Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/419

Rh To defeat a witch by drawing her blood is well known in the lore of the people.

Cf. Lapp stories, "Ulta Pigen," where the lad catches an Ulta girl by pricking her in the hand with a pin, so as to draw blood. A similar incident occurs in "Goveiter Pige," from Nsesseby. In "Bondesønnen, Kongesønnen og Solens Søster," from Tanen, the herd is told to prick his bride (who has gone from him on account of his looking behind) in her hand till blood comes, and then suck the drop off. He did so and secured his bride. Friis, pp. 23, 39, 140.

The same superstition is well known in the North of England. In Lincolnshire there is a tale still told (1888) of a farmer who could not get his horses to go past a certain cottage until he got down and thrashed the old woman, who lived there, till the blood came. Whereupon the horses went past without further ado. In Sykes's Local Records of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, under March 26th, 1649, we are told how it was decided that certain women were witches, because blood did not come when they were pricked with pins by the "witchfinder." See also Witch Stories by L. Linton, p. 260, &c.

We must not feel surprised when we learn that it is still customary among the Servians and other half-civilised nations to subject women who are suspected as witches to the trial by water, since there are still many persons living who can remember the same thing having been done in the Netherlands and Germany. Thus, in 1823, it went through all the papers that a middle-aged woman at Delten, in Guelderland, being suspected of being a witch, volunteered herself to prove her innocence by the trial of water, that the trial actually took place in broad daylight before a crowd of people in a neighbouring canal, and that the result of the trial turned out in her favour. The following case is more horrible. It happened about thirteen years after the above date on the Peninsula Hela, near Dantzic. A man living in the Cassubian village Ceynowa was taken ill with dropsy, and a quack pointed out a poor widow fifty-one years old, and mother of five young children, as the witch who had caused the man's illness. In order to force her to undo the charm, the quack beat her and jumped on her in a most brutal manner, and she was led to the bed