1. A tangled knot of hair supposed to be made by witches: = ELF-LOCK.
1598. Drayton, Heroic. Ep., El. Cobham, 112. O that I were a Witch…! I would … knit whole ropes of witchknots in her hayre.
17[?]. Willie’s Lady, xxxiv. in Child, Ballads, I. 87. Oh wha has loosed the nine witch knots That was amo that ladie’s locks?
2. A bushy tuft of twigs on a tree: = witches’ besom (see WITCH sb.2 5 c).
1806. J. Grahame, Birds Scot., 51. The simple boy … Mistakes the witch-knots for the cushat’s nest.
1880. F. P. Pascoe, Zool. Classif. (ed. 2), 96. The ‘witch-knot’ found on the birch, and resembling a great mass of twigs like a bird’s nest, is an abnormal growth … caused by Phytopti.
