ou. If you give what she asks, she will go free; if you
refuse it, she will burn, and a mark will be on her body the next
day."[787] So, too, in Oldenburg, "the burning of things that are
bewitched or that have been received from witches is another way of
breaking the spell. It is often said that the burning should take place
at a cross-road, and in several places cross-roads are shewn where the
burning used to be performed.... As a rule, while the things are
burning, the guilty witches appear, though not always in their own
shape. At the burning of bewitched butter they often appear as
cockchafers and can be killed with impunity. Victuals received from
witches may be safely consumed if only you first burn a portion of
them."[788] For example, a young man in Oldenburg was wooing a girl, and
she gave him two fine apples as a gift. Not feeling any appetite at the
time, he put the apples in his pocket, and when he came home he laid
them by in a chest. Two or three days afterwards he remembered the
apples and went to the chest to fetch them. But when he would have put
his hand on them, what was his horror to find in their stead two fat
ugly toads in the chest. He hastened to a wise man and asked him what he
should do with the toads. The man told him to boil the toads alive, but
while he was doing so he must be sure on no account to lend anything out
of the house. Well, just as he had the toads in a pot on the fire and
the water began to grow nicely warm, who should come to the door but the
girl who had given him the apples, and she wished to borrow something;
but he refused to give her anything, rated her as a witch, and drove her
out of the house. A little afterwards in came the girl's mother and
begged with tears in her eyes for something or other; but he turned her
out also. The last word she said to him was that he should at least
spare her daughter's life; but he paid no heed to her and let the toads
boil till they fell to bits. Next day word came that the girl was
dead.[789] Can any reasonable man doubt that the witch herself was
boiled alive in the person of the toads?

[The burning alive of a supposed witch in Ireland in 1895.]

Moreover, just as a witch can assume the form of an animal, so she can
assume the form of some other human being, and the likeness is sometimes
so good that it is difficult to detect the fraud. However, by burning
alive the person whose shape the witch has put on, you force the witch
to dis