erious volume called "The
Girl's Own Book," and which, as I can depose, has often power to tickle
children. It is this:

"Bandy-legged Borachio Mustachio Whiskerifusticus, the bald and brave
Bombardino of Bagdad, helped Abomilique Bluebeard Bashaw of Babelmandel
beat down an abominable bumblebee at Balsora."

But to the other witches. Their charms were repeated sometimes in their
own language and sometimes in gibberish. When the Scotch witches wanted
to fly away to their "Witches' Sabbath," they straddled a broom-handle,
a corn stalk, a straw, or a rush, and cried out "Horse and hattock, in
the Devil's name!" and immediately away they flew, "forty times as high
as the moon," if they wished. Some English witches in Somersetshire used
instead to say, "Thout, tout, throughout and about;" and when they
wished to return from their meeting they said "Rentum, tormentum!" If
this form of the charm does not manufacture a horse, not even a
saw-horse, then I recommend another version of it, thus:

"Horse and pattock, horse and go!
Horse and pellats, ho, ho, ho!"

German witches said (in High Dutch:)

"Up and away!
Hi! Up aloft, and nowhere stay!"

Scotch witches had modes of working destruction to the persons or
property of those to whom they meant evil, which were strikingly like
the negro obeah or mandinga. One of these was, to make a hash of the
flesh of an unbaptised child, with that of dogs and sheep, and to put
this goodly dish in the house of the victim, reciting the following
rhyme:

"We put this untill this hame
In our Lord the Devil's name;
The first hands that handle thee.
Burned and scalded may they be!
We will destroy houses and hald,
With the sheep and nolt (_i. e._ cattle) into the fauld;
And little shall come to the fore (_i. e._ remain,)
Of all the rest of the little store."

Another, used to destroy the sons of a certain gentleman named Gordon
was, to make images for the boys, of clay and paste, and put them in a
fire, saying:

"We put this water among this meal
For long pining and ill heal,
We put it into the fire
To burn them up stock and stour (_i. e._ stack and band.)
That they be burned with our will,
Like any stikkle (stubble) in a kiln."

In case any lady reader finds herself changed into a hare, let her
remember how the witch Isobel Gowdie changed herself from hare back to
woman. It was by repeating:

"Hare, hare, God send thee care!
I am in a