Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/206

184 cream was bewitched; and that they had heard say that if the cream was stirred with one twig of mountain-ash, and the cow beaten with the other, the charm would be broken, and the butter come without delay.

On the Borders, if you suspect a woman of bewitching your cow and hindering the butter from coming, order the dairymaid to press down the churn staff to the bottom of the churn, and keep it there. The witch will be drawn to your house, enter it, and sit down without power to rise. Now you are mistress of the occasion. Tax her with her guilt, and make her promise to let your butter come. This done, you may permit her to rise and go away, which she will do at once, making many protestations of innocence. The Irish mode of procedure is somewhat different. In Leinster, when witchcraft is suspected in the dairy the doors are shut, and the plough-irons thrust into the fire and connected with the churns by twigs of the mountain-ash or quickenberry. The witch, wherever she may be, finds her inside tortured by the red-hot coulter, and must come and present through the window a bit of bewitched butter, which being thrown into the churn undoes the mischief. In North Germany, again, they believe that if the butter does not come the dairy is bewitched, but the remedy there is to smoke the cows, churns, and pails, in secret and at nightfall. This will bring the witch to the door, asking admittance, but she must on no account be let in.