Reading Notes: Week 13, Part B (The Witch Girl)
There was a Cossack who was riding through a town late one evening and decided to stop at the last village before he exited the town to see if the master would let him spend the night there. The master replied with "Come in, if you don't fear death!" For the Cossask, this was an odd reply. After he had tied up his horse and given it food, he walked into the cottage to find a bunch of men, women and little children sobbing and praying. After everyone was done praying, they began to put on clean shirts. The Cossack asked why they were all crying, to which the master began to tell him the story of the witch that holds the power of death. Death happens at night, and whichever cottage the witch looks into, that is the cottage that the people will die in the next day. It just so happened that that night it was that cottage's turn. That night, everyone went to sleep, except the Cossack, who was on the lookout the whole night. At exactly midnight, the witch appeared at the window of the cottage. She took her arm and reached into the cottage, and just as she was about to start sprinkling, the Cossack cut her arm off close to her shoulder. The witch ran away crying, and the Cossack picked up her arm and hid it in his cloak. The next morning, the master of the house woke up to everyone still being alive. The Cossack was very delighted to show off his arm, so he gathered everyone together to go searching for the witch in the town. They came upon a house where one of the master's daughters was ill. The Cossack looked towards the stove where the girl was laying and saw that one of the girl’s arms had evidently been cut off. He told the whole story of what had taken place that night, and he brought out and showed the arm which had been cut off. The commune rewarded the Cossack with a sum of money, and ordered that witch to be drowned.
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