ned 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 in