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Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 14

A Sprig Of Rowan

(Specially written jor “The Press”

DERRICK ROONEY)

Rowan-tree a»d red thread Make the witches lose their speed Is a rhyme reported from all over Scotland and dating from the days when witches were about as common as elderberries and the most potent weapon against them was the rowan tree, or mountain ash.

Highlanders carried sprigs of rowan in their pockets, or laid them across their doorways. Among fishermen, too, it had a good reputation, and when fishing boats were rigged with sails a pin made of it was invariably used to fasten the halyard.

When cattle fell ill or malt failed to produce the expected quantity of spirits sprigs of rowan were the sovereign remedies.

Some people made profitable businesses of gathering and selling these sprigs; the “Literary and Statistical Magazine” of Scotland reported in 1819 the case of an old herbalist who, “during the course of a long practice, sold mountain-ash sprigs, accompanied with proper prescriptions, for such sums that his son was reputed rich aqd his grandson is now a landed proprietor.” Witches were once believed to have the power of obtaining milk from their neighbours’ cattle by a simple and insidious process: a witch would take a hair from the tail of each cow, twist them into a rope and tie a knot for each

by

cow. Then, tugging the rope as if milking a cow, she would mutter the following incantation while the milk streamed into her pail:

Mare’s milk and deer’* milk. .And every beast that bears milk Between St. Johnstone and Dundee, Come a to me. come a' to me. Some cows, of course, were uncommonly sagacious and could give warning of the theft by lowing. The antidote was to lay a twig of rowan, bound with a scarlet thread, across the threshold of the byre or to fix a stalk of clover, with four leaves to the stall.

To discover the identity of the witch the best method was to place a pair of the goodman's breeks over the cow’s horns, one leg on each horn; whereupon the cow, set loose, would head straight to the guilty party’s door. The rowan, by the way, has practical as well as supernatural uses; in parts of Britain its bright scarlet berries, which appear in early autumn, are used for making jam.