Chapter 34

Again, the Servian starting-spell, 'ni o trn ni o grm, vetch na pometno guvno!' (not against thorn nor against oak, but to swept barnfloor), agrees with German ones. Usually the word is: 'auf und davon! hui oben hinaus und nirgend an!' out on high, and (strike) against nothing; or 'wol aus und an, stoss nirgend an!' or 'fahr hin, nicht zu hock, nicht zu nieder!' and in England: 'tout, tout, throughout and about!' But if the witch is pursuing people: 'before me day, behind me night!' Dan. 'lyst foran, og mörkt bag!' A Norse magician took a goatskin, wrapt it round his head, and spoke: 'verði þoka, ok verði skrîpi, ok undr mikil öllum þeim sem eptir þer sœkja!' be there mist and magic and much wonder to all that seek after thee, Nialss. cap. 12. A formula used by Fr. magicians on mounting the stick is given, but not completely, by Boguet p. 111: 'baston blanc, baston noir, etc.' Of Indian sorceresses we are likewise told, that they repeat a formula for flight: Kalaratri said it and immediately, with her disciplines and the cow-stall on whose roof she stood, she flew aloft and along the path of cloud, whither she would; a man, having overheard her, made use of the same spell to go after her (Somad. 2, 58-9), exactly as in our tales of witches men get acquainted with their salves and spells, and pursue them (see Suppl.).

Where is the first mention of stick and broom riding to be found? Actually I can only produce a tolerably old authority for riding on reeds and rushes, and even these turn into real horses. Guilielm. Alvernus, p. 1064: 'Si vero quaeritur de equo quem ad vectigationes suas facere se credunt malefici, credunt, inquam, facere de canna per characteres nefandos et scripturas quas in ea inscribunt et impingunt; dico in hoc, quia non est possibile malignis spiritibus de canna verum equum facere vel formare, neque cannam ipsam ad hanc ludificationem eligunt, quia ipsa aptior sit ut transfiguretur in equum, vel ex illa generetur equus, quam multae aliae materiae. Forsitan autem propter planitiem superficiei et facilitatem habendi eam alicui videatur ad hoc praeelecta..........Sic forsan hac de causa ludificationem istam efficere in canna sola et non alio ligno permittuntur maligni spiritus, ut facilitas et vanitas eorum per cannam hominibus insinuetur........Si quis autem dicat, quia canna et calamus habitationes interdum malignorum spirituum sunt (90)...........ego non improbo.' ---More intelligible is the Irish tale of the rushes and cornstalks that turn into horses the moment you bestride them, Ir. elfenmär. 101. 215. Of such a horse, after the first time, you need only lift the bridle and shake it when you want him, and he comes directly (Sup. H, cap. 31. Spell xvi.). In Hartlieb (Sup. H, cap. 32) the unholden are represented riding on rakes and oven-forks, in the older Poem given at p. 1048 on brooms, dehsen, oven-sticks and calves, in the Ackermann aus Böhmen p. 8 on crutches and goats, but in the Tkadlezek p. 27 on distaffs (kuzly). Dobrowsky in Slavin p. 407 mentions the Bohem. summons 'staré baby, na pometlo!' old wives, on to your stove-broom. Of more importance is what we find in the story of Thorsteinn bœarmagn, which Müller 3, 251 assigns to the 15^th century: As the hero lay hid in the cane-brake, he heard a boy call into the hill, 'Mother, hand me out crook-staff and band-gloves, I wish to go the magic ride (gand-reið, p. 1054), there is wedding in the world below'; and immediately the krôkstafr was handed out of the hill, the boy mounted it, drew the gloves on, and rode as children do. Thorsteinn went up to the hill, and shouted the same words: out came both staff and gloves, he mounted, and rode after the boy. Coming to a river, they plunged in, and rode to a castle on a rock, where many people sat at table, all drinking wine out of silver goblets; on a golden throne were the king and queen. Thorsteinn, whom his staff had made invisible, ventured to seize a costly ring and a cloth, but in doing so he lost the stick, and was seen by all, and pursued. Happily his invisible fellow-traveller came by on the other stick, Thorsteinn mounted it as well, and they both escaped (Fornm. sög. 3, 176-8). If the poem has not the peculiar stamp of Norse fable, it teaches none the less what notions were attached to these enchanted rides in the 14^th and 15^th century: no devil shows his face in it. Sticks and staves however seem to be later expedients of witchery: neither night-wives nor Furious Host nor valkyrs need any apparatus for traversing the air; night-wives had already calves and goats attributed to them, p. 1058. There is a very curious phrase, 'to wake a hedge-stick,' which has to become a he-goat and fetch the loved one to her lover; originally perhaps no other sticks were meant but such as, on bestriding, immediately turned into beasts (see Suppl.).

As witches slip through keyholes and cracks in the door, p. 1074, they are able to squeeze themselves into the narrowest space, even betwixt wood and bark (conf. Suppl. on p. 653). Thus in H. Sachs ii. 4, 10 the devil first peels the hazel-rod on which he hands the old woman the stipulated shoes, for fear she might creep to him 'twixt wood and bark. In Iw. 1208 the utmost secresy is expressed by: 'sam daz holz under der rinden, alsam sît ir verborgen.' When a Lithuanian convert began to bark the trees in a holy wood, he said: 'Vos me meis anseribus gallisque spoliastis, proinde et ego nudas vos (sc. arbores) faciam. Credebat enim deos rei suae familiari perniciosos intra arbores et cortices latere.' The Swed. song makes enchanting minstrels charm the bark off the tree, the babe out of the mother, the hind from the forest, the eye from out the socket (Arvidsson 2, 311-2-4-7).

Again, the witches' dislike of bells is heathenish: the elves have it, and the giants, p. 459. Pious prayer and ringing of bells put their plans out: they call the bells 'yelping dogs.' In a Swed. folktale (Ödm. Bahusl. beskrifn. p. 228) an old heathen crone, on hearing the sound of the christian bell from Tegneby, exclaims in contempt: 'nu må tro, Rulla på Rallehed har fådt bjälra,' R. the christian church has got a tinkler. As yet there is no thought of witchery. But it is told of Swed. witches too, that they scrape the bells loose up in the belfry: in their airy flight when they come to a steeple, they set the kidnapped children (p. 1078) down on the church-roof, who are then mere jackdaws to look at; in the meantime they scrape the bell loose, and lug it away, and afterwards let the metal drop through the clouds, crying: 'never let my soul draw near to God, any more than this metal will be a bell again!' (see Suppl.).

The raising of hailstorms and spoiling of crops by magic reaches back to the remotest antiquity of almost every nation. As benignant gods make the fruits to thrive, as air-riding valkyrs from the manes of their steeds let life-giving dew trickle down on the plain (p. 421); so baneful beings of magic power strive to annihilate all that is green. The Greek Eumenides (a word that even our oldest glosses translate by hâzasa) spoil the crops with their slaver, and the fruit with hailstones, Aesch. Eum. 753-68-77-95. The Roman Twelve Tables imposed a penalty on him 'qui fruges excantassit.......sive......alienam segetem pellexerit.' (91) In the 8-9^th cent. 'weather-making' was alleged against sorcerers rather than sorceresses; the passages given at p. 638 name only tempestarii, not tempestariae. So in Ratherius p. 626: 'contra eos qui dicunt quod homo malus vel diabolus (92) tempestatem faciat, lapides grandinum spergat, agros devastet, fulgura mittat, etc. Those magicians in Burchard are called immissores tempestatum, Sup. C, 10, 8; p. 194a. Yet in the North, Thorgerðr and Irpa, who stir up storm and tempest, are women (p. 637), and the salt-grinders Fenja and Menja giantesses; their ship is like the mist-ship of the clouds. How magicians set about their weather-making, is nowhere specified. In much later authorities we find them using a tub or a pitcher, p. 593. In Ls. 2, 314 Master Irreganc says (G. Abent. 3, 90):




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