Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. by Sir James George Frazer

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[Mode in which the burning of a bewitched animal is supposed to break
the spell.]

But how, we must still ask, can burning an animal alive break the spell
that has been cast upon its fellows by a witch or a warlock? Some light
is thrown on the question by the following account of measures which
rustic wiseacres in Suffolk are said to have adopted as a remedy for
witchcraft. "A woman I knew forty-three years had been employed by my
predecessor to take care of his poultry. At the time I came to make her
acquaintance she was a bedridden toothless crone, with chin and nose all
but meeting. She did not discourage in her neighbours the idea that she
knew more than people ought to know, and had more power than others had.
Many years before I knew her it happened one spring that the ducks,
which were a part of her charge, failed to lay eggs.... She at once took
it for granted that the ducks had been bewitched. This misbelief
involved very shocking consequences, for it necessitated the idea that
so diabolical an act could only be combated by diabolical cruelty. And
the most diabolical act of cruelty she could imagine was that of baking
alive in a hot oven one of the ducks. And that was what she did. The
sequence of thought in her mind was that the spell that had been laid on
the ducks was that of preternaturally wicked wilfulness; that this spell
could only be broken through intensity of suffering, in this case death
by burning; that the intensity of suffering would break the spell in the
one roasted to death; and that the spell broken in one would be
altogether broken, that is, in all the ducks.... Shocking, however, as
was this method of exorcising the ducks, there was nothing in it
original. Just about a hundred years before, everyone in the town and
neighbourhood of Ipswich had heard, and many had believed, that a witch
had been burnt to death in her own house at Ipswich by the process of
burning alive one of the sheep she had bewitched. It was curious, but it
was as convincing as curious, that the hands and feet of this witch were
the only parts of her that had not been incinerated. This, however, was
satisfactorily explained by the fact that the four feet of the sheep, by
which it had been suspended over the fire, had not been destroyed in the
flames that had consumed its body."[754] According to a slightly
different account of the same tragic incident, the last of the "Ipswitch
witches," one Grace Pett, "laid her hand heavily on a farmer's sheep,
who, in order to punish her, fastened one of the sheep in the ground and
burnt it, except the feet, which were under the earth. The next morning
Grace Pett was found burnt to a cinder, except her feet. Her fate is
recorded in the _Philosophical Transactions_ as a case of spontaneous
combustion."[755]

[In burning the bewitched animal you burn the witch herself.]

This last anecdote is instructive, if perhaps not strictly authentic. It
shows that in burning alive one of a bewitched flock or herd what you
really do is to burn the witch, who is either actually incarnate in the
animal or perhaps more probably stands in a relation of sympathy with it
so close as almost to amount to identity. Hence if you burn the creature
to ashes, you utterly destroy the witch and thereby save the whole of
the rest of the flock or herd from her abominable machinations; whereas
if you only partially burn the animal, allowing some parts of it to
escape the flames, the witch is only half-baked, and her power for
mischief may be hardly, if at all, impaired by the grilling. We can now
see that in such matters half-measures are useless. To kill the animal
first and burn it afterwards is a weak compromise, dictated no doubt by
a well-meant but utterly mistaken kindness; it is like shutting the
stable-door when the steed is stolen, for obviously by leaving the
animal's, and therefore the witch's, body nearly intact at the moment of
death, it allows her soul to escape and return safe and sound to her own
human body, which all the time is probably lying quietly at home in bed.
And the same train of reasoning that justifies the burning alive of
bewitched animals justifies and indeed requires the burning alive of the
witches themselves; it is really the only way of destroying them, body
and soul, and therefore of thoroughly extirpating the whole infernal
crew.

[Practice of burning cattle and sheep as sacrifices in the Isle of Man.]

In the Isle of Man the practice of burning cattle alive in order to stop
a murrain seems to have persisted down to a time within living memory.
On this subject I will quote the evidence collected by Sir John Rhys: "A
respectable farmer from Andreas told me that he was driving with his
wife to the neighbouring parish of Jurby some years ago, and that on the
way they beheld the carcase of a cow or an ox burning in a field, with a
woman engaged in stirring the fire. On reaching the village to which
they were going, they found that the burning beast belonged to a farmer
whom they knew. They were further told it was no wonder that the said
farmer had one of his cattle burnt, as several of them had recently
died. Whether this was a case of sacrifice or not I cannot say. But let
me give you another instance: a man whom I have already mentioned, saw
at a farm nearer the centre of the island a live calf being burnt. The
owner bears an English name, but his family has long been settled in
Man. The farmer's explanation to my informant was that the calf was
burnt to secure luck for the rest of the herd, some of which were
threatening to die. My informant thought there was absolutely nothing
the matter with them, except that they had too little to eat. Be that as
it may, the one calf was sacrificed as a burnt-offering to secure luck
for the rest of the cattle. Let me here also quote Mr. Moore's note in
his _Manx Surnames_, p. 184, on the place name _Cabbal yn Oural Losht_,
or the Chapel of the Burnt Sacrifice. 'This name,' he says, 'records a
circumstance which took place in the nineteenth century, but which, it
is to be hoped, was never customary in the Isle of Man. A farmer, who
had lost a number of his sheep and cattle by murrain, burned a calf as a
propitiatory offering to the Deity on this spot, where a chapel was
afterwards built. Hence the name.' Particulars, I may say, of time,
place, and person could be easily added to Mr. Moore's statement,
excepting, perhaps as to the deity in question; on that point I have
never been informed, but Mr. Moore is probably right in the use of the
capital _d_, as the sacrificer is, according to all accounts, a highly
devout Christian. One more instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the
parish of Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a
'lump of a girl' of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being
burnt in a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she meant
the first of May reckoned according to the Old Style. She asserts very
decidedly that it was _son oural_, 'as a sacrifice,' as she put it, and
'for an object to the public': those were her words when she expressed
herself in English. Further, she made the statement that it was a custom
to burn a sheep on old May-day for a sacrifice. I was fully alive to the
interest of this evidence, and cross-examined her so far as her age
allows of it, and I find that she adheres to her statement with all
firmness."[756]

[By burning a bewitched animal you compel the witch to appear.]

But Manxmen burn beasts when they are dead as well as when they are
alive; and their reasons for burning the dead animals may help us to
understand their reasons for burning the living animals. On this subject
I will again quote Sir John Rhys: "When a beast dies on a farm, of
course it dies, according to the old-fashioned view of things, as I
understand it, from the influence of the evil eye or the interposition
of a witch. So if you want to know to whom you are indebted for the loss
of the beast, you have simply to burn its carcase in the open air and
watch who comes first to the spot or who first passes by; that is the
criminal to be charged with the death of the animal, and he cannot help
coming there--such is the effect of the fire. A Michael woman, who is
now about thirty, related to me how she watched while the carcase of a
bewitched colt was burning, how she saw the witch coming, and how she
remembers her shrivelled face, with nose and chin in close proximity.
According to another native of Michael, a well-informed middle-aged man,
the animal in question was oftenest a calf, and it was wont to be burnt
whole, skin and all. The object, according to him, is invariably to
bring the bewitcher on the spot, and he always comes; but I am not clear
what happens to him when he appears. My informant added, however, that
it was believed that, unless the bewitcher got possession of the heart
of the burning beast, he lost all his power of bewitching."[757]

[Magic sympathy between the witch and the bewitched animal.]

These statements shew that in the Isle of Man the sympathetic relation
between the witch and his or her animal victim is believed to be so
close that by burning the animal you compel the witch to appear. The
original idea may have been that, by virtue of a magic sympathy which
binds the two together, whatever harm you do to the animal is felt by
the witch as if it were done to herself. That notion would fully explain
why Manx people used also to burn bewitched animals alive; in doing so
they probably imagined that they were simultaneously burning the witch
who had cast the spell on their cattle.

[Parallel belief in magic sympathy between the animal shape of a
were-wolf and his or her ordinary human shape: by wounding the wolf you
simultaneously wound the man or woman.]

This explanation of the reason for burning a bewitched animal, dead or
alive, is confirmed by the parallel belief concerning were-wolves. It is
commonly supposed that certain men and women can transform themselves by
magic art into wolves or other animals, but that any wound inflicted on
such a transformed beast (a were-wolf or other were-animal) is
simultaneously inflicted on the human body of the witch or warlock who
had transformed herself or himself into the creature. This belief is
widely diffused; it meets us in Europe, Asia, and Africa. For example,
Olaus Magnus tells us that in Livonia, not many years before he wrote, a
noble lady had a dispute with her slave on the subject of were-wolves,
she doubting whether there were any such things, and he maintaining that
there were. To convince her he retired to a room, from which he soon
appeared in the form of a wolf. Being chased by the dogs into the forest
and brought to bay, the wolf defended himself fiercely, but lost an eye
in the struggle. Next day the slave returned to his mistress in human
form but with only one eye.[758] Again, it happened in the year 1588
that a gentleman in a village among the mountains of Auvergne, looking
out of the window one evening, saw a friend of his going out to hunt. He
begged him to bring him back some of his bag, and his friend said that
he would. Well, he had not gone very far before he met a huge wolf. He
fired and missed it, and the animal attacked him furiously, but he stood
on his guard and with an adroit stroke of his hunting knife he cut off
the right fore-paw of the brute, which thereupon fled away and he saw it
no more. He returned to his friend, and drawing from his pouch the
severed paw of the wolf he found to his horror that it was turned into a
woman's hand with a golden ring on one of the fingers. His friend
recognized the ring as that of his own wife and went to find her. She
was sitting by the fire with her right arm under her apron. As she
refused to draw it out, her husband confronted her with the hand and the
ring on it. She at once confessed the truth, that it was she in the form
of a were-wolf whom the hunter had wounded. Her confession was confirmed
by applying the severed hand to the stump of her arm, for the two fitted
exactly. The angry husband delivered up his wicked wife to justice; she
was tried and burnt as a witch.[759] It is said that a were-wolf,
scouring the streets of Padua, was caught, and when they cut off his
four paws he at once turned into a man, but with both his hands and feet
amputated.[760] Again, in a farm of the French district of Beauce, there
was once a herdsman who never slept at home. These nocturnal absences
naturally attracted attention and set people talking. At the same time,
by a curious coincidence, a wolf used to prowl round the farm every
night and to excite the dogs in the farmyard to fury by thrusting his
snout derisively through the cat's hole in the great gate. The farmer
had his suspicions and he determined to watch. One night, when the
herdsman went out as usual, his master followed him quietly till he came
to a hut, where with his own eyes he saw the man put on a broad belt and
at once turn into a wolf, which scoured away over the fields. The farmer
smiled a sickly sort of smile and went back to the farm. There he took a
stout stick and sat down at the cat's hole to wait. He had not long to
wait. The dogs barked like mad, a wolf's snout shewed through the hole,
down came the stick, out gushed the blood, and a voice was heard to say
without the gate, "A good job too. I had still three years to run." Next
day the herdsman appeared as usual, but he had a scar on his brow, and
he never went out again at night.[761]

[Werewolves in China.]

In China also the faith in similar transformation is reflected in the
following tale. A certain man in Sung-yang went into the mountains to
gather fuel. Night fell and he was pursued by two tigers, but scrambled
up a tree out of their reach. Then said the one tiger to the other
tiger, "If we can find Chu-Tu-shi, we are sure to catch this man up the
tree." So off went one of them to find Chu-Tu-shi, while the other kept
watch at the foot of the tree. Soon after that another tiger, leaner and
longer than the other two, appeared on the scene and made a grab at the
man's coat. But fortunately the moon was shining, the man saw the paw,
and with a stroke of his axe cut off one of its claws. The tigers roared
and fled, one after the other, so the man climbed down the tree and went
home. When he told his tale in the village, suspicion naturally fell on
the said Chu-Tu-shi; next day some men went to see him in his house.
They were told that they could not see him; for he had been out the
night before and had hurt his hand, and he was now ill in bed. So they
put two and two together and reported him to the police. The police
arrived, surrounded the house, and set fire to it; but Chu-Tu-shi rose
from his bed, turned into a tiger, charged right through the police, and
escaped, and to this day nobody ever knew where he went to.[762]

[Werewolves among the Toradjas of Central Celebes.]

The Toradjas of Central Celebes stand in very great fear of werewolves,
that is of men and women, who have the power of transforming their
spirits into animals such as cats, crocodiles, wild pigs, apes, deer,
and buffaloes, which roam about battening on human flesh, and especially
on human livers, while the men and women in their own proper human form
are sleeping quietly in their beds at home. Among them a man is either
born a were-wolf or becomes one by infection; for mere contact with a
were-wolf, or even with anything that has been touched by his spittle,
is quite enough to turn the most innocent person into a were-wolf; nay
even to lean your head against anything against which a were-wolf has
leaned his head suffices to do it. The penalty for being a were-wolf is
death; but the sentence is never passed until the accused has had a fair
trial and his guilt has been clearly demonstrated by an ordeal, which
consists in dipping the middle finger into boiling resin. If the finger
is not burnt, the man is no were-wolf; but if it is burnt, a werewolf he
most assuredly is, so they take him away to a quiet spot and hack him to
bits. In cutting him up the executioners are naturally very careful not
to be bespattered with his blood, for if that were to happen they would
of course be turned into were-wolves themselves. Further, they place his
severed head beside his hinder-quarters to prevent his soul from coming
to life again and pursuing his depredations. So great is the horror of
were-wolves among the Toradjas, and so great is their fear of
contracting the deadly taint by infection, that many persons have
assured a missionary that they would not spare their own child if they
knew him to be a were-wolf.[763] Now these people, whose faith in
were-wolves is not a mere dying or dead superstition but a living,
dreadful conviction, tell stories of were-wolves which conform to the
type which we are examining. They say that once upon a time a were-wolf
came in human shape under the house of a neighbour, while his real body
lay asleep as usual at home, and calling out softly to the man's wife
made an assignation with her to meet him in the tobacco-field next day.
But the husband was lying awake and he heard it all, but he said nothing
to anybody. Next day chanced to be a busy one in the village, for a roof
had to be put on a new house and all the men were lending a hand with
the work, and among them to be sure was the were-wolf himself, I mean to
say his own human self; there he was up on the roof working away as hard
as anybody. But the woman went out to the tobacco-field, and behind went
unseen her husband, slinking through the underwood. When they were come
to the field, he saw the were-wolf make up to his wife, so out he rushed
and struck at him with a stick. Quick as thought, the were-wolf turned
himself into a leaf, but the man was as nimble, for he caught up the
leaf, thrust it into the joint of bamboo, in which he kept his tobacco,
and bunged it up tight. Then he walked back with his wife to the
village, carrying the bamboo with the werewolf in it. When they came to
the village, the human body of the were-wolf was still on the roof,
working away with the rest. The man put the bamboo in a fire. At that
the human were-wolf looked down from the roof and said, "Don't do that."
The man drew the bamboo from the fire, but a moment afterwards he put it
in the fire again, and again the human were-wolf on the roof looked down
and cried, "Don't do that." But this time the man kept the bamboo in the
fire, and when it blazed up, down fell the human were-wolf from the roof
as dead as a stone.[764] Again, the following story went round among the
Toradjas not so very many years ago. The thing happened at Soemara, on
the Gulf of Tomori. It was evening and some men sat chatting with a
certain Hadji Mohammad. When it had grown dark, one of the men went out
of the house for something or other. A little while afterwards one of
the company thought he saw a stag's antlers standing out sharp and clear
against the bright evening sky. So Hadji Mohammad raised his gun and
fired. A minute or two afterwards back comes the man who had gone out,
and says he to Hadji Mohammad, "You shot at me and hit me. You must pay
me a fine." They searched him but found no wound on him anywhere. Then
they knew that he was a were-wolf who had turned himself into a stag and
had healed the bullet-wound by licking it. However, the bullet had found
its billet, for two days afterwards he was a dead man.[765]

[Were-wolves in the Egyptian Sudan.]

In Sennar, a province of the Egyptian Sudan, the Hammeg and Fungi enjoy
the reputation of being powerful magicians who can turn themselves into
hyaenas and in that guise scour the country at night, howling and
gorging themselves. But by day they are men again. It is very dangerous
to shoot at such human hyaenas by night. On the Jebel Bela mountain a
soldier once shot at a hyaena and hit it, but it dragged itself off,
bleeding, in the darkness and escaped. Next morning he followed up the
trail of blood and it led him straight to the hut of a man who was
everywhere known for a wizard. Nothing of the hyaena was to be seen, but
the man himself was laid up in the house with a fresh wound and died
soon afterwards. And the soldier did not long survive him.[766]

[The were-wolf story in Petronius.]

But the classical example of these stories is an old Roman tale told by
Petronius. It is put in the mouth of one Niceros. Late at night he left
the town to visit a friend of his, a widow, who lived at a farm five
miles down the road. He was accompanied by a soldier, who lodged in the
same house, a man of Herculean build. When they set out it was near
dawn, but the moon shone as bright as day. Passing through the outskirts
of the town, they came amongst the tombs, which lined the highroad for
some distance. There the soldier made an excuse for retiring behind a
monument, and Niceros sat down to wait for him, humming a tune and
counting the tombstones to pass the time. In a little he looked round
for his companion, and saw a sight which froze him with horror. The
soldier had stripped off his clothes to the last rag and laid them at
the side of the highway. Then he performed a certain ceremony over them,
and immediately was changed into a wolf, and ran howling into the
forest. When Niceros had recovered himself a little, he went to pick up
the clothes, but found that they were turned to stone. More dead than
alive, he drew his sword, and, striking at every shadow cast by the
tombstones on the moonlit road, he tottered to his friend's house. He
entered it like a ghost, to the surprise of the widow, who wondered to
see him abroad so late. "If you had only been here a little ago," said
she, "you might have been of some use. For a wolf came tearing into the
yard, scaring the cattle and bleeding them like a butcher. But he did
not get off so easily, for the servant speared him in the neck." After
hearing these words, Niceros felt that he could not close an eye, so he
hurried away home again. It was now broad daylight, but when he came to
the place where the clothes had been turned to stone, he found only a
pool of blood. He reached home, and there lay the soldier in bed like an
ox in the shambles, and the doctor was bandaging his neck. "Then I
knew," said Niceros, "that the man was a were-wolf, and never again
could I break bread with him, no, not if you had killed me for it."[767]

[Witches like were-wolves can temporarily transform themselves into
animals.]

These stories may help us to understand the custom of burning a
bewitched animal, which has been observed in our own country down to
recent times, if indeed it is even now extinct. For a close parallel may
be traced in some respects between witches and were-wolves. Like
were-wolves, witches are commonly supposed to be able to transform
themselves temporarily into animals for the purpose of playing their
mischievous pranks;[768] and like were-wolves they can in their animal
disguise be compelled to unmask themselves to any one who succeeds in
drawing their blood. In either case the animal-skin is conceived as a
cloak thrown round the wicked enchanter; and if you can only pierce the
skin, whether by the stab of a knife or the shot of a gun, you so rend
the disguise that the man or woman inside of it stands revealed in his
or her true colours. Strictly speaking, the stab should be given on the
brow or between the eyes in the case both of a witch and of a
were-wolf;[769] and it is vain to shoot at a were-wolf unless you have
had the bullet blessed in a chapel of St. Hubert or happen to be
carrying about you, without knowing it, a four-leaved clover; otherwise
the bullet will merely rebound from the were-wolf like water from a
duck's back.[770] However, in Armenia they say that the were-wolf, who
in that country is usually a woman, can be killed neither by shot nor by
steel; the only way of delivering the unhappy woman from her bondage is
to get hold of her wolf's skin and burn it; for that naturally prevents
her from turning into a wolf again. But it is not easy to find the skin,
for she is cunning enough to hide it by day.[771] So with witches, it is
not only useless but even dangerous to shoot at one of them when she has
turned herself into a hare; if you do, the gun may burst in your hand or
the shot come back and kill you. The only way to make quite sure of
hitting a witch-animal is to put a silver sixpence or a silver button in
your gun.[772] For example, it happened one evening that a native of the
island of Tiree was going home with a new gun, when he saw a black sheep
running towards him across the plain of Reef. Something about the
creature excited his suspicion, so he put a silver sixpence in his gun
and fired at it. Instantly the black sheep became a woman with a drugget
coat wrapt round her head. The man knew her quite well, for she was a
witch who had often persecuted him before in the shape of a cat.[773]

[Wounds inflicted on an animal into which a witch has transformed
herself are inflicted on the witch herself.]

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