people who
believed such things must have lived in a continual state of fear. And
in many instances this was really the case; but the common result was
not so, for fortunately the bane and antidote were generally found
together, and the means for preventing or exorcising these devil-imposed
evils were about as numerous as the evils themselves. I have already in
a former chapter mentioned incidentally some of these charms and
preventives, but as this incidental treatment cannot possibly cover the
field, I shall here speak of them separately.

Tennant, in his _Tour through Scotland_, states that farmers placed
boughs of the mountain ash in their cow-houses on the second day of May
to protect their cows from evil influences. The rowan tree possessed a
wonderful influence against all evil machinations of witchcraft. A staff
made of this tree laid above the boothy or milk-house preserved the milk
from witch influence. A churn-staff made of this wood secured the butter
during the process of churning. So late as 1860 I have seen the rowan
tree trained in the form of an arch over the byre door, and in another
case over the gate of the farmyard, as a protection to the cows. It was
also believed that a rowan tree growing in a field protected the cattle
against being struck by lightning.

Mr. Train describes the action of a careful farmer's wife or dairymaid
thus:--

"Lest witches should obtain the power
Of Hawkie's milk in evil hour,
She winds a red thread round her horn,
And milks thro' row'n tree night and morn;
Against the blink of evil eye
She knows each andidote to ply."

The same author, writing in 1814, says:--"I am acquainted myself with an
Anti-Burgher clergyman who actually procured from a person who pretended
to such skill in these charms two small pieces of carved wood, to be
kept in his father's cow-house as a security for the health of his
cows." The belief in the potency of the rowan tree to ward off evil is
no doubt a survival of ancient tree worship. Of this worship, the Rev.
F.W. Farrar says:--"It may be traced from the interior of Africa, not
only in Egypt and Arabia, but also onwards uninterruptedly into
Palestine and Syria, Assyria, Persia, India, Thibet, Siam, the
Philippine Islands, China, Japan, and Siberia; also westward into Asia
Minor, Greece, Italy, and other countries; and in most of the countries
here named it obtains at the present day, combined, as it has been, in
othe