y far less
potent for mischief than when she is careering about the country in the
likeness of a cat, a hare, a horse, or what not. This principle is still
indeed clearly recognized by people in Oldenburg, though, as might be
expected, they do not now carry out the principle to its logical
conclusion by burning the bewitched animal or person alive; instead they
resort to a feeble and, it must be added, perfectly futile subterfuge
dictated by a mistaken humanity or a fear of the police. "When anything
living is bewitched in a house, for example, children or animals, they
burn or boil the nobler inwards of animals, especially the hearts, but
also the lungs or the liver. If animals have died, they take the inwards
of one of them or of an animal of the same kind slaughtered for the
purpose; but if that is not possible they take the inwards of a cock, by
preference a black one. The heart, lung, or liver is stuck all over with
needles, or marked with a cross cut, or placed on the fire in a tightly
closed vessel, strict silence being observed and doors and windows well
shut. When the heart boils or is reduced to ashes, the witch must
appear, for during the boiling she feels the burning pain. She either
begs to be released or seeks to borrow something, for example, salt or a
coal of fire, or she takes the lid off the pot, or tries to induce the
person whose spell is on her to speak. They say, too, that a woman comes
with a spinning-wheel. If it is a sheep that has died, you proceed in
the same way with a tripe from its stomach and prick it with needles
while it is on the boil. Instead of boiling it, some people nail the
heart to the highest rafter of the house, or lay it on the edge of the
hearth, in order that it may dry up, no doubt because the same thing
happens to the witch. We may conjecture that other sympathetic means of
destruction are employed against witchcraft. The following is expressly
reported: the heart of a calf that has died is stuck all over with
needles, enclosed in a bag, and thrown into flowing water before
sunset."[786]

[There is the same reason for burning bewitched things; similarly by
burning alive a person whose form a witch has assumed, you compel the
witch to disclose herself.]

And the same thing holds good also of inanimate objects on which a witch
has cast her spell. In Wales they say that "if a thing is bewitched,
burn it, and immediately afterwards the witch will come to borrow
something of y