In the popular belief of the Swabians, Friday is the day when the witches celebrate their joint festival with the Devil on the Heuberg, near Rotenburg, and afterward scour the country, intent on working all manner of mischief upon the people and their cattle.[435]
According to a Scotch superstition, however, witches were supposed to hold their weekly meetings on Saturdays, in unfrequented places. The formal proceedings on these occasions included an address by the Devil, and the holding of a court, wherein each witch was expected to give a detailed statement of her doings; and those who had been idle were given a beating with their own broomsticks, the diligent being rewarded by gifts of enchanted bones. A dance followed, the Devil playing on the bag-pipes, and leading the music.[436]
The Irish are careful not to mention fairies by name either on Wednesdays or Fridays, for these invisible creatures are unusually alert on these two days.
On Fridays especially, their power for evil is very strong. On that day, therefore, a careful watch is kept over the children and cattle; a lighted wisp of straw is waved about the baby’s head, and a quenched coal is placed under the cradle and churn. And if the horses are more than usually restive in their stalls, it is a sure sign that the fairies are riding them; therefore the people spit three times at the animals, and the fairies thereupon immediately take their departure.[437]
In Ireland Friday is facile princeps among unlucky days, and especial care should be taken not to open the door of one’s dwelling to any stranger on that day. Neither butter nor milk should be given away, nor should a cat be taken from one house to another on a Friday. To undo a sorcerer’s spell, one should eat barley cakes over which an incantation has been said; but the cakes must be eaten on a Monday or Thursday, and never on Friday.[438]
In Welsh tradition the water-sprites are thought to keep an especially watchful eye over the sea on Fridays, making it rough and tempestuous.
On a Friday morning in the year 1600, says an old legend, a ship set sail from a Northern port, having on board a young man and a maiden of rare beauty, whose strange actions and demeanor seemed to betoken that they were supernatural beings. The vessel never reached port, but one stormy night a phantom ship was seen, enveloped in an uncanny light; and on its deck stood the youth and his sweetheart, a weird vision, as the spectral craft moved along over the stormy sea against the wind.[439]
In Hesse Frau Hölle, the modern Freyja, is the special guardian and protectress of newly married people, and so tenacious has been this old belief in the minds of the Hessian peasants that the day of Venus is still in high favor among them as the most propitious for weddings.[440]
In some places it is unlucky to receive any news, whether good or bad, on a Friday; and, according to a Shropshire saying, “if you hear anything new on a Friday, it gives you another wrinkle on your face, and adds another year to your age.”[441] Indeed, the term “Friday-faced” was used to denote a gloomy or dejected visage, as in the following quotation:—