for mischief may be hardly, if at all, impaired by the grilling.  We can now see that in such matters half-measures are useless.  To kill the animal first and burn it afterwards is a weak compromise, dictated no doubt by a well-meant but utterly mistaken kindness; it is like shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen, for obviously by leaving the animal’s, and therefore the witch’s, body nearly intact at the moment of death, it allows her soul to escape and return safe and sound to her own human body, which all the time is probably lying quietly at home in bed.  And the same train of reasoning that justifies the burning alive of bewitched animals justifies and indeed requires the burning alive of the witches themselves; it is really the only way of destroying them, body and soul, and therefore of thoroughly extirpating the whole infernal crew.

[Practice of burning cattle and sheep as sacrifices in the Isle of Man.]

In the Isle of Man the practice of burning cattle alive in order to stop a murrain seems to have persisted down to a time within living memory.  On this subject I will quote the evidence collected by Sir John Rhys:  “A respectable farmer from Andreas told me that he was driving with his wife to the neighbouring parish of Jurby some years ago, and that on the way they beheld the carcase of a cow or an ox burning in a field, with a woman engaged in stirring the fire.  On reaching the village to which they were going, they found that the burning beast belonged to a farmer whom they knew.  They were further told it was no wonder that the said farmer had one of his cattle burnt, as several of them had recently died.  Whether this was a case of sacrifice or not I cannot say.  But let me give you another instance:  a man whom I have already mentioned, saw at a farm nearer the centre of the island a live calf being burnt.  The owner bears an English name, but his family has long been settled in Man.  The farmer’s explanation to my informant was that the calf was burnt to secure luck for the rest of the herd, some of which were threatening to die.  My informant thought there was absolutely nothing the matter with them, except that they had too little to eat.  Be that as it may, the one calf was sacrificed as a burnt-offering to secure luck for the rest of the cattle.  Let me here also quote Mr. Moore’s note in his Manx Surnames, p. 184, on the place name Cabbal yn Oural Losht, or the Chapel of the Burnt Sacrifice.  ‘This name,’ he says, ’records a circumstance which took place in the nineteenth century, but which, it is to be hoped, was never customary in the Isle of Man.  A farmer, who had lost a number of his sheep and cattle by murrain, burned a calf as a propitiatory offering to the Deity on this spot, where a chapel was afterwards built.  Hence the name.’  Particulars, I may say, of time, place, and person could be easily added to Mr. Moore’s statement, excepting, perhaps as to the deity in question; on that point I have