For the same reason herd-boys employ an ash-twig for driving cattle, and one may often see a mountain-ash growing near a house.

On the Continent the tree is in equal repute, and in Norway and Denmark rowan branches are usually put over stable doors to keep out witches, a similar notion prevailing in Germany.

No tree, perhaps, holds such a prominent place in witchcraft-lore as the mountain-ash, its mystic power having rarely failed to render fruitless the evil influence of these enemies of mankind.
In our northern counties witches are said to dislike the bracken fern, "because it bears on its root the initial C, which may be seen on cutting the root horizontally."[26] and in most places equally distasteful to them is the yew, perhaps for no better reason than its having formerly been much planted in churchyards.

The herb-bennett (_Geum urbanum_), like the clover, from its trefoiled leaf, renders witches powerless, and the hazel has similar virtues.

Among some of the plants considered antagonistic to sorcery on the Continent may be mentioned the water-lily, which is gathered in the Rhine district with a certain formula.