Charms are usually made for some purpose in hand; amulets are intended to be worn or attached to the object to be protected, around the farms it was generally the cow, the cow byre or the milk churn.

There were rhymed spells, incantations and exhortations, as well as objects of flint, wood, etc. They were used as a protection against the abstraction, theft, loss of goodness or souring of milk, and to help in the tasks of milking and churning.

A commonly accepted belief was that witches could abstract milk from cows by a magical sort of “remote control.” A “cheyne-tether cast east and west, and south and north” was used for this purpose by Elspet Seith of Balmerino, in 1649. Early on Beltane morning too, the witches of Breadalbane would draw a hair rope along the dewy grass, saying in Gaelic: “milk of this one above, milk of this one below, into my own big pail.”

The fairies were also blamed for mischief about the milking sheds. At St. Andrews, in the 18th century, it was believed that if a burning coal was passed over the cow’s back and under her, immediately after the birth of her calf, she would be safe from “fairy milking.”

Rowan Tree twigs were sometimes placed in the byre to safeguard the milk, while at Perth a decorated and flanged axe found in 1830 was hung in a cow byre till 1877 “to make the cows yield well.”

In the early days, dairy farming was handicapped by ignorance of hygienic methods and superstition. Casualties, misfortunes and griefs, mainly due to the violation of natural laws, were attributed to the dreaded powers of the supernatural world. There is a tale of a farm wife who could never obtain butter, churn as she might, and who tried all sorts of magical remedies to get rid of “the evil eye” which she believed some of her neighbours had cast upon her cows.

In great distress she at last went to the parish minister, who patiently listened to her complaint. He expressed great sympathy, then wisely said: “It seems to me that the evil eye has been cast on your dishes and not your cows. Gang hame and tak’ your dishes down to the burn, and let them lie awhile in the running stream; then rub them well and dry with a clean clout. Tak’ them hame and fill each with boiling water. Pour it out and leave them aside to dry. The evil eye cannot withstand boiling water. Sca’d it out and ye’ll get butter.”

The farm wife followed this prescription, and later she came to thank the minister for this wonderful cure!

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