The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 10 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 10 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
(M280) Again, the wounds inflicted on a witch-hare or a witch-cat are to
be seen on the witch herself, just as the wounds inflicted on a were-wolf
are to be seen on the man himself when he has doffed the wolf’s skin. To
take a few instances out of a multitude, a young man in the island of
Lismore was out shooting. When he was near Balnagown loch, he started a
hare and fired at it. The animal gave an unearthly scream, and then for
the first time it occurred to him that there were no real hares in
Lismore. He threw away his gun in terror and fled home; and next day he
heard that a notorious witch was laid up with a broken leg. A man need be
no conjuror to guess how she came by that broken leg.(774) Again, at
Thurso certain witches used to turn themselves into cats and in that shape
to torment an honest man. One night he lost patience, whipped out his
broadsword, and put them to flight. As they were scurrying away he struck
at them and cut off a leg of one of the cats. To his astonishment it was a
woman’s leg, and next morning he found one of the witches short of the
corresponding limb.(775) Glanvil tells a story of “an old woman in
Cambridge-shire, whose astral spirit, coming into a man’s house (as he was
sitting alone at the fire) in the shape of an huge cat, and setting her
self before the fire, not far from him, he stole a stroke at the back of
it with a fire-fork, and seemed to break the back of it, but it scambled
from him, and vanisht he knew not how. But such an old woman, a reputed
witch, was found dead in her bed that very night, with her back broken, as
I have heard some years ago credibly reported.”(776) In Yorkshire during
the latter half of the nineteenth century a parish clergyman was told a
circumstantial story of an old witch named Nanny, who was hunted in the
form of a hare for several miles over the Westerdale moors and kept well
away from the dogs, till a black one joined the pack and succeeded in
taking a bit out of one of the hare’s legs. That was the end of the chase,
and immediately afterwards the sportsmen found old Nanny laid up in bed
with a sore leg. On examining the wounded limb they discovered that the
hurt was precisely in that part of it which in the hare had been bitten by
the black dog and, what was still more significant, the wound had all the
appearance of having been inflicted by a dog’s teeth. So they put two and
two together.(777) The same sort of thing is often reported in
Lincolnshire. “One night,” said a servant from Kirton Lindsey, “my father
and brother saw a cat in front of them. Father knew it was a witch, and
took a stone and hammered it. Next day the witch had her face all tied up,
and shortly afterwards died.” Again, a Bardney bumpkin told how a witch in
his neighbourhood could take all sorts of shapes. One night a man shot a
hare, and when he went to the witch’s house he found her plastering a
wound just where he had shot the hare.(778) So in County Leitrim, in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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