On Walpurgis Night precaution must be taken against witches who may harm cattle. The stable doors are locked and sealed with three crosses. Sprigs of ash, hawthorn, juniper, and elder, once sacred to the pagan gods, are now used as a protection against them. Horseshoes are nailed prongs up on the threshold or over the door. Holy bells are hung on the cows to scare away the witches, and they are guided to pasture by a goad which has been blessed. Shots are fired over the cornfield. If one wishes, he may hide in the corn and hear what will happen for a year. Signs and omens on Walpurgis Night have more weight than at other times except on St. John's Day. "On Walpurgis Night rain Makes good crops of autumn grain," but rain on May Day is harmful to them. [Illustration: THE WITCHES' DANCE (VALPURGISNACHT.) _From Painting by Von Kreling._] Lovers try omens on this eve, as they do in Scotland on Hallowe'en. If you sleep with one stocking on, you will find on May morning in the toe a hair the color of your sweetheart's. Girls try to find out the temperament of their husbands-to-be by keeping a linen thread for three days near an image of the Madonna, and at midnight on May Eve pulling it apart, saying: "Thread, I pull thee; Walpurga, I pray thee, That thou show to me What my husband's like to be." They judge of his disposition by the thread's being strong or easily broken, soft or tightly woven. Dew on the morning of May first makes girls who wash in it beautiful. "The fair maid who on the first of May Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ever after handsome be." _Encyclopedia of Superstitions._ A heavy dew on this morning presages a good "butter-year." You will find fateful initials printed in dew on a handkerchief that has been left out all the night of April thirtieth. On May Day girls invoke the cuckoo: "Cuckoo! cuckoo! on the bough, Tell me truly, tell me how Many years there will be Till a husband comes to me." Then they count the calls of the cuckoo until he pauses again. If a man wears clothes made of yarn spun on Walpurgis Night to the May-shooting, he will always hit the bull's-eye, for the Devil gives away to those he favors, "freikugeln," bullets which always hit the mark.