Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/222

200 hair of different cows with a knot for each cow. The following verse was sung by way of incantation on such occasions:

As to May-dew, the belief in its virtue extends to Germany, or rather seems to have originated there, since the Germans have an appellation for a witch derived from her connection with it. They call her Daustriker (Thaustreicher), dew-striker or scraper. When the dew falls on May-morning, they say, it will be a good butter year. On such a morning a witch went out before sunrise into her neighbours’ fields, took up the dew with large linen cloths, then wrung them out, and so collected the dew in a vessel. Afterwards, every time she wished to make butter, she took a spoonful of it and poured it into the churn, saying at the same time “From every house a spoonful.” By this process she took on each occasion so much butter from every one of the owners of the fields she had swept of dew. Once, however, she left her man to churn, but not rightly understanding the matter he blundered out, “From every house a bushelful;” so when he churned there came so much butter that it spread out over the whole house, and people were at a loss what to do with it.

The German witches seem, indeed, to have been unremitting in their attacks on the dairy. “There was a time when they were particularly mischievous. It was then indispensable for every housewife to have a handle made of the wood of the service (quicken) tree to her churn, else she could never be sure of getting butter. A man one morning early, on his way from Jägerup to Hadersleben, heard, as he passed by Woiensgaard, that they were churning in the yard; but at the same time he observed that a woman whom he knew was standing by the side of a running brook, and churning with a stick in the water. On that same day he saw her again selling a large lump of butter in