The Magyar shepherds place horses’ and asses’ skulls as talismans about their sheepfolds to keep wolves away from their flocks, and also to prevent herbaceous animals other than their sheep from eating the grass of their pasture lands. Also when, as occasionally happens, some hill or upland region gains an unsavory reputation among the peasants as an alleged meeting-place of witches, horses’ skulls are placed there in order to prevent such unseemly orgies, for, according to the popular report, where witches meet grass will not grow. Whoever has the courage to visit such a place on the midnight of Good Friday with a so-called _Luciastuhl_, a peculiar chair or stool made during Christmas week, may see the witches at their revels, and may easily disperse them by throwing a horse’s skull into their midst.[176] The gypsies inhabiting lands bordering on the eastern Danube are wont to fasten the skulls of horses and cattle upon the fence-palings which surround their farmyards, to prevent witches and evil spirits from entering the inclosures. So, too, the Transylvanian gypsies bury horses’ skulls beneath the floor of the earth caverns which they occupy in winter; and the tribes of southern Hungary place similar talismans upon the graves of their kindred, that no witch may tread upon the sanctified ground.[177] The wizards and conjurers of the Shamans pretend to be experts in sorcery, and to possess a secret knowledge which enables them to control the actions of evil spirits. They wear a long elk-skin robe adorned with many fetich objects, such as bells and pieces of iron; and to assist them in their magic rites they carry staves, whose tops are carved into the shape of horses’ heads, and by means of these staves they are enabled to leap high into the air.[178] XIII. THE HORSE-SHOE AS A FAVORITE ANTI-WITCH CHARM The _universality_ of the use of the horse-shoe as a safeguard against evil spirits is indeed noteworthy. It is the anti-witch charm _par excellence_, as well as the approved symbol of good luck, and, used for these purposes, it is to be seen throughout a large portion of the world. The horse-shoe is most commonly placed over the entrance-doors of dwellings; but stables likewise are thought to be effectually protected by it, for “witches were dreadful harriers of horse-flesh.” In William Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of the Northern Countries of England” we read of a Durham farmer who was convinced that one of his horses had been ridden by hags, as he had found it bathed in sweat of a morning. But after he took the precaution to nail a horse-shoe over the stable-door, and also to hang some broom above the manger, the witches had not been able to indulge in clandestine rides on his horses. While many an honest fellow in England and elsewhere is a firm believer in witches and magical horse-shoes, very few of them can give plausible reasons therefor.