Medica, I, 119. At the time of woman’s delivery also they smeared pitch upon the houses to keep out the demons (εἰς ἀπέλασιν τῶν δαιμόνων) who are wont to attack mothers at this period, which the patriarch, Photius, notes in his Lexicon (ninth century) when he discusses the word ῥάμνος. The Serbians to-day paint crosses with tar on the doors of houses and barns to guard them from vampires. On Walpurgis Night the Bohemian peasant never neglects to strew the grunsel of his cow-sheds and stables with hawthorn, branches of gooseberry bushes, and the briars of wild rose-trees so that the witches or vampires will get entangled amid the thorns and can force their way no further. The tar of the Serbian will glue them fast in like manner. It was formerly believed among the Scotch Highlanders, and the custom may yet linger that tar daubed on a door kept away the witches. The horse shoe, at any rate, is still commonly to be seen so affixed, not as in England for good luck, but with the very definite object of protecting the house against warlocks and witches. Alexander Burnes, Travels in Bokhara, 1834, I, p. 202, says: “Passing a gate of the city of Peshawur I observed it studded with horse-shoes, which are as superstitious emblems in this country as in remote Scotland.” The bawds of Amsterdam believed that a horse-shoe, which had either been found or stolen, placed on the chimney-hearth would bring many clients to their stew and keep away witches, say the author of Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam, 1687. “The horse-shoe,” writes William Henderson in his Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, London, 1866, “is said to owe its virtue chiefly to its shape. Any other object presenting two points or forks, even the spreading out of the two forefingers, is said to possess similar occult power, though not in so high a degree as the rowan wish-rod. In Spain and Italy forked pieces of coral are in high repute as witch-scarers. A crescent formed of two boars’ tusks is frequently appended to the necks of mules as a charm.” In many countries mountain ash (or rowan) is held to be most efficacious against witches and vampires. If an Irish housewife ties a sprig of rowan on the handle of the churn-dash when she is churning no witch can steal her butter. In a local ballad made on the case of Mary Butters, the Carnmoney witch, when in August, 1807, Alexander
