[Sidenote: Cattle crowned to protect them from witchcraft.] But why, it may be asked, should crowns or garlands cleanse dogs from the taint of bloodshed? An answer to this question is indicated by the reason which the South Slavonian peasant assigns for crowning the horns of his cows with wreaths of flowers on St. George’s Day, the twenty-third of April. He does it in order to guard the cattle against witchcraft; cows that have no crowns are regarded as given over to the witches. In the evening the chaplets are fastened to the door of the cattle-stall, and remain there throughout the year. A herdsman who fails to crown his beasts is scolded and sometimes beaten by his master.[436] The German and French custom of crowning cattle on Midsummer Day[437] probably springs from the same motive. For on Midsummer Eve, just as on Walpurgis Night, witches are very busy holding their nocturnal assemblies and trying to steal the milk and butter from the cows. To guard against them some people at this season lay besoms crosswise before the doors of the stalls. Others make fast the doors and stop up the chinks, lest the witches should creep through them on their return from the revels. In Swabia all the church bells used to be kept ringing from nine at night till break of day on Midsummer morning to drive away the infernal rout from honest folk’s houses. South Slavonian peasants are up betimes that morning, gather the dew from the grass, and wash the cows with it; that saves their milk from the hellish charms of the witches.[438]
[Sidenote: Similarly the crowning of hunting dogs may have been meant to protect them against the angry spirits of the beasts they had killed.] Now when we observe that garlands of flowers, like hawthorn and other green boughs,[439] avail to ward off the unseen powers of mischief, we may conjecture that the practice of crowning dogs at the festival of a huntress goddess was intended to preserve the hounds from the angry and dangerous spirits of the wild beasts which they had killed in the course of the year. Fantastical as this explanation may sound to us, it is perfectly in accordance with the ideas of the savage, who, as we shall see later on, resorts to a multitude of curious expedients for disarming the wrath of the animals whose life he has been obliged to take. Thus conceived, the custom in question might still be termed a purification; but its original purpose, like that of many other purificatory rites, would be not so much to cleanse moral guilt, as to raise a physical barrier against the assaults of malignant and mischievous spirits.[440]