34 WOMAN AS WITCH 



it comes about that the bride must propitiate the 

 goddess or her servant. Newly -married couples in 

 Esthonia, one of the Eussian Baltic provinces, carry an 

 offering to the great water-mother in the shape of a 

 goat ; in Bohemia and other parts of Austria the bride 

 sacrifices a cock ; in England the bride had to anoint 

 the threshold of the door, or smear the door-posts with 

 swine's grease to avoid the " mischievous fascinations of 

 witches." This must be compared with the blood of a 

 black dog which was smeared on the door-posts to pro- 

 tect the house from witches, much as the blood of a 

 lamb was smeared by the Jews at Passover. In Bran- 

 denburg the bride carries salt and dill to prevent the 

 witches injuring her. In North Germany salt and dill 

 are also used to protect newly -built bridges against 

 witches. This is the more noteworthy as Tacitus tells 

 us that the German priestesses prepared salt, and 

 witches are famed for brewing salt and collecting herbs. 

 There is no doubt that the salt and the dill were 

 symbols of a goddess, types of the discoveries due to 

 woman's work in the old mother-age civilisation, and 

 as such symbols they consecrated both bridge and bride 

 to the goddess, and saved them from the anger of her 

 priestesses, as the blood of the sheep saved from, the 

 anger of Jehovah. 



If my general theory be at all a correct one, we 

 ought to find in witchcraft fossils of the old law of 

 inheritance peculiar to the mother-age, and something 

 akin to this we do find. In the Eheinthal we hear of 

 uralte Hexensippe families where from time imme- 

 morial witchcraft has been handed down from mother 



