ansformed
herself are inflicted on the witch herself.]

Again, the wounds inflicted on a witch-hare or a witch-cat are to be
seen on the witch herself, just as the wounds inflicted on a were-wolf
are to be seen on the man himself when he has doffed the wolfs skin. To
take a few instances out of a multitude, a young man in the island of
Lismore was out shooting. When he was near Balnagown loch, he started a
hare and fired at it. The animal gave an unearthly scream, and then for
the first time it occurred to him that there were no real hares in
Lismore. He threw away his gun in terror and fled home; and next day he
heard that a notorious witch was laid up with a broken leg. A man need
be no conjuror to guess how she came by that broken leg.[774] Again, at
Thurso certain witches used to turn themselves into cats and in that
shape to torment an honest man. One night he lost patience, whipped out
his broadsword, and put them to flight. As they were scurrying away he
struck at them and cut off a leg of one of the cats. To his astonishment
it was a woman's leg, and next morning he found one of the witches short
of the corresponding limb.[775] Glanvil tells a story of "an old woman
in Cambridge-shire, whose astral spirit, coming into a man's house (as
he was sitting alone at the fire) in the shape of an huge cat, and
setting her self before the fire, not far from him, he stole a stroke at
the back of it with a fire-fork, and seemed to break the back of it, but
it scambled from him, and vanisht he knew not how. But such an old
woman, a reputed witch, was found dead in her bed that very night, with
her back broken, as I have heard some years ago credibly reported."[776]
In Yorkshire during the latter half of the nineteenth century a parish
clergyman was told a circumstantial story of an old witch named Nanny,
who was hunted in the form of a hare for several miles over the
Westerdale moors and kept well away from the dogs, till a black one
joined the pack and succeeded in taking a bit out of one of the hare's
legs. That was the end of the chase, and immediately afterwards the
sportsmen found old Nanny laid up in bed with a sore leg. On examining
the wounded limb they discovered that the hurt was precisely in that
part of it which in the hare had been bitten by the black dog and, what
was still more significant, the wound had all the appearance of having
been inflicted by a dog's teeth. So they put two and two together.[777]
The sa