Which Witch Done Did It?

Some Old-Timey Thoughts on Witches

Today when one hears the word “witch” it may conjure images of a green faced Margaret Hamilton commanding her flying monkeys or perhaps the “weird sisters” of Shakespeare’s MacBeth. It wasn't that far back in history that a belief in malevolent witches and methods to remedy such were commonplace. In our day and age folks don't generally cast aspersions of using “dark arts” on another when beset with some difficulty, yet a century ago many ills were believed supernatural in origin. Sit back and enjoy few folk beliefs in keeping with the Halloween season regarding witches and witch masters.

Witches in the Dairy

Animal husbandry has come a long way in the Ozarks. Today we understand why a cow goes dry or gives bloody milk, a quick google search and perhaps a call to a local veterinarian can clear up a whole host of issues that in the past were often attributed to sorcery. Folk beliefs like witchcraft tend to flourish when a better answer is not available. In the hardscrabble Ozarks, with a family to feed, a dry, sick or dying cow was a disaster. Today, too far removed from starvation, we may scoff, –a tad indignantly perhaps– but magic was very real to these people, as was the fear of the people who could “do things”.

The witch’s incentive for casting such a spell wasn't to hurt the cow but rather to steal the milk. People in the neighborhood who possessed butter and cheese but didn't own a cow, usually fell under suspicion as it was assumed they acquired these by some magical means. Witches cannot conjure the cows without gaining access to the barn, or without getting something as a loan or a gift from the owner of the cow. Several methods exist to keep witches out of your barn, one such charm is a SATOR ROTAS square, a two dimensional latin palindrome, which is to be placed above the door the cows use, thus preventing evil from entering the barn.

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Should a witch happen to gain control of your milk cow, it may become wild and grow thin, but most of all you will notice a lack of milk, or the presence of blood while other times it may be unchurnable, implying only the cream has been stolen. In Ozark Magic and Folklore, Randolph tells the story of, “...two young women who lived alone on a nearby farm. They owned no cattle and were never seen to do any milking but always had plenty of butter and homemade cheese. Finally a farmhand peeked in at their window and later swore that he saw these girls hang a dishcloth on the pot rack, and squeeze several gallons of milk out of it. Turning about he looked at the cows in the neighbors pasture and saw their udders were gradually decreasing in size.” Another common story that circulated the frontier involved milking an axe handle. When the family needs milk, one must take a dishcloth and an axe outdoors to the north side of the cabin. There, drape the dishrag over the end of one log and sink the axe into the endgrain securely holding it, which is twisted and wrapped around the handle above a waiting bucket. The witch then works the end like the teat of a cow and fills the bucket. This belief is Germanic in origin and at least 500 years old as evidenced by a woodcut depicting such a scene from 1517. In certain parts of the country, it is claimed this conjure method for stealing milk continued well into the twentieth century.

In order to break the spell, you must redirect the magic back upon the caster. In the case of milk that is bloody or won't churn; one simply gets an iron kettle and builds a roaring fire under it. When that kettle is red hot, pour the witched milk in with a written prayer or a silver .50 cent piece bearing “In God We Trust”, a magical guide of the time suggests adding scrapings from the skull of a criminal, which should kill the witch outright! As the milk boils away, the witch's power wanes and she gets literally burned or scalded by this magical reversal. Should one wish to inflict additional pain and torment, you can get a switch or a thorny briar and whip the boiling milk, in effect whipping the witch. Many tales of this type end with the maimed witch showing up at your house to borrow or ask for something. You must refuse, thus forever breaking her power over you and your cows.

In some cases witches conjure the churn, in effect stealing butter. Randolph writes, “One day they churned and churned with no result, so the housewife took a hot horseshoe from the oven, where it was kept to drive hawks away from the chickens, and dropped it into the churn. The butter came instantly, and a moment later they heard loud screams from a shanty across the road. They rushed over and found an old woman badly burned. She said she had fallen in the fireplace, but the burn looked as if it had been made by a hot horseshoe.”

To Kill a Witch

Many times in the hills long running feuds for a generation or more are laced with violence and sometimes murder. In the most isolated sections of the Ozarks these feuds weren’t only continued with revolvers and knives but spilled over into the magical as well. In this environment unexplained illnesses and accidents were looked upon with suspicion, as these occurrences may have been “witched” on the family by an enemy, particularly if the opposing clan had a relative who could “do things”. In a serious time such as this, one might seek the counsel of a witch master.

The witch master was a professional who was capable of matching magic and breaking whatever spell beset the family. He also intended to kill or at the very least maim the witch in the process.

The most common method of the last two centuries involved shooting the witch with a silver bullet, preferably one molded when the new moon is on a Friday and stored for sometime in a human skull; as every hillman knows bullets fashioned and stored in this manner are far more deadly than store bought ones. The real question becomes, who exactly is the witch? If one cannot figure it out this may need to be repeated multiple times. One such method, eliminates all doubt by drawing the witch to you where she can be easily dispatched. In order for this to work, one must go to the woods and kick up a big ring of leaves and debris, fifty feet or more wide, then at midnight, set fire to it and wait. Through some magical means the witch will be forced to appear inside the ring allowing a good clean shot. Many stories abound of unwitting strangers seeing the woods on fire blundering into one of these “witch rings” and doing some quick talking in order to not get a silver bullet in the ribs.

In another method the witch master shoots the witch in absentia. Generally he takes a board and draws a figure of the witch in charcoal, if he knows her name he writes it on there too -so there can be no error. He then loads his witch rifle, this is a special rifle with built in charms to increase its potency. Then with a measure of powder, a prayer written on paper and a silver rifle ball, he loads up and takes aim at the rude drawing on the board. BLAM! the old witch rifle goes off! As the smoke clears, there exist some differences of opinion as to what to expect. Many times when the magical bullet hits the drawing of the witch in the vitals it will kill her, many times witnesses claimed that after such a process the board would bleed verifying a fatal shot. Another older school of thought assumes that the witchmaster conjures the witch into the drawing on the board where she is in plain sight, and when he shoots, the magical bullet finds the witch wherever she might be even if it's miles away. In this case if the bullet hits the board it's a sure sign he missed and must repeat the process.

Next week: Local Ghost Tales and Stories

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Contact Champ by emailing news@marshfieldmail.com.