1852 Magic and Witchcraft

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la

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READING FOR TRAVELLERS.

iicabiiig

for

Cnibtllcrs.

JUST PUBLISHED,

OLD ROADS AKD

NEW

EGADS.

PiaCE OJiE SHILLING.

NOTICES OF THE PRESS.
The. Daily News. "Knowledge and amusemeut are very happDy blended together, and the reader who finds his acquiiintance with the history of roads increaied at the journey, wiU also find his available fund of anecdote augmented." end of his

The Literary Gazette.
"The (jook contains little more than a hundred pages, and might be read during the journey by the express train between London and Brighton but so suggestive is every page, that an intelligent and imaginative reader will not reach the end till the book has been many an hour in his hands."
;

The Economist.
"This is a pleasant book, somewhat quaint, partieularly the preface, but fuU of amusing and instructive reading."

The
. .

Atlas.

" If the other volumes of the series are equal to the present in interest and value, we think we may safely predict a very extensive popularity for the enterprise. . The author has collected from all manner of curious and out-of-the-way sources materials for his book, and it reads like one of old
Montaigne's Essays."

The Lender.
charming volume of curious and learned gossip, such as would have Lamb by its fine scholarly tone and its discursive wealth. volumes are up to this mark, the series will be by far the best of the many which now make Literature the luxury of the poor."
riveted Charles
If the other

"

A

The Gardeners'

Chronicle.

" Exactly the book for the amusement of a man of education. Lively and learned, poetical and practical. This book is to the scholar fatigued with trash Uke a bottle of rich Hungarian wine to a man who has been condemned ti) the thin potations of France and the Rheingau."

The Gateshead Observer. " Old SoluU ami New Roads. (Chapman and HaU, London.) No. I. of Reading for Travellers.' A first-rate little volume, printed with large type, and just the thing for a railway ride. The publishers have acted wisely in calling to their aid a scholar and a writer of the highest order."



'

The
ture,
'

Leicestershire Mercury.

" Messrs. Chapman and HaU have re-entered the field of Railway Literaand have very fittingly commenced their series of ' Beading for TraveOers with a graphic historical sketch of Old lioadu and Netc Roads. It is at once scholarly and popular in style and contents yet free from the slightest tinge of pedantry or afifeotation. The narrative is by no means a mere dry record of facts and dates. It is abundantly diversified and reUeved with illustrative anecdotes and sprightly observations— philosophy and pleasantry combining with genuine eruditiou to make this one of the most useful and entertaining of the volun-.es of railway reading with which we have met."

MAGIC

WITCHCRAFT.

MAGIC

WITCHCRAFT

'

Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, partentaque Thessala rides ?"

Uor. Epkt. a.

2.

!

LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193,
1852.

PICCADILLY.

FRinTSD BY

JOHX

EXir/AlID

TAXLOB, LITTLB Ql'BEK STEEET,

PREFACE.

We

have long wished that some English or foreign
prize
for

university would offer a

a history of

The records of human opinion would contain few chapters more instrucMagic and Witchcraft.
tive

than one which should deal competently with

the Black Art.
tails
its

For gross and painful as the de-

of superstition

may

be, yet superstition,

by

very etymology, implies a

dogma or

a system of

practice standing

upon some

basis of fact or truth

and however vain or noxious the superstructure

may

be, the foundation of

it is

in

some way con-

nected with those deep verities upon which rest
also the roots of philosophy

and

religion.
at

For a grand
time essentially

error,
affect

and such alone can
the opinions of

any
in

mankind

general, is ever the imitation or caricature of

some

grand truth.
tree

From one

soil

spring originally the

which yields good

fruit

and the plant which

PREFACE.
distils

deadly poison.
is

The very discernment of the

causes of error
its

a step towards the discovery of

opposite.

The bewildennents of the mind of
fidly analysed,

man, when
course of
its

afford a clue to the

movements from the

right track, or

at least enable

us to detect the point at which

began the original separation between Truth and
Error.

Alchemy

led,

by no very circuitous route,
;

to the science of chemistry

the adoption of false

gods by the majority of the
necessary the
dispensations
;

human
of the

race rendered

Jewish and
re-

Christian schemes

and the corruption of true

verence for the Good, the Beautiful, and the Holy,

was the parent of those

arts,

which, under the

several appellations of Magic, Witchcraft, Sorcery,
etc.,

drew their professors

at first

and the multievil,

tude afterwards to put faith in the
formed, and the impiu'c.
are little
JNIagic

the de-

and Witchcraft

more than the

religious instincts of

man-

kind,
all

first

inverted, then polluted,

and

finally, like

corrupted matter, impregnated with the germs

of a corrupt vitality.

So universal
and more

is

the belief in spiritual influences,

especially in their malignant influences,

that no race of men, no period of time, no region of the globe, have been exempt fi'om
it.

It
life,

meets
in the

us in the remote antiquity of Asiatic

comparatively recent barbarism of the American

aborigines, in the creeds of all the nations

who

branched

off

thousands of years ago eastward and

westward from their Caucasian cradle, in the myths,
the observances, and the dialects of nations

who

have no other

affinity

with one another than the

mere form of man.

No
with

nation, indeed, can reproach another nation
its

addiction to magic without in an equal
itself.

degree condemning

All the varieties of

man-

kind have, in this respect, erred alike at different
periods of their social existence, and
all

accordingly

come under the same condemnation of making
and loving a
tisfied
lie.

The Chaldean erred when,

dissa-

vidth

simple

observation of the heavenly

bodies through the luminous atmosphere of his
plains,

he perverted astronomy into astrology

:

the

Egyptian erred when he represented the omnipresence of the Deity by the ubiquity of animal

worship

:

the Hindoo erred when, having conceived

the idea of an incarnation, he clothed with flesh

and

fleshly attributes the

members of

his

mon-

strous

pantheon

:

the

Kelt

and Teuton erred

when, in their

silent

and

solitary forests, they

stained the serenity of nature with the deified attributes of

war

;

and the more

settled

and
cities

civilized

races

who

built

and inhabited the

of the

ancient world, erred in their conversion of the indivisible

unity of the Demiourgos or World- Creator

into an antkropomorpliic system of several gods.

But the very

uuiversality of the error points to
for it in the recesses of the
all its

some common ground

human

heart;

and since Paganism under

forms was the corruption of religion, and Witchcraft in its turn the corruption of

Paganism, an
fail

inquiry into the seeds of this evil fruit cannot
to he also in

some measure an investigation of the

very

'

incunabula' of

human

error.
state,

We

have stated, or endeavoured to

the

real scope

and dimensions of the subject of jMagic

and Witchcraft

—not
it

however with any pm-pose
in so small a volume as the
offer

of expatiating upon present one.

In the pages which follow we

only a few remarks upon theories or modes of belief

which in remote or in nearer ages have affected
the creeds and the conduct of mankind.
ject, in extenso,

The sub-

belongs to larger volumes, and to

maturer learning and meditatjon.

CONTENTS.

The Legendary

Lixeifer

.

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

An
from
title

amusing work appeared
tlie

at Mainz, in 1826, pen of " Herr Kirchenratli" Horst, the
:

of whicli, translated in extenso, runs thus

"The Magical

Library;

or,

of Magic, Theurgy,

and Necromancy; Magicians, Witches, and Witch Trials, Demons, Ghosts, and Spectral Appearances. By G. C. Horst, Church- Counsellor to the Grand

Duke

of Hesse."

The following pages formed a

rc\iew of this work, which appeared

many

years

This book of the worthy Church-Coimsellor
rather a singular one
:

is

it is

not a history of Magic,

but a sort of spiiitual periodical, or magazine of
infernal science, supported in a great
* Since they were written,
historical notices.
Sii'

measure by

Witclicraft' has been published, a

Walter Scott's Demonology and book replete with interesting

4

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

contributions from persons of a ghostly turn of

mind, who, although they
believers at heart,

affect occasionally

to

write in a Sadducee vein, are

many

of

them

half-

and would not walk through a
like to pay.

churchyard at night, except for a consideration
larger than
wliich
it

we shoidd

The

field

over

travels is too extensive, for us to attempt

to follow the author throughout his elaborate subdivisions.
circles;

Dante divided hell, hke Germany, into and Mr. Horst, adopting sometliing of a

similar arrangement, has parcelled out the terri-

toiy of the Prince of the Air into sundry regular
di^-isions,

are

made

plain

by which its whole bearings and distances enough for the use of infant schools.
one of the provinces of the Inferno,

It is only at

however, that

though
grand

for those
torn',

we can at present afford to glance who are inclined to make the

the Counsellor

may

be taken as an

intelligent travelling

companion, well acquainted

with the road.

and

distinct,

In fact his work is so methodical and the geography of the infernal

regions so clearly laid do^Ti, according to the best
authorities,

to

from Jamblichus and Porphyry down Glamil and the Abbe Fiard, that the whole

flistrict is

now about
;

as well

known

as the course

of the Niger
fault if

must be the traveller's own he does not find his exit from Avernus as
and
it

easy as

its

entrance has proverbially been since
Vii-gil.

the days of

The

picture,

however, drawn by these

intelli-

THE LEGENDARY LUCIFER.
gent spiritual travellers
is

3

by no means calculated

to impress us with a high notion of the dominions

of the Prince of the Air, or that the personnel of
liis

majesty or his government are prepossessing.
climate, as all of them,
agi'ce, is

The

wards,

oppressively hot,

from Faust doAvnand the face of

the country apparently a good deal like that be-

tween Birmingham and Wolverhampton, abounding with furnaces and coal-pits.
of composition with which
Literature
is

evidently at a low ebb, from the few specimens

we

are favoured in the

Zauber-Bibliothek, and the sciences, with the exception of some practical applications of chemistry,

shamefully neglected.
potical,

The government seems

des-

but subject to occasional explosions on the

part of the

more

influential spirits concerned in
fact,

the executive.

In

the departments of the

administration are by no means well arranged
there
is

no proper
is,

division of labour,

and the con-

sequence

that Beelzebub, "

Mooned Ashtaroth,'^

and others of the ministry, who, according to the
theory of the constitution^ are entitled to precedence, are constantly jostled and interfered with by
* Faustus, who is a sort of Delolme in matters infernal, has treatise on the subject, entitled Mrrakel- Kimst- und Wunder-Buch, oder der schwartze Eabe, auch der dreifache Hollen Zwang genannt,' in wliich the poUtical system of Lucifer's dominions is examiaed. Dionysius the Areopagite indeed is not more exact in his calendar of the celestial hierarchy. Perhaps these treatises are the common parents of the modern ' Blue Books.'
an ahle
'

4

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

Aziel, Mepliistopheles, Marbuel,

and other forward

second-rate

spii'its,

who

are continually thrusting

in their claws where they are not called for.

The

standing
teers

army

is

considerable*, besides the volun-

by which
is

it is

continually augmented.

No-

thing

heard however of the navy, and from the

ominous silence wliich our geographers preserve on this point, it is easy to see that water is a rare
element in this quarter.

The

hints given as to the personal appearance

and conduct of Lucifer, the reigning monarch, are
not flattering.

Common readers

are apt to believe
is

that Satan occupies that dignityf, but this

a

great error, and only shows, as
Clcofas,

Asmodeus told Don

when he fell into a similar mistake about Beelzebub, " that they have no true notions of hell."
The morals of
as

Lucifer, as

might be expected, are

we see no evidence of his being personally addicted to
bad as
possible, with this exception, that
* Eeginald Scott's
of Amazeroth,
'

Discoverie of Witchcraft' contains an

army-list or muster-roll of the infernal forces.

Thus the Duke

who seems

to be a sort of brigacher-general, has

the

command of sixty legions, etc. + Satan is a mere tlui'd-i-ate spirit,
'

as they will find

by con-

sulting a list of the Infernal Privy Council for 1669, contained

in Faust's

Black Eaven.'

But we

are not told the exact date of

from his primacy. It is singular that both in the book of Job, where he is mentioned for the fii-st time, and in the Scandinavian mythologers, he appears m a sumlar character " The Ranger," or " Eovuig Spirit of Tartarus." See ^\^liter, Etymologicon, vol. iii., in wliich very learned, though now forhis deposition



gotten work, there

is

much

diaboHeal eruchtion.

THE LEGENDARY LUCIFER.
His licentious habits, however, are atby many a scandalous chronicle in Sprenger, Delrio, and Bodinus; and for swearing, all the world knows that Ernulphus was but a type His jokes are aU practical and of a low of him. order, and there is an utter want of dignity in most of his proceedings. One of his most facedrinking.
tested
tious

the

amusements consists in constantly pulling on which his witches are riding, from beneath them, and applying them vigorously to their shoulders and he has more than once adminisspits,
;

tered personal chastisement to his servants,

when
is

they neglected to keep an appointment.
notorious cheat
;

He

a

many

enterprising

young men,

who have
their

enlisted in his service

on the promise of

high pay and promotion, having foimd, on putting

them
talent

hands into their pockets, that he had paid their bounty in tin sixpences, and having

never risen even to the rank of a corporal.
dered very mediocre, and therefore
that

His

might, from these narratives, be consi-

we

are afraid

the

ingenious

selection

from his papers,

published by Jean Paid*, must be a literary forgery.

At

least all his printed speeches are bad,

flashy enough,

no doubt, in the commencement,

but generally ending in smoke.

He

has always

had a fancy

for

appearing in masquerade, and

Censor, Lucifer

* Auswahl aug des Teufels Papieren. Yet, like Cato the may have taken to study late in life.

b

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT,

once delivered a course of lectures on magic at

Salamanca, in the disguise of a professor.
late as 1626,

So

he lived

incog.,

but in a very splen]\Iilan,

did style, for a whole winter, in
title

under the

of the Didce of

Mammon"^,

It is in vain,

however, for his partial biographers to disguise the
fact,

that in his nocturnal excursions, of which,

Alraschid, he was at one time rather and where, we learn from the Swedish witches, he generally figured in a grey coat and red small-clothes, ornamented with ribbons and blue stockings, he has more than once received a sound di'ubbing from honest people, whom he has attempted to trip up by laying his tail in their way. And, in fact, since his affair with St. Dunstan, he has kept pretty much withindoors after nightfall. Luther, as we know, kept no terms with him when he began to crack hazel-nuts in his bedroom
like

Haroun

fond,

at the "Wartbm'g,
fair contest

but beat him

all

to nothing in a

of ribaldry and abuse, besides leaving
St.

an indelible blot of ink upon his red smalls f.

Lupus shut him up

for a

whole night in a pitcher

of cold water, into which he had (as he thought,
* Lotichius, Oratorio super fatalibus hoc tempore Acaclemi-

anun

periculis

:

1631.

Lotichius took the trouble to compose

a Latin
entitled

poem on
'

the subject of lus triumphal entry.
in its day.

A

book

Mammon' had some reputation
name indeed
is

The acknow-

ledged author's

Harris

;

yet

some commentator

of the year 2150 will perhaps suggest that it was ' Old Harry's 3Tammon.' have seen worse " conjectural emendations."

We

t Colloquia Mensalia.

THE LEGENDARY LUCIFEE.

/

cunuingly) conveyed himself, with the hope that
the saint would swallow

him

unawares'^.

This

however^

considering

his

ordinary temperatxirej

must have been an
have brought on
church.
St.

act of kindness^

which should

St.

Lupus the censure of the
for a very polite
;

Anthony, in retm-n

I

offer of his services, spat in his face

which hurt

his feelings so

much, that

it

was long before he

ventured to appear in society againf.

And

al-

though in his many transactions with mankind he
is

constantly trying to secure

some

unfair advan-

tage, a person of

any
is

talent, particularly if

been bred a lawyer J,
jesty,

a match for

him

are niunerous cases in the books, in

he has and there which his ma;

attempting to apprehend the person of a

debtor, has been unexpectedly defeated

by an ingeecclesias-

nious saving clause in the bond, which, like Shylock,

he had overlooked, and non-suited in the
tical courts,

where he commonly sues, with costs §. Finally, we infer from the Mora Trials, that his

* Legenda Aurea Jacob, de Voragine, t Ihid. leg. 21. J Or even a bishop.
§

leg.

123.

See Southey's pithy and profitable tale

of ' Eleemon, or a Sinner Saved.'

In the case of St. Lydvina, when he pleaded his case in and thought it a clear one, he was faii'ly laughed out of court, " deriso explosoque Dtemone." (Brugmann, Vita Lydvinse, p. 290.) He was hoaxed in a stLU more ingenious manner by Nostradamus, who having agreed that the devil should have him, if he was bm-ied either in the church or out of it, left directions that he should be buried m. a hole in the waU. Sometimes
person,

»

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

general health must have suffered from the climate,
for in

1669 he was extremely

ill

in

though he got over the attack

for a time,

Sweden; and by bleedwas

ing and an antiphlogistic regimen, the persons

who were about him thought
breaking up, and that he was

his constitution
still

in a dying way.

Such

is

the grotesque aspect of the legendary

Lucifer and his court, which a coui'se of dsemono-

logy presents to us

!

But though we have thus

spoken with levity of these gross and palpable
conceptions of the e^dl principle, and though un-

doubtedly the
farrago
fear,

first

impression produced by such a
one, the subject,

must be a ludicrous
its

we

has also
its

serious side.

An

Indian deity,
atti-

with
tude,

wild distorted shape and grotesque

appears merely ridiculous
its

when

separated

from

accessories

and \iewed by daylight in a
it

museum.

But

restore

to the darkness of its

own hideous

temple, bring back to our recollection

the victims that have bled upon

its altar, or been and our sense of the ridiculous subsides into aversion and horror. So,

crushed beneath

its

car,

while the superstitious di'cams of former times are

regarded as mere speculative insanities, we
for a

may
as, for

moment be amused with
-was the gainer in

the wild incoheren-

however he

such equivocal compacts,



example, in the case of the
in a chair

monk who was

to Uve so long as he
slept

abstained from sleeping between sheets.
;

The monk always

but in an unlucky hour Satan caught him as

fast as

a top with his head between the sheets of a sermon, and claimed
his bond.

SOURCES OF SUPERSTITION.
cies of the patients
;

9
out

but when we

reflect that

of these hideous misconceptions of the principle
of evil arose the belief in witchcraft
;

that this was

no dead

faith^

but one operating on the whole

being of society, urging on the mildest and the
wisest to deeds of murder, or cruelties scarcely less

than murder ; that the learned and the beautiful,

young and
its

old,

influence to the stake

male and female, were devoted by and the scaffold, every



feeling

disappears

except

that

of astonishment

that such things could be, and humiliation at the

thought that the delusion was as lasting as
imiversal.
It is true that the current of

it

was

human

opinion

seems
if

now

to set in a different direction,
is

and that

the evil spirit of persecution

again to re-apall

pear on earth, his avatar must in

probability

be made in a different form.
longer, as Dr. Francis

Our

brains are no

Hutchinson says of Bodi-

nus,

"mere
if

storehouses for devils to dance in;''

and

the influence of the great

enemy

is

still

as active as before

on

earth, in the shape of evil

passions, he at least keeps personally in the back-

ground, and has changed his tactics entirely since
the days of the
" For Satan
'

MaUeus Maleficarum.'
is

now

wiser than before,

And
Still

tempts by making rich
it is

— not making poor."

always a useful check to the pride of the human mind, to look to those delusions which have darkened
it,

however

more

especially to

10

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

such as have originated in feelings in themselves
exalted,

and laudable.

Such

is

unquestionably the

case in regard to one of the gloomiest chapters in

the history of

human

error, the belief in witchcraft

and

its

consequences.

The wish

to raise ourselves

above the visible world, and to connect ourselves
with beings supposed to occupy a higher ranli in
creation,

seemed

at first calculated to exercise only

a beneficent influence on the mind.

Men

looked

by which they were to estabhsh a communication between earth and heaven, and by means of which angelic influences might be always ascending and descending upon the heart of man. But, unfortimately, the supposition of this actual and bodily intercourse
it

upon

as a sort of Jacob's ladder,

mth

spirits

of the better order, involved also a

similar lielief as to the possibility of establishing a
free trade with the subterranean powers^
" Who lurk in ambush, in their earthy cover,

And,

swift to hear oui' spells,

come swarming up

;"

and from these theoretical opinions, once
blished and acted upon,
all

esta-

the horrors of those

tempestuous times flowed as a natural consequence.

For thus the kingdoms of
brought into open contest
every one's
mercenaries,
call,
it

light
:

and darkness were
Satan was ready at

if

to send out his spirits like

Swss

became equally necessary for the true believer to rise in arms against him with fire and sword; any Avaveriug on his part was con-

MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
strued into apostasy, and
to be persecuted himself
to
lie

11

Avho did not choose

was driven in self-defence

become a persecutor. The grand postulate of direct diabolical agency being once assumed and quietly conceded on all
hands, any absurdity whatever was easily engrafted

on
to

it. Satan beiug thus brought home, as it were, men's business and bosoms, every one speculated

light

on his habits and demeanour according to his own and soon the insane fancies of minds crazed
;

by natm^e, disease, or misfortunes, echoed and repeated from all sides, gathered themselves into a
code or system of
the
faith,

which, being instilled into

mind with the

earliest

rudiments of instrucits

tion, fettered

even the strongest intellects with

The mighty minds of Luther, of Calvin, and of Knox, so quick in detecting error, so undaunted and merciless in exposing it,
baleful influence.

yielded tamely to
Sii-

its thrall

;

the upright and able
of death, in

Matthew Hale passed sentence

1664, on two poor

and Sir Thomas
Errors,''
trial,

accused of witchcraft, Browne, the historian of " Vulgar
as a witness
fits

women

who was examined
it

gave

as his opinion that the

on the under

which the patients had laboured, though natural in themselves, were " heightened by the Devil cooperating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies !" and apparently on
this e\idence chiefly did the conviction proceed.

Neither, in

fact,

were the incongruities and

12

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

inconsistencies of the witch-creed of the time so

might at first sight appear, to awaken men^s minds to the radical insanity of the belief. The dash of the ludicrous, which mingles itself with almost all the exploits of Satan and
calculated^ as they
his satellites, grew, naturally enough, out of the

monkish conception of Satan, and might be supposed not inconsistent with the character of a set
of beings whose proceedings of course could not

be expected to resemble those either of
angels.

men

or

him

:

in
"

The monkish Satan has no dignity about soul and body he is low and deformed.
occhi ha vermigli, e la barba unta ed atra,
'1

Grii

E
His apish

ventre largo, ed unghiate

le

mani,

G-rafSa gli spirti, gli scuoja, ed isquatra*."

tricks

and satyr -like gambols were

suffi-

ciently in imison with the idea of a spirit with

boundless malice but limited powers, grinning in
despite

where he could not

injure,

and ridiculing

those sacred rites the power of which he was compelled to acknowledge and obey. to his infernal flock,

the sacrament
his

;

Hence he preaches and mocks the institution of wreaks his native malice even on
his deluded victims in their distress, de-

own adherents; plunges
them

into misery, or deserts
prives

them of the rewards he has promised
;

to

them

plagues and torments the good, but cowers
is

whenever he

boldly resisted, and
* Inferno, canto vi.

is

at once dis-

MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
comfited by any one
the thunders

13

who

wields

by commission

of heaven.

Writers of fiction in

general have seldom seized these features of his

character;

indeed hardly any one has done

so^

except Hofiman, who, in most of his supernatural
pictures, has painted

him not with

the grandeur

and sullen gloom of the

fallen archangel,

but with

the coarse and comic malice of the spirit of the

middle ages, and has thus, on the whole, deepened
the real horror of his goblin scenes by the infusion
of these outbreakings of mirth, just as the frightful
effect

of an execution would be increased, if the

criminal, instead of joining in the devotions, were

suddenly to strike up a lively air from the top of
the ladder.

a natm-al sequence of the
exil principle,

But whether the delusion of witchcraft was thus monkish notions of an
and of the almost universal persua-

sion that intercourse with a higher order of beings

was possible
its

for

man, no one can

cast a glance over

history "without being satisfied that the compre-

hensive nature of its iafluence, and its long duration,

were owing to penal laws and prosecutions. It adds one more to the long hst of instances which prove
that there
ing,
is

is

which

will

no opinion, however absurd and revoltnot find believers and martyrs, if it
the subject of persecution.

once

made

From

the

earliest ages of Christianity it is certain the belief

existed, and must occasionally have been employed by strong minds as an instrument of terror to the

14

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
;

weak

but

still

the frame of society itself was not

shaken, nor, with one exception*, does the crime

begin to

make any

figure in history

till

the Bull

of Innocent VIII. in 1484 stirred up the slumber-

ing embers into a flame.

Of
tm-ies

the extent of the horrors which for two cen-

and a half followed, our readers we suspect
;

have but a very imperfect conception

we remem-

ber as in a dream that on this accusation persons

were occasionally burnt, and one or two remarkable relations from our own annals or those of the Continent

may

occur to our recollection.
in the history of

But of the

extent of these judicial murders, no one

who has

not dabbled a has any idea.

little

demonology

No sooner has Innocent placed his commission of fire and sword in the hands of Sprenger and his brethren, and a regular form of process for the trial of this ofience been laid down
in that unparalleled performance, the
]\Ialeficarum,^
'

jMalleus

which was intended as a theological and juridical commentary on the Bull, than the race of witches seems at once to increase and multiply, till it replenishes

the earth.

The

original edict

of persecution was enforced by the successive bulls

of the infamous Alexander VI. in 1494 (to

whom

Satan might indeed have addressed the remon* The
vol.
iii.

trials at

Arras, in 1459.

Yide Monstrelet's Chronicle,
these were rather rehgious pro-

p.

84

:

Paris, 1572.

But

secutions against supposed heretics,

and the crime of witchcraft

only introduced as aggravating their offences.

MONKISH SUPERSTITION.

15

strance "et tu Brute \"), of Leo X. in 1521^ and of

Adrian VI. ia 1522.

Still

the only effect of these
evil

commissions was to render the
formidable^ tOl at last, if

daUy more

we

are to believe the tes-

timonies of contemporary historians, Europe was
little

better than a large subm'b or outwork of

Pandemonium.

One-half of the population was
Delrio
tells

either bewitching or bewitched.

us

in his preface that

500 witches were executed in

Geneva in three months, about the year 1515.

A

thousand, says Bartholomseus de Spina, were executed in one year in the diocese of Como, and they

went on burning

annum
900.

for

1580 to In France the multitude of executions about 1520 is incredible; Danseus, in the first part of his dialogue concerning witches, calls it " infinitum
pene veneficorum numerum.^^

at the rate of a hundred per some time after. In Lorraine, from 1595, Remigius boasts of having burned

The well-known
he
associates.

sorcerer, Trois Echelles, told Charles IX., while

was

at Poitou, the

names of 1200 of his

This calculation

is

according to Mezeray^s more

reasonable version of the story, for the author of
the Journal du Regne de Henri III.^ makes the number 3000, and Bodinus, not satisfied even with this allowance, adds a cypher, and makes the total return of witches denounced by Trois EcheUes 30,000, though he does at the same time express some doubt as to the correctness of this account.
'

In Germany, to which indeed the bull of Inno-

16

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

cent bore particular reference, this
to a degi'ce almost inconceivable.

pla^e raged

derborn, "Wurtzburg, and Ti'cves
seats,

Bamberg, Pawere its chief
a half after the

though

for a

centmy and

introduction of the trials under the commission no

quarter of that great empire was free from
ful influence.

its

bane-

It

would be wearisome and

revolt-

ing to go through the details of these atrocities

but " ab uno disce omnes.^^

A catalogue

of the ex-

ecutions at AVurtzbui'g for the period from 1627 to

February 1629, about two years and two months,
printed by Hauber in the conclusion of his third volume of the ' Acta et Scripta Magica.' It is reguis

larly di^aded into twenty-nine burnings,

and constating at

tains the

names of 157 persons, Hauber
is

the same time that the catalogue

not complete.

It is impossible to peruse this catalogue A^'ithout

horror.

The

greater

part of

it

consists of old
it

women

or foreign travellers, seized,

woidd ap-

pear, as foreigners

were

at Paris dui-ing the days
:

of ]\Iarat and Robespierre

it

contains children of

twelve, eleven, ten, and nine years of age, fourteen
A-icars

of the cathedral, two boys of noble families,
little

the two

sons {sblmlein) of the senator Stol;

zenburg; a stranger boy
belin, the

a blind girl; Gobel Ba-

handsomest

girl in

Wurtzburg,
et virgine ceesd

etc.
.'"

" Sanguine placarunt Divos

And

yet, fr-ightful as this list

of 157 persons

executed in two years appears, the

number

is

not

EXECUTIONS FOR WITCHCRAFT.
(taking the

17

population of Wurtzburg into ac-

Lindheim process from For in that small district, consisting at the very utmost of six hundred inhabitants, thirty persons were condemned and put to death, making a twentieth part of the whole population consumed in four years. How dreadful are the results to which these data lead! If we take 157 as a fair average of
count) so great as in the

1660 to 1664.

the executions at "Wurtzburg (and the catalogue
itself states that

the

list

was by no means com-

plete),

the amoimt of executions there in the

course of the century preceding 1628 would be
15,700.

We

know

that from 1610 to 1660 was

trials, and that so late 1749 Maria Renata was executed at Wurtzburg for witchcraft ; and though in the interval between 1660 and that date it is to be hoped that the number of these horrors had diminished, there can be little doubt that several thousands must be added to the amount already stated. If Bamberg, Paderborn, Treves, and the other Catholic bishop-

the great epoch of the witch
as

rics,

whose

zeal

equal contingent,

was not less ardent, furnished an and if the Protestants, as we

know*, actually ^ied with them in the extent to which these cruelties were carried, the number of victims from the date of Innocent's bull to the
* Cliristoph

von Kanzow, a nobleman of Holstein, burned

eighteen at once on one of bis estates.

C

18

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

final extinction of these persecutions

must

consi-

derably exceed 100,000 in Germany.

rusal of the

by the peWurtzburg murders is perhaps exceeded by that to which another document relative to the state of matters in 1629 must give rise namely a ballad on the subject of these executions,

Even the

feeling of horror excited

detailing ia doggrel verses the sufferings of the

unfortmiate victims, " to be simg to the tune of

Dorothea"
is

—a common street-song of the day.
'

It

entitled the

Druten Zeitung/ or Witches'

Clu'o-

nicle,

" being an accoimt of the remarkable events

which took place in Franconia, Bamberg, and Wm'tzburg, with those wi-etches who from avarice
or ambition have sold themselves to the devil, and

how they had

their reward at last

;

set to music,

and to be sung to the air of Dorothea." It is graced also with some hideous devices in wood, representing three de\ils seizing on divers persons

by the hair of

their heads, legs, etc.,

and dragging

It commences and concludes with them away. some pious reflections on the guilt of the witches and mzards, whose fate it commemorates wdth the One device in pargreatest glee and satisfaction. ticular, by which a witch who had obstinately resisted the

torture

is

betrayed into confession

namely, by sending into her prison the hangman seems to disguised as her familiar (Buhl Teufel)



meet with the particular approbation of the author, who calls it an excellent joke ; and no doubt the

SELF-DELUSIONS.
point of
it

19

in his eyes was very mucli increased lay

the consideration that

was

called, so obtained, the

upon the confession, as it unhappy wretch was

immediately committed to the flames'^.

What

are

we

to think of the state of feelmg in the country

periodical ballads,

where these horrors were thus made the subject of and set to music for the amuse-

ment of the populace t?
It

was one

fatal effect of the perseverance

with
tlais

* Some of our readers
precious productiou.

may

wisli to see a

specimeu of

We

shall take a stanza or two, descriptive

of the joke of wliich the poor witch was the victim.

Em Hexen hat man gefangen, zu Zeit die war sehi' reich
Mit der man lang umbgaben ehe
sie

bekannte gleich,

Dann
Bis

sie blieb

man
ich

ihr

ilir Unrecht gross, macht nothwendig diesen artlichen Foss{\),

darauf bestandig es gescheh

Das

mich

driiber

wunder
als

;

man
den

schickt eui Henkersknecht

Zu

ihr ins Gefangniss 'nimter,

man

hat kleidet recht

Mit

einer

Bamhaute

Als ihm die Drut anschaute meynts

wenns der Teufel war ihi- Buhl kam daher.

Sie sprach zu ihm behende, wie lestu mich so lang In der Obrigkeit Hande ? Hilf mir aus ihi-en Zwang, Wie du mir hast verheissen, ich bhi ja eben dein Thu mich aus der Angst entreissen, o Hebster Bide meiu Sie thet sich selbst verrathen,

Sie hat nit geschmeckt denBraten,

imd gab Anzeigung viel was das tvarfilr ein Spiel (!).

Er trostet sie und saget, ich will dir helfen wohl Darmn sey imverzaget, Morgens geschehen soil.
It bears the

colophon "Printed at Smalcald in the year 1627."
it is

t

When

these horrors were thus versified,

not wonderful

them " improved" by the preachers of the time. At Riga, in 1626, there appeared Nine Select Witch Sermons, by Hermann Sampsonius, superintendent at Riga,' and many others in
to find
'

the course of that century.

r O

20
wliicli

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
Satan and his dealings were thus brought
actually led into

before the view of every one, that thousands of

weak and depraved minds were

the belief that they had formed a connection with the evil being, and that the \asions which had so

long haunted the brain of Sprenger and his associates

this

own case. In some measm'c account for the strange confessions which form the great peculiarity in the witch trials, where unhappy creatures, with the fidl knowledge of theu' fate,
had been
realized in their

way

alone can

we

in

admit then* intercom-se with Satan, their midnight
meetings, incantations, then' dealings with
spii'its,

" white, black, and grey, with

all their

trumpery,"

the grotesque horrors of the sabbath,



in short,

every vrHd and impossible phantasm which had received colour and a body in the 'Malleus,^

— and
these

seemed to be perfectly
merited the fiery

satisfied that

they had fully

trial to

which their confession
"WTien

immediately subjected them,
trials,

we read

we Grimm's

tliink of the efiect of the

Jew's fiddle in

fairy tale;

we

see the delusion spreadtill first

ing like an epidemic fi'om one to another,
criminals themselves,

the witnesses, then the judges, and lastly the poor
all

pcld to the giddy

whirl,

and go
ence.

off like

dancing Der\dses under

its influ-

True

it is

that, in

many

of the cases, and parearlier part of

ticularly those

which occur in the

the seventeenth centurv,

when

the diabolical doc-

SELF-DELUSIONS.
trines of Sprenger

21

and Delrio were in their full vigoiir, the confessions on which these convictions proceeded were elicited by torture, moral and physical,

and frequently retracted,
instance from Delrio

till

a fresh appli-

cation of the rack produced a fresh admission.

One

may

stand in place of a

thousand.

He

mentions that an unfortunate gen-

tleman in Westphalia had been twenty times put to the rack, " vicies ssevse qvisestioni subditum," in
order to compel

wolf

he was a weretill the hangman gave him an intoxicating draught, and under its influence he confessed that he was a were- wolf " En judicum clemens arbitrium,^' says after all.
to confess that
!

him

AU

these tortures he resisted,

Defrio, "

quo

se porrigat in

illis

partibus aquilo-

naribus,"

— See
!

in the north
tni

how long-suffering we judges are we never put our criminals to death
them with twenty preliminary
!

we have

tried

courses of torture

This

is

perfectly in the spirit

who had been annoyed with the pertinacity of a witch, who, like
of another worthy in Germany,

the poor lycanthrope, persisted in maiataining her
innocence.

"

Da

says the inquisitor

— "und

hess ich sie tiichtig foltern,^^
sie

gestand;"

—I tortm'ed
and

her tightly

(the torture lasted four hours),
!

she confessed

Who

indeed under such a system

would not have confessed? Death was unavoidable either way, and the great object was to attain that consummation with the least preparatory pain. " I went," says Sir George Mackenzie, " when I

22

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

was a Justice Depute, to examine some women

who

liad confessed judicially.
silly creature,

One

of them,

who

was a

told

me

that she

had not con-

fessed because she was guilty, but^ being a poor
avIio wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a mtch, she knew she would starve, for no person hereafter would give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the Avorld. Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said*." In other cases, the torture was

creatm'e

applied not only to the indi\'idual accused, but to
his relations or friends, to secure confession.

In

Alison Pearson's casef,
ter, a girl

it

appears that her daugh-

of nine years of age, had been placed

in the pilliewinks,
fifty

and her son subjected to about

strokes in the boots.

Where

the torture was

not corporeally applied, terror, confusion, and the
influence of others frequently produced the
effect

same on the weak minds of the accused. In the case of the New England Avitches in 1696, six of
the poor

women who were

liljerated in the general

gaol -delivery which took place after this reign of
terror

began to

decline, (and

who had

all

confessed

previously that they had been guilty of the
crafts

mtch-

imputed to them,) retracted

their confessions

in writing, attributing
* Criminal Law.
Tit. x.

them
Ti-ial

to the consternation

t Eccords of Justiciary.

of the Master of Orkney.

SELF-DELUSIONS.

23

tlieir sudden seizure and imprison" And indeed/' said they, " that confession which it is said we made was no other than what was suggested to us by some gentlemen, they telling us we were witches, and they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so, and our imderstanding, our reason, and our faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition. And most of what we said was but a consenting to what

produced by
ment.

they said^."

But though unquestionably great part of these which at first tended so much to prolong this delusion, were obtained by torture, or contrary to the real conviction and belief of the
confessions,

accused,
cases

it

is

impossible to deny that in

many
won-

the confessions were voluntary,
belief.

and proto be

ceeded from actual

Nor was

it

dered at that persons of a weak and melancholy

temperament should, more particularly at a time when the phenomena of nature and of the human body were so little imderstood, be disposed to set down every occurrence which they could not explain, and every wild phantasm which crossed
their minds, to the du'ect

and immediate agency

of an evil power.

At

that period even the

most

natural events were ascribed to witchcraft.
child, after

If a being touched by a suspected individual,
ill,

died or became

the convulsions were ascribed
JoiATiial.

* Calef's

24

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

to diabolical interference, as in
late as

Wenham's

case, so

on the contrary, she cured instead of killing, the conclusion was the same, although the only charm employed might be a prayer to the Almighty f. If an old woman's cat, coming
1712*.
If,

to the door at night, took part in a concert with

other cats, this was nothing but a

mtch

herself

iri

disguise J. In the case of Robert Erskine of
tried for the mui'der of his
for

Dim§,
ivitch-

nephews, he

is

inchcted

makiag away with them by poisoning and
the poisoning was not of
itself

craft, as if

amply

sufficient to

account for then* death.

It was still less wonderful that those mysterious phenomena which sometimes occur in the human

frame, such as spontaneous combustion, delusions
arising

from the

state of the braia

and nerves, and
offices

optical deceptions, should appear to the sufferer to

be the work of the

de\il,

whose good
little

they
fit

might very probably have invoked imder some
of despondency or misanthropy,
like the

expecting^

poor man in the fable who called on Death,

to be taken at their word.

What

a " Thesaurus

of Horror^' would the spectres of Nicolai have
* Cobbett's State Trials.

t Trial of Bartie Paterson.
Dee. 18, 1607.

Eecorcb of Scottish

Justiciar}-.

X In Wenham's
ing to Jane

case, IVIr.

Cbauncy deposed that a
at his

cat belong-

Wenliam had come and knocked
killed
it.

door at night,

and that he had
trial.

This was founded on evidence at the^

§ Rec. of Just. 1613, Dec. 1.

SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.

25

afforded in the sixteenth centmy or the commencement of the seventeenth, if embodied in the pages of the ' Malleus' or the Flagellnm Dsemonum/ instead of beiag quietly published by the patients as optical and medical phenomena in the
'

^Berlinische Monatschrift' for 1799, and the 15th

volume of the
fearful

'

Philosophical Journal V

What

a

ghmpse into the infernal world would have been afforded by the still more frightful illusions which haunted poor Backzko of Konigsberg"^
during his political labours in 1806; the grinning

negro Avho seated himself opposite to him, the

owl-headed tormentor that used to stare at him
every night through his curtains, the snakes
tAvist-

iug and turning about his knees as he tiirned his
periods
!

If

glish Jacob

of visions

we go back to 1651, we find our EnBohme, Pordagef, giving an account which must have been exactly of the
arising

from an excited state of the most thorough conviction of their reahty. His Philadelphian disciples, Jane Leade, Thomas Bromley, Hooker, Sapperton, and others, were indulged, on the first meeting of their society,
brain, ^ith the

same kind,

with a vision of unparalleled splendour. The princes

and powers of the infernal world passed in review
before them, sitting in coaches, surroimded with

dark clouds and drawn by a cortege of
* See the
'

lions, dra-

Neue Necrologie

cler

Deutschen, 1823,' for an ac-

count of these remarkable appearances,

t Divina

et

Vera Metaphysica.

26

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

gons, tigers, and bears; then followed the lower
spirits

arranged in squadrons with
;

cats^ ears, claws,

twisted limbs, etc. or kept
distinct
;

whether they shut their eyes

them open, the appearances were equally " for we saw," says the master-spirit Por-

dage, " with the eyes of the mind, not with those

of the body."
"

And

shapes that come not at a mortal call

Will not depart when mortal voices bid.

Lords of the visionary

eye,

Once

raised remains aghast,

whose lid and will not

fall*."

Thus, while phenomena which experience has

shown to be perfectly natural were imiversally men had come to be on the most familiar footing with spiritual beings of all kinds. In the close of the sixteenth
since

attributed to supernatural causes,

century. Dr.

and we

verily believe his

Dee was, according to his own account, own conviction, on terms
His brother
all his

of intimacy with most of the angels.

physician. Dr. Richard Napier, a relation of the

inventor of the logarithms, got almost
dical prescriptions

mefill-

from the angel Raphael. In

Elias

Ashmole had a IMS. volume of these

receipts,

ing about a quire and a half of paper f.

fact,

one would almost suppose that few persons at that
*

Wordsworth's 'Dion.'

t The prefixed characters which Ashmole interprets to mean Responsum Raphaehs seem remarkably to resemble that cabalistic-looking initial which in medical prescriptions is commonly
interpreted " Recipe."

SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.

27

time condescended to perform a cure by natural

means.

Witness

the

sympathetic

nostrums of

Valentine Greatrakes and Sir
the case of

Kenelm Digby; or Arise Evans, reported by Aubrey, who
;

whom it was revealed hand would cure him and at the first coming of King Charles II. into St. James's Park he kissed the king's hand and rubbed his
" had a fungous nose, and to
that the king^s

nose with
him.''

it,

which troubled the king, but cured
too, the visits of ghosts

In Aubrey's time,

had become so frequent, that they had their exits and their entrances without exciting the least sensation. Aubrey makes an entry in his journal of the appearance of a ghost as coolly as a merchant uow-a-days makes an entry in his ledger. " Anno
1670. Not far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether good spirit or bad, re-

turned no answer, but disappeared with a curious

perfume and a melodious twang."
Is it to be wondered at then, that, siuTounded on all hands with such superstitious fancies, the weak and depraved were early brought to believe

that

all

the wild chimeras of the

demonologists

were true, and that they had really concluded that
covenant with Satan, the possibility of which was
universally inculcated as an article of faith, and

the idea of which was constantly present to their

minds ? or

that,

under the influence of

tliis

fright-

ful delusion,

they should voluntarily come forward

to confess their imaginary crime, as in the

Am-

28

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
girl atIio

sterdam case of the poor
Tii'ius'^j

accused herself

of be\\itcliing cattle by the words Shurius, Turius,
or in another
still

more remarkable case
'

in 16S7, mentioned in Reichard's

Beytrage/ where

a young

woman
all

accused herself, her friend, and

the mother of her friend, of a long course of witchcraft,

with

the usual traditional and impossible

horrors of Sprenger and his brethren ?
Neither,

we

are afraid,

is

there

much

reason to

doubt that some of the most horrible of their conceptions were founded on facts which were lint too
real
;

that the cunning and the depraved contrived

to tiu'n the ecstasies

and the

fears of these

poor

wretches to their o^vn

pui'jjoses; in

short, that

frauds similar to tliose which Boccaccio has painted in his novel of the angel Gabriel, were occasionally

played off upon the deluded victims.
entering further on a topic which
is

Without
rather of a

delicate kind, the reader will have an idea of our

meaning who

recollects the disclosures that took

place in the noted French case of Father Girard

and La Cadiere.

Much

has been said as to the wonderful coinci-

dences to be found in the evidence of the accused
* Dapper (Besclireibung von A m sterdam,
her as a melaucholy or bypochondriac
girl.

p. 150)

describes

She was burned however as usual. These rhjTning or aUiterative charms are of very remote antiquity. Cato, in his treatise on Husbandry, re-

commends the
or "

following formulaiy for a spraiu
Ista, Pista Sista,

or fi-acture

"Huat Hanat, Huat
Motas

Domiabo Damnaustra,"

Yseta, Daries Dardaries, Astataries Dissunapiter."

COINCIDENCES IN EVIDENCE.

29

when examined
details,

separately, the minuteness of their

and the general harmony of the infernal

narratives, as collected
different

from the witch
is

trials

of

countries.

But the truth
first

that this

assertion

must in the

place be received with
cases, where, ac-

great limitations; for in

many

cepting the assertions of Sprenger and the rest
as true,

we should suppose the

coincidence to be

complete, the original confessions which stUl exist

prove that the resemblance was merely general,

and that there were radical and irreconcHeable
ferences in the details of the evidence.

dif-

luasfar as

the assertion

is

really true,

one simple explanation

goes far to account for the phenomenon
nire parent certd ratione

notions of the devil

; " Insamodoque." The general and his demeanour, the rites



of the infernal sabbath, etc. being once fixed, the
visions

which crossed the minds of the unfortunate
so that, even if left to

wretches accused soon assumed a pretty determinate and invariable form
tell
;

their

own

story, there

would have been the
dif-

closest resemblance

ferent

persons.

between the narratives of But this was not all. In

al-

most every case the confessions were merely the echo of questions put by the inquisitors, aU of which again were founded on the demonological
creed of the
'

Malleus.^

One

set of questions is

put

to all the witches,

and the answers, being almost
differ-

always simple affirmatives, necessarily correspond.

Hence

it is

amusing enough to observe how

30

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

ent were the results,

when

the process of investi-

gation

fell

into the hands of persons to

whom

In the Lindheim trials in 1633, to which we have abeady alluded, the inquisitor happened to be an old soldier, who had witnessed several campaigns in the ThirtyYears War, and who, instead of troubling his head
about lucubi, Succubi, and the other favourite
subjects of inquiry with the disciples of the

Sprenger^s manual was unknown.

Hamthe

mer, was only anxious to ascertain

who was

queen of the infernal
as distinct

spirits,

the general,

officers,

corporals, etc., to all of

which he received answers

and

satisfactory as

any

tliat

are recorded

for oui' insti'uction in the chronicles of

Bodinus

or Delrio.

In the seventeenth century, the manner in which
the delusion was communicated seems exactly to

resemble those remarkable instances of sympathy

which occur in the cases of the Scottish Cambuslang Conversions and the American Forest Preachings.

No

sooner has one hypochondriac published
fifty

his

symptoms, than

others feel themselves at

once affected with the same disorder.
the readers of Glamil (and
ally

In the

celeall

brated ^Mora case in 1669, with which of course

who

has not occasion-

peeped into his hoiTors?) are familiar, the
first

disease spreads

thi'ough the childi-en,

who

be-

lieved themselves the victims of diabolical agency,

and who ascribed the convulsions, faintings, etc., with which thev were attacked, to that cause and
;

SWEDEN.

THE BLOCULA.

31

next through the unfortunate witches themselves.
for as soon as

one or two of them, bm'sting into
the accusation of the children

tears, confessed that

was

true, all the rest joined in the confession.
is

And
all

what

the natm'e of their confession?

Of

impossible absurdities that ever entered the brain

They meet the is the epitome. on the Blocula, which is the devil's ball-room in Sweden, as the Brocken is in Germany; they ride thither on sticks, goats, men's backs, and spits; they are baptized by a priest
of man, this trial
devil nightly

provided by the devil ; they sup with him, very frugally
it

would appear,

for the

banquet commonly

consists of broth

made with

colewort and bacon,
;

oatmeal, bread and butter, milk and cheese

and

the devil allows no wine.

After supper they dance,

and when the devil wishes to be particularly jolly he pulls the spits from under them, and beats them black and blue, after which he sits down and
laughs outrageously.
to a musical exhibition

Sometimes he treats them on the harp, for he has

a great turn for music, as his famous sonata to
Tartini proves.

All of

them

confess intercourse

with him^, and most of them had sons and daughters

by him. Occasionally he

fell sick,

and required

to be bled and blistered ; and once he seemed to

be dead, on which occasion there was a general
* This, indeed,
trials,
is

an almost inyariable feature in the witch

and,

if

the subject could justify the discussion, might lead

to

some singular medical conclusions.

32

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
for

momniing
idol

him on

tlie

Blocula, as the Syrian

damsels used to bewail the annual wound of their

Thammuz on Lebanon.

Is

it

not frightful

to think that in a trial held before a tribunal consisting of the elite of the province of Dalecarlia,

assisted

by the commissioners from the

capital,

in a country where, until this time,

the witch

mania, already beginning to abate in Germany,

had scarcely been heard
earlier perhaps

of,

and where

it

ceased

than in most other comitries in
fifteen children

Europe,

—seventy-two women and
Is

shoidd have been condemned and executed at one

time upon such confessions ?
like conclusion of Dr.

it

possible after

this to read without shuddering the cool newspaper-

Horneck " On the 25th of August execution was done upon the notoriously guilty, the day being bright and glorious, and the sun shining, and some thousands of people being
present at the spectacle
\"



Thirty years before, a similar instance of the
progress of the epidemic had taken place at Lille,
in the hospital founded

by the pious enthusiast

Antoinette Bourignon.

On

entering the school-

room one
of
little

day, she imagined that she saw a

number

black children, with wings, flying about the heads of the girls ; and not lildng the colour or

appearance of these
to be

visitors,

she warned her pupils

on their guard. Shortly before this, a girl who had run away from the institution in consequence of being confined for some misdemeanour

DELUSIONS.
of ^rhicli she

33

had heen

guilty, being interrogated

how

she had contrived to escape, and not liking

disclose the tnith, had maintained had been liberated by the devil, to whose Noservice she had devoted herself from a child. thing more was wanting in that age of diablerie to

prolDably to

that she

tnrn the heads of the poor children ; in the course
of six months almost
all

the girls in the hospital,

amounting to more than
intercourse with the

fifty,

selves confirmed witches,

had confessed themand admitted the usual
the midnight meetwhich form the staple

devil,

ings, dances, banquets, etc.,

of the narrative of the time.

Their ideal banquets
liberal scale

seem to have been on a more
ever than those of the poor

how-

Mora

witches; pro-

many of the pupils had been accustomed to better fare in a populous and wealthy town in Flanders, than the others in a poor village
bably because
in Sweden.

Exorcisms and prayers of

all

kinds

fol-

lowed this astomiding disclosure.

The Capuchins
the Jesuits

and Jesuits quarrelled, the Capucliins implicitly
Ijclieving the reality of the possession,

The parents of the culprit now turned the tables upon poor Bourignon, by accusing her of ha^dng bewitched them and at last the
doxibting
it.
;

pious theosophist, after an examination before the
Council, was glad to seek safety in flight
;

having

thus obtaiued a clearer notion than she formerly
possessed of the
wliich she

kingdom of Satan, with regard to had entertained and published as many D

34

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
;

strange fancies as the Bishop of Beuevento
haA-iug

and

been taught by her own experience the
laid,

danger of tampering ^ith youthful minds, in which
the train of superstition had been so long
that
it

only requii'ed a spark from her overheated
it

brain to kindle
It

into a flame.

woidd appear too that physical causes, and in
this time

particvdar nervous aflectious of a singular kind,

had about

mingled with and increased
its rise

the delusion which had taken

in these suhis influ-

perstitious conceptions of the devil

and

Dm-ing the very year (1669) in which the children at ^Mora were suflering under convidsions and fainting fits, those in the Oqihan Hospital at Hoorn, in Holland, were laboiuing under a malady exactly similar ; but though the phenomena were
ence.
atti'ibuted to

diabolical agency, the suspicions of

the public fortunately were not directed to any
indi\idual in particular.

Another instance of the
at

same
in the

kmd had

taken place about a century before

Orphan Hospital
accoimt
is

Amsterdam, of which a
of children supposed

particulai'

given in Dapper's history of

that city, where the
to be bewitched

number

amounted to about seventy, and where the e^'il was attributed to some unhappy old women, before whose houses the afiected urchins, when led out into the streets, had been more than usually clamorous. Such also appears to have been the primary cause of the tragedies in New England in 1699; of the demoniac exhibitions at Loudon,

CONFESSIONS.

35

which were made a pretext for the murder of the
obnoxious Graudier ; of the strange incidents which
occurred so late as 1749 in the convent of Unterzeil at

Wurtzburg

;

and of most of the other more

remarkable cases of supposed possession.
sterious principle of

The my-

sympathy, operating in weak

minds, will in fact be found to be at the root of

witchcraft.

most of the singular phenomena in the history of No wonder then that after the expe-

rience of a century, the judges, and even the igno-

rant pubHc themselves,
that,

came

at last

to suspect

however the principle might apply to other crimes, the confession of the criminal was not, in
cases of witchcraft, the best evidence of the fact.

England cases, says Mr. Calef (April "one was tried that confessed; but they were now so well taught what weight to lay upon confessions, that the jmy brought her in not
In the
25, 1693),
guilty, although she confessed she was."

New

But what a deluge of blood had been shed before this principle came to be recognized, and still more before the judicial belief in the existence of WTiat a spectacle the crime was fully eradicated does Europe present from the date of Innocent's Bull down to the commencement of the eighteenth centm-y Sprenger, Henry Institor, Geiss von Lindheim, and others in Germany; Cumanus in Italy the Inquisition in Spain ; Remigius, Bodinus, and De TAncre in France and Lorraine,
even
! !

;

flooring

witches

on

all

sides

with the

'

Malleus

36

IMAGIC

AND TVITCHCRAFT.
them
to death ^vith the

^Maleficarum/ or flogging

'Fkgellum' and Tustis Dsemonum;' Holland, Geneva, Sweden, Denmark, England, and Scotland
A^dng with each other in the number of
trials
!

and

the depth of their infatuation and bigotry

The Reformation, which uprooted other
only strengthened and fostered
this.

errors,

Every town

and

village

accusers,

on the continent was filled with spies, and ATetchcs who made their living by
viitli

pretending to detect the secret marks which indicated a compact

the dcAol^,



inquisitors,

* The trade of a pricker, as it was called, i. e. a person who put pins into the flesh of a witch, was a regular one in Scotland and England, as well as on the Continent. Sir George Mackenzie mentions the case of one of them who confessed the imposture

and a similar instance is mentioned by Spottiswood Sir Walter Scott gives the following account of tliis celebrated mode of detecting witches, and torturing them at the same time, to draw forth confession, was, by running pins into their body, on pretence of discovering the devil's stigma, or mark, wliich was said to be inflicted by him upon all liis vassals, and to be insensible to pain. This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was in Scotland reduced to a trade and the yoiuig witch-finder was allowed to
(p.

48)

;

trade: — "One

(p.

448).

;

torture the accused party, as

if in

exercise of a lawful calling,
it

although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatizes
tm'e.
trial

as a hoi-rid impos-

I observe in the Collections of Mr. Pitcaim, that, at the of Janet Peaston of Dalkeith, the magistrates and ministers

John Kincaid of Tranent, the common upon her, who found two marks of and which appeared indeed to l-'3 so, for she could not feel the pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did they (the marks) bleed when they were taken out again and when she was asked where she thought the pins were put in, she pointed to a part of her body distant from
of that market-town caused
1

a'icker,

to exercise

liis

craft

'

what he

called the devil's making,

;

THE REFORMATION.
judges^
advocates,

6l

executioners,

every one con-

nected with these frightM tribunals, on the watch
for anything

which might afford the semblance of

To ensure the death or ruin of an enemy, nothing more was necessary in most cases than to throw into this lion's mouth an accusation of
suspicion.

magic against him.

" Vix aliquis eorum," says

Linden, the determined foe of these proceedings,

"qui accusati
of Edelin, of

sunt, supplicium evasit."

The

fate

Urban Grandier, and
France,
in

of the Mare-

chale d'Ancre in

Sidonia von

York

of Doctor Flaet and Germany, and of Peter of

Abano

in Italy*, prove

how

often the accusation

of sorcery was not even believed by the accusers
themselves, but was resorted to merely as a certain

means

to get rid of

an obnoxious enemy.
officials,

INlean-

while the notaries' clerks and
their vocation,

labouring in

attendant on these trials

grew rich from the enormous fees ; the executioner became
:

a personage of first-rate consequence

" generoso

equo instar

aulici nobilis ferebatm', aiu'o argen:

toque vestitus

uxor ejus vestium luxu certabat
tliree

the real place. They were pins of

inches in length.' Besides

the fact, that the persons of old people especially sometimes contain spots void of sensibUity, there
is

also

the professed prickers used a pin, the

room to beheve that pomt or lower part of

which was, on being pressed down, sheathed in the upper, which was hoUow for the purpose, and that wliich appeared to enter Demonology and Witchcraft, the body did not pierce it at all."
p. 297.

*

Peter died in prison just in time to escape the flames.
after his death.

He

was burned in efBgy however

Ob

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
nobilioiibus*."

cum

Some

partial diminution of

this persecuting zeal took place in consequence of

a Rescript of

John YII, (18th December, 1591),
by'which the fees of
trade in

addi'essed to the commission,
coui't

were restricted within more moderate bounds
the profits arising from
tliis

but

still

human

Aictims were sufficient to induce the
dej)endants of coiu't, like

members and the Brahmins in India, to
this

support with
tion by
fire.

all theu'

might

system of pm'ifica-

At

last

however the hoiTors of Wurtzburg and

TreAcs began to open the eyes even of the dullest
to the progress of the danger, which,
like Elijah^s cloud,

commencing had gradually overshadowed the
were confined to the
or mihappy fowhose more vigorous intellect

land.

^ATiile the executions

lower classes, to crazed old
reigners, even those

women

enabled them to resist the popular contagion chose
rather to
sit

by spectators of these horrors, than

to

expose themselves to the fate of Edelin or Flaet,

hx attacking the madness in which they originated. But now, when the pestilence, spreading on and on,
thi'eatened the lives of moreexalted A-ictims,

— when

noblemen and abbots, presidents of courts and professors, began to swell the catalogue, and when no man felt secure that he might not suddenly be compelled by tortiu'c to bear witness against his own selfishness began to innocent wife or childi'cn,



* Lindou, cited bv Wyttonbach, Yersuch einer Gcischichte von
'

Trier,' vol.

iii.

p. 110.

PERSECUTIONS IN GERMANY.
co-operate with truth and reason.
So^ in the

39

same

way, in the case of the
the
first

New

England

witchcrafts,

effectual

check which they received was

from the accusation of Mrs. Hale, the clergyman's
wife
:

her husband,

who

till

then had been most

active in the persecution, immediately received a

new

light with regard to the transaction,

and ex-

erted his whole influence for the suppression of the
trials.

The

first

decisive

blow which the doctrines of the

inquisitors received in

Germany was from
it is

the pub-

lication of the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in 1631.

In

the sixteenth centmy,

true that Ponzonibius,

Wierus, Pietro d'Apone, and Reginald Scott had
published works which went to

impugn their whole

proceedings

;

but the works of the foreigners were
in

almost

unknown

Germany, and that of Wierus

was nearly as absurd and superstitious as the doctrines he combated. It is little to the credit of the Reformers that the first work in which the
matter was treated in a philosophical, humane, and

common-sense view should have been the production of a Catholic Jesuit, Frederick Spec, the

descendant of a noble family in Westphalia.
witch
operate on the

So

strongly did this exposure of the horrors of the
trials

mind

of

John Philip
finally
first

Schonbrunn, Bishop of Wm-tzburg, and
care

Archbishop and Elector of Mentz, that his

on assuming the Electoral dignity was to

abolish the process entirely within his dominions

iO

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
example which was soon
after followed

—an
the

by

Duke

of Brunswick and others of the

German

princes.

Shortly after this the darkness begins to

break up^ and the da^vning of better views to appear,

though

still liable

to partial

and temporary

obscm-ations,

—the

evil

apparently shifting fm'ther

north, and re-appearing in
in the

Sweden and Denmark
at

shape of the

trials

Mora and

Fioge.

Eeichard"^ has published a rescript of Frederick

William, Elector of Brandenbvu'g, bearing date the

4th of November, 1654, addressed to the judges in
reference to the case of

Ann

of Ellcrbroke, enjoin-

ing that the prisoner should be allowed to be heard
in defence, before any tortm'e

was resorted

to (a

principle directly the reverse of those maintained

by the

inqiiisitorial courts),

and expressly repro-

bating the proof by water as an unjust and deccitfid test, to which no credit was to be given. Even where a conviction takes place, as in the Neuendorf trial of Catherine Sempels, we find the sentence of death first passed upon her by the provincial judges, commuted into imprisonment for a degree life by the Electoral Chamber in 1671,



of lenity which never could have taken place dvir-

ing the height of the mania.

In 1701 the celebrated
livered,

inaugural

Thesis of

Thomasius, 'De Crimine Magise,^ was publicly dewith the highest applause, in the Uni-

* Beytrage zur Befbrderiing einer niiliern Einsicht in das ge-

saiamte Geisten-cicb, toI.

i.

p. 284.

PERSECUTIONS IN HUNGARY.
versity

41
fifty

of Halle, a work

wliich

some

years

before woiild assuredly have procured tlie author no other crown but that of martyrdom, but which was now received with general approbation, as embodying the views which the honest and intelligent

had long entertained.

Thomasius^s great

storehouse of information and argument Avas the

work of Bekker, who again had modelled his on Van Dale on Oracles and Thomasius, while he adopted his facts and argiunents, steered clear of those Cartesian doctrines which had been the chief cause why the work of Bekker had produced so little practical eflFect. Still, notthe Treatise of
;

withstanding the good thus produced, the
not extinguished.

fire

of

persecution seems to have been smothered only,

In 1728

it

flamed up again at

Szegedin in Hungary, where thirteen persons were

burnt ahve on three

scaflblds, for witchcraft,

under

circumstances of horror worthy of the wildest periods of this madness.
the frightful stoiy of

And so late as 1749 comes Maria Renata, of Wurtzburg, the whole official details of which are published by -Horst, and which in its atrocity was worthy to conclude the long series of murders which had polluted the annals of Bamberg. This trial is remarkable from the feeling of disgust it seems to have excited in Germany, Italy, and France and the more so because, whatever may be thought
of the reality of her pretensions, there seems to be

no doubt from the evidence that Maria was by

42

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
ivas a dabbler in spells

no means immaculate, but
dosian code.

and potions, a venefica in the sense of the Theo-

But there

is

a time, as

Solomon
glories

says, for eveiytbing

under the sun ; and the
trial

of the

'

Malleus Maleficarum^ were departed.

The

consequence was, that taking this

as their

text-book, various foreigners, particularly IMaffei,
Tartarotti,

and Dell' Ossa, attacked the system so
time the adherents of

^•igorously, that since that

the old superstition seem to have abandoned the

Germany. had come to a close much sooner in Switzerland and France. In the Catholic canton of Glarus, it is said, a witch was burnt even so late as 1786; but in the Protestant cantons no trials seem to have taken place for two centuries past. The last execution in Geneva was that of Michel
field in

^Matters

Chauderon, in 1652. Sebastian Michaelis indeed would have us to believe, that at one time the tribunal at Geneva put no criminals accused of
witchcraft to death, unless on proof of their having

done actual injury to
the other

men

or animals, and that

phenomena of garded as mere mental

confessions, etc., were redelusions.

If such how-

rule was nowhere did the mania of persecution at one time rage more than in Geneva, as is evident from Debio's preface. It seems fairly entitled however to the credit of having been the first state in Europe

ever was originally the case, this

humane
for

unfortunately soon abandoned;

EDICT OF LOUIS XIV.

43

which emancipated
bloody superstition.

itself

from the influence of this

In France, the edict of Louis XIV., in 1682,
directed only against pretended witches

and pro-

phets, proves distinctly that the belief in the reality

of witchcraft had ceased, and that

it

was merely
it

the pretended exercise of such powers which

was
was

thought necessary to suppress.
credit of Louis

It is highly to the

and

his ministry, that this step

taken by him in opposition to a formal requite by
the Parliament of

Normandy, presented

in the

year 1670, on the occasion of his Majesty having

commuted the punishment of death into banishment for life, in the case of a set of criminals whom the Parliament had condemned more majorum for witchcraft*. In this apology for their
belief,

they reminded Louis of the inveterate prac-

tice of the

kingdom; of the numerous

arrets of

the Parliament of Paris, from the trials in Artois
in 1459, reported

by Monstrelet, down to that of 1616 ; of the judgments pronounced under the commission addressed by Henry the
Leger in

May

Great to the Sieur de TAncre, in 1609 of those pronounced by the Parliament of Toulouse, in
;

1577

;

of the celebrated case of Gaufi'idy, in 1611

of the arrets of the Parliaments of Dijon and

Hennes, following on the remarkable
* The

trial of

the

Abbe

Fiard, one of the latest believers on record, has
'

printed the Requete at full length in his
p.

Lettres

sui* la

117

et seq.

44

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

Mareclial de Retz, in 1441^ wlio was biu'nt for magic and sorcery in tlie presence of tlie Duke of Bretague and after combating tlie authority of a
:

canon of the Council of Ancyra, and of a passage
in St. Augustine^

them by

their opponents, they

which had been quoted against sum up their plead-

ing with the following placid and charitable supplication to his Majesty
soufiru'

— " Qu'elle

voudra bien

Texecution des arrets qu'ils out rendus, et

lem- permcttre de coutinuer ^instruction et juge-

ment
frira

dcs proces des personnes accuses de sor-

tilege, et

que

la piete de

Votre Majeste ne souf-

.

pas que Ton introduise dm'ant son regne une

nouvelle opinion contraire aux principes de la religion,

pour laquelle Votre

jNIajeste a toujoiu's si

glorieusement employe ses soins et ses armes."

Notwithstanding this concluding compliment to
his Majesty^s zeal

and

piety, it is doubtful

whether

the Parliament of

Normandy,

in their anxiety for

the support of their constitutional privileges, coidd

have taken a more effectual plan to ruin their OAvn
case,

than by thus presenting Louis with a sort of

anthology or elegant extracts from the atrocities
of the witch trials
;

and in

all

probability the ap-

pearance of the edict of 1680 was accelerated by
the very remonstrance by which the

Norman

sages

had hoped to strangle it. In tmniing from the Continent to the state of matters in England and Scotland, the prospect is anything but a comfortable one; and certainly

PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND.
notliing can be
^vliich

45

more

deceitful than tlie unction

Dr. Francis Hutchinson lays to his soul,
to assert that
its

when he ventures
and

England was one of
felt

those countries where

horrors were least

Witness the trials and convictions which, even before the enactment of any penal statute, took place for this imaginary ofearliest suppressed.

fence, as in the case of Bolingbroke

and Margery

Jourdain, whose incantations the genius of Shakespear has rendered familiar to us in the Second

Part of King
(Statutes

of

Henry VI. Witness the successive Henry VIII., of Elizabeth, and of

James
neral,

I.,

the last of which was repealed only in

1736, and passed while Coke was Attorney-Ge-

and Bacon a member of the Commons Witness the exploits of Hopkins, the witch-findergeneral, against the wretched creatures in Lincolnshire, of

whom
And some
for sitting above

" Some only for not being drown' cl,

groimd

Wliole nights and days upon their breeches,

And

feehng pain, were hanged for witches."

Sudibras, part

ii.

canto

iii.

WTiat would the Doctor have said to the
of

list

THREE THOUSAND \dctims executed during the

dynasty of the Long Parliament alone, which Zachary Grey, the editor of Hudibras, says he himperused ? ^liat absm-dities can exceed those sworn to in the trials of the witches of Warboys, whose fate was, in Dr. Hutchinson's days, and
self

46
perhaps

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
is stilly

annually " improvecV in a comat

memoration sermon

Cambridge ? or

in the case

of the Inckless Lancashire witches, sacrificed, as
afterwards appeared, to the villany of the impostor

Robinson, whose story fiu'nished materials to the
di'amatic

muse of Hey wood and Shadwell ?
is

How

melancholy

the spectacle of a

man

like Hale,

condemning Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, in 1664, on e\-idence which, though corroborated by the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a child would

now be
things,

disposed to laugh at
it

?

A

better order of

justiceship

commences with the Chiefof Holt. The e\idence against ^lother
is

true,

^lunnings, in 1694, would, Avith a
intellect,

man
jiu-y

of weaker

have sealed the fate of the unfortunate
;

old

woman

but Holt charged the

with such

firmness and good sense, that a verdict of
Guilty, almost the
for witchcraft,
trials before
fii"st

Not
trial

then on record in a

was found.

In about ten other
case,

Holt, fi-om 1694 to 1701, the result

was the same.

Wenham's

which followed in

1711, sufficiently evinced the change which had

taken place in the feelings of judges.
out the whole
trial.

Through-

Chief Justice Powell seems to

have sneered openly at the absm'dities which the
A^itnesses,

and in particular the clergjTnen who
but, with all his exertions, a verdict of

were examined, were endeavoiu'ing to press upon
the juiy
guilty
;

was found against the prisoner. With the view however of seciu'ing her pardon, by showing

PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND.

47

had gone, he was given in, " whether they found her guilty upon the indictment for conversing ^^ith the dcA-il in the shape of a cat?" The foreman answered, " We find her guilty of that " It is almost needless to add that a pardon

how

far the prejudices of the jury

asked,

when the

a

erdict

was procured
1716,
jNIrs.

for her.

And

yet after

all this,

in

Hicks and her daughter, aged
at

niiie,

were hanged
to the devil,

Huntingdon for selling their soids and raising a storm, by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of soap With this crowning atrocity, the catalogue of
!

murders in England closes; the penal statutes against witchcraft being repealed in 1736, and the
pretended exercise of such arts being punished in
fature by imprisonment

and

pillory.

Even yet

however the case of Rex v. Weldon, in 1809, and the still later case of Barker v. Ray, in Chancery
(August
2,

1827), proves that the popular belief

in such practices has
is

by no means ceased ; and

it

not very long ago that a poor
life

woman

narrowly

escaped with her
trial

fi'om a re\ival of Hopkins's

by

water'^.

Barrington, in his observations

on the statute 20 Henry VI., does not hesitate to estimate the numbers of those put to death in

England on
*

this charge at
'

30,000

Even now a complaint of being bewitched' is occasionally made to Justices of the Peace by the very ignorant or the very
malignant.

48

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

We

now turn

to Scotland.
rise

Much

light has

been

and progress^ decline and fall, of the delusion in that country by the valuable work of Mr. Pitcairn*, which contains abstracts
of every trial in the supreme Criminal Coui't of

thrown on the

Scotland

:

the author has given a faithful and
of the procedure in each case, acfull

minute

-siew

companied with
terest.

extracts fi'om

the original

docimients, where they contained anything of in-

In no country perhaps did
in Scotland.

this

gloomy superthan

stition assxmie a darker or bloodier character

Wild, mountainous, and pastoral

from the striking, varied, and sometimes terrible phenomena which they present,
countries, partly

—partly from the habits and manner of the tendency to thought and meditation which they create and —have always been the great
life,

foster,

haunts in which superstition finds

its

cradle

and
re-

home.
flection

The temper of the
with enthusiasm

Scots,

combining
of
life



their

mode

in

earlier days,
v.-ild

which amidst the occasional bustle of
exertion, left

and agitating

many

internals

— their night watches —their uncertain cHby the cave on the conmate, of sunshine and vapour and storm—
of mental vacuity in solitude
hill-side
all
* Trials

and other Proceedings

in Matters Criminal before the
tlie

High Court

of Justiciary in Scotland, selected from

Records

of that Court.

By

Eobert Pitcaim.

Edinburgh.

SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
tributed to exalt
fear with

49

and keep

alive that superstitious

which ignorance looks on every extra-

From the earliest ordinary movement of nature. period of the Scottish annals, " All was hot gaistis,
and eldrich phantasie;" the meteors and aurorse
boreales which prevailed in this moimtainous re-

gion were tortured into apparitions of horsemen

combating in the

air,

or corpse-candles burning

on the
guests

hill -tops "^.

Skeletons danced as familiar
spectres

at

the nuptials of our kingsf:

warned them back from the battle-field of Flodden, and visionary heralds proclaimed from the
market-cross the long catalogue of the
" Figures that seemed to rise and
die,

slain.

Gibber and sign, advance and fly, WliUe nought confu-med, coidd ear or eye Discern of sound or mien Yet darkly did it seem as there Heralds and pursuivants appear. With trimipet soimd and blazon fair,
;

A

summons

to proclaim."

Marmion, canto

v.

Incubi and succubi wandered about in

all direc-

tions, with a degree of assm-ance and plausibility which would have deceived the very elect J ; and wicked churchmen were cited by audible voices

and an accompaniment of thunder before the
* Holingshed, vol.
i.

tri-

pp. 50, 317.
III.,

t At the second marriage of Alexander
p. 128.

Fordim,

vol.

ii.

Boece, p. 294, ed. 1574.

X Boece, p. 149.

E

50

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

bunal of Heaven"'^,
wizards, before

The annals of the

thirteenth

century are dignified with the exploits of three

whom Nostradamus
Thomas

and MerHn

must stoop

their crests,

of ErcUdoune,

Sir Michael Scott, and Lord Soulis. The Tramontane fame of the second had even crossed the Alps, for Dantef accommodates him mth a place in Hell, between Bonatto, the astrologer of Guido di Monte Feltro, and Asdente of Parma. But previous to the Reformation, these superstitious notions, though generally prevalent, had hardly assumed a form much calculated to disturb the peace of society. Though in some cases, where these powers had been supposed to have been exercised for treasonable piu'poses, the punishment of death had been inflicted on the witches J, men

did not as yet think

it

necessary, merely for the

supposed possession of such powers, or their benevolent exercise, to apply the piu'ifying power of fire
to eradicate the disorder.
Sii' Michael and the and died peaceably ; and the tragical

Ehymer

lived

fate of the tyrant Soulis

on the Nine Stane Rigg

* In the case of Cameron, Bishop of Glasgow, 1466.
chanan. Pitscottie. + " Quell' altro, che nei fianchi e cosi poco,
llichele Scotto fu, che veramente

—Bu-

Delle magiche frode seppe

il

giuoco."

Canto xx.

J As in the case of the witches at Forres, who attempted to destroy King Duifus by the favourite pagan charm of roasting his unage in wax, and those burnt at Edinburgh for a similar
attempt against James
III., in

1479.

SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.

51

was

OTving,

not to the supposed sorceries

wMch

had polluted his Castle of Hermitage, but to those more palpable atrocities which had been dictated by the demon of his own evil conscience, and executed
agents,

who were
the

by those iron-handed and iron-hearted so readily eA^oked by the simpler

spell of feudal despotism.

From

commencement

of the Records of the

Scottish Justiciary Court,

down

to the reign of

Mary, no

trial

properly for witchcraft appears on

the record.

For though in the case of the unfor1536,

tunate Countess of Glammis^ executed in

during the reign of James V., on an accusation of
treasonably conspiring the king's death by poison,

some

hints of sorcery are tlirown into the dittay,

probably with the ^dew of exciting a popular prejudice against one whose personal beauty and high
spu'it
is

rendered her a favourite with the people,

it

ob^dous that nothing was really rested on this

charge.

But with the introduction of the Reformation " novus rerum nascitur ordo.'' Far from divesting themselves of the dark and bloody superstitions

propagated, the
this,

which Innocent's bull had systematized and German reformers had preserved

while they demoHshed every other idol, and
" In dismal dance around the fiu-nace blue,"

moving
had made even children pass through the
Moloch.
E 3
fire

to

Their Scottish brethren, adopting im-

52

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
of their continental prototypes^

plicitly the creed

transplanted to our
nately but too
Avell

own

country^ a soil unfortu-

prepared for such a seed^ the
Aisible

whole doctrine of Satan^s
^yith all

agency on earthy
liis

the grotesque horrors of

commerce

with mankind.

The

aid of the sword of justice

was immediately found to be indispensable to the weapons of the spirit; and the verse of Moses which declares that a witch shall not be suffered to live, was forthmth made the groundwork of the Act 73 of the ninth parliament of Queen ^Nlary^ which enacted the pmiishment of death against
Antches or considters Avith vritches.

The consequences of

this avithoritative recogni-

tion of the creed of witchcraft

became immediately

ob\ious with the reign of James which followed.

Witchcraft became the all-engi"ossing topic of the
day, and the ordinary accusation resorted to whenever
it

was the object of one indiAidual

to ruin

another, just as certain other offences were during

the reign of Justinian, and during the fom'teenth
fifteenth centimes in Italy. In Scotland the was not less busy in high places, than among the humbler beings, who had generally been pro-

and

evil

fessors of the art

magic.

A

sort of relation of

clientage seems to have been established between

the operative performers, and those noble patrons
(chiefly,

we

regret to say, of the

fail-

sex)

by

whom

their services

were put in requisition.

The Lady

SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
furnished our
his

53
of

own Northern Wizard with some
pictures^

most striking

—the Countess of Athol^

the Coimtess of Huntly, the wife of the Chancellor

Arran, the Lady Ker, wife of James, Master of
Reqiiests, the Countess of Lothian, the Countess

of Angus, (more fortimate in her generation than

her grandmother Lady Glammis), were

all, if

we

are to believe the scandal of Scotstarvet, either protectors of witches
arf^.

or themselves dabblers in the
liimself did not escape the ac-

Even Knox

cusation of witchcraft; the power and energy of

mind with which Providence had
source.
raise

gifted him, the

enemies of the Reformation attributed to a darker

He was
;

accused of ha\'ing attempted to
St.

"some

sanctes" in the churchyard of

Andrew's

but in the course of this resuscitation

upstarted the de^dl himself, having a huge pair of

horns on his head, at which terrible sight Knox's
secretary
died.

became mad with fear, and shortly after Nay, to such a height had the mania gone,

that Scot of Scotstarvet mentions that Sir Lewis

Ballantyne, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland,
curiosity dealt

"by

with a warlock

called

Richard

Grahame,"
trial

(the

same person who

figures in the

of Alison Balfom% as a confederate of Both-

well),

"to

raise the devil,

who having

raised

him

in his

own yard

in the Canongate, he was thereby

so terrified

that he

took sickness and

thereof

died."

This was a "staggering state of Scots

* Scot of Scotstarvet,

Home

of G-odscroft, passim.

54

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

statesmen" indeed, when even the supreme criminal judge of Scotland was thus at the head of the
delinquents.

have said

Avith

Well might any unfortunate criminal Angelo
steal themselves."

" Tliieves for their robbeiy have authority,

When judges
Nor, in

Measure f. Measure,
fact,

ii. 2.,

was the Church

less deeply impli-

cated than the com't and the hall of justice ; for
in the case of Alison Pearson, (1588)

celebrated Patrick

we find the Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrew^ s, laying aside the fear of the Act of Parliament, and condescending to apply to this poor Avretch for a potion to cure him of his sickness A faith so strong and so general coiild not In 1572 be long in manifesting itself in works.
occurs the
trial
first

entry in the Justiciary Record, the

of Janet

Bowman,

of which no particulars

are given, except the emphatic sentence " Convict

and Brynt."

No

fewer than thirty-five

trials

appear to have taken place before the Coui't of
Justiciary dm'ing the remainder of Jameses reign,
(to

1625), in almost aU of which the residt
as in the case of

is

the

same

Bowman.

Two or

three of these are peculiarly interesting

one, from the difference between its details and

those which form the usual materials of the witch
trials
;

the others, from the high rank of some of

those involved in them, and the strange and almost

inexpKcable extent of the delusion.

The

first

to

TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.

55

which we allude
victed

is

that of Bessie Dnnlop"^, con-

on her own confession ; the peculiarity in

this case is that, instead of the de^dl himself in

propria persona, the spiritual beings to

whom we

are introduced are our old friends the fairies, the

same sweet elves whom Paracelsus defends, and old Aubrey delighted to honom\ Bessie^s familiar was a being whom she calls Thorn Reed, and

whom

she describes in her judicial declarationf as

'^an honest weel elderlie

man, gray

bairdit,

and

had ane gray

coitt

with

Lumbard

sleeves of the

auld fassoun, ane pair of gray brekis, and quhyte schankis gartarrit

abone the kne/'

Their

first

meeting took place as she was going to the pasture,
"gi'ctand (weeping) verrie fast for her

kow

that

was dead, and her husband and child that were
lyand sick in the land-ill (some epidemic of the

and she new risen out of gissane (childbed) ." Thom, who took care that his character shoidd open upon her in a favourable light, chid her for
time),

her distrust in Providence, and told her that her
sheep and her child would both
die,

but that her

husband should recover, which comforted her a little. His true character, however, appeared at a second "forgathering,^^ when he unblushingly urged her " to denye her Christendom and renounce her baptism, and the faith she took at the fount stane.^' The poor witch answered, that " though
*

Nov.

8,

1576.

Pitcaim, vol.

i.

p. 48.

t Ibid.

p. 51.

56

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

she should be riven at horse-tails she would never

do that/' hut promised him obedience in
else^

all

things

—a

qualified concession vrith

which he rather

grumblingiy departed.
place in her

His third appearance took
(three

own

house, in presence of her hus!)
.

band and

three tailors

To the

infinite

consternation of this trio and of the gudeman, he

took her by the apron and led her out of the house
to the kiln-end, where she saw eight

women and

four
ing,

men

sitting

;

the

men

in gentlemen's cloth-

and the women with plaids round about them,

and "very seemly to see." They said to her, " Welcome Bessie, wilt thou go with us but as

V

made no answer to this invitation, some conversation among themselves
she

they, after

Avhich she

could not understand, disappeared of a sudden, and

" a hideous ugly sough of wind followed them."
these

She was told by Thom, after theu' departure, that "were the gude "n'ights that wonned in the Court of Elfane," and that she ought to have acShe afterwards received a cepted their imitation.
the

visit fi'om

Queen of Elfane

in person,

who

con-

descendingly asked a drink of her, and prophesied
the death of her child and the recovery of her

husband.

privileges
spells

The use which poor Bessie made of her was of the most harmless kind, for her seem to have been all exerted to cure, and
kill.

not to

Most of the

articles of
is

her indictment

are for cures performed, nor

there any charge

against her of exerting her powers for a malicious

REMARKABLE TRIALS.
pui'pose.
hui'nt.

57

As

usual however she was con\icted and

This was evidently a pure case of mental delu-

but it was soon followed by one of a darker and more complex character, in which, as far as the principal actor was concerned, it seems doubtsion^

ful

whether the

mummery

of witchcraft formed

anything more than a mere pageant in the dark
to the trials of

drama of human passions and crimes. We allude Lady Fowlis and of Hector INIunro
is

of Fowlis, for witchcraft and poisoning, in 1590.

This

one of those cases which might plausibly

be quoted in support of the ground on wliich the
witch
trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle, and the writers of the Encyclopedic, namely, the



necessity

of punishing the pretensions to such

powers, or the belief in their existence, with as
great rigour as if their exercise

had been

real.

" The law against

witches,^' says Selden,
it

" does not

prove there be any, but

pimishes the malice

of those people that use such

means

to take

away

men^s

lives.

If one should profess that, by turn-

ing his hat and crying buz, he could take away a

man's

life,

thing, yet this were a just

though in truth he could do no such law made by the state,

that whoever should turn his hat thrice and cry

buz, with an intention to take
shall

away a man's

life,

be put to death."

We

shall hardly stop to

expose the absiu'dity of this doctrine of Selden in
the absti'act, which thus

makes the

will univer-

58

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
deed ; but when we read such

sally equal to the

cases as that of

Lady

Fowlis^

it

cannot at the

same time be denied, that the power which the pretended professor of such arts thus obtained over
the popular mind, and the relaxation of moral prin-

the indi\idual himseK, rendered

was naturally accompanied in him a most dangerous member of society. In general, the prociple

with which

it

fession of sorcery

was associated with other crimes,

and was frequently employed as a mere cover by which these might with the more security and The philters and loveeifect be perpetrated. potions of La Voisin and Forman, the private court calendar of the latter, containmg "what ladies loved what lords best," (Avhich the Chief Justice prudently would not allow to be read in

Charms of a more disgusting nature appear to have been supplied by our own witches, as in the case of Roy, tried
court), are sufficiently well kno\Mi.

before

the

sheriff

of Perth, in

1601*, and in

that of Colquhoun, of Luss, tried for sorcery and
incest, 1633, where the instrument of seduction In was a jewel obtained from a necromancer. short, wherever any flagitious purpose was to be effected, notliing more was necessary than to have In poisoning, recourse to some notorious witch. in particular, they were accomplished adepts, as was natm-ally to be expected from the power which

* Rec. of Just.

May

27, 1601.

CASE OF LADY FOWLIS.
it

59
prophecies.

gave them of realizing their

own
;

Poisoners and witches are classed together in the
conclusion of Lonis
before the

XIV/s

edict

and the

trials

Chambre Ardente prove

that the two

trades were generally found in harmonious juxtaposition.
aflfords
.

Our own Mrs.

Tiu'ner,

in

England,
while

us no bad specimen of this union of the
;

poisoner with the procuress and the witch

the prevalence of the same connection in Scotland

appears fi-om the

details

of the case of Robert

Erskine, of Dun, from that of the daughter of

Lord Cliffconhall, Euphemia ]\Iacalzean, and stiU more from the singular case of Lady Fowlis. The object of the conspirators in this last case was the destruction of the young lady of Balnagown, which would have enabled George Ross, of Balnagovvn, to many the young Lady Fowlis. But in order to entitle them to the succession of
Fowlis, supposing the alliance to be effected, a

more extensive slaughter was required. Lady Fowlis's stepsons, Robert and Hector, with their families, stood in the way, and these were next to
be removed,

^ay, the indictment goes the length

of charging her with projecting the mm'der of more

than thirty individuals, including an accomplice of
her own, Katharine Ross, the daughter of Sir David
Ross,

whom

she had seduced into her schemes, a

woman

apparently of the most resolute temper,

lect: there

and obviously of an acute and penetrating intelseems reason to doubt whether she

60
had any
ceries

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
faith in the

to

power of the charms and sorwhich she resorted, but she probably

thought that, in availing herself of the ser\ices of
those hags

whom

she employed, the

more prudent

course woidd be to allow

them

to play off their

mummeries in their own way, while she combined them with more effective hiunan means. Accordingly the work of destruction commenced with the common spell of making two pictures of clay, representing the intended victims; but instead of

exposing them to the
their heads

fire, or burying them with downward, the pictm'cs were in this case hung up on the north side of the room, and

the lady, with her familiars, shot several arrows,

shod with
effect.

elf- arrow

heads, at them, but without

Though

the

Lady Fowlis gave orders

that

other two pictures should be prepared, in order to

renew the attempt, she seems
resorted to

forth^vith to have

more vigorous measures, and

to have

associated Katharine Ross and her brother George

in her plans.

The

first

composition prepared for
ale,

her victims was a stoupfiil of poisoned

but this

ran out in making.

She then gave orders to prepare "a pig of ranker poison, that would kill shortly," and this she dispatched by her nurse to ProWdence however the young Laird of Fowlis. again protected him the "pig" fell and was broken by the way, and the nurse, who could not resist
:

the temptation of tasting the contents, paid the

penalty of her curiosity with her

life.

So corrosive

CASE OF LADY FOWLIS.

61

was the nature of the potion, that the very grass on which it fell was destroyed. Nothing however
could

move Lady Fowlis from her

pm-pose.

Like

Mrs. Turner, who treated Ovcrbury with spiders,
cantharides, and arsenic, alternately, that she

might

be able to " hit his complexion," she
to try the effect of

now proceeded

" ratton poyson," (ratsbane,) of
" in eggs, browis, or kale," but
constitution apparently pro-

which she seems to have administered several doses
to the
still

young

laird,

without

effect, his

ving too strong for them.

She had more nearly

succeeded, however, with her sister-in-law, her fe-

male victim. The " ratton poyson" which she had Lady Balnagown, she contrived, by means of one of her subsidiary hags, to mix in a
prepared for
dish of kidneys,

her company supped ; and
lent,

on which Lady Balnagown and its effects were so viothat even the wretch by whom it was admi-

nistered revolted at the sight.
trial,

At

the date of the

however,
still

it

was

alive.

would seem the unfortunate lady Lady Fowlis was at last appre-

hended, on the confession of several of the witches
she had employed, and

more than one of whom
trial

had been executed before her own

took place.

The proceedings
tal,

after all
is

terminated in an acquit-

a result which

only explicable by observing

that the jury was evidently a packed one, and consisted principally of the

dependants of the houses

of

Munro and

Fowlis.

This scene of diablerie and poisoning, however^

62

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
It

did not terminate here.
Hectox',

now appeared

that

Mr.

one of his stepmother's intended Adetims,
life

had himself been the principal performer in a witch
nnderplot directed against the
of his brother

George.

Unlike

liis

more

energetic stepmother,

credulous to the last degree, he seems to have been
entirely

under the control of the hags by whom he was surrounded, and who harassed and tenified

him Avith
of
all

fearful predictions

and ghastly exhibitions

kinds.

He

docs not appear to have been

naturally a -nicked man, for the very

same witches

who
life

Avere aftcnvards leagued

^nth him against the

of George, he had consulted with a ^iew of cu-

ring his elder brother Robert, by whose death he

would have succeeded to the
seized with a lingering illness,

estates.

But being

and told by his familiars that the only chance he had of recovering
his health

was that

his brother should die for him,

he seems quietly to have devoted him to death,

imder the strong instinct of
order to prevent suspicion,

self-presentation.
it

In

was agreed that his death should be lingering and gradual, and the officiating witch, who seemed to have the same

confidence in her

own

nicety of calculation as the

celebrated inventress of the poudre de successions,

warranted the victim until the 17th of April
loTiving.

fol-

It

must be admitted that the incantations

wliich followed were well calculated to produce a

strong effect, both moral and physical, on the weak and credulous being on whom they were played oflf.

CASE OF LADY FOWLIS.
Shortly after midnight, in the
the witches
left

month

of January,

the house in which Mr. Hector Avas

lying sick at the time, and passed to a piece of

periors,

ground lying betwixt the lands of two feudal suwhere they dug a large grave. Hector
Mu.m'o, wrapped in blankets, was then carried

forth, the bearers all the

time remaining dumb,

and

silently deposited in the grave, the turf being

laid over

him and

pressed

down with
riggs,

staves.

His

foster-mother. Christian Neill, was then ordered
to

run the breadth of nine

the grave, to ask the chief witch
choice."

and returning to '^ which was her

choice to

him.

She answered that Mr. Hector was her and his brother George to die for This cooling ceremony being thi'ee times
live,

and terror, Mr. Hector's witches were more successful than the hags employed by George died in the month of his stepmother. April, as had been predicted, doubtless by other spells than the force of sympathy, and Hector apHe had the advantage, pears to have recovered. however, of a selected jury on his trial, as well as Lady Fowlis, and had the good fortune to be acrepeated, the patient, fi-ozen with cold

was carried back to bed.

quitted.

Scarcely had the agitation produced by these
trials subsided,

when the

public

mind was again

confoimded by a new, a more extensive, and almost inexplicable scene of enchantment, directed against
the
life

of James and his Queen, in 1591.

64

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

The

first liint

of those strange proceedings which

were afterwards disclosed, was derived from the confessions of a
gii'l

named

Gellie, or Gellis Drnican,

servant to the

Deputy

Bailiff of Tranent.

Some

sudden cm'cs performed by

this girl,

and other

suspicious points in her conduct, ha^^Jlg attracted

the observation of her master, he, with a laudable
anxiety for the discovery of the truth, " did, with

the help of others, torment her with the torture of the pillic^vinkis
[a species
is

of thumbscrew] upon

her fingers, wliich

a grievous paine, and binding

or wi-enching her head with a cord or rope, which
is

a

most cruel torment

also^.^'

But, notwithstand-

ing these persuasive applications,

no confession

was suggested by some of the operators, that her silence was owing to her haA-ing been marked by the devil, and on a diligent examination the mark was found on the
could be extorted.
last it

At

fore part of the throat.

No
:

sooner was

it

detected
all

than the charm was bm'st
dcAil,

she confessed that

her cm-es were performed by the assistance of the

and proceeded to make disclosures
gviilt,

relative

to the extent of her
ciates,

and the number of
all

asso-

which utterly eclipse

the preceding " dis-

coveries

of Avitchcraft," with which the criminal

records fiu'nish us

down

to this time.

Thirty or

forty different individuals,

pamphlet obsen^es,
*

some of whom, as the were "as civill honest women
damnable
life

Xews

il-om Scotland, declaring the
vol.
i.

of Dr. Fian.

—Pitcaim,

p. 213.

JAMES THE FIRST.

65

as anie that dwelled within the city of Edinljui'gh/'

were denounced by her, and forthwith apprehended

upon her

confession.

Nor was

this list confined to

the lower classes, from
to this superstition

whom

the victims offered
;

had generally been selected for among those apprehended on Duncan's information was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators of the College of Justice.

To

trace out the wide field of witchcraft
to

which

was opened

him by

the confessions of the ac-

cused, as they were successively examined,

was an

employment highly congenial

to

the credulous

mind

of James, prone to every superstition, and
all

versed in

the traditionary lore of Sprenger and
after

Bodinus.

Day

day he attended the examitrait of

nations in person, was put into a " wonderful admiration^'

by every new

grotesque horror

which

their confessions disclosed,

and even carried

his curiosity so far as to send for Gellie
herself,

Duncan

who

had, according to the confession of

another witch, Agnes Sampson (the wise wife of
Keith), played a reel or dance before the witches,
as they

moved

in procession to

meet the

devil in

the kirk of North Berwick, in order that he might

himself listen to this infernal air
like

" who upon the trumpe did play the said dance before the



King's majestic, who, in respect of the strangeness
of these matters, took great delight to be present
at these examinations."

G6

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT,
it

All these disclosures, liowever,

may

be

antici-

pated, were not without a liberal application of the

usual compulsitor in such cases
chief sufferer was a person
figures in the trials

the torture. The named Cuningham, who under the name of Dr. Fian,



a schoolmaster near Tranent, and apparently a per-

son of dissolute character, although, as appeared
fi'om his conduct

on

tliis

inquisition, also of sin-

gidar strength of

mind and

firmness of nem^e.

He

was put to the question, "first, by thr awing of his head Avith a rope, whereat he woidd confess nothing; secondhj, he was persuaded by fair means to confess his folly," (woidd it not have been as natural to have tried the fail' means first ?) " but that Avould prevail as little; lastly, he was put to the most cruel and severe pam in the world, called the Boots^, who, after he had received three strokes, being inquired if he would confess his damnable acts and wicked life, his tongue would not serve him to speak." Being released from this instrument of torture, he appears, imder the influence of the agony produced by it, to have subscribed a confession, embracing not only the alleged charges of conspiracy against the King by means of witchcraft,

but a variety of particulars relative to his

own

life

and conversation, by no means of an

edi-

fying character.
* We need hardly remind our readers of the torture of Macbriar bv the Boots, before the Privy Council, in the Tales of my
'

Landlord.'

TORTURES.

67

But the weight to be attached to this confession was soon made apparent by what followed; for Fian, who had been recommitted to prison, and who had appeared for a day or two to be "very soHtarye" and penitent, contrived in the course of the next night to make his escape, and on his reapprehension and second examination thought fit,
to the great discomposure of James, to deny the

whole of the charges which he had previously ad" Whereupon the King's majestic, permitted.
cei\ing his stubborn wilfolnesse," prescribed the

following

remedy

for his relapse.

" His nayles

and pulled with an instrument called in Scottish a Turkas*. And under
his fingers were riven

upon

every naile there was thrust in two needles over

even up to the heads.

At

all

which torments, notit

withstanding, the doctor never shrunke anie whitt,
neither would he then confess

the sooner for

all

the tortures inflicted upon him.
all convenient

Then was he with speed by commandment conveyed

again to the torment of the boots, where he continued a long time, and abode so

many

blows in

and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made

them

that his legs were crushed

unserviceable for ever."

The
*

doctor,. it will
;

be seen, did not long reqrdre

their services

but whether his confession was obfi'om torquere.

Old French, Turquois, a smith's pmcers,

p 3

G8

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

tained by fair
startling

means or

foul, it certainly bears so

a

resemblance to that of the leading

witch,

Agnes Sampson, a woman
it is

whom

Spottis-

wood

describes as " matron-like, grave and settled

in her answers," that

hardly to be wondered

mind of James should have been confounded by the coincidence. Nothing, in fact, can exceed the general harmony of
at that the superstitious

the accounts given by the different \vitches of their
proceedings, except the ludicrous and yet hon'ible

character of the incidents which they record, and

which might well

extort,

even from James himself,

the observation he appears to have

made

in the

commencement
all

of the proceedings, that they were

" extreme lyars."
James,
it

appears, fr'om his singular piety, and

the active part which, long before the composition of his
'

Dsemonologie,' he had taken against

Satan and his invisible world, had been, from the
first,

most obnoxious to

his servants

upon

earth.

On

one occasion, when an unsuccessful attempt

had been made against his life, the fiend pleaded (though we do not see why a Scotch devil should speak French) that he had no power over him, The A-isit adding, " II est homme de Dieu'^."
which, in a sudden
fit

of romantic gallantry, he

paid to Norway, to bring over his queen, was too
favourable an opportunity for the instruments of

Satan to be neglected; and accordingly
* Sir James Melville, p. 294.

it

was

re-

CONVENTION OF WITCHES.
solved

69

by the conclave that every exertion should
infal(as

be made to raise such a tempest as should
libly

put an end to the greatest enemy
to

Satan
the

himself confidentially admitted

one

of

mtches)

whom

the devil ever had in the world.
therefore

The preparations were
all

commenced with
first

due solemnity.

Satan undertook^ in the

instance^ to raise a mist so as to strand the

King

on the English

coast, but,

more
is

active measures

being thought necessary, Dr. Fian, as the devil's
secretary, or register, as

he

called throughout

these trials, addressed a letter to a distingiiished
-ndtch,

Marion Linkup, and others of the

sister-

hood, directing them to meet their master on the
sea within five days, for the purpose of destroying

the King^.
partj^, to

On

All-hallowmas Eve the infernal

of about two hundred, embarked, " each in a riddle or sieve, and went into

the

number

the same very substantially."

In what latitude

they met with Satan
cruizing about he

is

not stated, but after some
his appearance,

made

and dehit

vered to Robert Grierson a cat, which

appears

had previously been drawn nine times through the cruikt, giving the Avord to " cast the same into the

charm was not whose fleet was at that time clearing the Danish coast, afterwards
sea!

Hola!"

And

this notable

Avithout its efiect, for James,

* Pitcairn, vol.

i.

p. 211.

f Crook
kitchen

—the

hook from which pots are himg oyer a Scottish

fii'e.

I

70

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

declared that his ship alone had the wind contrary,

while

all the other vessels had a fair one. The charm upon the water being finished, the

witches landed, and after enjoying themselves with
wine, which they drank out of the same sieves in

which they had previously
tially,"

sailed

so

" substan-

they moved on in procession towards the

kirk of North Berwick, which had been fixed on
as their place of rendezvous with their master. The company exceeded one hundred, of whom thirtytwo are enumerated in Agnes Sampson's confession. And they were preceded by Gellie Dmican, playing upon the Jew's-harp the following ditty " Cummer, goe ye before, dimmer, goe ye, Gif ye will not go before, Cimimer, let me

!

Here
less

their master

common

was to appear in a character in Scotland than on the Continent,
Doctor Fian, who, as the
took the lead in the ceremonies at
black candles sticking round

that of a preacher.
devil's register,

the kirk, blew up the doors, and blew in the lichts,

which resembled

about the pulpit, while another of the party. Grey
Meill, acted as door-keeper.

Suddenly the

de\dl

himself started up in the pulpit, attired in a

gown

and

hat, both black.

The sketch of

his appear-

ance given in Sir James Mehdlle's IVIemoirs has

something of the power and pictm-esqueness of " His body was hard lyk ym, as they Dante. thocht that handled him; his faice was terrible,
his nose lyk the

bek of an

egle, gret

bournyng

DR. FIAN.

71
hanclis

eyn "

(occlii di

bragia)

;

"

liis

and

leggis
feit

were berry, with clawis upon his handis, and
lyk the Griffin, and spak with a
first

how

voice/^

He

called the roll of the congregation, to

which

each answered by name; he then demanded of them whether they had been good servants, what they had done since the last time they had convened, and what had been the success of their Gray Meill, the conjurations against the King. doorkeeper, who was rash enough to remark, that " naething ailet the King yet, God be thankit,'^ was rewarded for this mal-a'propos observation by a great blow. The devil then proceeded to admonish them to keep his commandments, which were simply to do all the evil they could; on his leaving the pulpit, the whole congregation, male and
female, did homage to him, by saluting him in a way and manner which we must leave those who
are curious in such ceremonies to ascertain from

the original indictments.

Such

is

the strange story in which

all

the cri-

minals examined before James and the Council
substantially agree;

and unquestionably the
difficult

sin-

gular coincidence of their narratives remains at
this

day one of the most

problems in the
fate of the

pliilosophy of Scottish history.

The

un-

fortunate beings

who

confessed these enormities

could not, in that age of credulity, be for a
doubtful.

moment
tor-

Fian, to

whom,

after the

inhuman
life

tures to which he

had been subjected,

could

t\C

MAGIC A\D WITCHCRAFT.
be of

jiot

much

value,

was condemned, strangled,
similar

and burnt.
fate.

Agnes Sampson underwent a

Barbara Napier, another person said to have been present at the convention, though acquitted
of this charge, was condemned on certain other

charges

of

sorcery in the indictment:

but so
that,

strongly Avas the

mind of James

excited,

though he had secured a conviction against her, he actually brought the assize to trial for wiKul error
in acqiutting her

on this point of dittay. But the most distinguished %dctim connected with this scene of witchcraft was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of an eminent judge, Lord Cliftouhall, a woman of strong mind and licentious passions, a devoted adherent to the

Roman

Catholic faith, a partisan of Bothwell (who Avas

accused by several of the Avitches as implicated
in these practices against the King^s
life),

and a

determined enemy to James and to the Reformed
religion.

^\Tiatever

may have been

the precise

extent of this lady's acquirements in sorcery, there

can be no doubt that she had been on terms of the most famihar intercourse with abandoned wretches of both sexes, pretenders to witchcraft, and that she had repeatedly employed their aid in attempting to remove out of the way persons who were
obnoxious to her, or
poisonings,
agrainst

who

stood in the

indulgence of her passions.
ceries,

way of the The number of sorat

and

attempts

poisoning,

charcrcd

her in the indictment,

almost

EUPHEMIA MACALZEAN.
rivals

VO
and,

the accusations against Brinvilliers ;

though the jury acquitted her of several of these, they competed her of participation in the murder
of her

own

godfather, of her husband's nephew,

and of Douglas of Pennfrastone ; besides being present at the convention of North Berwick, and
various other meetings of witches, at which the

King's death had been contrived. Her pmiishment was the severest which the com-t could pronounce
instead of the ordinary sentence, directing her to

be

first strangled at a stake and then burned, the unhappy woman was doomed to be " bund to ane staik and burnt in assis, quick, to the death," a

fate

which she endured with the greatest firmness,

on the 25th of June, 1591.
the King's mind, that

So deep and permato

nent was the impression made by these scenes upon

we owe

them the prepa-

ration of an Act of Parliament anent the form of

process against witches, mentioned

among

the un-

printed acts for 1597, and

more immediately the composition of that notable work of the Scottish
Solomon, the
'

DEemonologie.'
of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of

In the

trials

Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel
Gardiner"^, the charges are principally of taking
ofi"

and laying on diseases either on
raising

men

or cattle

meetings with the devil in various shapes and
places
;

and dismembering dead bodies for
destroying crops

the pm-pose of enchantments;

* Just. Eecords, 1590-1610.

74

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
;

scaring lionest persons in the sliape of cats

taking

away women's milk; committing housebreaking and theft by means of encbantmentSj and so on.
South-running water^
flints
salt^

rowan-tree^ enchanted

(probably elf-arrow heads), and doggrel verses

(generally a translation of the Creed or Lord's

Prayer) were the means employed for effecting a
cure.

Diseases again were laid on by forming pic-

tures of clay or wax, which were placed before the
fire

or

bmied

Aiith the

heads downward ; by plaas in the
tlirow-

cing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in
the house of the intended victim
case of Grierson,
;

or,

by the simpler process of
tailzie (slice)

ing an enchanted
door.

of beef against his

It Avas immaterial

whether the supposed
CA-il,

powers of the A^tch were exerted for good or

In the case of Grie\'e, no malefice (to use the technical term) was charged against him, but simply that he had cured diseases by means of charms;
both were executed.

and the same in the case of Alison Pearson ; but Bartie Paterson seems to have been the most pious of warlocks, for his patients Avere uniformly directed, in addition to his

prescriptions, to " ask theu' health at all livand
vrichtis

abone or under the earth, in the name of

Jesus."

The

trial

of Robert Erskine of Dim,
for witchcraft,

though given as one

seems to have
]\Iargaret

been a simple case of poisoning, he haA-ing merely
resorted to a notorious
Ir\"ine, for
AA-itch,

named

the herbs by which he despatched his

CHARLES THE FIRST.
nephews.

75

The

case of Margaret Wallace^ towards

the close of James's reign^ deserves notice as being

the

first

against

where something like a stand was made some of the fundamental positions of the
3

demonologists

the counsel for the prisoner con-

tending strongly against the doctrine that^ in the
case of a person accused of witchcraft^ eveiy cure

performed by her was to be
of the devil.

set down to the agency The defence however, though it seems

to have been ably conducted, was unsuccessfid.

Matters continued

much
I.

in the same state dur-

ing the reign of Charles

From 1625

to

there are eight entries of trials for witchcraft

1640 on

the Record, one of which, that of Elizabeth Bathgate, is remarkable, as being followed
tal.

by an acquit-

In that of Katharine Oswald"^, the prisoner's

counsel had the boldness to argue, that no credit

witches,

was to be given to the confessions of the other who had sworn to the presence of the

prisoner at

some of

their orgies

;

" for

all

lawyers

agree," argued he, " that they are not really transported, but only in their fancies, while asleep, in wliich they sometimes

dream they

see others there."

This reasoning however appears to have

made no

impression on the jury, any more than the argu-

ment
mill,
*

in Yoimg's casef, that the stoppage of the which she was accused of having effected
tlie

Most of
4,

cases here cited are

found in the Justiciary

Eecords, from about 1605 to 1640.

t Feb.

1629.

76

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

twenty-nine years before, by sorceiy^ might have

been the

effect of natural causes.

About one-half

of the condctions dm-ing this period proceed on
judicial confessions
;

whether voluntary or extorted
details in the trial of

does not appear.
ingj

Tliey are not in general interest-

though some of the
differ a little

Ha-

milton*

from the ordinary routine of

Ha\'ing met the de^il on Kingston Hills, in East Lothian, he was persuaded by the tempter to renoimce his baptism piece of apostasy for which he received only four shillings. The dcA-il fui-ther directed him to em-

the witch trials of the time.



ploy the following polite adjuration

when he wished

to raise him, namely, to beat the ground three

times with his stick, and say, " Rise up, foul thief!''

On

the other hand, the devil's beha\'iour towards

him was equally unceremonious; for on one occasion, when Hamilton had neglected to keep his appointment, he gave him a severe drubbing with
a baton.

The scene darkens however, towards the
Puritans.

close

of this reign, with the increasing dominion of the

In 1640 the General Assembly passed
all

an

act,

that

ministers should take particular

note of witches and charmers, and that the commissioners should

recommend

to the

supreme judi-

cature the tmsparing application of the laws against

them.

In 1643 (August

19), after setting forth the

increase of the crime, they

recommend the

grant-

* Just. Eecords, Jan. 1630.

THE PURITANS,
ing a standing commission from
tlie

77
Privy Council

or Justiciary to any " understanding gentlemen or
I

magistrates," to apprehend, try, and execute justice against the delinquents.

The

subject appears

I

[

to have been

I

and their been without

resumed in 1644, 1645, and 1649; remonstrances, it would seem, had not
eflFect,

for in 1649, the year after the

execution of Charles, an Act of ParHament was passed confirming and extending the pro^dsions
of

Queen Mary^s,

so as

more

effectually to reach

consulters Avith witches, in regard to

whom

it

was

thought (though we do not see why) that the
terms of the former act were a
little

equivocal.

From

tliis

time, not only does the

victions,

which since the death of on the decline, increase, but the features of the The old, cases assume a deeper tinge of horror. impossible, and abominable fancies of the 'Malleus' were revived in the trials of Janet Barker and Margaret Lauder"^, which correspond in a remarkable manner with some of the evidence in the Mora trials. About thirty trials appear on the record
between
quittal;
this last date

number of conJames had been

and the Restoration, only

one of which appears to have terminated in an acwhile at a single circuit-court, held at

Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in 1659, seventeen persons were convicted and burnt for this crime.

Numerous however
Records of Justiciary,

as
it,

are the

cases

in

the

must be kept

in ^dew

* Just. Eec, Dec. 1643.



MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

that these afford an extremely inadequate idea of

the extent to which this pest prevailed over the
countiy.

For though Sir George Mackenzie doubts

whether, in virtue merely of the general powers
given by the act, 1563, inferior judges did at any
time, of their

own

authority, try

and condemn
of Jus-

criminals accused of witchcraft, the same end was

managed
ticiaiy

in a different Avay.

The Court

was anxious to get rid of a jimsdiction
sufficient

which would alone have afforded them

and the Privy Council were in use to grant commissions to resident gentlemen and ministers, to examine, and afterwards to try and execute, AA-itches all over Scotland; and so numerous
;

employment

were these commissions, that
his astonishment at the
gisters.

Wodrow

expresses
in the Re-

number found

Under these commissions multitudes were
In Mercer^s

bm-nt in every part of the kingdom.

Manuscript Diary, Lamont's Diary, and TMiitelock's jMemorials, occasional notices of the

num-

bers burnt are peiiDCtually occurring.

In every case of the kind
It

it

would appear that

the clergy displayed the most intemperate zeal.

was before them that the poor wretches " defirst

lated" of witchcraft were
nation,

brought for exami-

—in most

cases after a preparatoiy course

of solitary confinement, cold, famine, want of sleep, or actual torture.

On some

occasions the clergy

themselves
prickers,

actiially

pci^formed

the part

of the
flesh of

and inserted long pins into the

THE RESTOKzVTTON.
the witches in order to try their sensibility
in
all
;

79

and

they laboiu'ed^ by the most persevering in-

vestigations, to obtain
sion,

from the accused a confes-

which might afterwards be used against them on their trial, and which in more than one instance, even though retracted, formed the sole evidence on
which the convictions proceeded. In some cases, where the charge against the criminal was that she was " habit and repute a witch," the notoriety
of her character was proved before the Justiciary

Court by the oath of a minister, just as habit and
repute
is

now proved

in cases of theft

by that of a

police officer.

Though the
this

tide of popular delusion in regard to

crime

may

be said to have turned during the
its

reign of Charles II.,

opening was perhaps more
its

bloody than that of any of
the
first

predecessors.

In

year after the Restoration (1661), about

twenty persons appear to have been condemned by
the Justiciary Coiu't, two of whom, though acquitted

on their first trial, were condemned on the second on new charges. The numbers executed throughout the country are noticed by Lamont. Fourteen commissions for trials in the provinces ap-

pear to have been issued by the Privy Council in

one day (November
nameless wretches

7,

1661).

Of

the numbers of

who

died and

made no

sign,

under the hands of those " understanding gentlemen'^ (as the General Assembly's overture styles
them) to

whom

the commissions were granted,

80
it is

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

now

almost impossible to form a conjecture.
tlie

In reference however to
in sucli cases,

course of procedure

we may
in

refer to

some singular ma-

nuscripts relative to the examination of two confessing witches

Morayshire in 1663, in the

possession of the family of Rose, of Kilravock;

more

particularly as the details they contain are,

both from their minuteness and the unparalleled
singularity

of their contents, far

more

striking

than anytliing to be fomid on the Records of
Justiciary about this time.

The names of these crazed beldames were Isobel Gowdie and Janet Braidhead. Two of the latter's
examinations are preserved ; the former appears to

have been four times examined at different dates

between the 13th April and 27th May, 1662, before the sheriff and several gentlemen and mmisters of the

neighbourhood

;

and on one of these

is

a marldng by the Justice Depute Colville, as fol-

lows

:



''

Having read and considered the confeswith divers

sion of Isobel Gowdie, Avithin contained, as paction
Avith Sathan, renunciation of baptism,

malefices, I find that a

commission may be vciy
A.
Colville^.'' The hand of a notary

justly given for her last trial.

confessions are written under the
pixblic,

and subscribed by

all

the clergymen, gen-

The paper is mai-ked on the back, " Edinburgh, July 10th, 1662 considered and found relevant by the Justice Depute." The part of Janet Braidhead's deposition, which appears to have boiiie a suuilar marking by the Justice Depute, is torn off.
*
:

ISOBEL GOWDIE.
tlemen, and otlier witnesses present
;

81
as

would ap-

pear to have been the practice where the precognitions were to be transmitted to the Justiciary, with

the view of obtaining a commission to try

and

punish the crime. What the result of Isobel Gowdie^s " last trial" was, it is easy, fi'om the nature of
her confessions, to conjecture. " Nou ragioniam di lor, ma guarda,

e passa."

Though examined on

four different occasions, at

considerable intervals of time, and imdoubtedly undergoing solitary confinement in the interim, so

minute and invariable are the accounts given by Gowdie in particular, of the whole life and conversation of the witches to

whom

she belonged, that a

pretty complete institute of infernal science might

be compiled from her confession. The distinctness
with which the visions seem to have haunted her,
the consistency they had assumed in her

own mind, and yet the inconceivable absmxlity and monstrosity of these conceptions, to many of which we cannot even allude, furnish some most important
contributions to the history of hypochondriac insanity.

Her
tized

devotion to the ser^dce of the devil took

place in the kirk of Auldearn, where she was bap-

by him with the name of Janet, being held up by a companion, and the devil sucking the blood from her shoulder^. The band or coven to which
* Her fellow-witch, Braidhead, was baptized by the very iaajipropriate

name

of Christian.

82
tliey

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
belonged consisted of thirteen (whose names

she enumerates, and some of

whom

appear to

have been apprehended upon her delation), that
being the usual number of the covens.
provided -vnth an
the
officer,

Each

is

whose duty

it is

to repeat

names of the party
to hold

who seems
is

after Satan; and a maiden, sway over the women, and who
is

the particular favourite of the devil,

placed

at his right

hand

at feasts.

A

grand meeting of

the covens takes place quarterly,
given.

when

a ball

is

Each \ntch has a "sprite" to wait upon her, some appearing "in sad dun, some in grass green, some in sea green, some in yellow." Those
of Gowdie's coven were, " Robert the Jakes, Sanders the Reed-Reever,

Thomas the

Faiiy, Swein

the Roaring Lion, Thief of Hell wait-upon-herself,

MacIIector," and so on.
it

Some

of these spirits,

wotdd appear, did not stand high in Isobel's opinion for Robert the Jakes, she says, was aged, and seemed to be " a gowkit glaikit spirit." Each of the -witches too received a sobriquet, by which Satan himself had they were generally knoAAn''^. several spirits to wait upon him; "sometimes he had boots and sometimes shoes upon his feet, but The witches, still his feet are forked and cloven.'^
;

it

appears, occasionally took considerable liberties

with his character, on which occasions Satan, on
* This seems to have been a
ritual.

common

practice in the Infernal

Law

gives the

nicknames of the Renfrewshire witches,
(Memorials,
p. 122.)

in the

Bangarran Case.

AMUSEMENTS OF WITCHES.

83

detecting the calumny, used to beat the delinquents

"up and down like naked gaists" with a stick, as Charon does the naked spirits in the 'Inferno/ He found it much more with his oar. (Cant, iii.) easy however to deal with the warlocks than with the fair sex. "Alexander Elder/' says the confessing witch, " was soft, and could not defend himself, and did naething but greit and crye while he will be scourging him but INIargaret Wilson in Aiddearn would defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to cape the blows, and Bessie Wilson would speak crustily with her tongue, and would
;

be bellin again to him stoutly."
are described with the

The amusements and occupations of the witches same firmness and minute-

ness of drawing.

When

the devil has appointed

an infernal
bed, a
their shape

diet,

the witches leave behind them, in
stool,

besom or three-legged
till

which assumes

their retm'n, a feature exactly cor-

responding with the

Mora

trials.
is

When

proceed-

ing to the spot where their work

to be performed,

they either adopt the shape of
else,

cats, hares, etc.,

or

mounting upon corn or bean straws, and pro" Horse and hattock, horse and go,

nouncing the following charm,
Horse and
pellats,

ho

!

ho

!"

they are borne through the air to the place of their
destination.

If any see these straws in motion,

and "do not sanctify themselves," the witches

may

shoot

them

dead.

This feat they perform

g2

84
Avitli

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
elf-arrow heads, which are manufactm'ccT

by

Satan himself; and his assistants the elf boys, who are described, like the Scandina\dan trolls, as
little

humpbacked creatures who speak "goustie
;

like" (gruffly)
certain

each witch receiving from Satan a
these " Freischiitze."
is

number of

A list

of

forty or fifty persons

given by the witch,

who

had been destroyed by herself and her companions, by these means while she also mentions that she had made an unsuccessful attempt against the life of Mr. Harry Forbes, minister of Auldearn, one of the witnesses actually present and subscriljing her
;

confession.

Another attempt against the
is

life

of this minister

described very grapliically. The instrument employed was " a bag made of the flesh and guts

and

galls of toads, the liver of a hare, pickles of

corn, parings of nails, of feet,
olio being steeped all night,

and toes," which and mixed secundum

artem by Satan himself, was consecrated by a

charm dictated by Satan, and repeated by the
witches, " all on their knees, and their hair about
their shoulders

and

eyes, holding

up their hands, he might

and looking

stedfastly

on the

devil, that

destroy the said Mr. Harry."

This composition

one of the witches, who made her way into the
minister's chamber, attempted to throw

upon him,

but was prevented by the presence of some other
holy

men

in the room.

Another composition of

the same kind, intended for the destruction of the

ANECDOTES OF WITCHES.
lairds of

85

Park and Lochloy, was more successful^ from the deposition of the other witch, Janet Braidhead. Having prepared the venom, " they came to Inshock in the night time, and scattered it up and down, above and about the gate, and other places, where the lairds and their sons would most haunt. And then we, in the likeness of crows and rooks^, stood above the gate, and in
as appears

the trees opposite the gate.
that, if

It

was appointed so
it fall

any of them

shoiild
it

touch or tramp upon

any of
it

it,

as well as that

or any of

on them,
them,
it

should strike them with boils and
it

kill

which

did,

and they

shortly died.

We

did

to

make

this

house

heirless.'^

It is needless to pursue further these strange
details,

which however form a valuable appendix
if

to the records at that time.
It

would seem as

the 'sdolence of this popular

* Taking the form of foul and ominous birds was a favourite

practice of witches in all ages.

Apuleius, in his character

of Lucius, thus describes the metamorphosis of his hostess at
Larissa
:

"Pamphile divested

herself of all her garments,
it

and opening

a certain cabinet took out of

a

number of boxes.

From one

of

these slie selected a salve, and anoiated herself from head to foot and after much muttering, she began to rock and wave herself Presently a soft down covered her limbs, and a paii* to and fro. of wings sprang from her shoulders her nose became a beak her nails talons. Pamphile was now in form a complete owl. Then uttering a low shriek she began to jump from the floor, and after a brief while flew out of the window and vanished. She winged her way, I was assured by Fotis, to some expectant And this was the last I saw of the old lady." lover.
:

86

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

delirium began after 1662 to relax.
of six years

An
trial

interval
for this

now

occurs without a

crime, while the record bears that James

Welsh "^
se-

was ordered to be publicly whipped for accusing
veral individuals of
likely
it,

—a

fate

which he was hardly

to

have encountered some years before.

Fountainliall, in noticing the case of the ten poor

women

convicted on their

own
Sir

confession in 1678tj,

obviously speaks of the whole aftair with great

doubt and hesitation.
in his
'

And

George Mackenzie,
edition of which

Criminal Law,^ the

first

appeared in the same year, though he does not
yet venture to deny the existence of the crime or

the expediency of

its

pmdshment,

lays

down many
of
all

principles very inconsistent with the practice of

the preceding century.
the crime," says he,

" From the horridness "I do conclude that of

crimes

it

requires the clearest relevancy and

most

convincing probature ; and I condemn, next to the

wretches themselves, those cruel and too forward

judges

who burn

persons by thousands as guilty

of this crime."

And

accordingly, acting on these

humane and

cautious principles. Sir George, in his

Report to the Judges in 1680, relative to a number of persons then in prison for this crime, stated
that their confessions had been procured by torture,

and that there seemed to be no other proof against
them, on which they were
* Just. Eecords.

set at liberty.
Jan. 27, 1662.

" Since

t Vol.

i.

Decisions, p. 14.

SUPERSTITIOUS ENTHUSIASM.
n liich

87

time/' adds Lord Royston, " there has been

no

trial for this

crime before that court, nor before
of,

any other court, that I know

except one at

Paisley by commission from the Privy Council in

aimo 1697."
is
v\

This observation of Lord Royston

not altogether correct.
hich he alludes
is

The

trial at Paisley to

evidently the noted case of the

Renfrewshire witches, tried on a charge of sorcery
against a girl

named

Christian Shaw, the daughter

of

Shaw

of Bargarran.

The conviction of the

ac-

cused apj)ears to have taken place principally on
tiie

evidence of the girl herself,

who

in the pre-

sence of the commissioners played off a series of

and convulsion fits, similar to those by which the nuns of Loudon had sealed the fate of Grandier the century before. In this atrocious case, the Commissioners (in the Report presented by them to the Privy Council, 9th March, 1697), reported that there were twenty-four persons, male and female, suspected of being concerned in the sorceries ; and among them, it is to be observed, is a girl of fom'teen, and a boy not twelve years
ecstasies

of age.

out of about twenty

we almost feel surprised that who were condemned, only five appear to have been executed. They were burnt on the gi-een at Paisley. The last trial before the
After this,

Court of Justiciary was that of Elspet Ride, tried
before

Lord Anstruther, on the Dumfries

circuit,

3rd of May, 1708, where the prisoner, though convicted by a plurality of voices, was merely sentenced

88
to be biu-ned
for
life.

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

The

on the cheek and banished Scotland last execution which took place was

that of an old

woman

in the parish of Loth, ex-

ecuted at Dornoch in 1722, by sentence of the
Sheriff depute of Caithness,

Captam David Koss,
that being brought

of Little Dean.

" It

is said,

out for execution, the weather proving very severe,
she sat composedly
!"

warming

herself

by the

fire,

while the other instruments of death were

made

ready

So ends in Scotland the tragical part of the history of Avitchcraft. In 1735, as already mentioned, the penal statutes were repealed much to the annoyance however of the Seeeders, who, in their an;

nual confession of national

sins,

printed in an act of

their Associate Presbytery at Edinburgh, in 1743,

enumerated, as a gi'ievous transgression, the repeal of the penal statutes " contrary to the express laws
of God \"

And though in remote districts the belief
minds of the ignorant,
it

may yet

linger in the

has

now, like the belief in ghosts, alchemy, or second
sight, only that sort of vague hold on the fancy which enables the poet and romance \\Titer to adapt it to the purposes of fiction, and therewith to point And, of a truth, no una moral or adorn a tale. important moral is to be gathered from the consi-

deration of the history of this delusion

;

namely,

the danger of encouraging those enthusiastic conceits of the possibility of direct spiritual influence,

which, in one shape or other, and even in

oui'

own

SUPERSTITIOUS ENTHUSIASM.

89

days, are found to haunt the brain of the weak and presumptuous. For it is but the same principle

which

lies at

the bottom of the persecutions
itself

of the witches, and which shows

in the

quietism of Bourignon, the reveries of

Madame

Guyon, the raptures of
denborg^s prospect of the

Sister Nativity, the pro-

phecies of Naylor, the dreams of Dr. Dee, or Swe-

New Jerusalem

;

still

but

an emanation of that

spirit of pride,

which, refusing

to be " but a little lower than the angels," asserts

an immediate communion and equality with them, and Avhich, according to the temper of the patient,
feeds

him with

the gorgeous visions of quietism,

or impels him, like a furious Malay, along the path

of persecution.

Some

persons assert that, in this

nineteenth century of ours, we have no enthusiasm.
the contrary, we have a great deal too much no period has enthusiasm of the worst kind been more rife witness the impostures of South-

On

at

;

and Hohenlohe, and the thousand phantasies which are daily running their brief course of popucott
larity.

At no time has

that calenture of the brain

been more widely
agency of the
devil,

diffused, which, as it formerly

converted every natural occurrence into the actual

now

transforms every leader of

a petty circle into a saint, and invests

him with

the garb and dignity of an apostle.
practical

Daily, are the

and active duties of life more neglected under the influence of this principle the charity which thinketh no evil of others daily becomes
;

90

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
wliich of

more rare; the stream of benevolence
poverty and sickness at home,

old stole deep and silently tlirougli the haunts of
is now but poorly compensated by being occasionally throAvn up in a few pompous and useless jets, at public subscrip-

tions for distant objects

;

while even in those whose
evils to which away in vain

minds are untinctured by the grosser
enthusiasm gives
rise,
life

passes

and

illusive

dreams of self-complacent superiority,
rarely

Avhicli, as

they are based only in pride and constisusceptibility,

tutional

endure when age
Thus, the en-

and infirmity have shaken or removed the materials

out of Avhich they were reared.

thusiast who, like Mirza, has been contemplating

through the long day the Elysian islands that

lie

beyond the
feels,

gulf,

and already walking in a fancied
their myrtle-crowned inhabitants,

communion with

in spite of all his efforts, that, as evening

creeps upon the landscape, the phantasmagoria becomes dimmer and more dim; the bridge, the
islands, the genius

who

stood beside

them
its

disap-

pear

;

till

at last

nothing remains for him but his
oxen,
its sides

own

long hollow valley of Bagdad, with
;

sheep, and camels grazing on



this sol)er,

weary, working world, in short, with

all its

cares

and

duties,

through which,

if

he had been wisely
it,

fulfilling

the end for which he was sent into

he should have been labouring onward with a beneficent actiAity, not idly dreaming
side of the

Eden

for

which he

is

by the waybound and so he
;

PAGAN WITCHCRAFT.

91

awakes to a conscioiisness of his true vocation in
life

wlien he

is

ceives the value

on the point of lea\ing it, and perand the paramount necessity of

exertion, only

and

its

energies, lies behind

when youth, with its opportunities, him for ever, like the

shadows of a dream.

The work
review of
its

of Church-Councillor Horst, and the
principal contents, leave however one
least of the subject of

hemisphere at
urgy, and

Magic, Thearts,

Necromancy unnoticed.

These

or

at least the popular belief in

them, are

much more

ancient than any of the forms of Christianity, and

by Paganism to the creeds which supplanted it. It needs no ghost to tell the reader hoAV firmly the
were, in fact, a most unlucky legacy bequeathed

ancients believed in

all

supernatural influences

how

populous, in their conceptions, were the ele-

ments with omens, portents, and prodigies; how abject and unreasoning was their credulity; and how dependent both their public and their domestic life upon the exorcisms of the priest and the science of the augm*. The Canidias and Ericthos of antiquity were not mere creations of the poets the most sober and sceptical of historians does not
disdain to relate that, in the house of the dying

Germanicus, were found bm'nt bones and
vered limbs of dead bodies
phical of the
;

disse-

and the most philoso-

Roman

poets recounts with compla-

92

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

cent gravity the charms

by which the dead might
did the belief in witches

be evoked^ or the faithless lover recalled by his
forsaken mistress.

Nor

and supernatm-al agencies decay or decline with the disbelief in the state-religion which marked
the latter ages of the

Roman

Empire.

On

the

contrary, as scepticism increased in one direction,
credulity and abject superstition grew and prevailed
in another.

Neither were these infirmities of the

mind by any means confined to the ^a^lgar or the profane. The later Platonists were deeply infected
with the malady of superstition, and there are few

more cmnous chapters
sophers,

in the history of

human

inconsistency, than the lives of

many

of the philo-

who argued
if

against the being of a God,

and who trembled
^vith a

a hare crossed their path, at

a sinister flight of crows, or at a sudden encounter

beldame or a blackamoor in the
art of the ancients,

gi'ey of the

morning.

The magical

more

especially

towards the decline of Pagandom, was indeed of

an extremely dark and atrocious complexion.
the poet of the iEneid
" Sin has ne possim naturae accedere partes

Un-

mindful of the wise and reverent forbearance of

Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,"

the ancient wizards pried, or affected to pry, into the very " incunabula \it0e."

Could we recover a
St. Paul,

few of those books which the sorcerers at Corinth

burned and brought the price of them to

LUCIAN AND APULEIUS.
'we should probably find in
tlieir

93

pages^

among

some curious physical or medical secrets^ nearly all the elements of a cruel and obscene superstition. Rome, we know, was both early and deeply infected with the orgiastic worship of the East,
especially with the

of

Isis.

the Isiac

and impure ceremonies of the priests It was of no avail to level to the ground chapels, and to banish their ministers.
for the

In an age of unbelief there was a passion

mysteries of darkness; and although Christianity gradually superseded Paganism in form, the spirit
of the latter long survived in the multitude, and
especially

among

the ignorant rural population.
his erudite

James Grimm, in
tiquities of the

work upon the

'

An-

German

Race,' traces with great

acuteness the connection between the superstitions

of the

Heathenism.

Dark Ages and the magical formularies of The spells of witches, the abraca-

dabra of quacks, and the loathsome furniture of
Sidrophel's laboratory are genuine descendants of

the impostures and abominations which were practised for ages both in the

Roman and

Parthian

empires.

In Lucian and Apuleius indeed we are presented
with a singular and terrible aspect of social existence.
life

The most ordinary

acts

and functions of
invisible

were believed to be affected by the

powers, and those powers were supposed to be
willing to do service to all

who were malignant
fearless

enough to seek

their aid,

and

enough to

94

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

serve the apprenticesliip whicli was

demanded
it

of

them.
lieved

It is easy to decry the weakness

and detect

the absurdity of such a creed.
:

Yet

was be:

it

excited terror

:

it

nurtured revenge

it

wrought withering and wastmg eflPects upon the it cast a dark shade feeble and the credulous
:

was potent over the sinews of the strong and over the bloom of the beautiful it exercised " upon the inmost mind" all " its fierce
over
life
:

it

:

accidents/' and preyed

upon the

pui-est spii'its,

"As on entrails, joints and limbs, With answerable pains, but more

intense."

It is idle to regard such a belief as a
perficial
all

mere su-

or individual superstition.

It pervaded

ranks of society, from the philosopher
first

who

dis-

puted about a
police, to the

cause, and the magistrate

who

\iewed religion in the light of a useful system of

shepherd who watched Orion and the

Pleiades,

and the miner who rarely beheld either sun or star. It was an erroneous, but it was an

earnest, belief ^^•hich di'ove
diviners,

men

to consult with

and to question the elements for signs

and wonders.
Availing ourselves of Sir George Head's excellent translation,

we
its

extract

from the

'

Golden Ass'
is

of Apuleius a story Avhich, to our conceptions,
unsiu'passed for

horror by any of the di'cariest

legends of Pagan or Medieval sorcery.

"

My master,

the baker, was a well-behaved, tohis wife, of all the

lerably

good man, but

women

THE baker's wife.

95

in the world, was the most wicked creature in
existence,

and continually rendered his home such
is

a painful scene of tribtdation to him, that, by Hercules,

many

the time and oft that I have silently

deplored his
table
all

fate.

The heart
like a

woman was

the evil dispositions

most deteswhere of om- nature were collected
of that

common

cess-pool,

together.

She was

cruel, treacherous, malevolent,

obstinate, penurious^ yet profuse in
dissipation, faithless to

expenses of

her husband, a cheat and
I heard
bill
it

a drimkard.

One day

said that the

baker had procured a

of divorce against his

execrable helpmate, and this intelligence turned

out in due time to be true.

She, exasperated by

the proceedings instituted against her,

communi-

cated with a certain

woman who had

the reputation

of being a witch, and whose spells and incantations

were of power milimited.

Having conciliated

this

woman by

gifts

and urgent supplications, she be-

sought of her one of two things
conciled to her

— either to soften
him
to a -siolent

the heart of her husband, so that he might be re;

or if unable to do that, to send a

ghost or some evil spirit to put
death.
failed,

In the

first

endeavour the sorceress totally
set

whereupon she

about contriving the death

of

my

unfortunate master.

To

effect

her pm'pose,

she raised from the grave the shade of a

woman

who had been murdered.
half- clad,

So one day, about noon,

there entered the bakehouse a bare-footed

woman

wearing a mourning mantle thrown across

96

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
licr

her shoulders^

pale sallow features

marked by

a lowering expression of guilt, her grisly dishevelled

hair

sprinkled with ashes, and her front

locks streaming over her face.

Unexpectedly ap-

proaching the baker, and taking him gently by the
hand, she drew him aside, and led him into an adjoining chamber, as
to communicate.
if

she had private intelligence

After the baker had departed,
his

and a considerable period had elapsed without

returning, the servants Avent to his chamber-door

lence, called several times,

and knocked very loudly, and, after continued siand thumped still harder

than before.

They then perceived

that the door

was carcfvdly locked and bolted; upon which, at once concluding that some serious catastrophe had
happened, they pushed against
strength,
it A;ith

their utmost

and by a violent
it

effort, either
its

breaking

the hinge or driAdng

out of

socket, they ef-

fected an entrance by force.

The moment they were
ceiling,

within the chamber, they saw the baker hanging
quite dead
l)ut

from one of the beams of the

the

woman who had accompanied him had
liAing,

disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen."

This evoking of the dead to destroy the
this

warring of a corpse with a living soul, and
its foul

then the sudden dismissal, when
grave, presents to the
wliicli

and

fatal
its

ciTand had been accomplished, of the ghost to

mind a climax

of terrors, for
fic-

wc do not know where,

in history or in

tion, to find a counterpart.

HIGH TREASON.

97

The Lex

Majestatis, or law of
effectual

High Treason,
weapons
placed in

was one of the most
the hands of
its

and

terrible

which the imperial constitution of
military despots.
offence this double-handled

Rome

Against one and sure-smiting enagainst the crime

gine was frequently levelled^

viz.

or the charge of inquiring into the probable duration of the Emperor's
life.

This was done in va-

rious ways,

—by

fire

applied to

consulting the stars, by casting nativities, by

waxen images, by em-

ploying prophets, by casual omens, but especially

by

certain permutations and combinations of

num-

bers,

^'numeros Babylonios," or the

letters of the

alphabet.

The

following extract from

Ammianus
on so " mait

Marcellinus affords an example of this treasonable
sacrilege, the practice or suspicion of which,

many

occasions, led to the expulsion of the

thematicians'' fi'om Italy.

The Romans indeed,

profoundly ignorant of science, or contemning
as the
ai't

Greek adventurers or Egyptian priests, neither of whom were in good odour with the government at any period, gave to the current impostors of those days an appellation which Camof

bridge wranglers
nobility.

now account

equal to a patent of

The following

story seems to have been substan-

tially a deposition

taken before the magistrates of

Constantinople, and extracted from the Avitnesses
or defendants by torture.
is

The

principal deponent

said to have been brought " ad

summas angusH

08
tias"

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

— to

the last gasp almost^ before

lie

"vroiild

confess.

"Tins unlucky

table/' lie said,

"which

is

now

produced in court, we made up of laurel boughs,
after the fashion of that

which stands before the

curtain at Deli)hi.

Terrible were the auspices^

awful the

charms, long and painful the dances,

Avhich preceded and accompanied its construction

and consecration.
procedure.
^diich

And

as often as

we consulted

this disc or table, the following

was our mode of

It was set in the midst of a chamber had previously been well purified by the On the smoke of Arabian gums and incense. table was placed a round dish, welded of divers On the rim of the dish were engraven metals.

the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, separated

from one another by equal and exactly measured
spaces.

Beside the table stood a certain

man

clad

in linen,

and having linen buskins or boots on his feet, with a handkerchief bound around his head. He waved in one hand a branch of vervain, that
propitious herb;
verses, such

he recited a

set

formulary of

as are

Averruncal gods.

wont to be sung before the He that stood by the table was

no ordinary magician. With his other he held and shook a ring which was attached to curtains, spun from the finest Carpathian thread, and which had often before been used for such mystic incantations. The ring thus shaken dropped ever and anon between the interspaces of the letters, and

LATER PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
formed by striking the
letters together

99
certain

words, wliich the sorcerer combined into

number
priests

und measure,

much

after the

manner of the

who manage the
chidian Apollo.

oracles of the Pythian

and Bran-

Then, when we inquired who per-

chance would succeed to the reigning Emperor,
the bright and smooth ring, leaping
letters,

among

the

struck together T, H, E, O, and afterwards

a final S, so that one of the bystanders at once

exclaimed that

THEO[DORU]S

was the emperor

designated by the Fates.
tions
:

We

asked no more ques-

seeing that Theodorus was the person

whom
and
in

we had sought for." The lingering belief

in the old religion,

the magical and thaumaturgical practices which had, like ivy around an oak, gradually accrued to
it,

was productive in the decline of Paganism of
poetical forms of superstition.
It is curious

many

and instructive to remark the increasing earnestness with which the decaying creed of

Heathendom
which the

sought to array
Christianity.

itself against

the encroachments of

The hght

persiflage with

philosophy of the Aiigustan age treated the statereligion nearly disappears.

The

indifference of the

magistrate gives place to an intolerant and indig-

nant tone of reclamation.
attack the

The Pagan

Csesars

new religion

as a formidable antagonist

the Christian emperors, in their turn, assail direct^
or ferret out perseveringly the superstitions which

The

100

MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.

ancient gods are no longer regarded by either their

worshipers or their opponents as simply deified
heroes or men^ but
iDeings,

as powerful

and mysterious
evil,

informed with demoniac energies and ca-

pable of conferring temporal good or

—beauty,

power, and Avealth, on the one hand; deformity,

ignominy, and disease, on the other,

upon those Such conceptions of blessing or of bale were embodied in strange



who honoured

or abjured them.

narratives of weeping or jubilant processions

of

majestic forms

when

the

moon

w'as hid in

her va-

cant interkmar cave, of
of fair enchantresses

demons assuming the shape
beguiled

who

men

to their un-

doing, of palaces reared in a night and disHmning
in the day, of banquets, like that Adsionary banquet in the wilderness,
all

which Milton has adorned with
'Paradise

the graces of imagination in his

Lost.'

We
tives

can afford room for only two of the narraof demoniac influence in which the later
their belief in the influence of

Pagans expressed
the early gods.
1.

The

superstition of the Lamia.

One

result

of the consoHdation of Western Asia with Europe,

under the

Roman Empire, was
The

to spread widely

over the latter continent the germs of the ser-

pent-worship of the East.
the
field,

subtlest beast of

retaining in full vigour his powers of

assuming tempting forms and uttering beguduig
words, was wont,
it

seems, to disport himself among

LATEE PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.

101

the sons and daughters of men which he deceived our general mother^ the overEspecially did he delight to entrap curious Eve.

under the shape in

some hopeful youth who was stiidying philosophy schools of Athens or Berytus^ or some neophyte in the Christian Church. A fair young gentleman at Corinth had been abroad on a pleasure excm-sion^ and might perchance be returning home a Httle the worse for wine. However this may have been, at the gates of Corinth he encounin the

tered a damsel richly attired, "beautiful exceedingly/^ but with hair dishevelled,
tears.
distress.
litter

and drowned in

He
and

began by inquiring the cause of her Faithless servants had carried off her
her lone.

left

He offered

her consolation,
also,

wldch she accepted, and his arm
did not decline.
in a

which she

bye

street
its

been.

At

She led him to a lordly palace of the city, where he had never yet marble portico waited a crowd of
fond, were ushered into

slaves with torches awaiting their absent mistress,

and the

pair,

now become
with
all

a sumptuous banqueting hall, where a board was
sjDread covered

the delicacies of the season,

and garnished with effulgent plate. In this palace of delight the young man abode many days, taking no account of time. But at length, cloyed with
sweets, he proposed inviting a party of his college
friends,

who, with

much to the dismay of his fair hostess^ many tears and embraces, besought him
In an
evil

to forego his wish.

hour however he

102

MAGIC ANB WITCHCRAFT.

persevered^ and his

rooms were filled with gownsmen, marvelling much, not Avithout emy, at the good fortune that had befallen their chum, Lucius, no one knew how or why. But among the undergraduates came a grave and grey college tutor,
deeply read in conjurors' books,

who

could detect

by

his skill the devil

under any shape.

Pale and

silent the old

man

sat at the festive board,

and was
grev/

ill-bred

enough to

stare the lady not only out of
also.

countenance, but out of her beauty
the palace melted also

She

pale, livid, an indiscriminate form: she
;

melted away;

the plate, the viands, and
;

the wines vanished also

and in place of columns
was a loatlisome serpent,

and

ceiled roofs

was a void square in Corinth, and

in place of the damsel

v\Tithing in the agonies of dissolution.

The white-

bearded fellow had scanned and scotched and slain
the snake

—the Lamia—but he

destroyed his pa-

tient also, for

Lucius became a maniac; had the

charm lasted awhile longer, his soul would have become the fiend's property. 2. A young man had sorely offended the great
goddess Venus,
city,

or, as

she was called in his native

the Syrian Byblus, Astarte.

self

from the curse upon his board and bed,
fair wife,

had recently married a
wise astrologer.

— —he applied
his case,

To redeem himfor

he

to a

The sage heard

and adcertain

vised him, as his only remedy, to go

on a

night, at its very noon, to a spot just without the
gates, called the Pagan's

Tomb,



to station himself

LATER PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
on the roof of
it,

103

and to

recite,

at a prescribed

moment, a
sel,

certain formulary, with which his coun-

learned in magical law, furnished him.

the Pagan^s

Tomb

accordingly the young

On man

placed himself at the noon of night, and awaited
his deliverance.
fines

And

presently, towards the con-

of morning, Avas heard a sound of sad and

solemn music, and of much wailing, and of the

measured tread of a long procession. And there drew nigh a mournful company of persons, who might have seemed men and women, but for their
extraordinary stature, and their surpassing majesty

and beauty

:

and the young

man remembered

the

words of the magician, and knew that before him

was the goodly company of the gods
forefathers

whom

his

in

past

generations had worshiped.

One

only of that august and weeping band was

borne in a chariot

—the

god Saturn

—perhaps by
Astarte to

reason of his great age; and to Saturn he addressed his prayer, which was of such potency
that Saturn

straightway

commanded

release the petitioner

from the cm'se she had laid

upon him.

We
a

have been able merely to indicate

how wide

beyond the proper domain of medieval witchcraft. It would be cui'ious to trace the similarity of the Heathen and Christian superstitions, or rather the derivation of one from the other. But we must reserve this subject to some other
field lies

101

MAGIC AND AVITCHCRAFT.

occasion, and conclude with repeating the wish

with wliich we commenced, that some competent

hand Avonhl midertake

to

trace

througli

all

its

ramifications the obscm'e yet recompensing subject

of ]Magic and Witchcraft.

THE END.

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LITTLE

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