Another means of discovering a guilty person is by the "Sieve and Shears," one of those divinatory instruments upon which such implicit reliance has been placed by superstitious folk from time out of mind, described as it is in the "Hudibras" as
"Th' oracle of sieve and shears, That turns as certain as the spheres."
The sieve is held hanging by a thread, or else by the points of a pair of shears stuck into its rim, it being supposed to turn, or swing, or fall at the mention of a thief's name, and give similar signs for other purposes. This ancient rite was formerly known as the "Trick of the Sieve and Scissors," and was generally practised among the Greeks for ascertaining crime. We find an allusion to it in Theocritus:--
"To Agrio, too, I made the same demand; A cunning woman she, I cross'd her hand: She turn'd the sieve and shears, and told me true, That I should love, but not be lov'd by you."
Among other modes of divination practised for the same purpose, there is one by the crowing of the cock. Thus, a farmer in Cornwall having been robbed of some property, invited all his neighbours into his cottage, and when they were assembled he placed a cock under the "brandice" (an iron vessel formerly much used by the peasantry in baking), he then asked each one to touch the brandice with the third finger, and say, "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, speak." Every one did as they were directed, and yet no sound came from beneath the brandice. The last person was a woman who occasionally laboured for the farmer in his field. She hung back, hoping to pass unobserved amidst the crowd. The neighbours, however, would not permit her to do so, and no sooner had she touched the brandice than, before she could even utter the prescribed words, the cock crew. Thereupon she fainted on the spot, and on recovering confessed her guilt.
In the North of England there was formerly a curious process of divination in the case of a person bewitched:--A black hen was stolen, the heart taken out, stuck full of pins, and roasted at midnight. It was then supposed that the "double" of the witch would come and nearly pull the door down. If, however, the "double" was not seen, any one of the neighbours who had passed a remarkably bad night was fixed upon.