Keeping the fairies from the brew

Professor Playfair wrote to Brand from St Andrews in 1804 about the superstitions of the neighbourhood. In private breweries a live coal was thrown into the vat to stop the fairies meddling with the brew. No fairy could take away a cow’s milk if a burning coal was passed across her back and under her belly just after she calved. And the fairies could not enter a house at night if, before bedtime, the lower end of the crook, the chain on which the pot hung over the fire, was raised a few links.