the knee, and hung over the fire-place in the kitchen.  It was thought sufficient by some if they were placed over the door of the byre, in the ‘crap o’ the wa’.’  Sometimes the heart and part of the liver and lungs were cut out, and hung over the fireplace instead of the fore-feet.  Boiling them was at times substituted for hanging them over the hearth.”  Compare W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (London, 1879), p. 167:  “A curious aid to the rearing of cattle came lately to the knowledge of Mr. George Walker, a gentleman of the city of Durham.  During an excursion of a few miles into the country, he observed a sort of rigging attached to the chimney of a farmhouse well known to him, and asked what it meant.  The good wife told him that they had experienced great difficulty that year in rearing their calves; the poor little creatures all died off, so they had taken the leg and thigh of one of the dead calves, and hung it in a chimney by a rope, since which they had not lost another calf.”  In the light of facts cited below (pp. 315 sqq.) we may conjecture that the intention of cutting off the legs or cutting out the heart, liver, and lungs of the animals and hanging them up or boiling them, is by means of homoeopathic magic to inflict corresponding injuries on the witch who cast the fatal spell on the cattle.

[737] The Mirror, 24th June, 1826, quoted by J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England (London, 1849), i. 360 note 2.

[738] Leland L. Duncan, “Fairy Beliefs and other Folklore Notes from County Leitrim,” Folk-lore, vii. (1896) pp. 181 sq.

[739] (Sir) Edward B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, Third Edition (London, 1878), pp. 237 sqq.; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 207 sqq.

[740] For some examples of such extinctions, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 261 sqq., 267 sq.; Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 311, ii. 73 sq.; and above, pp. 124 sq., 132-139.  The reasons for extinguishing fires ceremonially appear to vary with the occasion.  Sometimes the motive seems to be a fear of burning or at least singeing a ghost, who is hovering invisible in the air; sometimes it is apparently an idea that a fire is old and tired with burning so long, and that it must be relieved of the fatiguing duty by a young and vigorous flame.

[741] Above, pp. 147, 154.  The same custom appears to have been observed in Ireland.  See above, p. 158.

[742] J.N.B.  Hewitt, “New Fire among the Iroquois,” The American Anthropologist, ii. (1889) p. 319.

[743] J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,*[4] i. 507.

[744] See above, p. 290.

[745] William Hone, Every-day Book (London, preface dated 1827), i. coll. 853 sq. (June 24th), quoting Hitchin’s History of Cornwall.