Tar, put on the door, kept witches away, and put on the cow’s ear, was believed to prevent ceathramh gorm, or quarter ill.
If, notwithstanding all these safeguards, or through neglect of them, a cow lost its milk, or the milk ceased to yield butter or cream, there were several methods by which the witchcraft, which was undoubtedly the cause, might be counteracted. Some of these remedies appear more like the inventions of practical jokers than ceremonies from which any rational meaning can be taken.
When a cow ceases unaccountably to give milk, and witchcraft is suspected, its owner is to take some of the animal’s urine (maistir), put it in a bottle, and cork it well. The witch who has taken the milk cannot make a drop of water till the milk is allowed to come back. It is a common story that the owner of bewitched cows, under the advice of ‘wise’ people of his neighbourhood, put a potful of the cows’ dung on the fire, and boiled it. He then put in half an ounce of pins and stirred the compost, till at last the witch appeared at the hole which formed the window, and entreated him to stop tormenting her, and all would be well. He stopped, and next morning his cows had milk as usual. It was also said that by putting pins in the cow’s milk, and boiling till the dish is dry, the witch is made to appear and confess. A woman once did this in Tiree, and found her own brother was the guilty party. Old people in the east side of Skye remember the bull being put on the top of a suspected witch’s house to bring back their milk to a farmer’s cows. The more brutal method of scoring, or drawing blood from, the witch above her breath—the object of which could only be to make clowns strike poor old women on the face with their fists—was unknown in the Highlands. The plant mōthan, pearlwort, put in the milk-pail, was a more gentle but quite as sure a method of restoring its virtue to the milk. If a piece of it was in the bull’s hoof at the time of pairing no witch could touch the offspring’s milk.
In Tiree a person lost several stirks by the stakes falling and strangling them in the byre. A ‘wise’ woman, reputed a witch, advised, though her advice was not taken, that the right hand part of a fore horse-shoe, with three nails in it, should be put below the threshold (stairsneach) of the byre, along with a silver coin, and that the hind quarter of one of the beasts should be taken west and buried beyond the limits of the farm. This was to prevent a similar calamity in future.
GOING TO SEA.
The Lewis witches were accounted the best for raising wind. A large number of them were at one time destroyed in the following manner. A tailor, working in a farmer’s house, where there happened at the time to be a scarcity of seasoning for dinner (gann-do-dh’annlan), was told by the farmer’s wife, this would not be the case to-morrow, if he could get breakfast past without the goodman saying grace. The tailor managed this, and his curiosity being roused, remained awake the following night, to see what the wife would do. He saw a number of women, among whom he recognised his own wife, assembling in the farm-house and accompanied by the farmer’s wife, disappearing up the chimney, each in a wicker creel. In the morning the farmer’s wife came back with her creel full of fresh herring. The tailor, when he went home, strongly represented to his wife the propriety of allowing him to accompany the witches in their future fishing expeditions. Two shares of the fish would then fall to them instead of one. The proposal was laid before a meeting of the witches, and in the circumstances they consented. To the number of eighteen the witches went to sea on a line of worsted thread, the tailor’s wife being left ashore to hold the ball, or end of the line, in her hand. The tailor persuaded her to go with the rest, and leave him in charge of the line. She went and the tailor paid out more line, till he thought the witches far enough out at sea. He then cut the thread and allowed the whole lot to drown.
Similarly, somewhere in the north (all marvels of this kind are said in the south Highlands to have occurred in the north) a tailor was working in the house of an old woman, who knew the forbidden arts, but at the time was short of kitchen for dinner. She took a creel, sat in it, and having muttered some mystic words, disappeared through a hole in the roof that formed the chimney. In a while she came back with the creel full of herring. The tailor kept the spell in remembrance, and the first day he got the old woman out of the way, sat in the creel, and repeated it. He does not seem, however, to have learned the words quite correctly, for the creel, instead of making for the hole in the roof, rose straight up and hit his head violently against the rafters. It then floated along against the roof, as if in search of an outlet. It bumped his head a second time against the rafters and he roared out, “Where, in the curse of God, are you going now?” Instantly at the name of the Deity, the creel fell down, and the tailor dislocated his hips (chaidh e as a ghobhal). He never again dabbled in the dark science.
In Skye, one of a party of women, assembled at an old woman’s house to full cloth, went by accident into the barn, and found it full of fish suspended from the roof. “There are many herrings here,” she said; and there being no way by which the old woman could have got them but by witchcraft, she taxed her with unholy practices. The old woman got very angry at the exposure.
A Barra and a Uist witch one year tried each other’s powers in drawing the fish to their respective islands. The Barra witch proved the stronger, and took the fish to Castlebay (Bàgh Chìosamuill).
Another year the Uist and Tiree witches had a similar contest. The latter prevailed, and the men of a bygone generation believed that every flounder caught that year on the Tiree shores had a hole in its tail, made by the witches in the struggle.
On the shallows (oitir) between Tiree and Coll, the witches of the two islands were often seen fighting for the flounders that abound in the locality. The appearance that suggested the fancy was no doubt the same as is still to be seen on these banks in stormy weather.
A witch, who left home every night, was followed by her husband, who wondered what she could be about. She became a cat, and went in the name of the devil to sea in a sieve, with seven other cats. The husband upset the sieve by naming the Trinity, and the witches were drowned. So the Skye story runs. In the Sound of Mull the witches went on board the sieve, “against the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost”; and the husband upset the concern by putting his foot on board in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In Tiree the unfortunate women were passing Kennavara hill in eggshells on their way to Ireland, when the husband of one of them, seeing the fleet, wished them God-speed. Instantly the eggshells sank, and the women were drowned.
RAISING STORMS AND DROWNING PEOPLE.
The belief that witches can trouble the sea and raise the wind is widespread, reaching even to the native Africans. It is part of the regular traffic of Finland witches to sell wind to mariners—as in the case of their Celtic sisters, tied in knots upon a thread. The following story is common to many places.
A boatman from one of the southern islands was long detained in Lewis by adverse winds. He was courting a witch’s daughter, and applied to her mother for a favourable wind. He gave her a pound of tobacco, and, assisted by neighbouring witches, after three days’ exertion, she produced a string with three knots upon it. The first knot was called ‘Come gently’ (Thig gu fòill), and when he loosened it, as he left the shore, a gentle breeze sprang up.