It appears to have been their practice to destroy the cattle of their neighbors, and the farmers have to this day many ceremonies to secure their cows and other cattle from witchcraft; but they seem to have been most suspected of malice against swine. Harsnet observes how, formerly, “A sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but some old woman was charged with witchcraft.”[68]
Mr. Henderson, in his “Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties” (1879, p. 182), relates how a few years ago a witch died in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devonshire. She was accused of “overlooking” her neighbors’ pigs, so that her son, if ever betrayed into a quarrel with her, used always to say, before they parted, “Mother, mother, spare my pigs.”
Multiples of three and nine were specially employed by witches, ancient and modern. Thus, in “Macbeth” (i. 3), the witches take hold of hands and dance round in a ring nine times—three rounds for each witch, as a charm for the furtherance of her purposes:[69]
“Thrice to thine and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm’s wound up.”
The love of witches for odd numbers is further illustrated (iv. 1), where one of them tells how
“Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,”
this being the witches’ way of saying four times.
In Fairfax’s “Tasso” (book xiii. stanza 6) it is said that
“Witchcraft loveth numbers odd.”
This notion is very old, and we may compare the following quotations from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (xiv. 58):