The villagers believed that Great Friday was the day when warlocks and witches would come out. Legend had it that the witches would come and ruin gardens and steal the milk from cows. Meanwhile, warlocks were supposed to stroll around the village, causing harm to any people that they met. It was thought that the warlocks could cripple, or even kill a man, if they came into contact with them.
To ward off the witches and warlocks, the villagers would use a lot of garlic in their food. As well as being eaten, the garlic was added to the farm animals’ feed and spread on the entrances to the stables. Another tradition that the villagers did to protect themselves on this day was to run onto their fields with bells and ring them as loudly as they could. This was not to protect them from witches and warlocks though, but instead to scare away moles so that their fields would not have any molehills in them that year.
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