FAIRY ENCHANTMENT—PISHOGUE.

FAIRY ENCHANTMENT—PISHOGUE. The article about bog butter points out that it was apparently not stored for ritual purposes. It quotes a museum official: “There are accounts dating back to the 1850’s with people used to wash their cattle once a year in the bog and then put some butter back into the bog. It was piseogary,” This blog post has some background. (The post is for August 21, 2009). It speculates that “in the 18th-19th century locals began finding lost butter stores when they harvested peat, and they developed the superstition that butter should be placed in the bog.” As for the word, apparently “pisherogues, or pishogues, a term used both in the Irish manuscripts and in the vernacular, means properly witchcraft or enchantment.” The post has a lot of lore: “If you said it was bad luck to come in and out of a house using the same door, someone would accuse you of believing in ‘ol pishogues.’… A lot of pishogues surrounded cows and milk. If the cow wasn’t inclined to give milk they believed someone had done pishogues. If the cream didn’t turn into butter after you dashed it in the churn, that was pishogues, too; and if a woman was seen skimming the top of water from a pond on your land she was said to be doing pishogues, and it would have a bad effect on your cows…” I can now think of some of my conscientious ancestors worrying whether they done all they could to protect their cow.