And the same thing holds good also of inanimate objects on which a witch has cast her spell.  In Wales they say that “if a thing is bewitched, burn it, and immediately afterwards the witch will come to borrow something of you.  If you give what she asks, she will go free; if you refuse it, she will burn, and a mark will be on her body the next day."[787] So, too, in Oldenburg, “the burning of things that are bewitched or that have been received from witches is another way of breaking the spell.  It is often said that the burning should take place at a cross-road, and in several places cross-roads are shewn where the burning used to be performed....  As a rule, while the things are burning, the guilty witches appear, though not always in their own shape.  At the burning of bewitched butter they often appear as cockchafers and can be killed with impunity.  Victuals received from witches may be safely consumed if only you first burn a portion of them."[788] For example, a young man in Oldenburg was wooing a girl, and she gave him two fine apples as a gift.  Not feeling any appetite at the time, he put the apples in his pocket, and when he came home he laid them by in a chest.  Two or three days afterwards he remembered the apples and went to the chest to fetch them.  But when he would have put his hand on them, what was his horror to find in their stead two fat ugly toads in the chest.  He hastened to a wise man and asked him what he should do with the toads.  The man told him to boil the toads alive, but while he was doing so he must be sure on no account to lend anything out of the house.  Well, just as he had the toads in a pot on the fire and the water began to grow nicely warm, who should come to the door but the girl who had given him the apples, and she wished to borrow something; but he refused to give her anything, rated her as a witch, and drove her out of the house.  A little afterwards in came the girl’s mother and begged with tears in her eyes for something or other; but he turned her out also.  The last word she said to him was that he should at least spare her daughter’s life; but he paid no heed to her and let the toads boil till they fell to bits.  Next day word came that the girl was dead.[789] Can any reasonable man doubt that the witch herself was boiled alive in the person of the toads?

[The burning alive of a supposed witch in Ireland in 1895.]

Moreover, just as a witch can assume the form of an animal, so she can assume the form of some other human being, and the likeness is sometimes so good that it is difficult to detect the fraud.  However, by burning alive the person whose shape the witch has put on, you force the witch to disclose herself, just as by burning alive the bewitched animal you in like manner oblige the witch to appear.  This principle may perhaps be unknown to science, falsely so called, but it is well understood in Ireland and has been acted on within recent years.  In March 1895 a peasant named Michael Cleary, residing at Ballyvadlea,