Northern mythology

64 NORTH GERMAN TRADITIONS.
For when in studious mood he paced
St. Andrew's cloister'd hall,
Ills form no darkening shadow traced
Upon the sunny wall.
DEVIL AGAINST DEVIL.
A cross painted on the principal door of the house is a
safeguard against witches ; it is also good to have in the
house a wafer that has been purloined at
If cattle is
the communion.
bewitched and no butter can be produced, the
cows, churns and pails must in the evening be silentlysmoked.
The witch will then usually come and ask admission,
but no one may be let in, how^ever hard they
may knock at the door.
At a house in Wilster a child was sick. A cunning
woman said there was some sorcery in the case, and that
the child must be smoked at twelve o^clock at night,
every door being closed. The person that had bewitched
it w^ould then come, when blood must be draw^n from him
or her on a cloth, and the cloth bui-nt. At the hour specified
every door w^as carefully closed ; before the window s,
and reaching almost to the top, sheets w^ere hung, all
precisely as the cunning w oman had directed.
But the
house had wdndow- shutters after the old fashion, made to
turn up, so that under eveiy window they hung like a sort
of flap, on which, when not turned up, a person might
contrive to stand and look through the window\ And so
it was here ; for wMe they were smoking the child, and
before it had struck twelve, the witch suddenly peeped
over the sheet into the room. On seeing her, the man
rushed out, struck her in the face, and received the blood
on a cloth, which being burnt, the child recovered.
In the neighbourhood of Biisum there dwelt a wealthy
peasant, who had an only daughter whom he tenderly