Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/150

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Folk-Lore

her stand within the sacred circle and exclaims:

With this green nettle
And cross of metal
I witches and wierds defy;
O' warld's gear gi'e me nae mair
Than the luck back ta da kye.
Whae'er it be, else he or she,
Dat's hurtit me an' mine,
In sorrow may dey live an' dee,
In pörta may dey pine.”

Then, suiting the action to the word, she sets fire to the tinder, saying: “So perish all my foes.”

This wierd performance is now over, the nettles are collected, and the woman returns to her home in the small hours of the morning. The nettles are buried in the gulgraave o' da vyeаdie (open drain) of the byre. The noralegs are stuck into the byre wall near the vagil baand of the cow, and as both rotted and corroded, so the witch was supposed to be seized with some wasting disease.

Trows or hillfolk were supposed to be

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