The corporal reported these circumstances to his officer, “who had no difficulty in discerning the Saxon housewife to be a dangerous and malignant witch, of whom there are but too many in the land.” The woman, called to account, consented to pay for new boots for the soldier, but warned the officer against prosecuting her, “else he should repent it.” Another class of sorcerers, the _wettermacher_ (weather-makers), are those who have power to conjure up thunder and hail storms at will or to disperse them. My old village oracle told me many stories about a man she had known, who used to go about the country with a small black bag in which were a book, a little stick, and a bunch of herbs. Whenever a storm was brewing he was to be seen standing on some rising piece of ground, and repeating his formulas against the gathering clouds. “People used to abuse him,” she said, “and to say that he was in league with the devil; but I never saw him do any harm, and now that he is dead there are many who regret him, for since then we have had heavier hail-storms than ever were known in his time.”[56] We are also told that many years ago, in the village of Wermesch, there lived a peasant who, whenever a thunder-storm was seen approaching, used to take his stand in front of it armed with an axe, by which means he always turned the storm aside. One day, when an unusually heavy storm was seen approaching, the weather-maker, as usual, placed himself in front of it, and hurled the axe up into the clouds. The storm passed by, but the axe did not fall down to the earth again. Many years later, the same peasant, taking a journey farther into the land, entered the hut of a Wallachian, and there to his astonishment found the axe he had thrown into the thunder-clouds several years previously. This Wallachian was a still greater sorcerer in weather-making than the Wermesch peasant, and had therefore succeeded in getting the axe down again from the sky. There are many old formulas and incantations bearing on this subject to be found in ancient chronicles, of which the following one bears a date of the sixteenth century: FORMULA. And the Lord went forth down a long and ancient road, and there was met by an exceeding large black cloud; and the Lord spoke thus to it, “Where goest thou, thou large black cloud? Where dost thou go?” Then spoke the cloud, “I am sent to do an injury to the poor man—to wash away the roots of his corn and to throw down the corn-ears; also to wash away the roots of his vines, and to overthrow the grapes.” But the Lord spoke, “Turn back, turn back, thou big black cloud, and do not wander forth to do an injury to the poor man, but go to the wild forest and wash away the roots of the big oak-tree and overthrow its leaves. St. Peter, do thou draw thy sharp sword and cut in twain the big black cloud, that it may not go forth to do an injury to the poor men.”