had herself endeavoured to check the progress of the distemper by taking “ane quik ox with ane catt, and ane grit quantitie of salt,” and proceeding “to burie the ox and catt quik with the salt, in ane deip hoill in the grund, as ane sacrifice to the devill, that the rest of the guidis might be fred of the seiknes or diseases."[792] Writing towards the end of the eighteenth century, John Ramsay of Ochtertyre tells us that “the violent death even of a brute is in some cases held to be of great avail.  There is a disease called the black spauld, which sometimes rages like a pestilence among black cattle, the symptoms of which are a mortification in the legs and a corruption of the mass of blood.  Among the other engines of superstition that are directed against this fatal malady, the first cow seized with it is commonly buried alive, and the other cattle are forced to pass backwards and forwards over the pit.  At other times the heart is taken out of the beast alive, and then the carcass is buried.  It is remarkable that the leg affected is cut off, and hung up in some part of the house or byre, where it remains suspended, notwithstanding the seeming danger of infection.  There is hardly a house in Mull where these may not be seen.  This practice seems to have taken its rise antecedent to Christianity, as it reminds us of the pagan custom of hanging up offerings in their temples.  In Breadalbane, when a cow is observed to have symptoms of madness, there is recourse had to a peculiar process.  They tie the legs of the mad creature, and throw her into a pit dug at the door of the fold.  After covering the hole with earth, a large fire is kindled upon it; and the rest of the cattle are driven out, and forced to pass through the fire one by one."[793] In this latter custom we may suspect that the fire kindled on the grave of the buried cow was originally made by the friction of wood, in other words, that it was a need-fire.  Again, writing in the year 1862, Sir Arthur Mitchell tells us that “for the cure of the murrain in cattle, one of the herd is still sacrificed for the good of the whole.  This is done by burying it alive.  I am assured that within the last ten years such a barbarism occurred in the county of Moray."[794]

[Calves killed and buried to save the rest of the herd.]

Sometimes, however, the animal has not even been buried alive, it has been merely killed and then buried.  In this emasculated form the sacrifice, we may say with confidence, is absolutely useless for the purpose of stopping a murrain.  Nevertheless, it has been tried.  Thus in Lincolnshire, when the cattle plague was so prevalent in 1866, there was, I believe, not a single cowshed in Marshland but had its wicken cross over the door; and other charms more powerful than this were in some cases resorted to.  I never heard of the use of the needfire in the Marsh, though it was, I believe, used on the wolds not many miles off.  But I knew of at least one case in which