Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/11

Rh with confidence to be for the following purposes:—The chair for the witches to rest in: the brooms for them to ride on: the rope to act as a ladder to enable them to cross the roof. In fact, they regarded them as being all placed there for the accommodation of the witches, presumably to render them propitious to the house. I have been unable, however, to discover on what grounds they rested their assertions, but they had no hesitation in at first sight designating the rope and feathers "A witches' ladder." Such a name, I think, they would have been unlikely to invent on the spur of the moment, nor would it have been likely to occur to them had there been no tradition extant, however vaguely, of such a thing having been used. It is not of such a form as to suggest of itself the notion of a ladder, nor obviously could it have been used in such a capacity.

It is composed of a piece of rope about five feet in length, and about half-an-inch in diameter. It is made with three strands, and has at one end a loop, as if for the purpose of suspending it. Inserted into the rope cross-ways are a number of feathers—mostly goose, but some crow or rook—not placed in any determinate order or at any regular intervals, but sticking out on all sides of the rope at (or near) right angles to its axis. Examination makes it evident that these feathers had been twisted into the rope at the time when it was first made, not inserted into it subsequently—an opinion which was confirmed by Mr. Bubear, owner of the house, himself a rope-manufacturer, who declared that on that point there could be no doubt. The "ladder" then was apparently made for some purpose, just as we now find it. It was a piece of new rope with feathers woven into it, only that now the feathers are in a very imperfect condition, nothing remaining of several of them save the merest stump of the quill.

In all attempts to discover a satisfactory explanation of the original meaning and objects of this so-called "witches' ladder," I have so far been baffled. Whether it was, as the workmen who found it seemed to think, intended in some sort to render the witches propitious to the house; or whether, like the broom which used to be laid across a door to keep them out, it was intended as a spell to bar their entrance,—no one whom I have been able to find seems now able to