by Anne Ross
17Callanish, Isle of Lewis — the chambered cairn is situated immediately beyond the great central pillar stone. After R. Feachem 1992, 48
While on the subject of witchcraft and magic practices to do harm to others, it may be apposite to note another tradition in the same vein recorded by Pennant. He states that milk may be taken from cattle by means other than the Evil Eye and in order to determine this the following test is recommended: ‘The tryal is made by immersing in milk a certain herb, and if the cows are supernaturally affected it instantly distills blood’. He then goes on to note magical revenge which an unsuccessful lover can work on his happy rival. The rejected lover ‘. . . takes three threads of different hues, and ties three knots on each, three times imprecating the most cruel disappointments on the nuptial bed: but the bridegroom to avert the harm, stands at the altar with an untied shoe and puts a sixpence beneath his foot’. The use of coloured threads in both black and white witchcraft was widespread in the Highlands, even until comparatively recent times, and much-believed in.
Shaw, writing in the late eighteenth century of customs in his part of the Highlands, records that witches and belief in their powers were commonplace and caused the church much alarm. Practices of this evil and pagan nature were in fact so prevalent in his day that every person over 12 years of age had to swear each year never to perform spells, enchantments or witchcraft of any kind. Witches were there, as elsewhere, believed to hold their meetings in churches and churchyards; they could turn themselves at will into mares (19), cats or hares. Their delight was to cause sickness and disease of every kind, raise storms at sea and drown their enemies, and turn the Evil Eye on whomsoever they envied or disliked. Martin Martin notes certain things about witches and others imbued with evil or anti-social powers. In the Islands in his day people believed that not only could the milk be taken from the cows by magic, but also from nursing mothers or wet-nurses. He himself saw four women whose milk was tested so that one might be chosen to act as nurse to a certain child. The woman with the best milk was selected but after three days her milk disappeared. As a result, she was dismissed from service and another woman chosen. The third day after that, the first nurse recovered her milk. It was locally concluded that the initial loss was brought about by the powers of witchcraft.
Other people were accredited with the ability to take away the substance of malt so that the drink made of malt so enchanted had no strength and no taste. The charmer, however, who was responsible, then brewed particularly good and potent ale. Martin himself knew a man who was without a single drop of good ale in his house for a whole year; he was always complaining about this and finally a local wise man told him to obtain some yeast from every alehouse in the parish. He got some from one particular man which he put amongst his wort and was able to make as good ale as could be found, and so the charm was defeated. Ale was, of course, the ancient drink of the Celts everywhere, and there are many stories told in the ancient and more recent tradition about it; according to the early Irish tradition it was the drink of the gods, the elixir dispensed to god and man alike at the Otherworld feast.
18Callanish, Isle of Lewis — oblique view of the circle, the lines of stones and the chambered cairn. After RCAHMS 1927, 25
19The Witches’ horse
Martin also heard many examples of the belief in the powers of certain people to take away the milk from cows by the powers of witchcraft. Various kinds of charms were employed in order to bring this about. The flow of milk was transferred to the witches’ own cows, or obtained in some other way; there is a large repertoire of very extraordinary tales told about this widely-held Highland belief. People maintained that milk, obtained by magic, did not produce the ordinary amount of butter; and also, that the curds of such milk were so tough and rubbery that they could not be made into good cheese; they were also unnaturally light in weight. It was held that butter taken away and mixed in with the charmer’s own butter could be detected because the two were different in colour. The charmed butter was paler than the other; if a woman was found to have butter of this kind she was immediately deemed guilty of having performed an act of witchcraft. The thing to do to remedy this state of affairs was to take a little rennet from the suspected charmer and place it in an egg-shell full of milk; unlike the ordinary blend of milk and rennet, the mixture would not curdle. Many people, even the most hardheaded, gave Martin examples of this and claimed to have experienced such a loss themselves. Charms were used to prevent these powers, and women often put the root of groundsel amongst their cream as an amulet.
Many examples of witchcraft and belief in the powers of certain people have been recorded in the nineteenth century; it is not a subject that people care to talk about very much, but sympathetic and skilful collectors could, and still do, manage to obtain very interesting first-hand information on the subject. One remarkable instance was recorded by the great collector Father Allan MacDonald and published in his invaluable notebook of Hebridean traditions. A man, a Campbell, was on his way to Mass one Sunday morning at Kildonan. Walking along the strand, he came upon a woman and her daughter engaged in ‘deilbh buidseachd’, ‘framing spells’, by crossing threads of various colours in a variety of ways in the same way as threads are arranged by weavers for the loom. He tore the structure to pieces and severely upbraided the women for their evil, and especially for performing it on the Sabbath. They begged him not to speak of what he had seen and said if he kept quiet about it no harm should come to him. However, when Mass was over, he told all the people what he had seen. When he was about to sail to the mainland a crow (20) perched on the mast, an evil omen, and as soon as the boat left the shore a terrible storm arose and he perished.
Witches could be encountered in human form, as in the episode above, but they could also be met with in the form of animals, the hare (21) being a frequent shape for metamorphosis. It was widely held that if arrows barbed with silver or muskets loaded with a silver coin were pointed at them, or the metal struck them, the creature would immediately regain human form, and stand, often wounded, to reveal itself as a woman known to and respected by the one who had shot her. I myself have lived in close proximity to witches whose homes I had been warned never to enter although these seemingly harmless beings were always eager to extend hospitality to the stranger or traveller. I have also heard in the Gaelic Islands numerous stories of their powers and the advisability of avoiding them. Apart from being accredited with taking the milk from the cattle and putting the Evil Eye upon those who had incurred their hostility, they had, as we have seen, the powers of taking on bird and animal form in order to destroy or damage their enemies. In some areas, as we have noted above, the hare was a popular shape for witches to adopt. I myself had an unnerving encounter with a hare when driving back to Killin on a wild winter’s night (or rather, at about three o’clock in the morning) when I was returning from interviewing a Glen Lyon shepherd, the late and much lamented Bob Bissett.
20The Witches’ crow
The road surface was extremely treacherous, with deep, water-filled potholes; the rain was falling heavily, and visibility was worsened by the long, white fingers of mist which constantly moved across the moor and in front of my windscreen. At one point my slow progress was abruptly halted when I became aware of a huge hare which was sitting right in the middle of the road and staring balefully at the car. The headlights revealed its size and its unusual character. I sounded my horn several times but the hare would not move. I began to feel afraid, especially considering the inimical nature of the countryside and the lateness of the hour. I slowly moved the car until it was almost touching the animal, which was not in any way disconcerted by the headlights, and I began to feel real terror. I was quite sure now that this was no ordinary animal, nor could I think of any way I could make it move. I stopped the car and the hare looked at me; I could see it clearly in between the swirling mists and the headlights glinting on the pools in the road. It was indeed an exceptionally large animal. I would not run it
down, so the only thing to do was to get out of the car and try to scare it off. I stood out in the driving rain and mist and the hare did not move. I suddenly remembered one method of dealing with witches: I had no gun, but I did find in my pocket a silver coin and this, in desperation I threw at the animal. It struck it on the shoulder and immediately the hare loped off into the darkness of the night. It was an experience that I shall never forget, nor have I been able, even now, to find a rational explanation for it, so I am not at all sure that it was not a witch — but who knows?
21The Witches’ hare
Another very sinister aspect of witchcraft was the making of a clay or wax effigy (corp creadha) of the person whom the witch desired to harm or destroy. Pins were stuck into this figure to the accompaniment of various incantations, and it was believed that the victim suffered agonising pain in the part of the body into which the pin was inserted. Death could be caused by sticking a pin into the region of the heart. A recent instance of this was told to the writer: the image — which in this case was not buried under the thatch of the victim’s house, as was frequently the practice, but placed under a lonely waterfall — was made by a jealous lover whose girl had preferred another suitor. When he had deposited the fetish under the overhanging rock in a lonely glen on a small island in the Hebrides, he returned home. Shortly afterwards his rival became ill. He fell into a decline and caused concern to all his friends. As he grew daily worse, some local boys noticed that, every evening, the jealous lover made off for the moor alone. They wondered what he was up to and decided to follow him. When he reached the stream, they hid and observed what he did. They saw him take some object from behind the waterfall, bend over it, and then replace it and set off for the township again. When he had disappeared they went to the spot and found the clay image, stuck over with pins. They took out every pin, using the correct words, and then destroyed the corp creadha. By the time they had returned home the sick man was already much improved, and his complete recovery was rapid thereafter.
Another story of this widespread and malicious practice was recorded in Perthshire, at Strathfillan. A minister there became afflicted with severe pains all over his body and fell into a wasting sickness. No doctor could discover the cause of his malaise. One morning, a woman from the far side of the river was on her way to call on the sick man and enquire after his health, when she observed another woman ahead of her whom she knew had a reputation in the locality for being a witch. Her suspicions were aroused, because it was still early morning, and she followed her. The alleged witch came to a hollow and there she buried something. The good woman dug this up when the other had gone and found it was a piece of wood stuck all over with pins. She at once took it to the Manse and revealed it, to the consternation of the witch, who was also visiting the sick man. As each pin was pulled out, the minister was instantly restored to health. It was also widely believed that no person lacking any limb could be affected by this evil form of magic; they must be completely whole in body.
Witches were believed to be capable of producing diseases in a variety of ways, apart from the use of the corp creadha. Campbell records how a young tailor, named Cumming, from Rannoch in Perthshire, fell into a wasting sickness. He told people that his terrible state was caused by witches who used to come to him at night and change him into a horse, on which they then proceeded to ride through the air to Edinburgh and back. In the morning he was completely exhausted. The belief that witches turned men into horses for their own purposes and rode them until they were almost dead is widespread, and has many variants.
Witches were disliked and feared in the Highlands and Islands and many counter-charms were made as protection against them, but the actual persecution of them stopped long ago. The last witch to die in Scotland was burned at Dornoch in Sutherland in 1722 for having allegedly transformed her own daughter into a horse and having her shod by the Devil. A method of transforming people into other shapes was to shake a bridle at them; and in some areas, death could be brought about, according to local belief, by accompanying this action by an incantation. One of the means of getting the milk from someone else’s cows was to ‘milk’ the slabhraidh or pot-chain — the chain which hung over the open fire and from which the great pot which boiled the water and cooked the food was suspended. Campbell records some extraordinary means whereby the stolen milk could be conveyed home by the witch. A native of Tiree took all the milk from the Laird of Coll’s cows. She had it in a piece of black seaweed, wrapped round her body. A man met with her and, guessing what she had been up to, cut the seaweed with a knife; immediately, all the milk flowed forth. Witches were believed to be capable of carrying away milk in a number of different ways, some seemingly quite ridiculous, for example in needles, dung-forks and so on. The powers of witches must be counteracted by protective measures. Juniper had strong apotropaic qualities; it must be gathered in a certain way, burned before the cattle and then a sprig placed in the animals’ tails as a charm against evil. In some instances a ball of hair — ronag — was put in the milk-pail on Lammas-day — on or about 1 August — in order to keep the substance in the milk for the rest of the year.
Stale urine was another powerful antidote for the Evil Eye and other malignant spells, and rowan, as always, more powerful than any other wood. It was believed widely that the handle of the churn should be made of rowan wood. Only a few years before Campbell wrote his book on witchcraft he recorded that in Islay a man used to have a rowan tree collar with which he habitually tied up his cow at night; and every time the cow went to the bull, her owner passed the rowan collar three times through the chimney crook (slabhraidh or pot-chain). On 1 May, Beltain, he decorated the whole house with sprigs of rowan. Campbell also notes an interesting tradition concerning a man from Craignish who habitually collected herbs with magic qualities on St Swithun’s Day and practised the magical arts with one foot on the chimney crook. This is reminiscent of the Old Irish Druidic spells which used to be chanted while the sorcerer went round a particular place or group of people on one foot (see 26, p97). Stallions were proof against witches, and no person riding a stallion could be harmed by this dread power. If all charms to return milk to a cow failed, some of the enchanted cow’s urine was placed in a well-corked bottle. The witch was then unable to pass water until she had restored the flow of milk to the beast. If pins were boiled in some of the milk of an afflicted cow until the vessel was dry, then the witch would appear and confess her guilt. In Skye it was apparently a custom to put the bull on top of the alleged witch’s house; this was sure to bring back the milk to the cows. The tradition of drawing blood from a witch, although known, seems not to have been much in vogue in the Highlands. One plant, amongst many to which magical powers were attributed, was the pearlwort (mothan); when this was put into the milk-pail, the good would gradually return to the milk. A piece of it inserted into the bull’s hoof at the time of mating ensured the milk from the future calf would be immune from the powers of witchcraft.
Amongst their many dread and sinister powers are those of raising storms at sea and causing death and suffering to those who navigated the treacherous waters of the Highland coasts. There are countless stories in the west of terrible events brought about by witches. The most famous witches in the western Islands for raising storms were the Lewis witches. They were also allegedly able to get the fish from the sea by magic. One episode, recorded by Campbell, tells how a Barra witch outwitted the other powerful witches of the islands, and took the whole catch to Castlebay. One witch used to disappear in human form from her home every night. This baffled her husband who eventually decided to follow her. To his amazement, she turned into a cat (22), and, in the name of the Devil, set out to sea in a sieve with seven other cats. The horrified man called upon the Trinity and instantly the sieve upturned and the witches were drowned. Eggshells were used as boats by witches; for this reason one must always pierce the bottom of an eggshell in order to prevent the witches from using it for this purpose.
