In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example, in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: “In yonder village is church-ale (_Kirmes_)”; thus implying that they will find better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called weather-crosses (_Wetterkreuze_) for the purpose of averting thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ’s death and the world’s redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
“Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed, Protect this house and burn the rest.”
Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice, legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties, including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds. In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by Berriat-Saint-Prix in the _Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of France_ (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D’Addosio so as to cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (_Vide_ Appendix F for a still fuller list.)