One favourite way of counteracting the spells of a witch is to draw blood from her
- Date of account
- Second edition published 1896
- Source
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2)
- Reference
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2) · selected passage 173
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
One favourite way of counteracting the spells of a witch is to draw blood from her
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyOne favourite way of counteracting the spells of a witch is to draw blood from her. Thus, Professor Rhys, writing of Manxland, says: "There is a belief that if you can draw blood, however little, from a witch or one who has the Evil Eye, he loses his power of harming you; and I have been told that formerly this belief was sometimes acted on. Thus, on leaving church, for instance, the man who fancied himself in danger from another would go up to him, or walk by his side, and inflict on him a slight scratch or some other trivial wound, which elicited blood." [775] In the First Part of "Henry VI." Talbot says to the Pucelle de Orleans,--
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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