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The Celtic Art Coracle Volume 1 Issue 7
The Lytchett Heath Game - John Bartlett

This is certainly a strange game; its source is the form-changing rhyme of the witch. Margaret Murray refers to it in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and in The God of the Witches. Isobel Gowdie of Auldearne, burnt as a witch in 1662, gave the formula for the transformation to a hare as follows:

I sall goe intill ane haire
With sorrow, and sych and meikle caire;
And I sall goe in the Divellis nam
Ay quill I com hom againe.
(I shall go into a hare
With sorrow and sighing and mickle care;
And I shall go in the Devil's name
Aye, till I come home again.)

for a cat:

I sall goe intill ane catt
With sorrow, and sych and a blak shot...

and for a crow:

I sall goe intill a craw
With sorrow, and sych, and a blak thraw.
(Murray, Witch-Cult, p. 166)

 

Copyright © John Bartlett 1983
 

The Celtic Art Coracle Vol 1
Contents © Coracle Press 1983
ISSN 0828-8321 
All Rights Reserved
10.02.01edition
coracle@thecoracle.tripod.com

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