The miller's wife and the two grey cats.
Once more, in Silesia they tell of a miller's apprentice, a sturdy and industrious young fellow, who set out on his travels. One day he came to a mill, and the miller told [pg 320] him that he wanted an apprentice but did not care to engage one, because hitherto all his apprentices had run away in the night, and when he came down in the morning the mill was at a stand. However, he liked the looks of the young chap and took him into his pay. But what the new apprentice heard about the mill and his predecessors was not encouraging; so the first night when it was his duty to watch in the mill he took care to provide himself with an axe and a prayer-book, and while he kept one eye on the whirring, humming wheels he kept the other on the good book, which he read by the flickering light of a candle set on a table. So the hours at first passed quietly with nothing to disturb him but the monotonous drone and click of the machinery. But on the stroke of twelve, as he was still reading with the axe lying on the table within reach, the door opened and in came two grey cats mewing, an old one and a young one. They sat down opposite him, but it was easy to see that they did not like his wakefulness and the prayer-book and the axe. Suddenly the old cat reached out a paw and made a grab at the axe, but the young chap was too quick for her and held it fast. Then the young cat tried to do the same for the prayer-book, but the apprentice gripped it tight. Thus balked, the two cats set up such a squalling that the young fellow could hardly say his prayers. Just before one o'clock the younger cat sprang on the table and fetched a blow with her right paw at the candle to put it out. But the apprentice struck at her with his axe and sliced the paw off, whereupon the two cats vanished with a frightful screech. The apprentice wrapped the paw up in paper to shew it to his master. Very glad the miller was next morning when he came down and found the mill going and the young chap at his post. The apprentice told him what had happened in the night and gave him the parcel containing the cat's paw. But when the miller opened it, what was the astonishment of the two to find in it no cat's paw but a woman's hand! At breakfast the miller's young wife did not as usual take her place at the table. She was ill in bed, and the doctor had to be called in to bind up her right arm, because in hewing wood, so they said, she had made a slip and cut off her own right hand. But [pg 321] the apprentice packed up his traps and turned his back on that mill before the sun had set.[784]
The analogy of were-wolves confirms the view that the reason for burning bewitched animals is either to burn the witch or to compel her to appear.
It would no doubt be easy to multiply instances, all equally well attested and authentic, of the transformation of witches into animals and of the damage which the women themselves have sustained through injuries inflicted on the animals.[785] But the foregoing evidence may suffice to establish the complete parallelism between witches and were-wolves in these respects. The analogy appears to confirm the view that the reason for burning a bewitched animal alive is a belief that the witch herself is in the animal, and that by burning it you either destroy the witch completely or at least unmask her and compel her to reassume her proper human shape, in which she is naturally far less potent for mischief than when she is careering about the country in the likeness of a cat, a hare, a horse, or what not. This principle is still indeed clearly recognized by people in Oldenburg, though, as might be expected, they do not now carry out the principle to its logical conclusion by burning the bewitched animal or person alive; instead they resort to a feeble and, it must be added, perfectly futile subterfuge dictated by a mistaken humanity or a fear of the police. “When anything living is bewitched in a house, for example, children or animals, they burn or boil the nobler inwards of animals, especially the hearts, but also the lungs or the liver. If animals have died, they take the inwards of one of them or of an animal of the same kind slaughtered for the purpose; but if that is not possible they take the inwards of a cock, by preference a black one. The [pg 322] heart, lung, or liver is stuck all over with needles, or marked with a cross cut, or placed on the fire in a tightly closed vessel, strict silence being observed and doors and windows well shut. When the heart boils or is reduced to ashes, the witch must appear, for during the boiling she feels the burning pain. She either begs to be released or seeks to borrow something, for example, salt or a coal of fire, or she takes the lid off the pot, or tries to induce the person whose spell is on her to speak. They say, too, that a woman comes with a spinning-wheel. If it is a sheep that has died, you proceed in the same way with a tripe from its stomach and prick it with needles while it is on the boil. Instead of boiling it, some people nail the heart to the highest rafter of the house, or lay it on the edge of the hearth, in order that it may dry up, no doubt because the same thing happens to the witch. We may conjecture that other sympathetic means of destruction are employed against witchcraft. The following is expressly reported: the heart of a calf that has died is stuck all over with needles, enclosed in a bag, and thrown into flowing water before sunset.”[786]
There is the same reason for burning bewitched things.
And the same thing holds good also of inanimate objects on which a witch has cast her spell. In Wales they say that “if a thing is bewitched, burn it, and immediately afterwards the witch will come to borrow something of you. If you give what she asks, she will go free; if you refuse it, she will burn, and a mark will be on her body the next day.”[787] So, too, in Oldenburg, “the burning of things that are bewitched or that have been received from witches is another way of breaking the spell. It is often said that the burning should take place at a cross-road, and in several places cross-roads are shewn where the burning used to be performed.... As a rule, while the things are burning, the guilty witches appear, though not always in their own shape. At the burning of bewitched butter they often appear as cockchafers and can be killed with impunity. Victuals received from witches may be safely consumed if only you [pg 323] first burn a portion of them.”[788] For example, a young man in Oldenburg was wooing a girl, and she gave him two fine apples as a gift. Not feeling any appetite at the time, he put the apples in his pocket, and when he came home he laid them by in a chest. Two or three days afterwards he remembered the apples and went to the chest to fetch them. But when he would have put his hand on them, what was his horror to find in their stead two fat ugly toads in the chest! He hastened to a wise man and asked him what he should do with the toads. The man told him to boil the toads alive, but while he was doing so he must be sure on no account to lend anything out of the house. Well, just as he had the toads in a pot on the fire and the water began to grow nicely warm, who should come to the door but the girl who had given him the apples, and she wished to borrow something; but he refused to give her anything, rated her as a witch, and drove her out of the house. A little afterwards in came the girl's mother and begged with tears in her eyes for something or other; but he turned her out also. The last word she said to him was that he should at least spare her daughter's life; but he paid no heed to her and let the toads boil till they fell to bits. Next day word came that the girl was dead.[789] Can any reasonable man doubt that the witch herself was boiled alive in the person of the toads?
Similarly by burning alive a person whose form a witch has assumed, you compel the witch to disclose herself. The burning alive of a supposed witch in Ireland in 1895.
Moreover, just as a witch can assume the form of an animal, so she can assume the form of some other human being, and the likeness is sometimes so good that it is difficult to detect the fraud. However, by burning alive the person whose shape the witch has put on, you force the witch to disclose herself, just as by burning alive the bewitched animal you in like manner oblige the witch to appear. This principle may perhaps be unknown to science, falsely so called, but it is well understood in Ireland and has been acted on within recent years. In March 1895 a peasant named Michael Cleary, residing at Ballyvadlea, a remote and lonely district in the county of Tipperary, burned his wife [pg 324] Bridget Cleary alive over a slow fire on the kitchen hearth in the presence of and with the active assistance of some neighbours, including the woman's own father and several of her cousins. They thought that she was not Bridget Cleary at all, but a witch, and that when they held her down on the fire she would vanish up the chimney; so they cried, while she was burning, “Away she goes! Away she goes!” Even when she lay quite dead on the kitchen floor (for contrary to the general expectation she did not disappear up the chimney), her husband still believed that the woman lying there was a witch, and that his own dear wife had gone with the fairies to the old rath or fort on the hill of Kylenagranagh, where he would see her at night riding a grey horse and roped to the saddle, and that he would cut the ropes, and that she would stay with him ever afterwards. So he went with some friends to the fort night after night, taking a big table-knife with him to cut the ropes. But he never saw his wife again. He and the men who had held the woman on the fire were arrested and tried at Clonmel for wilful murder in July 1895; they were all found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to various terms of penal servitude and imprisonment; the sentence passed on Michael Cleary was twenty years' penal servitude.[790]
Sometimes bewitched animals are buried alive instead of being burned.
However, our British peasants, it must be confessed, have not always acted up to the strict logical theory which seems to call for death by fire as the proper treatment both of bewitched animals and of witches. Sometimes, perhaps in moments of weakness, they have merely buried the bewitched animals alive instead of burning them. For example, in the year 1643, “many cattle having died, John Brughe and Neane Nikclerith, also one of the initiated, conjoined their mutual skill for the safety of the herd. The surviving animals were drove past a tub of water containing two enchanted stones: and each was sprinkled from the liquid contents in its course. One, however, being unable to walk, ‘was by force drawin out at the byre dure; [pg 325] and the said Johnne with Nikclerith smelling the nois thereof said it wald not leive, caused ane hoill to be maid in Maw Greane, quhilk was put quick in the hole and maid all the rest of the cattell theireftir to go over that place: and in that devillische maner, be charmeing,’ they were cured.”[791] Again, during the prevalence of a murrain about the year 1629, certain persons proposed to stay the plague with the help of a celebrated “cureing stane” of which the laird of Lee was the fortunate owner. But from this they were dissuaded by one who “had sene bestiall curet be taking ane quik seik ox, and making ane deip pitt, and bureing him therin, and be calling the oxin and bestiall over that place.” Indeed Issobell Young, the mother of these persons, had herself endeavoured to check the progress of the distemper by taking “ane quik ox with ane catt, and ane grit quantitie of salt,” and proceeding “to burie the ox and catt quik with the salt, in ane deip hoill in the grund, as ane sacrifice to the devill, that the rest of the guidis might be fred of the seiknes or diseases.”[792] Writing towards the end of the eighteenth century, John Ramsay of Ochtertyre tells us that “the violent death even of a brute is in some cases held to be of great avail. There is a disease called the black spauld, which sometimes rages like a pestilence among black cattle, the symptoms of which are a mortification in the legs and a corruption of the mass of blood. Among the other engines of superstition that are directed against this fatal malady, the first cow seized with it is commonly buried alive, and the other cattle are forced to pass backwards and forwards over the pit. At other times the heart is taken out of the beast alive, and then the carcass is buried. It is remarkable that the leg affected is cut off, and hung up in some part of the house or byre, where it remains suspended, notwithstanding the seeming danger of infection. There is hardly a house in Mull where these may not be seen. This practice seems to have taken its rise antecedent to Christianity, as it reminds us of the pagan custom of [pg 326] hanging up offerings in their temples. In Breadalbane, when a cow is observed to have symptoms of madness, there is recourse had to a peculiar process. They tie the legs of the mad creature, and throw her into a pit dug at the door of the fold. After covering the hole with earth, a large fire is kindled upon it; and the rest of the cattle are driven out, and forced to pass through the fire one by one.”[793] In this latter custom we may suspect that the fire kindled on the grave of the buried cow was originally made by the friction of wood, in other words, that it was a need-fire. Again, writing in the year 1862, Sir Arthur Mitchell tells us that “for the cure of the murrain in cattle, one of the herd is still sacrificed for the good of the whole. This is done by burying it alive. I am assured that within the last ten years such a barbarism occurred in the county of Moray.”[794]