The Lore of Simple Things—
Milk, Honey and Bread
In Myth And Legend (Continued)

In a custom widespread over much of Western and Northern Europe, milk is left out at night by the hearth, or the front door, or in the barn for house spirits such as hobs, pixies, and tomten. It further believed in some places (such as here in Devon and the neighboring county of Somerset) that if the faeries are not propitiated in this way, they will take what is theirs and punish the greedy by blighting cattle and causing their milk to dry up, spoiling cream, cursing the butter churn, or by coming in the night and drinking cattle and other milk bearing animals dry. As a defense for such otherworldly attacks, Irish housewives would celebrate the eve of May by cutting and peeling boughs from the rowan (or mountain ash) tree and twisting them around their butter churns and milk pails to prevent their contents being stolen by the faeries.

Such beliefs are remnants of very ancient practices, known in Greece and Rome (certainly practiced in Roman Britain), whereby the house god, the Lar (whose statue was kept in a special shrine, a lariarum, in the center of the house), required frequent sacrifice. If ignored, the Lares left their houses, becoming instead one of the Larvae, the demonic spirits who preyed on travelers. In beliefs such as these, dangerous powers are made safe and domestic through the related rites of honoring and sacrifice. As the symbolic and literal embodiment of nourishment, milk was the frequent offering to such forces, rendering them not merely familiar, but also family.

Though May Day was the day of greatest rejoicing in Ireland, it was not without its dangers. The powers of faeries waxed at that time, and witches (who are often closely linked to fairies in folklore) were particularly known to meddle with milk, butter, children and cattle. Because of this, many precautions were taken. A cold coal was placed under both cradle and churn. Primrose petals were strewn over the thresholds for a fairy will not gladly pass that flower.

On the morning of the May, witches would go to great lengths to steal all the milk they could, though what they did with it all is not always clear in the tales. Some sources seem to indicate that if a witch gets the milk of a particular household, all their good fortune was gone and any milk and butter they made during the ensuing year belonged absolutely to the faeries. Again, primroses play a part in protecting the interests of the farm; old women tied them to the tail of the cattle. Iron heated on the hearth was also thought to be efficacious, but whatever the precaution it had to be done before sunrise.

In the history of witchcraft, the mother–child relationship is mocked and/or subverted in the witch's practice of suckling their familiars or feeding them milk from a vessel. Some very specific early modern references exist, including the 1582 trial documents of Margery Sammon, who stated that she was given animal familiars in a wicker basket (in the form of toads called "Tom" and "Robin") by her mother who taught her how to use them. The trial papers state that her mother "bade her keep them and feed them. This examinate [Margery] asking 'wherewithal?' her mother answered, 'If thou dost not give them milk, they will suck of thy blood.'"

A witch named Elizabeth Francis from Essex stated in 1566 that she had been given a familiar called Satan in the form of a white spotted cat, and that her grandmother taught her to "feed the said cat with bread and milk," and in 1582 a witch from the same county, Elizabeth Bennett, claimed to possess two spirits, one called "Suckin" who was black "like a dog," the other called "Lierd," who was "red like a lion." It was further said that they "many times they drank of her milk bowl." In Ben Jonson's The Masque of Queens (1609), witches attempt to call up a familiar demon from the earth:

Closely paralleling that tradition, the fairy beliefs of Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe also use milk as the favored offering, given in specific and implicit bargains with faeries while emphasizing and mimicking the familial bond between adult and child. The Bean Nighe of Scotland, one of the fairy washer–women who haunt the river fords (and often were an omen of impending death for whomever saw them), could be approached, and if the brave person "grabbed her breast and suckled it" he could then claim the fairy as their foster–mother.

As with the familiars of the witches, good relations with the faeries required sacrifice. Usually basic foods were enough to insure their favors and services. As we've seen, milk (often with bread mixed in, a common food for children) was left for them on the hearth or other thresholds and could also be poured on rocks, trees, or by springs. Early modern chroniclers and antiquarians noted that they needed "a pail of clean water, good victuals, and the like . . .and would . . .grind corn for a mess of milk" (Robert Burton); enjoyed a "messe of milke sopt with white bread" (Aubrey); and that the famous hobgoblin, Robin Goodfellow also required a "messe of white bread and milke" (Reginald Scott). Harsenet speaks of them in his Declaration:

I suspect that milk was the favored offering of both faeries and the dead because it emphasized intimacy and needed to be gotten fresh, thus being a gift that necessitated immediate and frequent offerings. Such offerings kept our "Good Neighbors" not only placated, but close to heart and hearth both. Curds and cream are also the best, highest–fat, most nutritious part of the milk — to offer them means you're leaving yourself only the watery skimmed milk — in The Winter's Tale, Perdita is called 'the queen of curds and cream,' alluding to her richness and desirability — the part you skim off the top and keep. This again mimics the way in which children are fed, the best most nutritious part being given to them.

There were rules about the use of milk in special situations as well as fear of its corruption. In Scotland in the seventeenth century any milk found in the house at the time of death was disposed of, because of the prevalent belief that milk was highly susceptible to corruption and may be affected by spirits of the dead. While Breton belief allows milk to remain in the room with the corpse, any vessel of standing water must be poured out for fear that the departing spirit of the deceased might drown within it. In Ireland when a cow is milked, its owner will put her finger into the milk and then quickly crosses the cow with it while softly saying, "Mary and our Lord preserve thee, until I come to thee again."

So central to rural custom were such beliefs that the church in its early history, medieval periods and even the Protestant church issued edict after edict from its numerous councils, seeking to suppress such practices. The frequency with which it tried to put down these beliefs is a good indicator of their prevalence. The Council of Rouen, held in the seventh century related the use of branches, rags and flowers were used to worship at wells, but later councils recounted and condemned "worse practices" such as "the adoration of stones, the pouring of milk on hills, and the sacrifice of bulls."