me sort of thing is often reported in Lincolnshire. "One night,"
said a servant from Kirton Lindsey, "my father and brother saw a cat in
front of them. Father knew it was a witch, and took a stone and hammered
it. Next day the witch had her face all tied up, and shortly afterwards
died." Again, a Bardney bumpkin told how a witch in his neighbourhood
could take all sorts of shapes. One night a man shot a hare, and when he
went to the witch's house he found her plastering a wound just where he
had shot the hare.[778] So in County Leitrim, in Ireland, they say that
a hare pursued by dogs fled to a house near at hand, but just as it was
bolting in at the door one of the dogs came up with it and nipped a
piece out of its leg. The hunters entered the house and found no hare
there but only an old woman, and her side was bleeding; so they knew
what to think of her.[779]

[Wounded witches in the Vosges.]

Again, in the Vosges Mountains a great big hare used to come out every
evening to take the air at the foot of the Mont des Fourches. All the
sportsmen of the neighbourhood tried their hands on that hare for a
month, but not one of them could hit it. At last one marksman, more
knowing than the rest, loaded his gun with some pellets of a consecrated
wafer in addition to the usual pellets of lead. That did the trick. If
puss was not killed outright, she was badly hurt, and limped away
uttering shrieks and curses in a human voice. Later it transpired that
she was no other than the witch of a neighbouring village who had the
power of putting on the shape of any animal she pleased.[780] Again, a
hunter of Travexin, in the Vosges, fired at a hare and almost shot away
one of its hind legs. Nevertheless the creature contrived to escape into
a cottage through the open door. Immediately a child's cries were heard
to proceed from the cottage, and the hunter could distinguish these
words, "Daddy, daddy, come quick! Poor mammy has her leg broken."[781]

[Wounded witches in Swabia.]

In Swabia the witches are liable to accidents of the same sort when they
go about their business in the form of animals. For example, there was a
soldier who was betrothed to a young woman and used to visit her every
evening when he was off duty. But one evening the girl told him that he
must not come to the house on Friday nights, because it was never
convenient to her to see him then. This roused his suspicion, and the
very next Friday night he set out to go