Odd numbers are intimately associated with the black art, for witches’ incantations are commonly repeated three or nine times. Who ever heard of a witch performing any of her mystic rites exactly four or six times? Apropos of this may be quoted the following story, taken from the advance sheets of a work entitled “Golspie,” edited by Edward W. B. Nicholson, M. A., Bodley’s Librarian in the University of Oxford, England, and loaned by him to the writer. The book contains much interesting folk-lore of the extreme north of Scotland:— A woman who lived near Golspie was always telling her neighbors that a woman whom they all believed to be a witch had cast an evil eye upon the cow and herself. “Her milk and butter were spoiled,” she said; and she also told them that in a dream she saw the witch in the shape of a hare come into her milk-house and drink the milk. One day when she was in the wood for sticks, her neighbors went into her byre, and seeing a petticoat on a nail, cut a number of crosses on it and put it in the cow’s stall. Then they tied nine rusty nails to a cord with nine knots on it. This cord they tied to the chain on the cow’s neck, and then went away. Shortly after the woman came home, she went into the byre, and seeing the petticoat, nails, etc., ran out to her neighbors screaming, and calling to them to go and see what the witch had done on her. To make sure that it was the witch’s work, she showed them the _unequal number_ of nails and knots. Then she took everything that she thought the witch had handled, and made a fire of them, saying that she could no longer harm any person, because her power was destroyed by fire. The employment of odd numbers in magical formulæ is exemplified in the following recipe for a drink against all temptations of the Devil, used by the Saxons in England:— Take betony, bishop wort, lupins, githrife, attorlothe, wolfscomb, yarrow; lay them under the altar, sing nine masses over them, scrape the worts into holy water, give the man to drink at night, fasting, a cup-full, and put the holy water into all the meat which the man taketh. Work thus a good salve against the temptations of the fiend.[532] A Hindu woman, on returning with her young child from a strange village, is careful, before entering her own dwelling, to pass seven small stones seven times around the baby’s head, and throw them away in different directions, in order thus to disperse any evil which may have been contracted during her trip.[533]