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Updated: May 20, 2025
Over the door in the inside, over the beds, and over the cattle in the outhouses, were placed branches of withered palm, that had been consecrated by the priest on Palm Sunday; and when the cows happened to calve, this good woman tied, with her own hands, a woollen thread about their tails, to prevent them from being overlooked by evil eyes, or elf-shot* by the fairies, who seem to possess a peculiar power over females of every species during the period of parturition.
The inquest, held on many a dead calf or its mother, was, that it died from an "elf-shot." They were so sure of this, that even when a stone arrow head such as our far-off ancestors used in hunting, when they were cave men was picked up off the ground, it was called an "elf bolt," or "elf-arrow."
The removal of those large portions of turf, which thunderbolts sometimes scoop out of the ground with singular regularity, is also ascribed to their agency. Cattle which are suddenly seized with the cramp, or some similar disorder, are said to be elf-shot, and the approved cure is to chafe the parts affected with a blue bonnet, which, it may be readily believed, often restores the circulation.
If a man had a sick cow, she was elf-shot; if his child became consumptive, it had been overlooked, or received a blast from the fairies; if the whooping-cough was rife, all the afflicted children were put three times under an ass; or when they happened to have the "mumps," were led, before sunrise to a south-running stream, with a halter hanging about their necks, under an obligation of silence during the ceremony In short, there could not possibly be a more superstitious spot than that which these men of mystery had selected for their residence.
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