Witchcraft and belief in Early Modern Scotland – Page 8
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J. Goodare, L. Martin, J. Miller – 2007 – Preview – More editions
‘Now that witches inhabit near this Lough of Pitloil, I am of opinion, provided there be any. But whether there be or be not such mortal demons, I suspend my judgment.’ He recounted an ‘adventure’ in which a local woman’s dog attacked one of Franck’s but was then set upon by another of his dogs, whereupon ‘the hag … was heard to express unsavory words, very diabolical, with charms and threats; besides various antick gestures and postures, both with her head and body; that at …
Materials for the Study of Russian Folklore – Page 31
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Linda J. Ivanits – 1978 – Snippet view
Another widely prevalent be i ief concerned the ability of witches to transform themselves and turn people into animals: into a pig, a magpie, a toad, a dog, a cat and so forth. People thought that witches, like sorcerers, caused various injuries to people, the harvest, and livestock. They send a “spoiling” or a craze, separate spouses, cause hall, etc. The most common occupation of a witch is the milking dry of someone else’s cows. Various methods of this were indicated: according to the …
The Songs of the Russian People: As Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and …
By William Ralston Shedden Ralston
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Ever since that time the metamorphosed bride has flown about seeking for and lamenting her lost bridegroom, and moistening the hedges with the “Cuckoo’s tears,” which we less poetically style “Cuckoo’s spittle.”
In order to produce such an effect as this on a wedding party, the hostile wizard, it is generally believed, must girdle each member of it with a leather strap or piece of bast, over which unholy spells have been whispered. According to a Ruthenian story, however, a witch once gained her end by simply rolling up her girdle, and hiding it beneath the threshold of the cottage in which the wedding festivities were being held. Every one who stepped across it immediately became a wolf. In order to effect the cure of an involuntary werewolf, it is necessary either to strip off his hide, or to remove the magic girdle or other amulet which has reduced him into his brute state. In one of the Russian stories a black dog behaves in so reasonable a manner, that the people to whom it has attached itself take it to a wizard for relief. Acting upon his advice, they heat a bath as hot as possible, and scald the dog’s skin off. No sooner is this done than the dog turns into a young man belonging to a neighbouring village, whom an old sorceress had bewitched4.
Witches and wizards constantly metamorphose people by the touch of a magic wand, stick, or whip. Sometimes, however, even this is not essential. In Ruthenia, at least, it is believed that a wizard, if he only knows a man’s baptismal name, can transform him by a mere effort of will, and therefore a man should conceal his real name, and answer to a fictitious one. Such a power as this is supposed by the Russian peasantry to have been employed upon one occasion by the Apostles Peter and Paul. As they were passing over a bridge one day, “a bad woman and her husband,” who had agreed to frighten the holy travellers, and had dressed themselves up in sheepskins turned inside out, ran at them, roaring like bears. “Then the Apostles said, ‘Go on roaring from this time forward and for ever!’ and at that very instant the mockers were turned into bears5.”
4 Afsmasief, P. V. S. III. 549—553.
More terrible even than the werewolf, but closely connected with him, as well as with the wizard and the witch, is the dreaded Vampire. It is in the Ukraine and in White-Russia—so far as the Russian Empire is concerned—that traditions are most rife about this ghastly creation of morbid fancy. There vampires are supposed to be such dead persons as in their lifetime were wizards, witches, and werewolves; or people who became outcasts from the Chureh and its rites, by committing suicide, for instance, or by drinking themselves to death j or heretics and apostates, or victims of a parental curse. The LittleRussians, on the other hand, attribute the birth of a vampire to an unholy union between a witch and a werewolf or a devil.
The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and …
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William Francis Ryan – 1999 – Preview – More editions
… in l738 a landowner suspected of witcheraft was beaten and burned to death; a woman under torture admitted to turning herself imo a goat or a dog and killing people by invoking spirits; in l770 a Turk was dipped in tar and burned to death; … witcheraft. and not legal process. which led to the killings.l23 This kind of witch-buming, especially in rural areas. cominued in the nineteemh cemury, in Russia as elsewhere in Europe.t-‘4 Sometimes quasi-judicial assemblies at local levels …
Witchcraft and belief in Early Modern Scotland – Page 8
https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=023059140X
J. Goodare, L. Martin, J. Miller – 2007 – Preview – More editions
‘Now that witches inhabit near this Lough of Pitloil, I am of opinion, provided there be any. But whether there be or be not such mortal demons, I suspend my judgment.’ He recounted an ‘adventure’ in which a local woman’s dog attacked one of Franck’s but was then set upon by another of his dogs, whereupon ‘the hag … was heard to express unsavory words, very diabolical, with charms and threats; besides various antick gestures and postures, both with her head and body; that at …
Russian Folk Belief – Page 83
https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0765630885
Linda J. Ivanits – 1989 – Preview – More editions
Numerous judicial documents, newspaper reports, and ethnographic materials paint a vivid picture of this facet of Russian village life and testify that scenes of mass hysteria and mob violence were not uncommon. For example, from Nizhnii Novgorod Province in 1848 comes an eyewitness account of an entire village’s frenzied pursuit of a multicolored dog believed to be the transformation of a witch responsible for cholera.2 In 1879 in Tikhvin District of Novgorod Province villagers …
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