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
end of his
find his available fund of anecdote augmented."
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.
"
A
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
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
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."
ture,
The records of human
opinion would contain few chapters more instrucMagic and Witchcraft.
tive
than one which should deal competently with
For gross and painful as the de-
the Black Art.
tails
its
of superstition
may
be, yet superstition,
very etymology, implies a
practice standing
upon some
dogma or
by
a system of
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
For a grand
time essentially
and
religion.
error,
and such alone can
affect
the opinions of
at
general, is ever the imitation or caricature of
grand truth.
tree
From one
which yields good
any
mankind
in
some
soil
spring originally the
fruit
and the plant which
PREFACE.
distils
deadly poison.
causes of error
its
course of
its
The very discernment of the
a step towards the discovery of
The bewildennents of the mind of
opposite.
man, when
is
afford a clue to the
fidly analysed,
movements from the
at least enable
right track, or
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
;
gods by the majority of the
necessary the
dispensations
Christian schemes
;
the adoption of false
human
race rendered
Jewish and
of the
and the corruption of true
re-
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 multi-
tude afterwards to put faith in the
formed, and the impiu'c.
are little
kind,
all
more than the
first
JNIagic
evil,
the de-
and Witchcraft
religious instincts of
inverted, then polluted,
and
man-
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.
us in the remote antiquity of Asiatic
It
life,
meets
in the
comparatively recent barbarism of the American
who
aborigines, in the creeds of all the nations
branched
off
thousands of years ago eastward and
westward from their Caucasian cradle, in the myths,
who
the observances, and the dialects of nations
have no other
affinity
with one another than the
mere form of man.
No
with
nation, indeed, can reproach another nation
addiction to magic without in an equal
its
degree condemning
itself.
man-
All the varieties of
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
vidth
tisfied
The Chaldean erred when,
lie.
simple
dissa-
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
pantheon
strous
when, in their
:
the
silent
members of
Kelt
and
his
mon-
and Teuton erred
solitary forests, they
stained the serenity of nature with the deified attributes of
races
who
war
;
built
and the more
settled
and inhabited the
and
cities
civilized
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
some common ground
human
for it in the recesses of the
and since Paganism under
heart;
all its
forms was the corruption of religion, and Witchcraft in its turn the corruption of
Paganism, an
inquiry into the seeds of this evil fruit cannot
to he also in
very
'
We
incunabula' of
human
error.
have stated, or endeavoured to
real scope
fail
some measure an investigation of the
state,
the
and dimensions of the subject of jMagic
and Witchcraft
—not
of expatiating upon
present one.
it
however with any pm-pose
in so small a volume as the
In the pages which follow we
offer
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
amusing work appeared
from
title
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
:
it is
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,
Sii-
measure by
Walter Scott's Demonology and
book replete with interesting
Witclicraft' has been published, a
historical notices.
'
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
4
contributions from persons of a ghostly turn of
mind, who, although they
affect occasionally
write in a Sadducee vein, are
believers at heart,
many
of
them
to
half-
and would not walk through a
churchyard at night, except for a consideration
larger than
wliich
we shoidd
like to pay.
The
field
over
travels is too extensive, for us to attempt
it
to follow the author throughout his elaborate sub-
Dante divided hell, hke Germany, into
and Mr. Horst, adopting sometliing of a
divisions.
circles;
similar arrangement, has parcelled out the terri-
toiy of the Prince of the Air into sundry regular
di^-isions,
made
are
by which its whole bearings and distances
enough for the use of infant schools.
plain
one of the provinces of the Inferno,
It is only at
however, that
though
grand
we can at present afford to glance
who are inclined to make the
for those
the Counsellor
torn',
intelligent travelling
with the road.
and
distinct,
may
be taken as an
companion, well acquainted
In fact his work is so methodical
and the geography of the infernal
regions so clearly laid do^Ti, according to the best
from Jamblichus and Porphyry down
Glamil and the Abbe Fiard, that the whole
authorities,
to
flistrict is
now about
of the Niger
fault if
easy as
its
the days of
The
as well
known
as the course
must be the traveller's own
he does not find his exit from Avernus as
;
and
it
entrance has proverbially been since
Vii-gil.
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.
The
climate, as all of them,
wards,
agi'ce, is
from Faust doAvnand the face of
oppressively hot,
the country apparently a good deal like that be-
tween Birmingham and Wolverhampton, abounding with furnaces and coal-pits.
Literature
is
evidently at a low ebb, from the few specimens
of composition with which
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
the executive.
influential spirits concerned in
In
fact,
the departments of the
administration are by no means well arranged
there
is
no proper
sequence
is,
division of labour,
that Beelzebub, "
and the con-
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
'
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
4
Aziel, Mepliistopheles, Marbuel,
second-rate
who
spii'its,
and other forward
are continually thrusting
The
in their claws where they are not called for.
army
standing
teers
by which
thing
is
is
considerable*, besides the volun-
it is
No-
continually augmented.
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
Common readers
not flattering.
are apt to believe
that Satan occupies that dignityf, but this
great error, and only shows, as
is
a
Asmodeus told Don
when he fell into a similar mistake about
Beelzebub, " that they have no true notions of hell."
Clcofas,
The morals of
Lucifer, as
might be expected, are
we see
no evidence of his being personally addicted to
as
bad as
possible, with this exception, that
* Eeginald Scott's
'
Discoverie of Witchcraft' contains an
army-list or muster-roll of the infernal forces.
of Amazeroth,
who seems
Thus the Duke
to be a sort of brigacher-general, has
command of sixty legions, etc.
+ Satan is a mere tlui'd-i-ate spirit,
the
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
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 adminis-
tious
the
spits,
;
tered personal chastisement to his servants,
they neglected to keep an appointment.
notorious cheat
who have
;
many
enterprising
when
He
is
a
young men,
on the promise of
enlisted in his service
high pay and promotion, having foimd, on putting
hands into their pockets, that he had paid
their bounty in tin sixpences, and having
their
them
never risen even to the rank of a corporal.
talent
dered very mediocre, and therefore
that
His
might, from these narratives, be consi-
the
ingenious
selection
we
are afraid
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.
had a fancy
for
He
has always
appearing in masquerade, and
* Auswahl aug des Teufels Papieren. Yet, like Cato the
may have taken to study late in life.
Censor, Lucifer
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT,
b
once delivered a course of lectures on magic at
Salamanca, in the disguise of a professor.
he lived
late as 1626,
incog.,
did style, for a whole winter, in
of the Didce of
title
So
but in a very splen]\Iilan,
Mammon"^,
under the
It is in vain,
however, for his partial biographers to disguise the
that in his nocturnal excursions, of which,
fact,
Haroun
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
fond,
at the "Wartbm'g,
but beat him
all
to nothing in a
of ribaldry and abuse, besides leaving
fair contest
an indelible blot of ink upon his red smalls f.
Lupus shut him up
for a
St.
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.
a Latin
poem on
entitled
'
Lotichius took the trouble to compose
the subject of lus triumphal entry.
Mammon' had some reputation
ledged author's
name indeed
is
Harris
;
in its day.
yet
A
book
The acknow-
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.
I
THE LEGENDARY LUCIFEE.
/
cunuingly) conveyed himself, with the hope that
the saint would swallow
however^
considering
must have been an
have brought on
church.
St.
his
him
unawares'^.
which should
act of kindness^
St.
Lupus the censure of the
Anthony, in retm-n
for a very polite
offer of his services, spat in his face
his feelings so
This
ordinary temperatxirej
much, that
it
which hurt
;
was long before he
ventured to appear in society againf.
And
al-
though in his many transactions with mankind he
constantly trying to secure
is
tage, a person of
any
been bred a lawyer J,
is
some
a match for
he has
and there
which his ma-
him
are niunerous cases in the books, in
jesty,
unfair advan-
talent, particularly if
;
attempting to apprehend the person of a
debtor, has been unexpectedly defeated
by an inge-
nious saving clause in the bond, which, like Shylock,
he had overlooked, and non-suited in the
ecclesias-
where he commonly sues, with costs §.
Finally, we infer from the Mora Trials, that his
tical courts,
* 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
in
ill
though he got over the attack
Sweden; and
by bleed-
for a time,
ing and an antiphlogistic regimen, the persons
who were about him thought
breaking up, and that he was
Such
is
was
his constitution
still
in a dying way.
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,
has also
with
its
tude,
from
first
impression produced by such a
must be a ludicrous
its
one, the subject,
An
serious side.
wild distorted shape and grotesque
appears merely ridiculous
accessories
its
museum.
But
own hideous
we
Indian deity,
when
atti-
separated
and \iewed by daylight in a
restore
it
to the darkness of its
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
may
regarded as mere speculative insanities, we
for a
moment be amused with
however he
-was the gainer in
example, in the case of the
such equivocal compacts,
monk who was
abstained from sleeping between sheets.
in a chair
;
the wild incoheren-
—
as, for
to Uve so long as he
The monk always
but in an unlucky hour Satan caught him as
slept
fast as
a top with his head between the sheets of a sermon, and claimed
his bond.
SOURCES OF SUPERSTITION.
cies of the patients
;
but when we
9
reflect that
out
of these hideous misconceptions of the principle
of evil arose the belief in witchcraft
no dead
that this was
;
but one operating on the whole
faith^
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
male and female, were devoted by
and the scaffold, every
old,
—
influence to the stake
feeling
disappears
except
of astonishment
that
that such things could be, and humiliation at the
thought that the delusion was as lasting as
it
was
imiversal.
It is true that the current of
now
seems
if
human
to set in a different direction,
the evil spirit of persecution
is
again to re-ap-
pear on earth, his avatar must in
be made in a different form.
longer, as Dr. Francis
nus,
"mere
and
if
opinion
and that
Our
all
probability
brains are no
Hutchinson says of Bodi-
storehouses for devils to dance in;''
the influence of the great
as active as before
on
enemy
is
still
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
And
'
MaUeus Maleficarum.'
now
is
wiser than before,
tempts by making rich
however
— not making poor."
always a useful check to the
pride of the human mind, to look to those deStill
it is
lusions which have darkened
it,
more
especially to
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
10
such as have originated in feelings in themselves
exalted,
and laudable.
Such
unquestionably the
is
case in regard to one of the gloomiest chapters in
the history of
and
its
human
consequences.
error, the belief in witchcraft
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.
upon
it
mth
spirits
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
as a sort of Jacob's ladder,
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
call,
and darkness were
light
:
if
Satan was ready at
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-
mercenaries,
it
MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
strued into apostasy, and
to be persecuted himself
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
to
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
on his habits and demeanour according to his own
and soon the insane fancies of minds crazed
light
;
by natm^e, disease, or misfortunes, echoed and repeated from all sides, gathered themselves into a
code or system of
the
faith,
mind with the
tion, fettered
which, being instilled into
rudiments of instruc-
earliest
even the strongest intellects with
its
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
Matthew Hale passed sentence
1664, on two poor
and Sir Thomas
Errors,''
trial,
accused of witchcraft,
Browne, the historian of " Vulgar
who was examined
gave
it
of death, in
women
as a witness
as his opinion that the
fits
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
12
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.
him
in
:
"
men
or
The monkish Satan has no dignity about
soul and body he is low and deformed.
Grii
E
occhi ha vermigli, e la barba unta ed atra,
'1
ventre largo, ed unghiate
le
mani,
G-rafSa gli spirti, gli scuoja, ed isquatra*."
His apish
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 com-
Hence he preaches
and mocks the institution of
wreaks his native malice even on
pelled to acknowledge and obey.
to his infernal flock,
the sacrament
his
;
own adherents; plunges
his deluded victims
them
in their distress, de-
into misery, or deserts
them of the rewards he has promised
prives
them
;
to
plagues and torments the good, but cowers
whenever he
is
boldly resisted, and
* Inferno, canto vi.
is
at once dis-
MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
comfited by any one
the thunders
who
of heaven.
wields
13
by commission
Writers of fiction in
general have seldom seized these features of his
indeed hardly any one has done
character;
so^
except Hofiman, who, in most of his supernatural
pictures, has painted
him not with
and sullen gloom of the
the grandeur
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.
But whether the delusion of witchcraft was thus
monkish notions of an
a natm-al sequence of the
exil principle,
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
once
no opinion, however absurd and revoltnot find believers and martyrs, if it
will
made
the subject of persecution.
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
14
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
the extent of the horrors which for two cen-
tm-ies
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
But of the
occur to our recollection.
who has
extent of these judicial murders, no one
not dabbled a
little
in the history of
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
has any idea.
in that unparalleled performance, the
'
jMalleus
which was intended as a theological
and juridical commentary on the Bull, than the
race of witches seems at once to increase and mul]\Ialeficarum,^
tiply, 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
p.
84
:
Arras, in 1459.
Yide Monstrelet's Chronicle,
But
these were rather rehgious pro-
Paris, 1572.
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
commissions was to render the
formidable^ tOl at last, if
we
evil
daUy more
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
either bewitching or bewitched.
Delrio
tells
us
500 witches were executed in
in his preface that
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
at the rate of a hundred per
some time after. In Lorraine, from
1595, Remigius boasts of having burned
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
900.
pene veneficorum numerum.^^
The well-known
sorcerer, Trois Echelles, told Charles IX., while
was
at Poitou, the
This calculation
names of 1200 of his
is
he
associates.
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-
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
16
cent bore particular reference, this
derborn, "Wurtzburg, and Ti'cves
seats,
though
for a
centmy and
pla^e raged
Bamberg, Pawere its chief
to a degi'ce almost inconceivable.
a half after the
introduction of the trials under the commission no
quarter of that great empire was free from
ful influence.
It
its
would be wearisome and
bane-
revolt-
ing to go through the details of these atrocities
A catalogue
but " ab uno disce omnes.^^
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
and con-
larly di^aded into twenty-nine burnings,
tains the
names of 157 persons, Hauber
the same time that the catalogue
stating at
not complete.
is
It is impossible to peruse this catalogue A^'ithout
The
horror.
women
greater
part of
consists of old
it
or foreign travellers, seized,
pear, as foreigners
were
it
woidd ap-
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,
the two
little
sons {sblmlein) of the senator Stol-
zenburg; a stranger boy
And
;
a blind girl; Gobel Ba-
girl in
Wurtzburg,
" Sanguine placarunt Divos
et virgine ceesd
belin, the
handsomest
yet, fr-ightful as this list
etc.
.'"
of 157 persons
executed in two years appears, the
number
is
not
EXECUTIONS FOR WITCHCRAFT.
17
population of Wurtzburg into ac-
(taking the
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
plete),
the
list
was by no means com-
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
was not less ardent, furnished an
and if the Protestants, as we
equal contingent,
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
18
final extinction of these persecutions
must
consi-
derably exceed 100,000 in Germany.
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
rusal of the
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.
entitled the
nicle,
'
Druten Zeitung/ or Witches'
It
Clu'o-
" 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
the consideration that
was
19
in his eyes was very mucli increased lay
upon the confession, as it
unhappy wretch was
called, so obtained, the
What
immediately committed to the flames'^.
we
are
to think of the state of feelmg in the country
where these horrors were thus made the subject of
and set to music for the amuse-
periodical ballads,
ment of the populace t?
was one
It
fatal effect of the perseverance
* Some of our readers
precious productiou.
may
We
wisli to see a
with
specimeu of
tlais
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
Dann
man
Bis
Das
Zu
ich
ihr
mich
einer
bekannte gleich,
darauf bestandig es gescheh
driiber
wunder
;
ihr ins Gefangniss 'nimter,
Mit
sie
ilir Unrecht gross,
macht nothwendig diesen artlichen Foss{\),
sie blieb
Bamhaute
als
man
den
schickt eui Henkersknecht
man
hat kleidet recht
wenns der Teufel war
ihi- Buhl kam daher.
Als ihm die Drut anschaute meynts
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,
imd gab Anzeigung viel
was das tvarfilr ein Spiel (!).
Sie hat nit geschmeckt denBraten,
Er trostet sie und saget, ich will dir helfen wohl
Darmn sey imverzaget, Morgens geschehen soil.
It bears the
t
When
colophon "Printed at Smalcald in the year 1627."
these horrors were thus versified,
it is
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
20
wliicli
Satan and his dealings were thus brought
before the view of every one, that thousands of
weak and depraved minds were
actually led into
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 asso-
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,
ciates
this
had been
way
realized in their
alone can
we
in
admit then* intercom-se with Satan, their midnight
meetings, incantations, then' dealings with
" white, black, and grey, with
all their
the grotesque horrors of the sabbath,
spii'its,
trumpery,"
—
in short,
every vrHd and impossible phantasm which had received colour and a body in the 'Malleus,^
seemed to be perfectly
merited the fiery
satisfied that
trial to
which their confession
immediately subjected them,
we
Grimm's
trials,
"WTien
tliink of the efiect of the
fairy tale;
we
— and
they had fully
we read
these
Jew's fiddle in
see the delusion spread-
ing like an epidemic fi'om one to another,
till first
the witnesses, then the judges, and lastly the poor
criminals themselves,
and go
off like
all
pcld to the giddy
dancing Der\dses under
whirl,
its influ-
ence.
True
it is
that, in
ticularly those
many
of the cases, and par-
which occur in the
the seventeenth centurv,
when
earlier part of
the diabolical doc-
SELF-DELUSIONS.
21
and Delrio were in their full
vigoiir, the confessions on which these convictions
proceeded were elicited by torture, moral and phytrines of Sprenger
and frequently retracted,
sical,
till
a fresh appli-
cation of the rack produced a fresh admission.
One
instance from Delrio
He
thousand.
may
stand in place of a
mentions that an unfortunate gen-
tleman in Westphalia had been twenty times put
to the rack, " vicies ssevse qvisestioni subditum," in
him
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.
order to compel
wolf
!
AU
Defrio, "
naribus,"
quo
se porrigat in
illis
partibus aquilo-
— See
in the north
tni
to confess that
these tortures he resisted,
how long-suffering we judges are
we never put our criminals to death
!
we have
them with twenty preliminary
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
her tightly
hess ich sie tiichtig foltern,^^
— "und
sie
gestand;"
—I tortm'ed
(the torture lasted four hours),
she confessed
!
Who
and
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
22
was a Justice Depute, to examine some women
who
liad confessed judicially.
was a
silly creature,
told
me
One
of them,
that she
who
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.
Alison Pearson's casef,
ter, a girl
In
appears that her daugh-
of nine years of age, had been placed
in the pilliewinks,
fifty
it
and her son subjected to about
Where
strokes in the boots.
the torture was
not corporeally applied, terror, confusion, and the
same
on the weak minds of the accused. In the
case of the New England Avitches in 1696, six of
influence of others frequently produced the
effect
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
imputed to them,) retracted
in writing, attributing
* Criminal Law.
them
mtch-
their confessions
to the consternation
Tit. x.
t Eccords of Justiciary.
Ti-ial
of the Master of Orkney.
23
SELF-DELUSIONS.
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
the confessions were voluntary,
ceeded from actual
belief.
Nor was
it
many
and proto be
won-
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
At
of an evil power.
and immediate agency
that period even the
most
natural events were ascribed to witchcraft.
child, after
If a
being touched by a suspected individual,
died or became
ill,
the convulsions were ascribed
* Calef's
JoiATiial.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
24
to diabolical interference, as in
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
late as
1712*.
If,
to the door at night, took part in a concert with
other cats, this was nothing but a
mtch
herself
disguise J. In the case of Robert Erskine of
tried for the mui'der of his
for
nephews, he
is
inchcted
makiag away with them by poisoning and
craft, as if
the poisoning was not of
sufficient to
iri
Dim§,
itself
ivitch-
amply
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
optical deceptions, should appear to the sufferer to
be the work of the
de\il,
whose good
offices
they
might very probably have invoked imder some
of despondency or misanthropy,
like the
little
fit
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.
Eecorcb of Scottish
Justiciar}-.
Cbauncy deposed that a
cat belong-
t Trial of Bartie Paterson.
Dee. 18, 1607.
X In Wenham's
ing to Jane
case, IVIr.
Wenliam had come and knocked
and that he had
killed
it.
at his
door at night,
This was founded on evidence at the^
trial.
§ Rec. of Just. 1613, Dec. 1.
25
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
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
'
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"^
fearful
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
we go back to 1651, we find our EnBohme, Pordagef, giving an account
which must have been exactly of the
If
!
glish Jacob
of visions
same kind,
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,
arising
brain, ^ith the
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
'
Neue Necrologie
cler
Deutschen, 1823,' for an ac-
count of these remarkable appearances,
t Divina
et
Vera Metaphysica.
lions, dra-
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
26
gons, tigers, and bears; then followed the lower
spirits
arranged in squadrons with
twisted limbs, etc.
or kept
distinct
;
;
cats^ ears, claws,
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
Once
eye,
whose lid
and will not
raised remains aghast,
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
Dee was, according to his own account,
own conviction, on terms
verily believe his
of intimacy with most of the angels.
His brother
physician. Dr. Richard Napier, a relation of the
inventor of the logarithms, got almost
dical prescriptions
all his
from the angel Raphael.
Ashmole had a IMS. volume of these
receipts,
ing about a quire and a half of paper f.
me-
Elias
In
fill-
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."
27
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
time condescended to perform a cure by natural
means.
Witness
the
sympathetic
nostrums of
Kenelm Digby; or
Arise Evans, reported by Aubrey, who
Valentine Greatrakes and Sir
the case of
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
it,
;
which troubled the king, but cured
In Aubrey's time,
him.''
too, the visits of ghosts
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,
ful delusion,
under the influence of
tliis
fright-
they should voluntarily come forward
to confess their imaginary crime, as in the
Am-
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
28
sterdam case of the poor
accused herself
girl atIio
of be\\itcliing cattle by the words Shurius, Turius,
Tii'ius'^j
or in another
still
more remarkable case
in 16S7, mentioned in Reichard's
a young
woman
'
Beytrage/ where
accused herself, her friend, and
the mother of her friend, of a long course of witchcraft,
with
all
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
wretches to their o^vn
fears of these
pui'jjoses; in
poor
short, that
frauds similar to tliose which Boccaccio has painted
in his novel of the angel Gabriel, were occasionally
Without
played off upon the deluded victims.
entering further on a topic which
is
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,
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, reher as a melaucholy or bypochondriac
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.
the assertion
is
really true,
dif-
luasfar as
one simple explanation
goes far to account for the phenomenon
—
;
" Insamodoque." The general
and his demeanour, the rites
nire parent certd ratione
notions of the devil
of the infernal sabbath, etc. being once fixed, the
visions
which crossed the minds of the unfortunate
wretches accused soon assumed a pretty determinate and invariable form
tell
their
own
;
so that, even if left to
story, there
would have been the
between the narratives of
But this was not all. In
closest resemblance
ferent
persons.
dif-
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
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
mer, was only anxious to ascertain
queen of the infernal
spirits,
corporals, etc., to all of
as distinct
and
Ham-
who was
the general,
the
officers,
which he received answers
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.
his
No
sooner has one hypochondriac published
symptoms, than
fifty
others feel themselves at
once affected with the same disorder.
In the
cele-
brated ^Mora case in 1669, with which of course
the readers of Glamil (and
ally
who
all
has not occasion-
peeped into his hoiTors?) are familiar, the
disease spreads
first
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.
one or two of them, bm'sting into
for as soon as
tears, confessed that
was
the accusation of the children
And
true, all the rest joined in the confession.
what
is
the natm'e of their confession?
Of
all
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,
consists of broth
for the
made with
banquet commonly
colewort and bacon,
oatmeal, bread and butter, milk and cheese
the devil allows no wine.
;
and
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.
Sometimes he treats them
on the harp, for he has
to a musical exhibition
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,
to
and,
if
is
an almost inyariable feature in the witch
the subject could justify the discussion, might lead
some singular medical conclusions.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
32
momniing
for
him on
tlie
Blocula, as the Syrian
damsels used to bewail the annual wound of their
idol
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
in a country where, until this time,
capital,
the witch
mania, already beginning to abate in Germany,
had scarcely been heard
earlier perhaps
Europe,
of,
and where
it
ceased
than in most other comitries in
—seventy-two women and
fifteen children
shoidd have been condemned and executed at one
time upon such confessions ?
Is
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
like conclusion of Dr.
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
Antoinette Bourignon.
room one
by the pious enthusiast
On
entering the school-
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
of
little
appearance of these
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
to be
33
DELUSIONS.
of ^rhicli she
how
had heen
guilty, being interrogated
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
amounting to more than
selves confirmed witches,
intercourse with the
the girls in the hospital,
had confessed themand admitted the usual
fifty,
devil,
ings, dances, banquets, etc.,
the midnight meetwhich form the staple
of the narrative of the time.
Their ideal banquets
seem to have been on a more
ever than those of the poor
liberal scale
Mora
how-
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-
The Capuchins
lowed this astomiding disclosure.
and Jesuits quarrelled, the Capucliins implicitly
Ijclieving the reality of the possession,
the Jesuits
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
kingdom of Satan, with regard to
had entertained and published as many
D
possessed of the
wliich she
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
34
strange fancies as the Bishop of Beuevento
haA-iug
;
and
been taught by her own experience the
danger of tampering ^ith youthful minds, in which
the train of superstition had been so long
that
it
brain to kindle
It
laid,
only requii'ed a spark from her overheated
it
into a flame.
woidd appear too that physical causes, and in
particvdar nervous aflectious of a singular kind,
had about
mingled with and increased
this time
the delusion which had taken
its rise
perstitious conceptions of the devil
in these su-
and
his influ-
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
Another instance of the
indi\idual in particular.
same
in the
kmd had
taken place about a century before
Orphan Hospital
particulai'
accoimt
is
that city, where the
at
Amsterdam, of which a
given in Dapper's history of
number
of children supposed
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,
to be bewitched
35
CONFESSIONS.
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
The my-
remarkable cases of supposed possession.
sterious principle of
sympathy, operating in weak
minds, will in fact be found to be at the root of
most of the singular phenomena in the history of
No wonder then that after the expe-
witchcraft.
rience of a century, the judges, and even the igno-
rant pubHc themselves,
came
to suspect
at last
however the principle might apply to other
crimes, the confession of the criminal was not, in
that,
cases of witchcraft, the best evidence of the fact.
New
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."
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.
^Maleficarum/ or flogging
them
to death ^vith the
'Fkgellum' and Tustis Dsemonum;' Holland,
Geneva, Sweden, Denmark, England, and Scotland
A^dng with each other in the number of
trials
the depth of their infatuation and bigotry
The Reformation, which uprooted other
only strengthened and fostered
and
this.
and
!
errors,
Every town
on the continent was filled with spies,
and ATetchcs who made their living by
village
accusers,
pretending to detect the secret marks which indicated a compact
viitli
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.
(p.
48)
;
448).
trade: — "One
;
torture the accused party, as
if in
exercise of a lawful calling,
although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatizes
it
as a hoi-rid impos-
tm'e.
I observe in the Collections of Mr. Pitcaim, that, at the
trial
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,
what he
to exercise
liis
craft
called the devil's making,
;
'
THE REFORMATION.
judges^
executioners,
advocates,
6l
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.
" Vix aliquis eorum," says
magic against him.
Linden, the determined foe of these proceedings,
"qui accusati
of Edelin, of
chale d'Ancre in
Sidonia von
Abano
The
sunt, supplicium evasit."
Urban Grandier, and
fate
of the Mare-
of Doctor Flaet and
Germany, and of Peter of
France,
York
in
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.
while the notaries' clerks and
officials,
INlean-
labouring in
grew rich from the enormous fees
;
the executioner became
their vocation,
attendant on these trials
a personage of first-rate consequence
equo instar
:
" generoso
aulici nobilis ferebatm', aiu'o argen-
toque vestitus
:
uxor ejus vestium luxu certabat
the real place. They were pins of
tliree
inches in length.' Besides
the fact, that the persons of old people especially sometimes contain spots void of sensibUity, there
is
room to beheve that
pomt or lower part of
also
the professed prickers used a pin, the
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.
was burned in efBgy however
after his death.
He
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
Ob
cum
Some
nobilioiibus*."
partial diminution of
this persecuting zeal took place in consequence of
a Rescript of
John YII, (18th December, 1591),
addi'essed to the commission,
coui't
but
by'which the fees of
were restricted within more moderate bounds
the profits arising from
still
tliis
trade in
human
members and
the Brahmins in India, to
Aictims were sufficient to induce the
dej)endants of coiu't, like
support with
tion by
At
all theu'
might
this
system of pm'ifica-
fire.
however the hoiTors of Wurtzburg and
last
TreAcs began to open the eyes even of the dullest
commencing
had gradually overshadowed the
to the progress of the danger, which,
like Elijah^s cloud,
land.
^ATiile the executions
reigners, even those
were confined to the
women
or mihappy fowhose more vigorous intellect
lower classes, to crazed old
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.
way, in the case of the
the
first
effectual
New
39
same
So^ in the
England
witchcrafts,
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
and ex-
light with regard to the transaction,
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
the pub-
lication of the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in 1631.
the sixteenth centmy,
it is
In
true that Ponzonibius,
Wierus, Pietro d'Apone, and Reginald Scott had
published works which went to
proceedings
almost
;
impugn their whole
but the works of the foreigners were
unknown
in
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.
So
strongly did this exposure of the horrors of the
witch
trials
operate on the
mind
of
John Philip
Schonbrunn, Bishop of Wm-tzburg, and
finally
Archbishop and Elector of Mentz, that his
care
first
on assuming the Electoral dignity was to
abolish the process entirely within his dominions
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
iO
—an
the
example which was soon
Duke
princes.
after followed
of Brunswick and others of the
by
German
Shortly after this the darkness begins to
break up^ and the da^vning of better views to appear,
though
obscm-ations,
still liable
—the
to partial
north, and re-appearing in
in the
shape of the
and temporary
apparently shifting fm'ther
evil
trials
Sweden and Denmark
at
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
inaugural
Thesis of
Thomasius, 'De Crimine Magise,^ was publicly delivered,
with 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
of Halle, a work
wliich
some
41
fifty
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
fire
of
persecution seems to have been smothered only,
not extinguished.
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 pe-
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
riods of this madness.
the frightful stoiy of
of the reality of her pretensions, there seems to be
no doubt from the evidence that Maria was by
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
42
no means immaculate, but
ivas a dabbler in spells
and potions, a venefica in the sense of the Theodosian code.
But there
says, for eveiytbing
of the
'
is
a time, as
Solomon
under the sun ; and the
glories
Malleus Maleficarum^ were departed.
consequence was, that taking this
trial
The
as their
text-book, various foreigners, particularly IMaffei,
Tartarotti,
and Dell' Ossa, attacked the system so
^•igorously, that since that
time the adherents of
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
men
phenomena of
garded as mere mental
the other
or animals, and that
confessions, etc., were redelusions.
If such how-
humane
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
unfortunately soon abandoned;
for
43
EDICT OF LOUIS XIV.
which emancipated
itself
from the influence of this
bloody superstition.
In France, the edict of Louis XIV., in 1682,
and pro-
directed only against pretended witches
phets, proves distinctly that the belief in the reality
of witchcraft had ceased, and that
it
was merely
the pretended exercise of such powers which
thought necessary to suppress.
credit of Louis
and
it
was
It is highly to the
his ministry, that this step
was
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
by Monstrelet, down to that of
1616 ; of the judgments pronounced
under the commission addressed by Henry the
in 1459, reported
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
Abbe
117
et seq.
the
Fiard, one of the latest believers on record, has
printed the Requete at full length in his
p.
trial of
'
Lettres
sui* la
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
44
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
which had been quoted against
sum up their plead-
their opponents, they
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
dcs proces des personnes accuses de sor-
tilege, et
frira
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
the Parliament of
and
piety, it is doubtful
Normandy,
whether
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
more
45
deceitful than tlie unction
Dr. Francis Hutchinson lays to his soul,
when he ventures
to assert that
those countries where
its
England was one of
horrors were least
felt
Witness the trials and
convictions which, even before the enactment of
any penal statute, took place for this imaginary of-
and
earliest 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
Henry VI. Witness the successive
Henry VIII., of Elizabeth, and of
Part of King
of
(Statutes
James
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-finderneral,
general, against the wretched creatures in Lincolnshire, of
whom
" Some only for not being drown' cl,
And some
for sitting above
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
46
perhaps
is stilly
annually " improvecV in a com-
memoration sermon
at
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 ?
melancholy
is
man
the spectacle of a
How
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
justiceship
A
?
^lunnings, in 1694, would, Avith a
intellect,
old
better order of
commences with the Chiefof Holt.
The e\idence against ^lother
true,
is
man
of weaker
have sealed the fate of the unfortunate
woman
;
but Holt charged the
jiu-y
with such
firmness and good sense, that a verdict of
Not
then on record in a
trial
Guilty, almost the
for witchcraft,
trials before
fii"st
was found.
In about ten other
Holt, fi-om 1694 to 1701, the result
was the same.
Wenham's
case,
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
were examined, were endeavoiu'ing to press upon
the juiy
;
but, with all his exertions, a verdict of
was found against the prisoner. With the
view however of seciu'ing her pardon, by showing
guilty
47
PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND.
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
was procured
1716,
a
erdict
for her.
And
yet after
all this,
Hicks and her daughter, aged
jNIrs.
in
niiie,
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
were hanged
at
to the devil,
!
murders in England closes; the penal statutes
against witchcraft being repealed in 1736, and the
pretended exercise of such arts being punished in
and
fature by imprisonment
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
not very long ago that a poor
escaped with her
trial
by
water'^.
life
woman
it
narrowly
fi'om a re\ival of Hopkins's
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.
'
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
48
We
now turn
thrown on the
Much
to Scotland.
light has
been
and progress^ decline and fall,
of the delusion in that country by the valuable
work of Mr. Pitcairn*, which contains abstracts
rise
of every trial in the supreme Criminal Coui't of
Scotland
minute
:
the author has given a faithful and
-siew
of the procedure in each case, ac-
companied with
full
extracts fi'om
the original
docimients, where they contained anything of interest.
In no country perhaps did
this
gloomy super-
stition assxmie a darker or bloodier character
than
Wild, mountainous, and pastoral
in Scotland.
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
home.
The temper of the
flection
with enthusiasm
earlier days,
v.-ild
Scots,
—
their
its
cradle
and
combining
mode
of
life
re-
in
which amidst the occasional bustle of
and agitating
exertion, left
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
High Court
in Matters Criminal before the
of Justiciary in Scotland, selected from
of that Court.
By
Eobert Pitcaim.
Edinburgh.
tlie
Records
49
SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
tributed to exalt
fear with
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
on the
hill -tops "^.
guests
at
air,
or corpse-candles burning
Skeletons danced as familiar
the nuptials of our kingsf:
spectres
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
slain.
die,
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
Incubi and succubi wandered about in
v.
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.
t At the second marriage of Alexander
p. 128.
tri-
pp. 50, 317.
III.,
Fordim,
Boece, p. 294, ed. 1574.
X Boece, p. 149.
E
vol.
ii.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
50
bunal of Heaven"'^,
The annals of the
thirteenth
century are dignified with the exploits of three
wizards, before
must stoop
whom Nostradamus
Thomas
their crests,
and MerHn
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
necessary, merely for the
it
supposed possession of such powers, or their benevolent exercise, to apply the piu'ifying power of fire
Sii' Michael and the
and died peaceably ; and the tragical
to eradicate the disorder.
Ehymer
lived
fate of the tyrant Soulis
on the Nine Stane Rigg
* In the case of Cameron, Bishop of Glasgow, 1466.
—Bu-
chanan. Pitscottie.
+ " Quell' altro, che nei fianchi e cosi poco,
llichele Scotto fu, che veramente
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.
51
SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
was
not to the supposed sorceries
OTving,
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,
by those iron-handed and iron-hearted
so readily eA^oked by the simpler
who were
spell of feudal despotism.
From
the
commencement
Scottish Justiciary Court,
Mary, no
trial
the record.
of the Records of the
down
to the reign of
properly for witchcraft appears on
For though in the case of the unfor-
tunate Countess of Glammis^ executed in
1536,
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
which Innocent's bull had systematized and
German reformers had preserved
propagated, the
this,
while they demoHshed every other idol, and
moving
" In dismal dance around the fiu-nace blue,"
had made even children pass through the
Moloch.
fire
to
Their Scottish brethren, adopting imE 3
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
52
plicitly the creed
of their continental prototypes^
transplanted to our
nately but too
Avell
own
country^ a soil unfortu-
prepared for such a seed^ the
whole doctrine of Satan^s
^yith all
Aisible
agency on earthy
the grotesque horrors of
with mankind.
The
commerce
liis
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
their services
fail-
sex)
were put in requisition.
by
whom
The Lady
53
SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
furnished our
his
own Northern Wizard with some
most striking
pictures^
of
—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
or themselves dabblers in the
Even Knox
liimself did not escape the ac-
arf^.
cusation of witchcraft; the power and energy of
mind with which Providence had
gifted him, the
enemies of the Reformation attributed to a darker
He was
source.
"some
raise
Andrew's
;
accused of ha\'ing attempted to
sanctes" in the churchyard of
St.
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
became mad with fear, and shortly after
Nay, to such a height had the mania gone,
secretary
died.
that Scot of Scotstarvet mentions that Sir Lewis
Ballantyne, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland,
curiosity dealt
Grahame,"
trial
(the
with a warlock
called
same person who
"by
Richard
figures in the
of Alison Balfom% as a confederate of Both-
well),
"to
in his
own yard
so terrified
died."
raise the devil,
who having
raised
him
in the Canongate, he was thereby
that he
took sickness and
thereof
This was a "staggering state of Scots
* Scot of Scotstarvet,
Home
of G-odscroft, passim.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
54
statesmen" indeed, when even the supreme criminal judge of Scotland was thus at the head of the
delinquents.
have said
Well might any unfortunate criminal
Angelo
Avith
" Tliieves for their robbeiy have authority,
When judges
steal themselves."
Measure f. Measure,
Nor, in
fact,
was the Church
ii. 2.,
less deeply impli-
cated than the com't and the hall of justice ; for
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.
in the case of Alison Pearson, (1588)
celebrated Patrick
occurs the
trial
first
of Janet
entry in the Justiciary Record, the
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
same
as in the case of
Two or
is
the
Bowman.
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
55
TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.
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
whom we
propria persona, the spiritual beings to
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
had ane gray
with
coitt
man, gray
Lumbard
bairdit,
and
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.
t Ibid.
8,
1576.
p. 51.
Pitcaim, vol.
i.
p. 48.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
56
she should be riven at horse-tails she would never
do that/' hut promised him obedience in
else^
—a
qualified concession vrith
grumblingiy departed.
own
place in her
band and
all
things
which he rather
His third appearance took
house, in presence of her hus-
three tailors
(three
!)
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
men
women and
four
men
ing,
and the women with plaids round about them,
sitting
;
the
in gentlemen's cloth-
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."
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.
these
visit fi'om
the
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
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
husband.
privileges
spells
not to
kill.
Most of the
articles of
are for cures performed, nor
is
her indictment
there any charge
against her of exerting her powers for a malicious
REMARKABLE TRIALS.
As
pui'pose.
57
usual however she was con\icted and
hui'nt.
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
drama of human passions and crimes. We allude
Lady Fowlis and of Hector INIunro
to the trials of
of Fowlis, for witchcraft and poisoning, in 1590.
This
is
one of those cases which might plausibly
be quoted in support of the ground on wliich the
trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle,
and the writers of the Encyclopedic, namely, the
witch
—
necessity
of punishing the pretensions to such
powers, or the belief in their existence, with as
great rigour as if their exercise
" The law against
prove there be any, but
it
lives.
real.
" does not
pimishes the malice
of those people that use such
men^s
had been
witches,^' says Selden,
means
to take
away
If one should profess that, by turn-
ing his hat and crying buz, he could take away a
man's
life,
though in truth he could do no such
law made by the state,
thing, yet this were a just
that whoever should turn his hat thrice and cry
buz, with an intention to take
shall
be put to death."
We
away a man's
life,
shall hardly stop to
expose the absiu'dity of this doctrine of Selden in
the absti'act, which thus
makes the
will univer-
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
58
sally equal to the
deed ; but when we read such
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-
was naturally accompanied in
him a most dangerous member of society. In general, the prociple
with which
it
the indi\idual himseK, rendered
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
gave them of realizing their
59
own
prophecies.
Poisoners and witches are classed together in the
conclusion of Lonis
before the
XIV/s
edict
;
Chambre Ardente prove
and the
trials
that the two
trades were generally found in harmonious juxtaposition.
aflfords
.
Our own Mrs.
Tiu'ner,
in
England,
us no bad specimen of this union of the
poisoner with the procuress and the witch
;
while
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
woman
she had seduced into her schemes, a
apparently of the most resolute temper,
and obviously of an acute and penetrating intelseems reason to doubt whether she
lect: there
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
60
had any
ceries
power of the charms and sorwhich she resorted, but she probably
faith in the
to
thought that, in availing herself of the ser\ices of
those hags
whom
she employed, the
course woidd be to allow
them
more prudent
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
fire, or burying them with
downward, the pictm'cs were in this
case hung up on the north side of the room, and
their heads
the lady, with her familiars, shot several arrows,
shod with
effect.
elf- arrow
Though
the
heads, at them, but without
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
her victims was a stoupfiil of poisoned
ale,
but this
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
ran out in making.
:
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
move Lady Fowlis from her
could
pm-pose.
Like
Mrs. Turner, who treated Ovcrbury with spiders,
cantharides, and arsenic, alternately, that she
be able to " hit his complexion," she
to try the effect of
might
now proceeded
" ratton poyson," (ratsbane,) of
which she seems to have administered several doses
to the
young
without
still
laird,
" in eggs, browis, or kale," but
effect, his
constitution apparently pro-
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
on which Lady Balnagown and
its effects were so viothat even the wretch by whom it was admi-
dish of kidneys,
her company supped ; and
lent,
nistered revolted at the sight.
trial,
was
however,
still
it
alive.
At
the date of the
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
had been executed before her own
The proceedings
tal,
after all
a result which
is
trial
took place.
terminated in an acquit-
only explicable by observing
that the jury was evidently a packed one, and consisted principally of the
of
Munro and
dependants of the houses
Fowlis.
This scene of diablerie and poisoning, however^
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
62
did not terminate here.
Hectox',
It
now appeared
that
Mr.
one of his stepmother's intended Adetims,
had himself been the principal performer in a witch
nnderplot directed against the
Unlike
George.
liis
more
life
of his brother
energetic stepmother,
credulous to the last degree, he seems to have been
under the control of the hags by whom
he was surrounded, and who harassed and tenified
entirely
him Avith
of
all
fearful predictions
kinds.
He
and ghastly exhibitions
docs not appear to have been
naturally a -nicked man, for the very
who
life
same witches
^nth him against the
Avere aftcnvards leagued
of George, he had consulted with a ^iew of cu-
ring his elder brother Robert, by whose death he
would have succeeded to the
estates.
But being
and told by his familiars that the only chance he had of recovering
seized with a lingering illness,
his health
was that
his brother should die for him,
he seems quietly to have devoted him to death,
imder the strong instinct of
self-presentation.
In
was agreed that his
death should be lingering and gradual, and the
officiating witch, who seemed to have the same
order to prevent suspicion,
confidence in her
own
it
nicety of calculation as the
celebrated inventress of the poudre de successions,
warranted the victim until the 17th of April
loTiving.
It
fol-
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
ground lying betwixt the lands of two feudal suwhere they dug a large grave. Hector
periors,
Mu.m'o, wrapped in blankets, was then carried
forth, the bearers all the
and
time remaining dumb,
silently deposited in the grave, the turf being
laid over
him and
pressed
down with
staves.
His
foster-mother. Christian Neill, was then ordered
to
run the breadth of nine
riggs,
the grave, to ask the chief witch
and returning to
'^
which was her
She answered that Mr. Hector was her
and his brother George to die for
This cooling ceremony being thi'ee times
choice."
choice to
him.
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.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
64
The
of those strange proceedings which
first liint
were afterwards disclosed, was derived from the confessions of a
named
gii'l
servant to the
Deputy
Gellie, or Gellis Drnican,
Some
Bailiff of Tranent.
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
her fingers, wliich
is
of thumbscrew] upon
a grievous paine, and binding
or wi-enching her head with a cord or rope, which
a
is
most cruel torment
But, notwithstand-
also^.^'
ing these persuasive applications,
At
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.
fore part of the throat.
last it
No
than the charm was bm'st
:
sooner was
it
detected
she confessed that
all
her cm-es were performed by the assistance of the
dcAil,
and proceeded to make disclosures
to the extent of her
ciates,
relative
and the number of
gviilt,
which utterly eclipse
all
asso-
the preceding " dis-
of Avitchcraft," with which the criminal
coveries
records fiu'nish us
down
to this time.
Thirty or
some of whom, as the
were "as civill honest women
forty different individuals,
pamphlet obsen^es,
*
Xews
il-om Scotland, declaring the
—Pitcaim,
vol.
i.
p. 213.
damnable
life
of Dr. Fian.
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
whom
the victims offered
the lower classes, from
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 Col-
to this superstition
;
lege of Justice.
To
trace out the wide field of witchcraft
was opened
to
him by
cused, as they were successively examined,
employment highly congenial
mind
which
the confessions of the ac-
to
was an
the credulous
of James, prone to every superstition, and
versed in
Bodinus.
all
the traditionary lore of Sprenger and
Day
after
day he attended the exami-
nations in person, was put into a " wonderful admiration^'
which
by every new
grotesque horror
trait of
their confessions disclosed,
and even carried
his curiosity so far as to send for Gellie
herself,
who
Duncan
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
—
" who upon the
trumpe did play the said dance before the
himself listen to this infernal air
like
King's majestic, who, in respect of the strangeness
of these matters, took great delight to be present
at these examinations."
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT,
G6
All these disclosures, liowever,
it
may
be
antici-
pated, were not without a liberal application of the
—
the torture. The
named Cuningham, who
under the name of Dr. Fian,
usual compulsitor in such cases
chief sufferer was a person
figures in the trials
a schoolmaster near Tranent, and apparently a per-
son of dissolute character, although, as appeared
fi'om his conduct
gidar strength of
on
tliis
inquisition, also of sin-
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,
own
but a variety of particulars relative to his
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
upon
remedy
" His nayles
for his relapse.
and pulled with an instrument called in Scottish a Turkas*. And under
his fingers were riven
every naile there was thrust in two needles over
even up to the heads.
At
all
which torments, not-
withstanding, the doctor never shrunke anie whitt,
neither would he then confess
it
the sooner for
all
Then was he with
speed by commandment conveyed
the tortures inflicted upon him.
all convenient
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
their services
*
;
be seen, did not long reqrdre
but whether his confession was ob-
Old French, Turquois, a smith's pmcers,
fi'om torquere.
p 3
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
G8
tained by fair
startling
witch,
wood
means or
foul, it certainly bears so
resemblance to that of the leading
a
Agnes Sampson, a woman
whom
Spottis-
describes as " matron-like, grave and settled
in her answers," that
it is
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
commencement
made
in the
of the proceedings, that they were
" extreme lyars."
all
James,
appears, fr'om his singular piety, and
it
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,
On
most obnoxious to
his servants
upon
earth.
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
be made to raise such a tempest as should
libly
put an end to the greatest enemy
himself confidentially admitted
whom
mtches)
one
of
due solemnity.
commenced with
therefore
Satan undertook^ in the
instance^ to raise a mist so as to strand the
on the English
the
the devil ever had in the world.
The preparations were
all
to
infal-
Satan
(as
coast, but,
more
first
King
active measures
being thought necessary, Dr. Fian, as the devil's
secretary, or register, as
he
is
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
On
the King^.
All-hallowmas Eve the infernal
number
of about two hundred, embarked, " each in a riddle or sieve, and went into
partj^, to
the
the same very substantially."
they met with Satan
cruizing about he
is
made
In what latitude
not stated, but after some
his appearance,
vered to Robert Grierson a cat, which
and dehit
appears
had previously been drawn nine times through the
cruikt, giving the Avord to " cast the same into the
And
charm was not
whose fleet was at
that time clearing the Danish coast, afterwards
sea!
Hola!"
this notable
Avithout its efiect, for James,
* Pitcairn, vol.
f Crook
kitchen
—the
i.
p. 211.
hook from which pots are himg oyer a Scottish
fii'e.
I
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
70
declared that his ship alone had the wind contrary,
all the other vessels had a fair one.
The charm upon the water being finished, the
while
witches landed, and after enjoying themselves with
wine, which they drank out of the same sieves in
which they had previously
tially,"
sailed
" substan-
so
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
!
was to appear in a character
in Scotland than on the Continent,
their master
common
that of a preacher.
devil's register,
Doctor Fian, who, as the
took the lead in the ceremonies at
the kirk, blew up the doors, and blew in the lichts,
which resembled
black candles sticking round
about the pulpit, while another of the party. Grey
Suddenly the
de\dl
himself started up in the pulpit, attired in a
gown
Meill, acted as door-keeper.
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
71
DR. FIAN.
eyn "
bragia)
(occlii di
;
"
and
hanclis
liis
leggis
were berry, with clawis upon his handis, and
lyk the Griffin, and spak with a
first
how
called the roll of the congregation, to
feit
He
voice/^
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
sin-
gular coincidence of their narratives remains at
this
day one of the most
difficult
pliilosophy of Scottish history.
fortunate beings
who
problems in the
The
fate of the
could not, in that age of credulity, be for a
doubtful.
Fian, to
tures to which he
un-
confessed these enormities
whom,
after the
moment
inhuman
had been subjected,
life
tor-
could
MAGIC A\D WITCHCRAFT.
t\C
jiot
much
be of
and burnt.
value,
was condemned, strangled,
Agnes Sampson underwent a
similar
Barbara Napier, another person said to have
been present at the convention, though acquitted
fate.
of this charge, was condemned on certain other
charges
of
sorcery in the indictment:
mind of James
strongly Avas the
but so
excited,
that,
though he had secured a conviction against her, he
actually brought the assize to trial for wiKul error
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 licen-
in acqiutting her
tious 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
who
ceries,
charcrcd
poisonings,
agrainst
and
way of the
The number of sor-
stood in the
indulgence of her passions.
attempts
at
poisoning,
her in the indictment,
almost
EUPHEMIA MACALZEAN.
VO
the accusations against Brinvilliers ;
rivals
and,
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
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
be
fate
which she endured with the greatest firmness,
So deep and perma-
on the 25th of June, 1591.
nent was the impression made by these scenes upon
the King's mind, that
we owe
to
them the prepa-
ration of an Act of Parliament anent the form of
process against witches, mentioned
among
the un-
more immediately the
composition of that notable work of the Scottish
printed acts for 1597, and
Solomon, the
In the
'
trials
DEemonologie.'
of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of
Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel
Gardiner"^, the charges are principally of taking
ofi"
and laying on diseases either on
men
or cattle
meetings with the devil in various shapes and
places
;
raising
and dismembering dead bodies for
the pm-pose of enchantments;
destroying crops
* Just. Eecords, 1590-1610.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
74
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 pla-
cing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in
the house of the intended victim
case of Grierson,
ing an enchanted
door.
;
or,
as in the
by the simpler process of
tailzie (slice)
It Avas immaterial
tlirow-
of beef against his
whether the supposed
powers of the A^tch were exerted for good or
CA-il,
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;
and the same in the case of Alison Pearson ; but
Bartie Paterson seems to
have been the most pious of warlocks, for his pa-
both were executed.
tients 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
though given as one
of Robert Erskine of Dim,
for witchcraft,
seems to have
been a simple case of poisoning, he haA-ing merely
resorted to a notorious
Ir\"ine, for
AA-itch,
named
]\Iargaret
the herbs by which he despatched his
CHARLES THE FIRST.
The
nephews.
75
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
demonologists
3
the counsel for the prisoner con-
tending strongly against the doctrine that^ in the
case of a person accused of witchcraft^ eveiy cure
set down to the agency
The defence however, though it seems
performed by her was to be
of the devil.
to have been ably conducted, was unsuccessfid.
Matters continued
much
ing the reign of Charles
in the same state dur-
I.
From 1625
to
1640
on
there are eight entries of trials for witchcraft
the Record, one of which, that of Elizabeth Bathgate, is remarkable, as being followed
by an acquit-
In that of Katharine Oswald"^, the prisoner's
tal.
counsel had the boldness to argue, that no credit
was to be given to the confessions of the other
who had sworn to the presence of the
witches,
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
Most of
tlie
cases here cited are
Eecords, from about 1605 to 1640.
t Feb.
4,
1629.
found in the Justiciary
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
76
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
does not appear.
ingj
;
whether voluntary or extorted
Tliey are not in general interest-
though some of the
milton*
differ a little
details in the trial of
Ha-
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
close
of this reign, with the increasing dominion of the
Puritans.
an
act,
In 1640 the General Assembly passed
that
all
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
* Just. Eecords, Jan. 1630.
grant-
THE PURITANS,
ing a standing commission from
77
tlie
Privy Council
or Justiciary to any " understanding gentlemen or
I
magistrates," to apprehend, try, and execute jus-
The
tice against the delinquents.
subject appears
I
[
I
resumed in 1644, 1645, and 1649;
remonstrances, it would seem, had not
to have been
and their
been without
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
From
tliis
time, not only does the
little
equivocal.
number of conJames had been
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
victions,
between
this last date
and the Restoration, only
one of which appears to have terminated in an acquittal;
while 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
must be kept
* Just. Eec, Dec. 1643.
in
the
in ^dew
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
criminals accused of witchcraft, the same end was
managed
The Court
in a different Avay.
of Jus-
was anxious to get rid of a jimsdiction
ticiaiy
which would alone have afforded them
employment
sufficient
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
;
Wodrow
were these commissions, that
his astonishment at the
gisters.
number found
expresses
in the Re-
Under these commissions multitudes were
bm-nt in every part of the kingdom.
In Mercer^s
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
would appear that
the clergy displayed the most intemperate zeal.
It
was before them that the poor wretches " de-
lated" of witchcraft were
nation,
—in most
first
brought for exami-
cases after a preparatoiy course
of solitary confinement, cold, famine, want of sleep,
or actual torture.
prickers,
On some
occasions the clergy
the part
of the
and inserted long pins into the
flesh of
themselves
actiially
pci^formed
THE RESTOKzVTTON.
79
the witches in order to try their sensibility
in
all
;
and
they laboiu'ed^ by the most persevering in-
vestigations, to obtain
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
sion,
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
crime
tide of popular delusion in regard to
may
be said to have turned during the
reign of Charles II.,
its
opening was perhaps more
bloody than that of any of
the
first
its
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).
who
Of
died and
the numbers of
made no
sign,
under the hands of those " understanding gentlemen'^ (as the General Assembly's overture styles
them) to
whom
the commissions were granted,
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
80
now
it is
almost impossible to form a conjecture.
In reference however to
in sucli cases,
we may
tlie
course of procedure
refer to
some singular ma-
nuscripts relative to the examination of two confessing witches
in
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 confes-
sion of Isobel Gowdie, Avithin contained, as paction
Avith Sathan, renunciation of baptism,
malefices, I find that a
justly given for her last trial.
A.
confessions are written under the
pixblic,
with divers
commission may be vciy
and subscribed by
all
Colville^.'' The
hand of a notary
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.
*
:
81
ISOBEL GOWDIE.
tlemen, and otlier witnesses present
;
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,
Though examined on
e passa."
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,
own mind,
and yet the inconceivable absmxlity and monstrosity of these conceptions, to many of which we
cannot even allude, furnish some most important
the consistency they had assumed in her
contributions to the history of hypochondriac insanity.
Her
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
tized
* Her fellow-witch, Braidhead, was baptized by the very iaajipropriate
name
of Christian.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
82
tliey
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
it is
Each
is
to repeat
names of the party
who seems
is
whose duty
officer,
to hold
after Satan; and a maiden,
sway over the women, and who
the particular favourite of the devil,
at his right
hand
A
at feasts.
is
placed
grand meeting of
the covens takes place quarterly,
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
given.
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.
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
;
it
appears, occasionally took considerable liberties
with his character, on which occasions Satan, on
* This seems to have been a
ritual.
in the
Law
gives the
Bangarran Case.
common
practice in the Infernal
nicknames of the Renfrewshire witches,
(Memorials,
p. 122.)
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."
The amusements and occupations of the witches
same firmness and minute-
are described with the
ness of drawing.
an infernal
bed, a
When
the devil has appointed
the witches leave behind them, in
diet,
besom or three-legged
their shape
till
stool,
responding with the
Mora
When
trials.
ing to the spot where their work
they either adopt the shape of
else,
which assumes
their retm'n, a feature exactly cor-
is
proceed-
to be performed,
cats, hares, etc.,
or
mounting upon corn or bean straws, and pro-
nouncing the following charm,
" Horse and hattock, horse and go,
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
84
Avitli
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
number of
these " Freischiitze."
forty or fifty persons
is
A list
given by the witch,
of
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
life
of this minister
described very grapliically.
The instrument
employed was " a bag made of the flesh and guts
is
and
galls of toads, the liver of a hare, pickles of
and toes," which
and mixed secundum
corn, parings of nails, of feet,
olio being steeped all night,
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 looking
and
eyes, holding
stedfastly
on the
up their hands,
devil, that
destroy the said Mr. Harry."
he might
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.
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
lairds of
as appears
the trees opposite the gate.
that, if
any of
any of them
it,
shoiild
as well as that
It
was appointed so
touch or tramp upon
or any of
it
which
make
it
did,
this
and they
house
shortly died.
on them,
it fall
should strike them with boils and
it
kill
We
them,
did
it
to
heirless.'^
It is needless to pursue further these strange
details,
which however form a valuable appendix
to the records at that time.
It
would seem as
if
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,
a certain cabinet took out of
it
a
number of boxes.
and opening
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.
:
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
86
An
delirium began after 1662 to relax.
of six years
now
occurs without a
trial
crime, while the record bears that James
interval
for this
Welsh "^
was ordered to be publicly whipped for accusing
veral individuals of
likely
to
it,
—a
fate
se-
which he was hardly
have encountered some years before.
Fountainliall, in noticing the case of the ten poor
women
convicted on their
own
confession in 1678tj,
obviously speaks of the whole aftair with great
And
doubt and hesitation.
in his
'
Sir
Criminal Law,^ the
George Mackenzie,
first
edition of which
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
principles very inconsistent with the practice of
the preceding century.
the crime," says he,
crimes
it
" From the horridness
"I do conclude that of
requires the clearest relevancy and
of
all
most
convincing probature ; and I condemn, next to the
wretches themselves, those cruel and too forward
judges
who burn
of this crime."
humane and
persons by thousands as guilty
And
accordingly, acting on these
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.
t Vol.
i.
set at liberty.
Jan. 27, 1662.
Decisions, p. 14.
" Since
87
SUPERSTITIOUS ENTHUSIASM.
n liich
no
time/' adds Lord Royston, " there has been
trial for this
crime before that court, nor before
any other court, that I know
of,
except one at
Paisley by commission from the Privy Council in
aimo 1697."
v\
This observation of Lord Royston
not altogether correct.
is
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
of
Shaw
named
Christian Shaw, the daughter
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
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
of age.
After this,
out of about twenty
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
88
to be biu-ned
for
on the cheek and banished Scotland
last execution which took place was
The
life.
that of an old
woman
in the parish of Loth, ex-
ecuted at Dornoch in 1722, by sentence of the
Sheriff depute of Caithness,
of Little Dean.
" It
Captam David Koss,
is said,
that being brought
out for execution, the weather proving very severe,
she sat composedly
warming
herself
by the
while the other instruments of death were
ready
fire,
made
!"
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 \"
may yet
And though in remote districts the belief
linger in the
minds of the ignorant,
it
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
89
SUPERSTITIOUS ENTHUSIASM.
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
of the witches, and which shows
itself
in the
Madame
quietism of Bourignon, the reveries of
Sister Nativity, the pro-
Guyon, the raptures of
phecies of Naylor, the dreams of Dr. Dee, or Swe-
denborg^s prospect of the
an emanation of that
New Jerusalem
spirit of pride,
;
still
but
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
Some
of persecution.
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
been more widely
that calenture of the brain
diffused, which, as it formerly
converted every natural occurrence into the actual
agency of the
devil,
now
transforms every leader of
a petty circle into a saint, and invests
the garb and dignity of an apostle.
him with
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
practical
;
90
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
more rare; the stream of benevolence
wliich of
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-
poverty and sickness at home,
tions for distant objects
;
while even in those whose
minds are untinctured by the grosser
enthusiasm gives
and
illusive
Avhicli, as
tutional
rise,
passes
life
evils to which
away in vain
dreams of self-complacent superiority,
they are based only in pride and constisusceptibility,
endure when age
rarely
and infirmity have shaken or removed the mateout of Avhich they were reared.
rials
Thus, the en-
thusiast who, like Mirza, has been contemplating
through the long day the Elysian islands that
beyond the
lie
gulf,
and already walking in a fancied
communion with
their myrtle-crowned inhabitants,
in spite of all his efforts, that, as evening
feels,
creeps upon the landscape, the phantasmagoria
becomes dimmer and more dim; the bridge, the
islands, the genius
pear
own
;
at last
till
who
stood beside
long hollow valley of Bagdad, with
sheep, and camels grazing on
its sides
weary, working world, in short, with
and
them
duties,
fulfilling
disap-
nothing remains for him but his
through which,
if
;
—
its
oxen,
this sol)er,
all its
cares
he had been wisely
the end for which he was sent into
it,
he should have been labouring onward with a be-
by the waybound and so he
neficent actiAity, not idly dreaming
side of the
Eden
for
which he
is
;
PAGAN WITCHCRAFT.
91
awakes to a conscioiisness of his true vocation in
life
wlien he
is
on the point of lea\ing it, and perand the paramount necessity of
ceives the value
when youth, with its opportunities,
him for ever, like the
exertion, only
and
its
energies, lies behind
shadows of a dream.
The work
review of
its
of Church-Councillor Horst, and the
principal contents, leave however one
hemisphere at
urgy, and
least of the subject of
Necromancy unnoticed.
at least the popular belief in
Magic, The-
These
them, are
arts,
or
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
how
all
supernatural influences
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
Roman
;
disse-
and the most philoso-
poets recounts with compla-
92
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
by which the dead might
cent gravity the charms
be evoked^ or the faithless lover recalled by his
forsaken mistress.
Nor
did the belief in witches
and supernatm-al agencies decay or decline with
the disbelief in the state-religion which marked
the latter ages of the
Roman
On
Empire.
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
in the history of
inconsistency, than the lives of
who argued
sophers,
and who trembled
if
many
human
of the philo-
against the being of a God,
a hare crossed their path, at
a sinister flight of crows, or at a sudden encounter
^vith a
beldame or a blackamoor in the
gi'ey of the
morning.
The magical
art of the ancients,
more
especially
towards the decline of Pagandom, was indeed of
an extremely dark and atrocious complexion.
Un-
mindful of the wise and reverent forbearance of
the poet of the iEneid
" Sin has ne possim naturae accedere partes
Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,"
the ancient wizards pried, or affected to pry, into
the very " incunabula \it0e."
Could we recover a
few of those books which the sorcerers at Corinth
burned and brought the price of them to
St. Paul,
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,
and
impure ceremonies of the priests
It was of no avail to level to the ground
chapels, and to banish their ministers.
especially with the
of
Isis.
the Isiac
In an age of unbelief there was a passion
for the
mysteries of darkness; and although Christianity
gradually superseded Paganism in form, the spirit
of the latter long survived in the multitude, and
especially
among
James Grimm, in
tiquities of the
the ignorant rural population.
his erudite
German
work upon the
'
An-
Race,' traces with great
acuteness the connection between the superstitions
of the
Dark Ages and the magical formularies of
The spells of witches, the abraca-
Heathenism.
dabra of quacks, and the loathsome furniture of
Sidrophel's laboratory are genuine descendants of
the impostures and abominations which were prac-
Roman and
tised for ages both in the
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
were believed to be affected by the
invisible
powers, and those powers were supposed to be
willing to do service to all
enough to seek
their aid,
who were malignant
and
fearless
enough to
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
94
demanded
serve the apprenticesliip whicli was
them.
It is easy to decry the weakness
the absurdity of such a creed.
lieved
it
:
excited terror
:
it
Yet
of
and detect
was be-
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-
It pervaded
or individual superstition.
ranks of society, from the philosopher
puted about a
first
who
cause, and the magistrate
dis-
who
\iewed religion in the light of a useful system of
police, to the
shepherd who watched Orion and the
and the miner who rarely beheld either
sun or star. It was an erroneous, but it was an
Pleiades,
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
extract
from the
'
Golden Ass'
of Apuleius a story Avhich, to our conceptions,
unsiu'passed for
its
is
horror by any of the di'cariest
legends of Pagan or Medieval sorcery.
"
My master,
lerably
the baker, was a well-behaved, to-
good man, but
his wife, of all the
women
95
THE baker's wife.
in the world, was the most wicked creature in
existence,
and continually rendered his home such
a painful scene of tribtdation to him, that, by Her-
many
cules,
deplored his
table
all
is
the time and oft that I have silently
woman was
She was
of that
common
like a
the evil dispositions
together.
most deteswhere
of om- nature were collected
The heart
fate.
cess-pool,
cruel, treacherous, malevolent,
obstinate, penurious^ yet profuse in
a drimkard.
One day
baker had procured a
expenses of
her husband, a cheat and
dissipation, faithless to
I heard
it
said that the
of divorce against his
bill
execrable helpmate, and this intelligence turned
out in due time to be true.
She, exasperated by
the proceedings instituted against her,
cated with a certain
woman who had
communi-
the reputation
of being a witch, and whose spells and incantations
Having conciliated
were of power milimited.
woman by
gifts
this
and urgent supplications, she be-
sought of her one of two things
— either to soften
the heart of her husband, so that he might be reconciled to her
;
or if unable to do that, to send a
ghost or some evil spirit to put
death.
failed,
of
my
In the
first
him
to a -siolent
endeavour the sorceress totally
whereupon she
set
about contriving the death
unfortunate master.
To
effect
her pm'pose,
she raised from the grave the shade of a
who had been murdered.
there entered the bakehouse a bare-footed
half- clad,
woman
So one day, about noon,
woman
wearing a mourning mantle thrown across
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
96
her shoulders^
licr
pale sallow features
marked by
a lowering expression of guilt, her grisly dishevelled
sprinkled with ashes, and her front
hair
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,
and a considerable period had elapsed without
his
returning, the servants Avent to his chamber-door
and knocked very loudly, and, after continued siand thumped still harder
lence, called several times,
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,
and by a violent
the hinge or driAdng
it
it A;ith
out of
fected an entrance by force.
their utmost
effort, either
its
breaking
socket, they ef-
The moment they were
within the chamber, they saw the baker hanging
quite dead
l)ut
the
from one of the beams of the
ceiling,
woman who had accompanied him had
disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen."
This evoking of the dead to destroy the
this
liAing,
warring of a corpse with a living soul, and
then the sudden dismissal, when
its foul
and
fatal
ciTand had been accomplished, of the ghost to
grave, presents to the
wliicli
mind a climax
wc do not know where,
tion, to find a counterpart.
its
of terrors, for
in history or in
fic-
HIGH TREASON.
The Lex
97
High Treason,
Majestatis, or law of
was one of the most
and
effectual
terrible
weapons
Rome
placed in
which the imperial constitution of
offence this double-handled
Against one
and sure-smiting en-
gine was frequently levelled^
viz.
the hands of
military despots.
its
against the crime
or the charge of inquiring into the probable duration of the Emperor's
rious ways,
—by
fire
life.
This was done in va-
applied to
waxen images, by
em-
consulting the stars, by casting nativities, by
ploying prophets, by casual omens, but especially
by
certain permutations and combinations of
bers,
^'numeros Babylonios," or the
alphabet.
The
num-
letters of the
following extract from
Ammianus
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.
on so
" ma-
The Romans indeed,
profoundly ignorant of science, or contemning
it
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 Camas the
ai't
of
bridge wranglers
now account
equal to a patent of
nobility.
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
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
08
tias"
— 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
awful the
which stands before the
Terrible were the auspices^
curtain at Deli)hi.
charms, long and painful the dances,
Avhich preceded and accompanied its construction
And
and consecration.
as often as
this disc or table, the following
we consulted
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.
procedure.
^diich
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
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
in linen,
propitious herb;
verses, such
he recited a
set
formulary of
wont to be sung before the
He that stood by the table was
as are
Averruncal gods.
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
99
LATER PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
formed by striking the
letters together
certain
words, wliich the sorcerer combined into
number
und measure,
much
manner of the
after the
priests
and Bran-
who manage the
oracles of the Pythian
chidian Apollo.
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
designated by the Fates.
tions
:
We
was the emperor
asked no more ques-
seeing that Theodorus was the person
we had sought for."
The lingering belief
in the old religion,
whom
and
in
the magical and thaumaturgical practices which
had, like ivy around an oak, gradually accrued to
it,
was productive in the decline of Paganism of
many
poetical forms of superstition.
It is curious
and instructive to remark the increasing earnestness with which the decaying creed of
sought to array
Christianity.
itself against
The hght
Heathendom
the encroachments of
persiflage with
which the
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
new religion
The Pagan
Csesars
as a formidable antagonist
the Christian emperors, in their turn, assail direct^
or ferret out perseveringly the superstitions which
The
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
100
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
informed with demoniac energies and ca-
pable of conferring temporal good or
evil,
—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
majestic forms
when
cant interkmar cave, of
of fair enchantresses
moon
the
w'as hid in
of
her va-
demons assuming the shape
who
beguiled
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,
which Milton has adorned with
the graces of imagination in his
all
'Paradise
Lost.'
We
tives
can afford room for only two of the narraof demoniac influence in which the later
Pagans expressed
their belief in the influence of
the early gods.
1.
The
superstition of the Lamia.
One
result
of the consoHdation of Western Asia with Europe,
under the
Roman Empire, was
to spread widely
over the latter continent the germs of the ser-
pent-worship of the East.
the
field,
The
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,
began by inquiring the cause of her
Faithless servants had carried off her
distress.
litter
and drowned in
He
tears.
and
left
her lone.
He offered
wldch she accepted, and his arm
her consolation,
also,
which she
She led him to a lordly palace
of the city, where he had never yet
marble portico waited a crowd of
did not decline.
in a
bye
been.
street
At
its
slaves with torches awaiting their absent mistress,
and the
pair,
now become
fond, were ushered into
a sumptuous banqueting hall, where a board was
sjDread covered
with
all
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,
much to the dismay of his fair hostess^
many tears and embraces, besought him
who, with
to forego his wish.
In an
evil
hour however he
MAGIC ANB WITCHCRAFT.
102
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,
by
his skill the devil
silent the old
ill-bred
man
who
enough to
and was
stare the lady not only out of
countenance, but out of her beauty
the palace melted also
also.
She
grev/
melted away;
the plate, the viands, and
;
the wines vanished also
ceiled roofs
Pale and
sat at the festive board,
pale, livid, an indiscriminate form: she
and
could detect
under any shape.
;
and in place of columns
was a void square in Corinth, and
was a loatlisome serpent,
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
tient also, for
destroyed his pa-
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,
self
or, as
she was called in his native
the Syrian Byblus, Astarte.
To redeem him-
—
—he applied
from the curse upon his board and bed,
had recently married a
wise astrologer.
fair wife,
The sage heard
his case,
vised him, as his only remedy, to go
on a
for
he
to a
and adcertain
night, at its very noon, to a spot just without the
gates, called the Pagan's
Tomb,
—
to station himself
103
LATER PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
on the roof of
moment, a
sel,
and to
it,
recite,
at a prescribed
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
One
in
past
whom
his
generations had worshiped.
only of that august and weeping band was
borne in a chariot
—the
god Saturn
—perhaps by
reason of his great age; and to Saturn he addressed his prayer, which was of such potency
that Saturn
straightway
release the petitioner
commanded
Astarte to
from the cm'se she had laid
upon him.
We
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
a
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.
JOHIf EDTVABD TAYLOR, PriXTEB,
LITTLE
QUEEN STEEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
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