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 stook 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 hare’s likeness now;
But I shall be woman even now—
Hare, hare, God send thee care!”
