Butter won’t churn? It’s a witch!Witches tended to be the scapegoat for just about any p

Butter won’t churn? It’s a witch!

Witches tended to be the scapegoat for just about any problem in a person’s life. One common complaint attributed to a witch’s curse was being unable to churn your milk into butter. You could churn and churn, but the milk would never thicken. To fix this predicament, you first had to expel the witch from the churn by taking an old horseshoe and heating it to glowing hot in the fire. It was best if that horseshoe “had been worn on the left hind foot of a baldfaced horse.” You would then take the glowing hot horseshoe, drop it into your churn, and sure enough the butter would come forth.

“Witches in the Cream.” The Weekly Standard (Raleigh, NC). May 4, 1870. p 1.

“Witchcraft: The Intense Belief in it in Switzerland County Sixty Years Ago.” Fayetteville Weekly Observer (Fayetteville, NC). October 27, 1887. p 1.