarded as effectual in causing injury by witches. It is quite likely that some at least of the means mentioned in the confessions of the accused were at times actually adopted. But whether actually adopted or not, they are equally valuable for our present purpose, since their efficacy was undoubted. On the 11th March, 1618-9, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower were burnt alive at Lincoln for sorcery. They had been, with Joan Flower, their mother, confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle. If we might credit their own confession under torture, they had become dissatisfied with their employers, and had employed the Black Art in order to gratify their spite. The mother had a familiar spirit in the form of a cat, named Rutterkin. Their procedure was to procure a lock of the hair of a member of the Earl’s family, or to steal one of his gloves. The hair they burnt; the glove was thrown by Joan Flower into boiling water, then repeatedly pricked with a knife, and afterwards rubbed on the cat. These performances were accompanied with words, bidding Rutterkin go and do some hurt to the owner of the glove. Finally, the glove was burnt, and its owner fell sick and died. Joan Flower vehemently protested her innocence, and asked for bread. Taking a piece, the unfortunate woman wished that if she were guilty it might choke her. Immediately, so says the tale, she fell stark dead. Other women were associated in the accusation, and their confessions confirmed those of the sisters Margaret and Philippa.[65.1]
The results of the practices of which these poor girls were convicted were terrible enough to them, if not to their supposed victim. Yet if their depositions exhausted their knowledge of the modes of witchcraft they cannot have penetrated far into its mysteries. A jealous Italian woman or a mischievous Gipsy, a North American Indian or an Australian savage, could have given them points.
A Sienese or Tuscan maiden, for example, deserted by her lover, will take some of his hair and put it into a toad’s mouth, or round a toad’s legs. The animal is then imprisoned in a covered pot, or else it is placed under a potsherd and bound to a tree. While the creature lives in this torment, the faithless lover will pine away; and when it dies, he will die also.[65.2] Wherefore a lock of hair is the most precious gift, the mark of the highest confidence, a lover or friend can bestow. In the province of Lucca, indeed, it is almost always refused; for even an imprecation uttered over it would render bald the head whereon it had grown; and the women, when they comb their hair, never throw the combings out of window, lest they be bewitched by some one passing by.[66.1] Nor is less care taken elsewhere in Italy—not to say throughout Europe—to burn the combings of the hair oneself or to put them in a place of safety. Dr. Pitrè remembers a woman at Palermo, who, when she was lying sick, having seen a man pick up one of her hairs—as she thought, with malicious intent—jumped out of bed and followed him in her shift, weeping and begging him to give it back to her and not to do her any harm.[66.2] In Tuscany the hair is occasionally boiled with a peppercorn and some other substance, the operator repeating an incantation consigning the foe to death and the society of witches. In Friuli the hair and blood of the victim are boiled with nails, needles, knives and other pieces of iron.[66.3] Even in some parts of England a girl forsaken by her lover is advised to get a lock of his hair and boil it. Whilst it is simmering in the pot he will have no rest.[66.4] In Belgium, as also about Mentone, it is possible to bewitch an enemy by putting one of his hairs into an egg, and leaving it there to rot; so that one must burn any hairs that fall out or are cut off, or at least spit or blow upon them as a protection against witchcraft before throwing them away.[67.1] In certain parts of Germany and Transylvania the clippings of the hair or nails, as well as broken pieces of the teeth, are buried beneath the elder tree which grows in the courtyard, or are burnt, or carefully hidden, for fear of witches.[67.2] In Poland it is thought possible to blind an enemy by threading one of his hairs in a needle which has sewed three shrouds, and then passing it through a toad’s eyes, and letting the poor brute go.[67.3] In Livonia, if you desire to bewitch a girl to the extent of preventing her marriage, all that need be done is to get hold of one of the pins with which her shift is fastened over her breast, wind round it three hairs torn by the roots from her head, and stick the pin in a corner in a northerly direction, or on the first paling of the house, saying: “As long as this sticks here the girl shall have no suitor.”[67.4] In Hungary and Transylvania continual strife between a married pair can be secured by laying a hair from each of their heads on the head of a corpse. They will have no peace until the hairs have decayed away.[68.1] On the other hand, if a Magyar suspect another of an intention to injure him secretly, he will possess himself of some hairs belonging to the suspected person, and hang them in the chimney until they disappear in the smoke: the enemy will then have abandoned his evil purpose.[68.2] So likewise among the Pennsylvanian Germans a witch can be disabled by securing a hair of her head, wrapping it in a piece of paper, and firing a silver bullet into it.[68.3]
We pay European peoples the compliment of calling them civilised: among savages the same methods are adopted. It was the belief of the Clal-lum, a tribe of British Columbia, that if they could procure the hair of an enemy and confine it with a frog in a hole, the head whence it came would suffer the torments of the frog.[68.4] And a lock of hair in the hands of certain women of the Chilcotin tribe would give them power over the person from whose head the lock was severed.[68.5] Any part of the body answers the same purpose among the Greenlanders.[68.6] At the opposite extremity of the American continent the Patagonians burn the hairs brushed out from their heads, and all the parings of their nails, for they believe that spells may be wrought upon them by any one who can obtain a piece of either.[69.1] In Central Brazil the Bakaïrí of one village fear the medicine-men of another, holding that if they can get any portion of their hair or blood, they will put it into a poison-calabash and so cause illness to the original owner.[69.2] What the inhabitants of the isle of Chiloe fear is that a foe will fasten a lock in the seaweed where the tide flows: hence they often keep their hair very short.[69.3] In the South Sea Islands it was necessary to the success of any sorcery to secure something connected with the body of the victim, such as the parings of his nails, a lock of his hair, saliva or other secretions, or else a portion of his food. Accordingly, a spittoon was always carried by the confidential servant of a chief of the Sandwich Islands to receive his expectorations, which were carefully buried every morning. And the Tahitians used to burn or bury the hair they cut off; and every individual among them had his distinct basket for food.[69.4] Among the Maoris “the usual way of obtaining power over another was to obtain (European fashion) some of the nail-parings, hair, etc., anything of a personal nature to act as a medium between the bewitched person and the demon. Spells would be muttered over these relics, then they were buried, and as they decayed the victim perished.”[69.5] In the Banks’ Islands “there are three principal kinds of charms by which evil was believed to be inflicted through the power of ghosts.” One of these called garata operated through fragments of food, bits of hair or nail, “or anything closely connected with the person to be injured. For this reason great care was used to hide or safely dispose of all such things.”[70.1] Similar beliefs and practices obtain in the New Hebrides and the New Marquesas.[70.2] At Matuku in Fiji, the priest of the god Tokalau, the wind, “promises the destruction of any hated person in four days, if those who wish his death bring a portion of his hair, dress or food which he has left.” Happily the doom can be averted by bathing before the fourth day. Most natives take the precaution of hiding the hair they cut off in the thatch of their own huts.[70.3] Some of the Papuan inhabitants of Timor-laut were delighted to make use of Mr. Forbes’ scissors to cut their hair; but they declined to allow the traveller to retain any specimens, for they said they would die; and they gathered up every scrap they could find.[70.4] Among the Australian aborigines of Western Victoria an unsuccessful lover who can get a lock of the lady’s hair covers it with fat and red clay and carries it about with him for a year. The knowledge of this so depresses her that she pines away and often actually dies. When a husband has, or imagines, a grievance against his wife he cuts a lock of her hair while she sleeps, and tying it to the bone hook of his spear-thrower he covers it with a coating of gum. Then he goes away to a neighbouring tribe and stays with them. At the first great meeting of the tribes he gives the spear-thrower to a friend, who sticks it upright before the camp-fire every night, and when it falls over, the husband considers it a sign that his wife is dead. This process, and the taunts to which the deserted wife is subjected, seldom fail to bring her to a sense of her duty of going to seek her husband, apologising for her conduct and bringing him home. The natives are very careful to burn their superfluous hair; and locks are only exchanged by friends as a mark of affection. If a lock thus obtained be lost it is a very serious matter. The loser of the lock will die; and so strong is the belief, that he sometimes does die, unless the person who holds the lock of his hair given in exchange be willing to return it, and so undo the exchange.[71.1] Other tribes have the like superstitions. Mr. Howitt records it as a general practice among the natives of the south-east of Australia, and particularly of the Wotjobaluk tribe, to procure a piece of the victim’s hair, “some of his fæces, a bone picked by him and dropped, a shred of his opossum rug, or at the present time of his clothes,” for the purpose of injuring him. “If nothing else can be got, he may be watched until he is seen to spit, when his saliva is carefully picked up with a piece of wood and made use of for his destruction.” And the writer, a keen observer, adds: “There is evidently a belief that doing an act to something which is part of a person, or which even only belongs to him, is in fact doing it to him. This is very clearly brought out by the remark of one of the Wirajuri, who said to me: ‘You see, when a black-fellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.’ ” Indeed, all over Australia sorcery by means of hair is practised, or at least feared; and the same is asserted of the now exterminated Tasmanians.[71.2] In Sumatra Mr. Forbes once noted a man carefully burying the scraps after paring his finger-nails.[72.1] The approved method of killing a foe at Amboyna is to take some of his hair or clothing, his quid of betel chewed and ejected, or the measure of his footprint, and put it into three bamboo cylinders, one of which is laid beneath a coffin, another buried under the steps of the house, and the third flung into the sea. To injure him it is apparently sufficient to put some of his hair into a coffin, or a grave, or to bind it to the tail of a living fish and return the creature to the water, or to stuff it into a cranny in a house or boat.[72.2] In the Panjáb some wizards are reputed to have the power of killing a woman by cutting off a lock of her hair, and afterwards bringing her to life again even though she had been buried.[72.3] And in Sindh no woman will give a lock of her hair, even to her husband, for fear of the power he would thus obtain.[72.4] Arab women are very careful to bury the parings of their nails for fear of witchcraft.[72.5] The Rautiás, a caste of Chota Nagpur in Bengal, partly Aryan and partly Dravidian, on the other hand, while convinced that witches can act upon their victims through bits of cut hair or nails, are guilty of the suicidal conduct of neglecting to preserve or destroy such articles.[72.6] They seem, however, exceptional in this respect among races in the lower culture. On the Slave Coast of Africa, “anything that has belonged to a man, especially anything that has formed part of, or has come out of, his body, such as hair-clippings, nail-parings, saliva, or the fæces, can be used” to his detriment. “Hence it is usual for pieces of hair and nails to be carefully buried or burned, in order that they may not fall into the hands of sorcerers”; and the saliva of a chief is gathered up and hidden or buried.[73.1] The Makololo used to burn or bury their hair, lest, in the hands of a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict the owner with headache.[73.2] Among the Basuto hairs or nail-parings of the person aimed at, or drops of his blood which he had not taken the precaution of effacing with his foot where they fell, were used by sorcerers in the manufacture of their charms. And without prolonging the list it may safely be said that this superstition is rife all over the continent.[73.3] Naturally the Negro has carried it to America. A lady writing half a century ago relates an incident which happened on the island of Antigua. A Negro boy had been drowned; and one of his kinswomen contrived to cut off some hair from the head of an acquaintance with whom she had a quarrel. This hair she placed in the dead boy’s hand just before his coffin was screwed down, at the same time pronouncing the word “Remember.” The ghastly result was thus described by the Negro who told the tale: “De pic’nee jumby trouble he [namely, the lady who had lost her hair] so dat he no know war for do, till at last he go out of he head, an’ he neber been no good since.”[73.4] Among the Negroes of the United States the recipe for driving an enemy mad is to get one of his hairs and slip it inside the bark of a tree. When the bark grows over it his intellect is gone for ever. But in fact everything “that pertains to the body, such as nails, teeth, hair, saliva, tears, perspiration, dandruff, scabs of sores even, and garments worn next the person,” is employed in charms. A powerful conjurer told Miss Owen: “I could save or ruin you if I could get hold of so much as one eye-winker or the peeling of one freckle.”[74.1]
Prominent in the magical superstitions of some nations is blood. All Europe holds that the pact with the devil must be signed with one’s own blood. It is by handing over a portion of his blood that the unhappy mortal puts himself in the power of the Father of Evil. Without this gage his covenant would be voidable. A popular allegation against the Freemasons in some places is that the candidate for initiation is required to paint his own figure on the wall of the lodge with blood taken from his finger. If thereafter he betray the secrets he has sworn to keep, he can be slain by stabbing the portrait thus made.[74.2] A German saying advises that blood let out of a vein should always be thrown into running water.[74.3] There, of course, it will always be free, it will speedily be lost, and no witchcraft can be wrought upon it. The Transylvanian Saxons declare that if any blood, saliva, or suchlike of a living person be put into a coffin with the dead, the former will slowly languish and die.[74.4] The blood or saliva, corrupting and decaying with the corpse, reacts upon the living body whence it has been derived. Similar is a Magyar prescription for causing barrenness in a woman, namely, by rubbing a dead man’s organ with her menses. In Hungary, too, if you wish to render a bridegroom indifferent to his bride, take some of his blood, or saliva, and with it smear the soles of the bride’s shoes before the wedding, or write his name in his blood on a pigeon’s egg and contrive that she shall tread unawares upon it. In either of these ways she will tread out her husband’s love.[75.1] In Ireland, when a child is vaccinated, the medical man is not allowed to take lymph from its arm without giving some present, however trifling, in return; and Dr. C. R. Browne records that when he was vaccinated in county Tipperary, his arm, as the nurse reported, was kept inflamed because the doctor did not put silver in his hand when taking the lymph.[75.2] The ground of the superstition appears to be the belief in witchcraft. Payment is always held to neutralise a witch’s power over a person through something received from him, probably because what she gives in exchange would confer a like power over her, and hence becomes a hostage for her good faith.[75.3]
When a shaman among the Cherokees wishes to destroy a man, he hides, and follows his victim about until the latter spits upon the ground. Then he collects on the end of a stick a little of the dust moistened with the saliva. “The possession of the man’s spittle gives him power over the life of the man himself.” He puts it into a tube consisting of a joint of the wild parsnip, “a poisonous plant of considerable importance in life-conjuring ceremonies,” together with seven earthworms beaten into a paste, and some splinters from a tree struck by lightning. With the tube thus prepared he goes to a tree which has been lightning-struck. At its base he digs a hole, in the bottom of which he lays a large yellow stone slab. Upon this he places the tube and seven yellow pebbles. Then, filling up the hole with earth, he builds a fire over it. The fire, we are told, is for the purpose of destroying all trace of his work; but it may well be done with another object. The yellow stones are said to represent trouble, and to be substitutes for black stones, not so easily found, which represent death. The shaman and his employer fast until after the ceremony. The victim is expected to feel the effects at once: “his soul begins to shrivel up and dwindle, and within seven days he is dead.”[76.1] A traveller in Oregon relates how some Kwakiutl who were exasperated against him took up his saliva when he spat, intending, as they subsequently told him, to give it to the medicine-man, who would charm his life away.[76.2] The custom, everywhere practised, of obliterating all trace of the saliva after spitting, doubtless originated in the desire to prevent such use of it.[76.3]
Sweat has been mentioned as one of the means of witchcraft among the American Negroes. The Melanesians hold a leaf wherewith a man has wiped the perspiration from his face an effective instrument for doing him mischief.[76.4] The fouler excreta are quite as potent; and this belief has been one of the most beneficial of superstitions. To it is due the extreme cleanliness in the disposal of fæcal matter which is almost universally a characteristic of savages. I shall content myself with throwing into a footnote references to a few passages of various authorities bearing on this means of witchcraft.[77.1]
Sorcery may be wrought upon a foe through any of his teeth which have been extracted. Wherefore the aborigines of Australia, among whom the loss of a front tooth is the sign of admission to the privileges of manhood, are very careful of the teeth which are knocked out. About the river Darling in New South Wales, “the youth’s companions take the tooth when it is extracted, and return it to him later with a present of weapons, rugs, nets, and suchlike. The youth places the tooth under the bark of a tree, near a creek, water-hole, or river: if the bark grows over it, or it falls into the water, all is well; but should it be exposed, and the ants run over it, it is believed that the youth will suffer from a disease in the mouth.”[77.2] Of other tribes in south-eastern Australia it is recorded that the extracted tooth is taken care of by one of the old men. It is passed from one head-man to another, until it has made the complete circuit of the community. It then returns to the youth’s father, and finally to himself. He carries it always about with him; but it must on no account be placed in his bag of magical substances, else great danger will accrue to him.[78.1] In England and elsewhere children are commonly told to burn their milk-teeth when taken out. In Belgium about Liége the reason assigned is to obtain a tooth of gold. In fact, the fear is that a witch may find it if thrown away, and injure the child by its means, or that a dog, a cat or a wolf may swallow it, in which event the new tooth growing in its place will be that of the animal.[78.2] This particular form of the superstition is also found in Sussex and Suffolk, and probably in other parts of England.[78.3]
Earth from a man’s footprints, on account of its close contact with the person—and closer still it must have been before mankind was shod—has acquired the virtues of a portion of his body. Out of a number of illustrations of its use in witchcraft I select the following from all quarters of the globe. Widely spread in Germany is the belief that if a sod whereon a man has trodden—all the better, if with naked foot—be taken up and dried behind the hearth or oven he will parch up with it and languish, or his foot will be withered. He will be lamed, or even killed, by sticking his footprint with nails—coffin-nails are the best—or broken glass. Burchard of Worms in the Middle Ages forbade the former practice; in still earlier times and another country Pythagoras had forbidden the latter.[78.4] They are still, however, particularly recommended in various parts of Germany and adjacent lands for punishing a thief, though it is equally effectual to put tinder in his footprint, for he will thus be burnt, or to fill a pouch with some of the earth he has trodden and beat it twice a day with a stick until fire (!) come out of it: he will feel the blows and die without fail if he bring not back the stolen goods. According to Bezzenberger a Lithuanian, who finds a thief’s footmark, takes it to the graveyard and selects a grave, wherefrom he draws out the cross, thrusts the earth of the footprint into the hole and rams down the cross upon it again. The thief then falls ill, and thus is revealed.[79.1] In Italy and Russia one may be bewitched by similar means to those used in Germany.[79.2] In Hungary, when a woman has a child of unwedded love and desires to bind its father’s affections to it, she digs up one of his footprints, drops some of her own milk into it and carefully puts it back, reversing its position toe to heel.[80.1]
The use of the footprint survives in the British Islands, I think, solely as a means of defence against witches. A correspondent of Mr. Train, the historian of the Isle of Man, writing about half a century ago, relates a story in which a colt was taken ill and there was reason to fear the Evil Eye. A friend of the owner gathered the dust of the road out of the footsteps of the suspected person, and rubbed the animal with it. Thereupon it once more partook of food and rapidly recovered.[80.2] Quite recently a parallel case has been reported, the beast bewitched having been a calf.[80.3] Mr. Hollingsworth, in his History of Stowmarket, published in 1844, says of a reputed witch that, if any one followed her as she walked, and drove a nail or a knife well into the ground through one of her footprints, she was deprived of power to move another step until it was extracted.[80.4] In Grafton County, New Hampshire, in the year 1852, a woman was seen to stick a knitting-needle in the footmarks of another who was regarded as a witch, under the belief that the steel had power to fasten a witch in her tracks, so that she could not move. On this occasion the device was ineffectual. There is always a reason for want of success in such performances. The performer was satisfied that she had broken the needle’s power by speaking. Elsewhere in New England and in Canada an awl is prescribed for the purpose.[80.5] Further south, the mixed white population of the Alleghanies recommend a nail from the coffin wherein a corpse has decayed to be driven with three blows into a thief’s track; it will produce the same effect as if it entered the robber’s foot. But you are cautioned to tie a string round the nail’s head, so that it can be drawn out when requisite; else the man will die.[81.1]