NOTICES OF THE PRESS.
The. Daily News. "Knowledge and amusemeut are very happDy blended together, and the reader who finds his acquiiintance with the history of roads increaied at the journey, wiU also find his available fund of anecdote augmented." end of his
The Literary Gazette.
"The (jook contains little more than a hundred pages, and might be read during the journey by the express train between London and Brighton but so suggestive is every page, that an intelligent and imaginative reader will not reach the end till the book has been many an hour in his hands."
;
The Economist.
"This is a pleasant book, somewhat quaint, partieularly the preface, but fuU of amusing and instructive reading."
The
. .
Atlas.
" If the other volumes of the series are equal to the present in interest and value, we think we may safely predict a very extensive popularity for the enterprise. . The author has collected from all manner of curious and out-of-the-way sources materials for his book, and it reads like one of old
Montaigne's Essays."
The Lender.
charming volume of curious and learned gossip, such as would have Lamb by its fine scholarly tone and its discursive wealth. volumes are up to this mark, the series will be by far the best of the many which now make Literature the luxury of the poor."
riveted Charles
If the other
"
A
The Gardeners'
Chronicle.
" Exactly the book for the amusement of a man of education. Lively and learned, poetical and practical. This book is to the scholar fatigued with trash Uke a bottle of rich Hungarian wine to a man who has been condemned ti) the thin potations of France and the Rheingau."
The Gateshead Observer. " Old SoluU ami New Roads. (Chapman and HaU, London.) No. I. of Reading for Travellers.' A first-rate little volume, printed with large type, and just the thing for a railway ride. The publishers have acted wisely in calling to their aid a scholar and a writer of the highest order."
—
'
The
ture,
'
Leicestershire Mercury.
" Messrs. Chapman and HaU have re-entered the field of Railway Literaand have very fittingly commenced their series of ' Beading for TraveOers with a graphic historical sketch of Old lioadu and Netc Roads. It is at once scholarly and popular in style and contents yet free from the slightest tinge of pedantry or afifeotation. The narrative is by no means a mere dry record of facts and dates. It is abundantly diversified and reUeved with illustrative anecdotes and sprightly observations— philosophy and pleasantry combining with genuine eruditiou to make this one of the most useful and entertaining of the volun-.es of railway reading with which we have met."
have long wished that some English or foreign
prize
for
university would offer a
a history of
The records of human opinion would contain few chapters more instrucMagic and Witchcraft.
tive
than one which should deal competently with
the Black Art.
tails
its
For gross and painful as the de-
of superstition
may
be, yet superstition,
by
very etymology, implies a
dogma or
a system of
practice standing
upon some
basis of fact or truth
and however vain or noxious the superstructure
may
be, the foundation of
it is
in
some way con-
nected with those deep verities upon which rest
also the roots of philosophy
and
religion.
at
For a grand
time essentially
error,
affect
and such alone can
the opinions of
any
in
mankind
general, is ever the imitation or caricature of
some
grand truth.
tree
From one
soil
spring originally the
which yields good
fruit
and the plant which
PREFACE.
distils
deadly poison.
is
The very discernment of the
causes of error
its
a step towards the discovery of
opposite.
The bewildennents of the mind of
fidly analysed,
man, when
course of
its
afford a clue to the
movements from the
right track, or
at least enable
us to detect the point at which
began the original separation between Truth and
Error.
Alchemy
led,
by no very circuitous route,
;
to the science of chemistry
the adoption of false
gods by the majority of the
necessary the
dispensations
;
human
of the
race rendered
Jewish and
re-
Christian schemes
and the corruption of true
verence for the Good, the Beautiful, and the Holy,
was the parent of those
arts,
which, under the
several appellations of Magic, Witchcraft, Sorcery,
etc.,
drew their professors
at first
and the multievil,
tude afterwards to put faith in the
formed, and the impiu'c.
are little
JNIagic
the de-
and Witchcraft
more than the
religious instincts of
man-
kind,
all
first
inverted, then polluted,
and
finally, like
corrupted matter, impregnated with the germs
of a corrupt vitality.
So universal
and more
is
the belief in spiritual influences,
especially in their malignant influences,
that no race of men, no period of time, no region of the globe, have been exempt fi'om
it.
It
life,
meets
in the
us in the remote antiquity of Asiatic
comparatively recent barbarism of the American
aborigines, in the creeds of all the nations
who
branched
off
thousands of years ago eastward and
westward from their Caucasian cradle, in the myths,
the observances, and the dialects of nations
who
have no other
affinity
with one another than the
mere form of man.
No
with
nation, indeed, can reproach another nation
its
addiction to magic without in an equal
itself.
degree condemning
All the varieties of
man-
kind have, in this respect, erred alike at different
periods of their social existence, and
all
accordingly
come under the same condemnation of making
and loving a
tisfied
lie.
The Chaldean erred when,
dissa-
vidth
simple
observation of the heavenly
bodies through the luminous atmosphere of his
plains,
he perverted astronomy into astrology
:
the
Egyptian erred when he represented the omnipresence of the Deity by the ubiquity of animal
worship
:
the Hindoo erred when, having conceived
the idea of an incarnation, he clothed with flesh
and
fleshly attributes the
members of
his
mon-
strous
pantheon
:
the
Kelt
and Teuton erred
when, in their
silent
and
solitary forests, they
stained the serenity of nature with the deified attributes of
war
;
and the more
settled
and
cities
civilized
races
who
built
and inhabited the
of the
ancient world, erred in their conversion of the indivisible
unity of the Demiourgos or World- Creator
into an antkropomorpliic system of several gods.
But the very
uuiversality of the error points to
for it in the recesses of the
all its
some common ground
human
heart;
and since Paganism under
forms was the corruption of religion, and Witchcraft in its turn the corruption of
Paganism, an
fail
inquiry into the seeds of this evil fruit cannot
to he also in
some measure an investigation of the
very
'
incunabula' of
human
error.
state,
We
have stated, or endeavoured to
the
real scope
and dimensions of the subject of jMagic
and Witchcraft
—not
it
however with any pm-pose
in so small a volume as the
offer
of expatiating upon present one.
In the pages which follow we
only a few remarks upon theories or modes of belief
which in remote or in nearer ages have affected
the creeds and the conduct of mankind.
ject, in extenso,
The sub-
belongs to larger volumes, and to
maturer learning and meditatjon.
CONTENTS.
The Legendary
Lixeifer
.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
An
from
title
amusing work appeared
tlie
at Mainz, in 1826, pen of " Herr Kirchenratli" Horst, the
:
of whicli, translated in extenso, runs thus
"The Magical
Library;
or,
of Magic, Theurgy,
and Necromancy; Magicians, Witches, and Witch Trials, Demons, Ghosts, and Spectral Appearances. By G. C. Horst, Church- Counsellor to the Grand
Duke
of Hesse."
The following pages formed a
rc\iew of this work, which appeared
many
years
This book of the worthy Church-Coimsellor
rather a singular one
:
is
it is
not a history of Magic,
but a sort of spiiitual periodical, or magazine of
infernal science, supported in a great
* Since they were written,
historical notices.
Sii'
measure by
Witclicraft' has been published, a
Walter Scott's Demonology and book replete with interesting
4
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
contributions from persons of a ghostly turn of
mind, who, although they
believers at heart,
affect occasionally
to
write in a Sadducee vein, are
many
of
them
half-
and would not walk through a
like to pay.
churchyard at night, except for a consideration
larger than
wliich
it
we shoidd
The
field
over
travels is too extensive, for us to attempt
to follow the author throughout his elaborate subdivisions.
circles;
Dante divided hell, hke Germany, into and Mr. Horst, adopting sometliing of a
similar arrangement, has parcelled out the terri-
toiy of the Prince of the Air into sundry regular
di^-isions,
are
made
plain
by which its whole bearings and distances enough for the use of infant schools.
one of the provinces of the Inferno,
It is only at
however, that
though
grand
for those
torn',
we can at present afford to glance who are inclined to make the
the Counsellor
may
be taken as an
intelligent travelling
companion, well acquainted
with the road.
and
distinct,
In fact his work is so methodical and the geography of the infernal
regions so clearly laid do^Ti, according to the best
authorities,
to
from Jamblichus and Porphyry down Glamil and the Abbe Fiard, that the whole
flistrict is
now about
;
as well
known
as the course
of the Niger
fault if
must be the traveller's own he does not find his exit from Avernus as
and
it
easy as
its
entrance has proverbially been since
Vii-gil.
the days of
The
picture,
however, drawn by these
intelli-
THE LEGENDARY LUCIFER.
gent spiritual travellers
is
3
by no means calculated
to impress us with a high notion of the dominions
of the Prince of the Air, or that the personnel of
liis
majesty or his government are prepossessing.
climate, as all of them,
agi'ce, is
The
wards,
oppressively hot,
from Faust doAvnand the face of
the country apparently a good deal like that be-
tween Birmingham and Wolverhampton, abounding with furnaces and coal-pits.
of composition with which
Literature
is
evidently at a low ebb, from the few specimens
we
are favoured in the
Zauber-Bibliothek, and the sciences, with the exception of some practical applications of chemistry,
shamefully neglected.
potical,
The government seems
des-
but subject to occasional explosions on the
part of the
more
influential spirits concerned in
fact,
the executive.
In
the departments of the
administration are by no means well arranged
there
is
no proper
is,
division of labour,
and the con-
sequence
that Beelzebub, "
Mooned Ashtaroth,'^
and others of the ministry, who, according to the
theory of the constitution^ are entitled to precedence, are constantly jostled and interfered with by
* Faustus, who is a sort of Delolme in matters infernal, has treatise on the subject, entitled Mrrakel- Kimst- und Wunder-Buch, oder der schwartze Eabe, auch der dreifache Hollen Zwang genannt,' in wliich the poUtical system of Lucifer's dominions is examiaed. Dionysius the Areopagite indeed is not more exact in his calendar of the celestial hierarchy. Perhaps these treatises are the common parents of the modern ' Blue Books.'
an ahle
'
4
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
Aziel, Mepliistopheles, Marbuel,
and other forward
second-rate
spii'its,
who
are continually thrusting
in their claws where they are not called for.
The
standing
teers
army
is
considerable*, besides the volun-
by which
is
it is
continually augmented.
No-
thing
heard however of the navy, and from the
ominous silence wliich our geographers preserve on this point, it is easy to see that water is a rare
element in this quarter.
The
hints given as to the personal appearance
and conduct of Lucifer, the reigning monarch, are
not flattering.
Common readers
are apt to believe
is
that Satan occupies that dignityf, but this
a
great error, and only shows, as
Clcofas,
Asmodeus told Don
when he fell into a similar mistake about Beelzebub, " that they have no true notions of hell."
The morals of
as
Lucifer, as
might be expected, are
we see no evidence of his being personally addicted to
bad as
possible, with this exception, that
* Eeginald Scott's
of Amazeroth,
'
Discoverie of Witchcraft' contains an
army-list or muster-roll of the infernal forces.
Thus the Duke
who seems
to be a sort of brigacher-general, has
the
command of sixty legions, etc. + Satan is a mere tlui'd-i-ate spirit,
'
as they will find
by con-
sulting a list of the Infernal Privy Council for 1669, contained
in Faust's
Black Eaven.'
But we
are not told the exact date of
from his primacy. It is singular that both in the book of Job, where he is mentioned for the fii-st time, and in the Scandinavian mythologers, he appears m a sumlar character " The Ranger," or " Eovuig Spirit of Tartarus." See ^\^liter, Etymologicon, vol. iii., in wliich very learned, though now forhis deposition
—
gotten work, there
is
much
diaboHeal eruchtion.
THE LEGENDARY LUCIFER.
His licentious habits, however, are atby many a scandalous chronicle in Sprenger, Delrio, and Bodinus; and for swearing, all the world knows that Ernulphus was but a type His jokes are aU practical and of a low of him. order, and there is an utter want of dignity in most of his proceedings. One of his most facedrinking.
tested
tious
the
amusements consists in constantly pulling on which his witches are riding, from beneath them, and applying them vigorously to their shoulders and he has more than once adminisspits,
;
tered personal chastisement to his servants,
when
is
they neglected to keep an appointment.
notorious cheat
;
He
a
many
enterprising
young men,
who have
their
enlisted in his service
on the promise of
high pay and promotion, having foimd, on putting
them
talent
hands into their pockets, that he had paid their bounty in tin sixpences, and having
never risen even to the rank of a corporal.
dered very mediocre, and therefore
that
His
might, from these narratives, be consi-
we
are afraid
the
ingenious
selection
from his papers,
published by Jean Paid*, must be a literary forgery.
At
least all his printed speeches are bad,
flashy enough,
no doubt, in the commencement,
but generally ending in smoke.
He
has always
had a fancy
for
appearing in masquerade, and
Censor, Lucifer
* Auswahl aug des Teufels Papieren. Yet, like Cato the may have taken to study late in life.
b
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT,
once delivered a course of lectures on magic at
Salamanca, in the disguise of a professor.
late as 1626,
So
he lived
incog.,
but in a very splen]\Iilan,
did style, for a whole winter, in
title
under the
of the Didce of
Mammon"^,
It is in vain,
however, for his partial biographers to disguise the
fact,
that in his nocturnal excursions, of which,
Alraschid, he was at one time rather and where, we learn from the Swedish witches, he generally figured in a grey coat and red small-clothes, ornamented with ribbons and blue stockings, he has more than once received a sound di'ubbing from honest people, whom he has attempted to trip up by laying his tail in their way. And, in fact, since his affair with St. Dunstan, he has kept pretty much withindoors after nightfall. Luther, as we know, kept no terms with him when he began to crack hazel-nuts in his bedroom
like
Haroun
fond,
at the "Wartbm'g,
fair contest
but beat him
all
to nothing in a
of ribaldry and abuse, besides leaving
St.
an indelible blot of ink upon his red smalls f.
Lupus shut him up
for a
whole night in a pitcher
of cold water, into which he had (as he thought,
* Lotichius, Oratorio super fatalibus hoc tempore Acaclemi-
anun
periculis
:
1631.
Lotichius took the trouble to compose
a Latin
entitled
poem on
'
the subject of lus triumphal entry.
in its day.
A
book
Mammon' had some reputation
name indeed
is
The acknow-
ledged author's
Harris
;
yet
some commentator
of the year 2150 will perhaps suggest that it was ' Old Harry's 3Tammon.' have seen worse " conjectural emendations."
We
t Colloquia Mensalia.
THE LEGENDARY LUCIFEE.
/
cunuingly) conveyed himself, with the hope that
the saint would swallow
him
unawares'^.
This
however^
considering
his
ordinary temperatxirej
must have been an
have brought on
church.
St.
act of kindness^
which should
St.
Lupus the censure of the
for a very polite
;
Anthony, in retm-n
I
offer of his services, spat in his face
which hurt
his feelings so
much, that
it
was long before he
ventured to appear in society againf.
And
al-
though in his many transactions with mankind he
is
constantly trying to secure
some
unfair advan-
tage, a person of
any
is
talent, particularly if
been bred a lawyer J,
jesty,
a match for
him
are niunerous cases in the books, in
he has and there which his ma;
attempting to apprehend the person of a
debtor, has been unexpectedly defeated
by an ingeecclesias-
nious saving clause in the bond, which, like Shylock,
he had overlooked, and non-suited in the
tical courts,
where he commonly sues, with costs §. Finally, we infer from the Mora Trials, that his
* Legenda Aurea Jacob, de Voragine, t Ihid. leg. 21. J Or even a bishop.
§
leg.
123.
See Southey's pithy and profitable tale
of ' Eleemon, or a Sinner Saved.'
In the case of St. Lydvina, when he pleaded his case in and thought it a clear one, he was faii'ly laughed out of court, " deriso explosoque Dtemone." (Brugmann, Vita Lydvinse, p. 290.) He was hoaxed in a stLU more ingenious manner by Nostradamus, who having agreed that the devil should have him, if he was bm-ied either in the church or out of it, left directions that he should be buried m. a hole in the waU. Sometimes
person,
»
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
general health must have suffered from the climate,
for in
1669 he was extremely
ill
in
though he got over the attack
for a time,
Sweden; and by bleedwas
ing and an antiphlogistic regimen, the persons
who were about him thought
breaking up, and that he was
his constitution
still
in a dying way.
Such
is
the grotesque aspect of the legendary
Lucifer and his court, which a coui'se of dsemono-
logy presents to us
!
But though we have thus
spoken with levity of these gross and palpable
conceptions of the e^dl principle, and though un-
doubtedly the
farrago
fear,
first
impression produced by such a
one, the subject,
must be a ludicrous
its
we
has also
its
serious side.
An
Indian deity,
atti-
with
tude,
wild distorted shape and grotesque
appears merely ridiculous
its
when
separated
from
accessories
and \iewed by daylight in a
it
museum.
But
restore
to the darkness of its
own hideous
temple, bring back to our recollection
the victims that have bled upon
its altar, or been and our sense of the ridiculous subsides into aversion and horror. So,
crushed beneath
its
car,
while the superstitious di'cams of former times are
regarded as mere speculative insanities, we
for a
may
as, for
moment be amused with
-was the gainer in
the wild incoheren-
however he
such equivocal compacts,
—
example, in the case of the
in a chair
monk who was
to Uve so long as he
slept
abstained from sleeping between sheets.
;
The monk always
but in an unlucky hour Satan caught him as
fast as
a top with his head between the sheets of a sermon, and claimed
his bond.
SOURCES OF SUPERSTITION.
cies of the patients
;
9
out
but when we
reflect that
of these hideous misconceptions of the principle
of evil arose the belief in witchcraft
;
that this was
no dead
faith^
but one operating on the whole
being of society, urging on the mildest and the
wisest to deeds of murder, or cruelties scarcely less
than murder ; that the learned and the beautiful,
young and
its
old,
influence to the stake
male and female, were devoted by and the scaffold, every
—
feeling
disappears
except
that
of astonishment
that such things could be, and humiliation at the
thought that the delusion was as lasting as
imiversal.
It is true that the current of
it
was
human
opinion
seems
if
now
to set in a different direction,
is
and that
the evil spirit of persecution
again to re-apall
pear on earth, his avatar must in
probability
be made in a different form.
longer, as Dr. Francis
Our
brains are no
Hutchinson says of Bodi-
nus,
"mere
if
storehouses for devils to dance in;''
and
the influence of the great
enemy
is
still
as active as before
on
earth, in the shape of evil
passions, he at least keeps personally in the back-
ground, and has changed his tactics entirely since
the days of the
" For Satan
'
MaUeus Maleficarum.'
is
now
wiser than before,
And
Still
tempts by making rich
it is
— not making poor."
always a useful check to the pride of the human mind, to look to those delusions which have darkened
it,
however
more
especially to
10
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
such as have originated in feelings in themselves
exalted,
and laudable.
Such
is
unquestionably the
case in regard to one of the gloomiest chapters in
the history of
human
error, the belief in witchcraft
and
its
consequences.
The wish
to raise ourselves
above the visible world, and to connect ourselves
with beings supposed to occupy a higher ranli in
creation,
seemed
at first calculated to exercise only
a beneficent influence on the mind.
Men
looked
by which they were to estabhsh a communication between earth and heaven, and by means of which angelic influences might be always ascending and descending upon the heart of man. But, unfortimately, the supposition of this actual and bodily intercourse
it
upon
as a sort of Jacob's ladder,
mth
spirits
of the better order, involved also a
similar lielief as to the possibility of establishing a
free trade with the subterranean powers^
" Who lurk in ambush, in their earthy cover,
And,
swift to hear oui' spells,
come swarming up
;"
and from these theoretical opinions, once
blished and acted upon,
all
esta-
the horrors of those
tempestuous times flowed as a natural consequence.
For thus the kingdoms of
brought into open contest
every one's
mercenaries,
call,
it
light
:
and darkness were
Satan was ready at
if
to send out his spirits like
Swss
became equally necessary for the true believer to rise in arms against him with fire and sword; any Avaveriug on his part was con-
MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
strued into apostasy, and
to be persecuted himself
to
lie
11
Avho did not choose
was driven in self-defence
become a persecutor. The grand postulate of direct diabolical agency being once assumed and quietly conceded on all
hands, any absurdity whatever was easily engrafted
on
to
it. Satan beiug thus brought home, as it were, men's business and bosoms, every one speculated
light
on his habits and demeanour according to his own and soon the insane fancies of minds crazed
;
by natm^e, disease, or misfortunes, echoed and repeated from all sides, gathered themselves into a
code or system of
the
faith,
which, being instilled into
mind with the
earliest
rudiments of instrucits
tion, fettered
even the strongest intellects with
The mighty minds of Luther, of Calvin, and of Knox, so quick in detecting error, so undaunted and merciless in exposing it,
baleful influence.
yielded tamely to
Sii-
its thrall
;
the upright and able
of death, in
Matthew Hale passed sentence
1664, on two poor
and Sir Thomas
Errors,''
trial,
accused of witchcraft, Browne, the historian of " Vulgar
as a witness
fits
women
who was examined
it
gave
as his opinion that the
on the under
which the patients had laboured, though natural in themselves, were " heightened by the Devil cooperating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies !" and apparently on
this e\idence chiefly did the conviction proceed.
Neither, in
fact,
were the incongruities and
12
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
inconsistencies of the witch-creed of the time so
might at first sight appear, to awaken men^s minds to the radical insanity of the belief. The dash of the ludicrous, which mingles itself with almost all the exploits of Satan and
calculated^ as they
his satellites, grew, naturally enough, out of the
monkish conception of Satan, and might be supposed not inconsistent with the character of a set
of beings whose proceedings of course could not
be expected to resemble those either of
angels.
men
or
him
:
in
"
The monkish Satan has no dignity about soul and body he is low and deformed.
occhi ha vermigli, e la barba unta ed atra,
'1
Grii
E
His apish
ventre largo, ed unghiate
le
mani,
G-rafSa gli spirti, gli scuoja, ed isquatra*."
tricks
and satyr -like gambols were
suffi-
ciently in imison with the idea of a spirit with
boundless malice but limited powers, grinning in
despite
where he could not
injure,
and ridiculing
those sacred rites the power of which he was compelled to acknowledge and obey. to his infernal flock,
the sacrament
his
;
Hence he preaches and mocks the institution of wreaks his native malice even on
his deluded victims in their distress, de-
own adherents; plunges
them
into misery, or deserts
prives
them of the rewards he has promised
;
to
them
plagues and torments the good, but cowers
is
whenever he
boldly resisted, and
* Inferno, canto vi.
is
at once dis-
MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
comfited by any one
the thunders
13
who
wields
by commission
of heaven.
Writers of fiction in
general have seldom seized these features of his
character;
indeed hardly any one has done
so^
except Hofiman, who, in most of his supernatural
pictures, has painted
him not with
the grandeur
and sullen gloom of the
fallen archangel,
but with
the coarse and comic malice of the spirit of the
middle ages, and has thus, on the whole, deepened
the real horror of his goblin scenes by the infusion
of these outbreakings of mirth, just as the frightful
effect
of an execution would be increased, if the
criminal, instead of joining in the devotions, were
suddenly to strike up a lively air from the top of
the ladder.
a natm-al sequence of the
exil principle,
But whether the delusion of witchcraft was thus monkish notions of an
and of the almost universal persua-
sion that intercourse with a higher order of beings
was possible
its
for
man, no one can
cast a glance over
history "without being satisfied that the compre-
hensive nature of its iafluence, and its long duration,
were owing to penal laws and prosecutions. It adds one more to the long hst of instances which prove
that there
ing,
is
is
which
will
no opinion, however absurd and revoltnot find believers and martyrs, if it
the subject of persecution.
once
made
From
the
earliest ages of Christianity it is certain the belief
existed, and must occasionally have been employed by strong minds as an instrument of terror to the
14
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
;
weak
but
still
the frame of society itself was not
shaken, nor, with one exception*, does the crime
begin to
make any
figure in history
till
the Bull
of Innocent VIII. in 1484 stirred up the slumber-
ing embers into a flame.
Of
tm-ies
the extent of the horrors which for two cen-
and a half followed, our readers we suspect
;
have but a very imperfect conception
we remem-
ber as in a dream that on this accusation persons
were occasionally burnt, and one or two remarkable relations from our own annals or those of the Continent
may
occur to our recollection.
in the history of
But of the
extent of these judicial murders, no one
who has
not dabbled a has any idea.
little
demonology
No sooner has Innocent placed his commission of fire and sword in the hands of Sprenger and his brethren, and a regular form of process for the trial of this ofience been laid down
in that unparalleled performance, the
]\Ialeficarum,^
'
jMalleus
which was intended as a theological and juridical commentary on the Bull, than the race of witches seems at once to increase and multiply, till it replenishes
the earth.
The
original edict
of persecution was enforced by the successive bulls
of the infamous Alexander VI. in 1494 (to
whom
Satan might indeed have addressed the remon* The
vol.
iii.
trials at
Arras, in 1459.
Yide Monstrelet's Chronicle,
these were rather rehgious pro-
p.
84
:
Paris, 1572.
But
secutions against supposed heretics,
and the crime of witchcraft
only introduced as aggravating their offences.
MONKISH SUPERSTITION.
15
strance "et tu Brute \"), of Leo X. in 1521^ and of
Adrian VI. ia 1522.
Still
the only effect of these
evil
commissions was to render the
formidable^ tOl at last, if
daUy more
we
are to believe the tes-
timonies of contemporary historians, Europe was
little
better than a large subm'b or outwork of
Pandemonium.
One-half of the population was
Delrio
tells
either bewitching or bewitched.
us
in his preface that
500 witches were executed in
Geneva in three months, about the year 1515.
A
thousand, says Bartholomseus de Spina, were executed in one year in the diocese of Como, and they
went on burning
annum
900.
for
1580 to In France the multitude of executions about 1520 is incredible; Danseus, in the first part of his dialogue concerning witches, calls it " infinitum
pene veneficorum numerum.^^
at the rate of a hundred per some time after. In Lorraine, from 1595, Remigius boasts of having burned
The well-known
he
associates.
sorcerer, Trois Echelles, told Charles IX., while
was
at Poitou, the
names of 1200 of his
This calculation
is
according to Mezeray^s more
reasonable version of the story, for the author of
the Journal du Regne de Henri III.^ makes the number 3000, and Bodinus, not satisfied even with this allowance, adds a cypher, and makes the total return of witches denounced by Trois EcheUes 30,000, though he does at the same time express some doubt as to the correctness of this account.
'
In Germany, to which indeed the bull of Inno-
16
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
cent bore particular reference, this
to a degi'ce almost inconceivable.
pla^e raged
derborn, "Wurtzburg, and Ti'cves
seats,
Bamberg, Pawere its chief
a half after the
though
for a
centmy and
introduction of the trials under the commission no
quarter of that great empire was free from
ful influence.
its
bane-
It
would be wearisome and
revolt-
ing to go through the details of these atrocities
but " ab uno disce omnes.^^
A catalogue
of the ex-
ecutions at AVurtzbui'g for the period from 1627 to
February 1629, about two years and two months,
printed by Hauber in the conclusion of his third volume of the ' Acta et Scripta Magica.' It is reguis
larly di^aded into twenty-nine burnings,
and constating at
tains the
names of 157 persons, Hauber
is
the same time that the catalogue
not complete.
It is impossible to peruse this catalogue A^'ithout
horror.
The
greater
part of
it
consists of old
it
women
or foreign travellers, seized,
woidd ap-
pear, as foreigners
were
at Paris dui-ing the days
:
of ]\Iarat and Robespierre
it
contains children of
twelve, eleven, ten, and nine years of age, fourteen
A-icars
of the cathedral, two boys of noble families,
little
the two
sons {sblmlein) of the senator Stol;
zenburg; a stranger boy
belin, the
a blind girl; Gobel Ba-
handsomest
girl in
Wurtzburg,
et virgine ceesd
etc.
.'"
" Sanguine placarunt Divos
And
yet, fr-ightful as this list
of 157 persons
executed in two years appears, the
number
is
not
EXECUTIONS FOR WITCHCRAFT.
(taking the
17
population of Wurtzburg into ac-
Lindheim process from For in that small district, consisting at the very utmost of six hundred inhabitants, thirty persons were condemned and put to death, making a twentieth part of the whole population consumed in four years. How dreadful are the results to which these data lead! If we take 157 as a fair average of
count) so great as in the
1660 to 1664.
the executions at "Wurtzburg (and the catalogue
itself states that
the
list
was by no means com-
plete),
the amoimt of executions there in the
course of the century preceding 1628 would be
15,700.
We
know
that from 1610 to 1660 was
trials, and that so late 1749 Maria Renata was executed at Wurtzburg for witchcraft ; and though in the interval between 1660 and that date it is to be hoped that the number of these horrors had diminished, there can be little doubt that several thousands must be added to the amount already stated. If Bamberg, Paderborn, Treves, and the other Catholic bishop-
the great epoch of the witch
as
rics,
whose
zeal
equal contingent,
was not less ardent, furnished an and if the Protestants, as we
know*, actually ^ied with them in the extent to which these cruelties were carried, the number of victims from the date of Innocent's bull to the
* Cliristoph
von Kanzow, a nobleman of Holstein, burned
eighteen at once on one of bis estates.
C
18
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
final extinction of these persecutions
must
consi-
derably exceed 100,000 in Germany.
rusal of the
by the peWurtzburg murders is perhaps exceeded by that to which another document relative to the state of matters in 1629 must give rise namely a ballad on the subject of these executions,
Even the
feeling of horror excited
detailing ia doggrel verses the sufferings of the
unfortmiate victims, " to be simg to the tune of
Dorothea"
is
—a common street-song of the day.
'
It
entitled the
Druten Zeitung/ or Witches'
Clu'o-
nicle,
" being an accoimt of the remarkable events
which took place in Franconia, Bamberg, and Wm'tzburg, with those wi-etches who from avarice
or ambition have sold themselves to the devil, and
how they had
their reward at last
;
set to music,
and to be sung to the air of Dorothea." It is graced also with some hideous devices in wood, representing three de\ils seizing on divers persons
by the hair of
their heads, legs, etc.,
and dragging
It commences and concludes with them away. some pious reflections on the guilt of the witches and mzards, whose fate it commemorates wdth the One device in pargreatest glee and satisfaction. ticular, by which a witch who had obstinately resisted the
torture
is
betrayed into confession
namely, by sending into her prison the hangman seems to disguised as her familiar (Buhl Teufel)
—
meet with the particular approbation of the author, who calls it an excellent joke ; and no doubt the
SELF-DELUSIONS.
point of
it
19
in his eyes was very mucli increased lay
the consideration that
was
called, so obtained, the
upon the confession, as it unhappy wretch was
immediately committed to the flames'^.
What
are
we
to think of the state of feelmg in the country
periodical ballads,
where these horrors were thus made the subject of and set to music for the amuse-
ment of the populace t?
It
was one
fatal effect of the perseverance
with
tlais
* Some of our readers
precious productiou.
may
wisli to see a
specimeu of
We
shall take a stanza or two, descriptive
of the joke of wliich the poor witch was the victim.
Em Hexen hat man gefangen, zu Zeit die war sehi' reich
Mit der man lang umbgaben ehe
sie
bekannte gleich,
Dann
Bis
sie blieb
man
ich
ihr
ilir Unrecht gross, macht nothwendig diesen artlichen Foss{\),
darauf bestandig es gescheh
Das
mich
driiber
wunder
als
;
man
den
schickt eui Henkersknecht
Zu
ihr ins Gefangniss 'nimter,
man
hat kleidet recht
Mit
einer
Bamhaute
Als ihm die Drut anschaute meynts
wenns der Teufel war ihi- Buhl kam daher.
Sie sprach zu ihm behende, wie lestu mich so lang In der Obrigkeit Hande ? Hilf mir aus ihi-en Zwang, Wie du mir hast verheissen, ich bhi ja eben dein Thu mich aus der Angst entreissen, o Hebster Bide meiu Sie thet sich selbst verrathen,
Sie hat nit geschmeckt denBraten,
imd gab Anzeigung viel was das tvarfilr ein Spiel (!).
Er trostet sie und saget, ich will dir helfen wohl Darmn sey imverzaget, Morgens geschehen soil.
It bears the
colophon "Printed at Smalcald in the year 1627."
it is
t
When
these horrors were thus versified,
not wonderful
them " improved" by the preachers of the time. At Riga, in 1626, there appeared Nine Select Witch Sermons, by Hermann Sampsonius, superintendent at Riga,' and many others in
to find
'
the course of that century.
r O
20
wliicli
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
Satan and his dealings were thus brought
actually led into
before the view of every one, that thousands of
weak and depraved minds were
the belief that they had formed a connection with the evil being, and that the \asions which had so
long haunted the brain of Sprenger and his associates
this
own case. In some measm'c account for the strange confessions which form the great peculiarity in the witch trials, where unhappy creatures, with the fidl knowledge of theu' fate,
had been
realized in their
way
alone can
we
in
admit then* intercom-se with Satan, their midnight
meetings, incantations, then' dealings with
spii'its,
" white, black, and grey, with
all their
trumpery,"
the grotesque horrors of the sabbath,
—
in short,
every vrHd and impossible phantasm which had received colour and a body in the 'Malleus,^
— and
these
seemed to be perfectly
merited the fiery
satisfied that
they had fully
trial to
which their confession
"WTien
immediately subjected them,
trials,
we read
we Grimm's
tliink of the efiect of the
Jew's fiddle in
fairy tale;
we
see the delusion spreadtill first
ing like an epidemic fi'om one to another,
criminals themselves,
the witnesses, then the judges, and lastly the poor
all
pcld to the giddy
whirl,
and go
ence.
off like
dancing Der\dses under
its influ-
True
it is
that, in
many
of the cases, and parearlier part of
ticularly those
which occur in the
the seventeenth centurv,
when
the diabolical doc-
SELF-DELUSIONS.
trines of Sprenger
21
and Delrio were in their full vigoiir, the confessions on which these convictions proceeded were elicited by torture, moral and physical,
and frequently retracted,
instance from Delrio
till
a fresh appli-
cation of the rack produced a fresh admission.
One
may
stand in place of a
thousand.
He
mentions that an unfortunate gen-
tleman in Westphalia had been twenty times put to the rack, " vicies ssevse qvisestioni subditum," in
order to compel
wolf
he was a weretill the hangman gave him an intoxicating draught, and under its influence he confessed that he was a were- wolf " En judicum clemens arbitrium,^' says after all.
to confess that
!
him
AU
these tortures he resisted,
Defrio, "
quo
se porrigat in
illis
partibus aquilo-
naribus,"
— See
!
in the north
tni
how long-suffering we judges are we never put our criminals to death
them with twenty preliminary
!
we have
tried
courses of torture
This
is
perfectly in the spirit
who had been annoyed with the pertinacity of a witch, who, like
of another worthy in Germany,
the poor lycanthrope, persisted in maiataining her
innocence.
"
Da
says the inquisitor
— "und
hess ich sie tiichtig foltern,^^
sie
gestand;"
—I tortm'ed
and
her tightly
(the torture lasted four hours),
!
she confessed
Who
indeed under such a system
would not have confessed? Death was unavoidable either way, and the great object was to attain that consummation with the least preparatory pain. " I went," says Sir George Mackenzie, " when I
22
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
was a Justice Depute, to examine some women
who
liad confessed judicially.
silly creature,
One
of them,
who
was a
told
me
that she
had not con-
fessed because she was guilty, but^ being a poor
avIio wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a mtch, she knew she would starve, for no person hereafter would give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her, and that therefore she desired to be out of the Avorld. Whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said*." In other cases, the torture was
creatm'e
applied not only to the indi\'idual accused, but to
his relations or friends, to secure confession.
In
Alison Pearson's casef,
ter, a girl
it
appears that her daugh-
of nine years of age, had been placed
in the pilliewinks,
fifty
and her son subjected to about
strokes in the boots.
Where
the torture was
not corporeally applied, terror, confusion, and the
influence of others frequently produced the
effect
same on the weak minds of the accused. In the case of the New England Avitches in 1696, six of
the poor
women who were
liljerated in the general
gaol -delivery which took place after this reign of
terror
began to
decline, (and
who had
all
confessed
previously that they had been guilty of the
crafts
mtch-
imputed to them,) retracted
their confessions
in writing, attributing
* Criminal Law.
Tit. x.
them
Ti-ial
to the consternation
t Eccords of Justiciary.
of the Master of Orkney.
SELF-DELUSIONS.
23
tlieir sudden seizure and imprison" And indeed/' said they, " that confession which it is said we made was no other than what was suggested to us by some gentlemen, they telling us we were witches, and they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so, and our imderstanding, our reason, and our faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition. And most of what we said was but a consenting to what
produced by
ment.
they said^."
But though unquestionably great part of these which at first tended so much to prolong this delusion, were obtained by torture, or contrary to the real conviction and belief of the
confessions,
accused,
cases
it
is
impossible to deny that in
many
won-
the confessions were voluntary,
belief.
and proto be
ceeded from actual
Nor was
it
dered at that persons of a weak and melancholy
temperament should, more particularly at a time when the phenomena of nature and of the human body were so little imderstood, be disposed to set down every occurrence which they could not explain, and every wild phantasm which crossed
their minds, to the du'ect
and immediate agency
of an evil power.
At
that period even the
most
natural events were ascribed to witchcraft.
child, after
If a being touched by a suspected individual,
ill,
died or became
the convulsions were ascribed
JoiATiial.
* Calef's
24
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
to diabolical interference, as in
late as
Wenham's
case, so
on the contrary, she cured instead of killing, the conclusion was the same, although the only charm employed might be a prayer to the Almighty f. If an old woman's cat, coming
1712*.
If,
to the door at night, took part in a concert with
other cats, this was nothing but a
mtch
herself
iri
disguise J. In the case of Robert Erskine of
tried for the mui'der of his
for
Dim§,
ivitch-
nephews, he
is
inchcted
makiag away with them by poisoning and
the poisoning was not of
itself
craft, as if
amply
sufficient to
account for then* death.
It was still less wonderful that those mysterious phenomena which sometimes occur in the human
frame, such as spontaneous combustion, delusions
arising
from the
state of the braia
and nerves, and
offices
optical deceptions, should appear to the sufferer to
be the work of the
de\il,
whose good
little
they
fit
might very probably have invoked imder some
of despondency or misanthropy,
like the
expecting^
poor man in the fable who called on Death,
to be taken at their word.
What
a " Thesaurus
of Horror^' would the spectres of Nicolai have
* Cobbett's State Trials.
t Trial of Bartie Paterson.
Dee. 18, 1607.
Eecorcb of Scottish
Justiciar}-.
X In Wenham's
ing to Jane
case, IVIr.
Cbauncy deposed that a
at his
cat belong-
Wenliam had come and knocked
killed
it.
door at night,
and that he had
trial.
This was founded on evidence at the^
§ Rec. of Just. 1613, Dec. 1.
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
25
afforded in the sixteenth centmy or the commencement of the seventeenth, if embodied in the pages of the ' Malleus' or the Flagellnm Dsemonum/ instead of beiag quietly published by the patients as optical and medical phenomena in the
'
^Berlinische Monatschrift' for 1799, and the 15th
volume of the
fearful
'
Philosophical Journal V
What
a
ghmpse into the infernal world would have been afforded by the still more frightful illusions which haunted poor Backzko of Konigsberg"^
during his political labours in 1806; the grinning
negro Avho seated himself opposite to him, the
owl-headed tormentor that used to stare at him
every night through his curtains, the snakes
tAvist-
iug and turning about his knees as he tiirned his
periods
!
If
glish Jacob
of visions
we go back to 1651, we find our EnBohme, Pordagef, giving an account which must have been exactly of the
arising
from an excited state of the most thorough conviction of their reahty. His Philadelphian disciples, Jane Leade, Thomas Bromley, Hooker, Sapperton, and others, were indulged, on the first meeting of their society,
brain, ^ith the
same kind,
with a vision of unparalleled splendour. The princes
and powers of the infernal world passed in review
before them, sitting in coaches, surroimded with
dark clouds and drawn by a cortege of
* See the
'
lions, dra-
Neue Necrologie
cler
Deutschen, 1823,' for an ac-
count of these remarkable appearances,
t Divina
et
Vera Metaphysica.
26
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
gons, tigers, and bears; then followed the lower
spirits
arranged in squadrons with
;
cats^ ears, claws,
twisted limbs, etc. or kept
distinct
;
whether they shut their eyes
them open, the appearances were equally " for we saw," says the master-spirit Por-
dage, " with the eyes of the mind, not with those
of the body."
"
And
shapes that come not at a mortal call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
Lords of the visionary
eye,
Once
raised remains aghast,
whose lid and will not
fall*."
Thus, while phenomena which experience has
shown to be perfectly natural were imiversally men had come to be on the most familiar footing with spiritual beings of all kinds. In the close of the sixteenth
since
attributed to supernatural causes,
century. Dr.
and we
verily believe his
Dee was, according to his own account, own conviction, on terms
His brother
all his
of intimacy with most of the angels.
physician. Dr. Richard Napier, a relation of the
inventor of the logarithms, got almost
dical prescriptions
mefill-
from the angel Raphael. In
Elias
Ashmole had a IMS. volume of these
receipts,
ing about a quire and a half of paper f.
fact,
one would almost suppose that few persons at that
*
Wordsworth's 'Dion.'
t The prefixed characters which Ashmole interprets to mean Responsum Raphaehs seem remarkably to resemble that cabalistic-looking initial which in medical prescriptions is commonly
interpreted " Recipe."
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
27
time condescended to perform a cure by natural
means.
Witness
the
sympathetic
nostrums of
Valentine Greatrakes and Sir
the case of
Kenelm Digby; or Arise Evans, reported by Aubrey, who
;
whom it was revealed hand would cure him and at the first coming of King Charles II. into St. James's Park he kissed the king's hand and rubbed his
" had a fungous nose, and to
that the king^s
nose with
him.''
it,
which troubled the king, but cured
too, the visits of ghosts
In Aubrey's time,
had become so frequent, that they had their exits and their entrances without exciting the least sensation. Aubrey makes an entry in his journal of the appearance of a ghost as coolly as a merchant uow-a-days makes an entry in his ledger. " Anno
1670. Not far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether good spirit or bad, re-
turned no answer, but disappeared with a curious
perfume and a melodious twang."
Is it to be wondered at then, that, siuTounded on all hands with such superstitious fancies, the weak and depraved were early brought to believe
that
all
the wild chimeras of the
demonologists
were true, and that they had really concluded that
covenant with Satan, the possibility of which was
universally inculcated as an article of faith, and
the idea of which was constantly present to their
minds ? or
that,
under the influence of
tliis
fright-
ful delusion,
they should voluntarily come forward
to confess their imaginary crime, as in the
Am-
28
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
girl atIio
sterdam case of the poor
Tii'ius'^j
accused herself
of be\\itcliing cattle by the words Shurius, Turius,
or in another
still
more remarkable case
'
in 16S7, mentioned in Reichard's
Beytrage/ where
a young
woman
all
accused herself, her friend, and
the mother of her friend, of a long course of witchcraft,
with
the usual traditional and impossible
horrors of Sprenger and his brethren ?
Neither,
we
are afraid,
is
there
much
reason to
doubt that some of the most horrible of their conceptions were founded on facts which were lint too
real
;
that the cunning and the depraved contrived
to tiu'n the ecstasies
and the
fears of these
poor
wretches to their o^vn
pui'jjoses; in
short, that
frauds similar to tliose which Boccaccio has painted in his novel of the angel Gabriel, were occasionally
played off upon the deluded victims.
entering further on a topic which
is
Without
rather of a
delicate kind, the reader will have an idea of our
meaning who
recollects the disclosures that took
place in the noted French case of Father Girard
and La Cadiere.
Much
has been said as to the wonderful coinci-
dences to be found in the evidence of the accused
* Dapper (Besclireibung von A m sterdam,
her as a melaucholy or bypochondriac
girl.
p. 150)
describes
She was burned however as usual. These rhjTning or aUiterative charms are of very remote antiquity. Cato, in his treatise on Husbandry, re-
commends the
or "
following formulaiy for a spraiu
Ista, Pista Sista,
cepting the assertions of Sprenger and the rest
as true,
we should suppose the
coincidence to be
complete, the original confessions which stUl exist
prove that the resemblance was merely general,
and that there were radical and irreconcHeable
ferences in the details of the evidence.
dif-
luasfar as
the assertion
is
really true,
one simple explanation
goes far to account for the phenomenon
nire parent certd ratione
notions of the devil
; " Insamodoque." The general and his demeanour, the rites
—
of the infernal sabbath, etc. being once fixed, the
visions
which crossed the minds of the unfortunate
so that, even if left to
wretches accused soon assumed a pretty determinate and invariable form
tell
;
their
own
story, there
would have been the
dif-
closest resemblance
ferent
persons.
between the narratives of But this was not all. In
al-
most every case the confessions were merely the echo of questions put by the inquisitors, aU of which again were founded on the demonological
creed of the
'
In the Lindheim trials in 1633, to which we have abeady alluded, the inquisitor happened to be an old soldier, who had witnessed several campaigns in the ThirtyYears War, and who, instead of troubling his head
about lucubi, Succubi, and the other favourite
subjects of inquiry with the disciples of the
Sprenger^s manual was unknown.
Hamthe
mer, was only anxious to ascertain
who was
queen of the infernal
as distinct
spirits,
the general,
officers,
corporals, etc., to all of
which he received answers
and
satisfactory as
any
tliat
are recorded
for oui' insti'uction in the chronicles of
Bodinus
or Delrio.
In the seventeenth century, the manner in which
the delusion was communicated seems exactly to
resemble those remarkable instances of sympathy
which occur in the cases of the Scottish Cambuslang Conversions and the American Forest Preachings.
No
sooner has one hypochondriac published
fifty
his
symptoms, than
others feel themselves at
once affected with the same disorder.
the readers of Glamil (and
ally
In the
celeall
brated ^Mora case in 1669, with which of course
who
has not occasion-
peeped into his hoiTors?) are familiar, the
first
disease spreads
thi'ough the childi-en,
who
be-
lieved themselves the victims of diabolical agency,
and who ascribed the convulsions, faintings, etc., with which thev were attacked, to that cause and
;
SWEDEN.
THE BLOCULA.
31
next through the unfortunate witches themselves.
for as soon as
one or two of them, bm'sting into
the accusation of the children
tears, confessed that
was
true, all the rest joined in the confession.
is
And
all
what
the natm'e of their confession?
Of
impossible absurdities that ever entered the brain
They meet the is the epitome. on the Blocula, which is the devil's ball-room in Sweden, as the Brocken is in Germany; they ride thither on sticks, goats, men's backs, and spits; they are baptized by a priest
of man, this trial
devil nightly
provided by the devil ; they sup with him, very frugally
it
would appear,
for the
banquet commonly
consists of broth
made with
colewort and bacon,
;
oatmeal, bread and butter, milk and cheese
and
the devil allows no wine.
After supper they dance,
and when the devil wishes to be particularly jolly he pulls the spits from under them, and beats them black and blue, after which he sits down and
laughs outrageously.
to a musical exhibition
Sometimes he treats them on the harp, for he has
a great turn for music, as his famous sonata to
Tartini proves.
All of
them
confess intercourse
with him^, and most of them had sons and daughters
by him. Occasionally he
fell sick,
and required
to be bled and blistered ; and once he seemed to
be dead, on which occasion there was a general
* This, indeed,
trials,
is
an almost inyariable feature in the witch
and,
if
the subject could justify the discussion, might lead
to
some singular medical conclusions.
32
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
for
momniing
idol
him on
tlie
Blocula, as the Syrian
damsels used to bewail the annual wound of their
Thammuz on Lebanon.
Is
it
not frightful
to think that in a trial held before a tribunal consisting of the elite of the province of Dalecarlia,
assisted
by the commissioners from the
capital,
in a country where, until this time,
the witch
mania, already beginning to abate in Germany,
had scarcely been heard
earlier perhaps
of,
and where
it
ceased
than in most other comitries in
fifteen children
Europe,
—seventy-two women and
Is
shoidd have been condemned and executed at one
time upon such confessions ?
like conclusion of Dr.
it
possible after
this to read without shuddering the cool newspaper-
Horneck " On the 25th of August execution was done upon the notoriously guilty, the day being bright and glorious, and the sun shining, and some thousands of people being
present at the spectacle
\"
—
Thirty years before, a similar instance of the
progress of the epidemic had taken place at Lille,
in the hospital founded
by the pious enthusiast
Antoinette Bourignon.
On
entering the school-
room one
of
little
day, she imagined that she saw a
number
black children, with wings, flying about the heads of the girls ; and not lildng the colour or
appearance of these
to be
visitors,
she warned her pupils
on their guard. Shortly before this, a girl who had run away from the institution in consequence of being confined for some misdemeanour
DELUSIONS.
of ^rhicli she
33
had heen
guilty, being interrogated
how
she had contrived to escape, and not liking
disclose the tnith, had maintained had been liberated by the devil, to whose Noservice she had devoted herself from a child. thing more was wanting in that age of diablerie to
prolDably to
that she
tnrn the heads of the poor children ; in the course
of six months almost
all
the girls in the hospital,
amounting to more than
intercourse with the
fifty,
selves confirmed witches,
had confessed themand admitted the usual
the midnight meetwhich form the staple
devil,
ings, dances, banquets, etc.,
of the narrative of the time.
Their ideal banquets
liberal scale
seem to have been on a more
ever than those of the poor
how-
Mora
witches; pro-
many of the pupils had been accustomed to better fare in a populous and wealthy town in Flanders, than the others in a poor village
bably because
in Sweden.
Exorcisms and prayers of
all
kinds
fol-
lowed this astomiding disclosure.
The Capuchins
the Jesuits
and Jesuits quarrelled, the Capucliins implicitly
Ijclieving the reality of the possession,
The parents of the culprit now turned the tables upon poor Bourignon, by accusing her of ha^dng bewitched them and at last the
doxibting
it.
;
pious theosophist, after an examination before the
Council, was glad to seek safety in flight
;
having
thus obtaiued a clearer notion than she formerly
possessed of the
wliich she
kingdom of Satan, with regard to had entertained and published as many D
34
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
;
strange fancies as the Bishop of Beuevento
haA-iug
and
been taught by her own experience the
laid,
danger of tampering ^ith youthful minds, in which
the train of superstition had been so long
that
it
only requii'ed a spark from her overheated
it
brain to kindle
It
into a flame.
woidd appear too that physical causes, and in
this time
particvdar nervous aflectious of a singular kind,
had about
mingled with and increased
its rise
the delusion which had taken
in these suhis influ-
perstitious conceptions of the devil
and
Dm-ing the very year (1669) in which the children at ^Mora were suflering under convidsions and fainting fits, those in the Oqihan Hospital at Hoorn, in Holland, were laboiuing under a malady exactly similar ; but though the phenomena were
ence.
atti'ibuted to
diabolical agency, the suspicions of
the public fortunately were not directed to any
indi\idual in particular.
Another instance of the
at
same
in the
kmd had
taken place about a century before
Orphan Hospital
accoimt
is
Amsterdam, of which a
of children supposed
particulai'
given in Dapper's history of
that city, where the
to be bewitched
number
amounted to about seventy, and where the e^'il was attributed to some unhappy old women, before whose houses the afiected urchins, when led out into the streets, had been more than usually clamorous. Such also appears to have been the primary cause of the tragedies in New England in 1699; of the demoniac exhibitions at Loudon,
CONFESSIONS.
35
which were made a pretext for the murder of the
obnoxious Graudier ; of the strange incidents which
occurred so late as 1749 in the convent of Unterzeil at
Wurtzburg
;
and of most of the other more
remarkable cases of supposed possession.
sterious principle of
The my-
sympathy, operating in weak
minds, will in fact be found to be at the root of
witchcraft.
most of the singular phenomena in the history of No wonder then that after the expe-
rience of a century, the judges, and even the igno-
rant pubHc themselves,
that,
came
at last
to suspect
however the principle might apply to other crimes, the confession of the criminal was not, in
cases of witchcraft, the best evidence of the fact.
England cases, says Mr. Calef (April "one was tried that confessed; but they were now so well taught what weight to lay upon confessions, that the jmy brought her in not
In the
25, 1693),
guilty, although she confessed she was."
New
But what a deluge of blood had been shed before this principle came to be recognized, and still more before the judicial belief in the existence of WTiat a spectacle the crime was fully eradicated does Europe present from the date of Innocent's Bull down to the commencement of the eighteenth centm-y Sprenger, Henry Institor, Geiss von Lindheim, and others in Germany; Cumanus in Italy the Inquisition in Spain ; Remigius, Bodinus, and De TAncre in France and Lorraine,
even
! !
;
flooring
witches
on
all
sides
with the
'
Malleus
36
IMAGIC
AND TVITCHCRAFT.
them
to death ^vith the
^Maleficarum/ or flogging
'Fkgellum' and Tustis Dsemonum;' Holland, Geneva, Sweden, Denmark, England, and Scotland
A^dng with each other in the number of
trials
!
and
the depth of their infatuation and bigotry
The Reformation, which uprooted other
only strengthened and fostered
this.
errors,
Every town
and
village
accusers,
on the continent was filled with spies, and ATetchcs who made their living by
viitli
pretending to detect the secret marks which indicated a compact
the dcAol^,
—
inquisitors,
* The trade of a pricker, as it was called, i. e. a person who put pins into the flesh of a witch, was a regular one in Scotland and England, as well as on the Continent. Sir George Mackenzie mentions the case of one of them who confessed the imposture
and a similar instance is mentioned by Spottiswood Sir Walter Scott gives the following account of tliis celebrated mode of detecting witches, and torturing them at the same time, to draw forth confession, was, by running pins into their body, on pretence of discovering the devil's stigma, or mark, wliich was said to be inflicted by him upon all liis vassals, and to be insensible to pain. This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was in Scotland reduced to a trade and the yoiuig witch-finder was allowed to
(p.
48)
;
trade: — "One
(p.
448).
;
torture the accused party, as
if in
exercise of a lawful calling,
it
although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatizes
tm'e.
trial
as a hoi-rid impos-
I observe in the Collections of Mr. Pitcaim, that, at the of Janet Peaston of Dalkeith, the magistrates and ministers
John Kincaid of Tranent, the common upon her, who found two marks of and which appeared indeed to l-'3 so, for she could not feel the pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did they (the marks) bleed when they were taken out again and when she was asked where she thought the pins were put in, she pointed to a part of her body distant from
of that market-town caused
1
a'icker,
to exercise
liis
craft
'
what he
called the devil's making,
;
THE REFORMATION.
judges^
advocates,
6l
executioners,
every one con-
nected with these frightM tribunals, on the watch
for anything
which might afford the semblance of
To ensure the death or ruin of an enemy, nothing more was necessary in most cases than to throw into this lion's mouth an accusation of
suspicion.
magic against him.
" Vix aliquis eorum," says
Linden, the determined foe of these proceedings,
"qui accusati
of Edelin, of
sunt, supplicium evasit."
The
fate
Urban Grandier, and
France,
in
of the Mare-
chale d'Ancre in
Sidonia von
York
of Doctor Flaet and Germany, and of Peter of
Abano
in Italy*, prove
how
often the accusation
of sorcery was not even believed by the accusers
themselves, but was resorted to merely as a certain
means
to get rid of
an obnoxious enemy.
officials,
INlean-
while the notaries' clerks and
their vocation,
labouring in
attendant on these trials
grew rich from the enormous fees ; the executioner became
:
a personage of first-rate consequence
" generoso
equo instar
aulici nobilis ferebatm', aiu'o argen:
toque vestitus
uxor ejus vestium luxu certabat
tliree
the real place. They were pins of
inches in length.' Besides
the fact, that the persons of old people especially sometimes contain spots void of sensibUity, there
is
also
the professed prickers used a pin, the
room to beheve that pomt or lower part of
which was, on being pressed down, sheathed in the upper, which was hoUow for the purpose, and that wliich appeared to enter Demonology and Witchcraft, the body did not pierce it at all."
p. 297.
*
Peter died in prison just in time to escape the flames.
after his death.
He
was burned in efBgy however
Ob
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
nobilioiibus*."
cum
Some
partial diminution of
this persecuting zeal took place in consequence of
a Rescript of
John YII, (18th December, 1591),
by'which the fees of
trade in
addi'essed to the commission,
coui't
were restricted within more moderate bounds
the profits arising from
tliis
but
still
human
Aictims were sufficient to induce the
dej)endants of coiu't, like
members and the Brahmins in India, to
this
support with
tion by
fire.
all theu'
might
system of pm'ifica-
At
last
however the hoiTors of Wurtzburg and
TreAcs began to open the eyes even of the dullest
to the progress of the danger, which,
like Elijah^s cloud,
commencing had gradually overshadowed the
were confined to the
or mihappy fowhose more vigorous intellect
land.
^ATiile the executions
lower classes, to crazed old
reigners, even those
women
enabled them to resist the popular contagion chose
rather to
sit
by spectators of these horrors, than
to
expose themselves to the fate of Edelin or Flaet,
hx attacking the madness in which they originated. But now, when the pestilence, spreading on and on,
thi'eatened the lives of moreexalted A-ictims,
— when
noblemen and abbots, presidents of courts and professors, began to swell the catalogue, and when no man felt secure that he might not suddenly be compelled by tortiu'c to bear witness against his own selfishness began to innocent wife or childi'cn,
—
* Lindou, cited bv Wyttonbach, Yersuch einer Gcischichte von
'
Trier,' vol.
iii.
p. 110.
PERSECUTIONS IN GERMANY.
co-operate with truth and reason.
So^ in the
39
same
way, in the case of the
the
first
New
England
witchcrafts,
effectual
check which they received was
from the accusation of Mrs. Hale, the clergyman's
wife
:
her husband,
who
till
then had been most
active in the persecution, immediately received a
new
light with regard to the transaction,
and ex-
erted his whole influence for the suppression of the
trials.
The
first
decisive
blow which the doctrines of the
inquisitors received in
Germany was from
it is
the pub-
lication of the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in 1631.
In
the sixteenth centmy,
true that Ponzonibius,
Wierus, Pietro d'Apone, and Reginald Scott had
published works which went to
impugn their whole
proceedings
;
but the works of the foreigners were
in
almost
unknown
Germany, and that of Wierus
was nearly as absurd and superstitious as the doctrines he combated. It is little to the credit of the Reformers that the first work in which the
matter was treated in a philosophical, humane, and
common-sense view should have been the production of a Catholic Jesuit, Frederick Spec, the
descendant of a noble family in Westphalia.
witch
operate on the
So
strongly did this exposure of the horrors of the
trials
mind
of
John Philip
finally
first
Schonbrunn, Bishop of Wm-tzburg, and
care
Archbishop and Elector of Mentz, that his
on assuming the Electoral dignity was to
abolish the process entirely within his dominions
iO
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
example which was soon
after followed
—an
the
by
Duke
of Brunswick and others of the
German
princes.
Shortly after this the darkness begins to
break up^ and the da^vning of better views to appear,
though
still liable
to partial
and temporary
obscm-ations,
—the
evil
apparently shifting fm'ther
north, and re-appearing in
in the
Sweden and Denmark
at
shape of the
trials
Mora and
Fioge.
Eeichard"^ has published a rescript of Frederick
William, Elector of Brandenbvu'g, bearing date the
4th of November, 1654, addressed to the judges in
reference to the case of
Ann
of Ellcrbroke, enjoin-
ing that the prisoner should be allowed to be heard
in defence, before any tortm'e
was resorted
to (a
principle directly the reverse of those maintained
by the
inqiiisitorial courts),
and expressly repro-
bating the proof by water as an unjust and deccitfid test, to which no credit was to be given. Even where a conviction takes place, as in the Neuendorf trial of Catherine Sempels, we find the sentence of death first passed upon her by the provincial judges, commuted into imprisonment for a degree life by the Electoral Chamber in 1671,
—
of lenity which never could have taken place dvir-
ing the height of the mania.
In 1701 the celebrated
livered,
inaugural
Thesis of
Thomasius, 'De Crimine Magise,^ was publicly dewith the highest applause, in the Uni-
* Beytrage zur Befbrderiing einer niiliern Einsicht in das ge-
saiamte Geisten-cicb, toI.
i.
p. 284.
PERSECUTIONS IN HUNGARY.
versity
41
fifty
of Halle, a work
wliich
some
years
before woiild assuredly have procured tlie author no other crown but that of martyrdom, but which was now received with general approbation, as embodying the views which the honest and intelligent
had long entertained.
Thomasius^s great
storehouse of information and argument Avas the
work of Bekker, who again had modelled his on Van Dale on Oracles and Thomasius, while he adopted his facts and argiunents, steered clear of those Cartesian doctrines which had been the chief cause why the work of Bekker had produced so little practical eflFect. Still, notthe Treatise of
;
withstanding the good thus produced, the
not extinguished.
fire
of
persecution seems to have been smothered only,
In 1728
it
flamed up again at
Szegedin in Hungary, where thirteen persons were
burnt ahve on three
scaflblds, for witchcraft,
under
circumstances of horror worthy of the wildest periods of this madness.
the frightful stoiy of
And so late as 1749 comes Maria Renata, of Wurtzburg, the whole official details of which are published by -Horst, and which in its atrocity was worthy to conclude the long series of murders which had polluted the annals of Bamberg. This trial is remarkable from the feeling of disgust it seems to have excited in Germany, Italy, and France and the more so because, whatever may be thought
of the reality of her pretensions, there seems to be
no doubt from the evidence that Maria was by
42
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
ivas a dabbler in spells
no means immaculate, but
dosian code.
and potions, a venefica in the sense of the Theo-
But there
is
a time, as
Solomon
glories
says, for eveiytbing
under the sun ; and the
trial
of the
'
Malleus Maleficarum^ were departed.
The
consequence was, that taking this
as their
text-book, various foreigners, particularly IMaffei,
Tartarotti,
and Dell' Ossa, attacked the system so
time the adherents of
^•igorously, that since that
the old superstition seem to have abandoned the
Germany. had come to a close much sooner in Switzerland and France. In the Catholic canton of Glarus, it is said, a witch was burnt even so late as 1786; but in the Protestant cantons no trials seem to have taken place for two centuries past. The last execution in Geneva was that of Michel
field in
^Matters
Chauderon, in 1652. Sebastian Michaelis indeed would have us to believe, that at one time the tribunal at Geneva put no criminals accused of
witchcraft to death, unless on proof of their having
done actual injury to
the other
men
or animals, and that
phenomena of garded as mere mental
confessions, etc., were redelusions.
If such how-
rule was nowhere did the mania of persecution at one time rage more than in Geneva, as is evident from Debio's preface. It seems fairly entitled however to the credit of having been the first state in Europe
ever was originally the case, this
humane
for
unfortunately soon abandoned;
EDICT OF LOUIS XIV.
43
which emancipated
bloody superstition.
itself
from the influence of this
In France, the edict of Louis XIV., in 1682,
directed only against pretended witches
and pro-
phets, proves distinctly that the belief in the reality
of witchcraft had ceased, and that
it
was merely
it
the pretended exercise of such powers which
was
was
thought necessary to suppress.
credit of Louis
It is highly to the
and
his ministry, that this step
taken by him in opposition to a formal requite by
the Parliament of
Normandy, presented
in the
year 1670, on the occasion of his Majesty having
commuted the punishment of death into banishment for life, in the case of a set of criminals whom the Parliament had condemned more majorum for witchcraft*. In this apology for their
belief,
they reminded Louis of the inveterate prac-
tice of the
kingdom; of the numerous
arrets of
the Parliament of Paris, from the trials in Artois
in 1459, reported
by Monstrelet, down to that of 1616 ; of the judgments pronounced under the commission addressed by Henry the
Leger in
May
Great to the Sieur de TAncre, in 1609 of those pronounced by the Parliament of Toulouse, in
;
1577
;
of the celebrated case of Gaufi'idy, in 1611
of the arrets of the Parliaments of Dijon and
Hennes, following on the remarkable
* The
trial of
the
Abbe
Fiard, one of the latest believers on record, has
'
printed the Requete at full length in his
p.
Lettres
sui* la
117
et seq.
44
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
Mareclial de Retz, in 1441^ wlio was biu'nt for magic and sorcery in tlie presence of tlie Duke of Bretague and after combating tlie authority of a
:
canon of the Council of Ancyra, and of a passage
in St. Augustine^
them by
their opponents, they
which had been quoted against sum up their plead-
ing with the following placid and charitable supplication to his Majesty
soufiru'
— " Qu'elle
voudra bien
Texecution des arrets qu'ils out rendus, et
lem- permcttre de coutinuer ^instruction et juge-
ment
frira
dcs proces des personnes accuses de sor-
tilege, et
que
la piete de
Votre Majeste ne souf-
.
pas que Ton introduise dm'ant son regne une
nouvelle opinion contraire aux principes de la religion,
pour laquelle Votre
jNIajeste a toujoiu's si
glorieusement employe ses soins et ses armes."
Notwithstanding this concluding compliment to
his Majesty^s zeal
and
piety, it is doubtful
whether
the Parliament of
Normandy,
in their anxiety for
the support of their constitutional privileges, coidd
have taken a more effectual plan to ruin their OAvn
case,
than by thus presenting Louis with a sort of
anthology or elegant extracts from the atrocities
of the witch trials
;
and in
all
probability the ap-
pearance of the edict of 1680 was accelerated by
the very remonstrance by which the
Norman
sages
had hoped to strangle it. In tmniing from the Continent to the state of matters in England and Scotland, the prospect is anything but a comfortable one; and certainly
PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND.
notliing can be
^vliich
45
more
deceitful than tlie unction
Dr. Francis Hutchinson lays to his soul,
to assert that
its
when he ventures
and
England was one of
felt
those countries where
horrors were least
Witness the trials and convictions which, even before the enactment of any penal statute, took place for this imaginary ofearliest suppressed.
fence, as in the case of Bolingbroke
and Margery
Jourdain, whose incantations the genius of Shakespear has rendered familiar to us in the Second
Part of King
(Statutes
of
Henry VI. Witness the successive Henry VIII., of Elizabeth, and of
James
neral,
I.,
the last of which was repealed only in
1736, and passed while Coke was Attorney-Ge-
and Bacon a member of the Commons Witness the exploits of Hopkins, the witch-findergeneral, against the wretched creatures in Lincolnshire, of
whom
And some
for sitting above
" Some only for not being drown' cl,
groimd
Wliole nights and days upon their breeches,
And
feehng pain, were hanged for witches."
Sudibras, part
ii.
canto
iii.
WTiat would the Doctor have said to the
of
list
THREE THOUSAND \dctims executed during the
dynasty of the Long Parliament alone, which Zachary Grey, the editor of Hudibras, says he himperused ? ^liat absm-dities can exceed those sworn to in the trials of the witches of Warboys, whose fate was, in Dr. Hutchinson's days, and
self
46
perhaps
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
is stilly
annually " improvecV in a comat
memoration sermon
Cambridge ? or
in the case
of the Inckless Lancashire witches, sacrificed, as
afterwards appeared, to the villany of the impostor
Robinson, whose story fiu'nished materials to the
di'amatic
muse of Hey wood and Shadwell ?
is
How
melancholy
the spectacle of a
man
like Hale,
condemning Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, in 1664, on e\-idence which, though corroborated by the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, a child would
now be
things,
disposed to laugh at
it
?
A
better order of
justiceship
commences with the Chiefof Holt. The e\idence against ^lother
is
true,
^lunnings, in 1694, would, Avith a
intellect,
man
jiu-y
of weaker
have sealed the fate of the unfortunate
;
old
woman
but Holt charged the
with such
firmness and good sense, that a verdict of
Guilty, almost the
for witchcraft,
trials before
fii"st
Not
trial
then on record in a
was found.
In about ten other
case,
Holt, fi-om 1694 to 1701, the result
was the same.
Wenham's
which followed in
1711, sufficiently evinced the change which had
taken place in the feelings of judges.
out the whole
trial.
Through-
Chief Justice Powell seems to
have sneered openly at the absm'dities which the
A^itnesses,
and in particular the clergjTnen who
but, with all his exertions, a verdict of
were examined, were endeavoiu'ing to press upon
the juiy
guilty
;
was found against the prisoner. With the view however of seciu'ing her pardon, by showing
PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND.
47
had gone, he was given in, " whether they found her guilty upon the indictment for conversing ^^ith the dcA-il in the shape of a cat?" The foreman answered, " We find her guilty of that " It is almost needless to add that a pardon
how
far the prejudices of the jury
asked,
when the
a
erdict
was procured
1716,
jNIrs.
for her.
And
yet after
all this,
in
Hicks and her daughter, aged
at
niiie,
were hanged
to the devil,
Huntingdon for selling their soids and raising a storm, by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of soap With this crowning atrocity, the catalogue of
!
murders in England closes; the penal statutes against witchcraft being repealed in 1736, and the
pretended exercise of such arts being punished in
fature by imprisonment
and
pillory.
Even yet
however the case of Rex v. Weldon, in 1809, and the still later case of Barker v. Ray, in Chancery
(August
2,
1827), proves that the popular belief
in such practices has
is
by no means ceased ; and
it
not very long ago that a poor
life
woman
narrowly
escaped with her
trial
fi'om a re\ival of Hopkins's
by
water'^.
Barrington, in his observations
on the statute 20 Henry VI., does not hesitate to estimate the numbers of those put to death in
England on
*
this charge at
'
30,000
Even now a complaint of being bewitched' is occasionally made to Justices of the Peace by the very ignorant or the very
malignant.
48
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
We
now turn
to Scotland.
rise
Much
light has
been
and progress^ decline and fall, of the delusion in that country by the valuable work of Mr. Pitcairn*, which contains abstracts
of every trial in the supreme Criminal Coui't of
thrown on the
Scotland
:
the author has given a faithful and
of the procedure in each case, acfull
minute
-siew
companied with
terest.
extracts fi'om
the original
docimients, where they contained anything of in-
In no country perhaps did
in Scotland.
this
gloomy superthan
stition assxmie a darker or bloodier character
Wild, mountainous, and pastoral
from the striking, varied, and sometimes terrible phenomena which they present,
countries, partly
—partly from the habits and manner of the tendency to thought and meditation which they create and —have always been the great
life,
foster,
haunts in which superstition finds
its
cradle
and
re-
home.
flection
The temper of the
with enthusiasm
Scots,
combining
of
life
—
their
mode
in
earlier days,
v.-ild
which amidst the occasional bustle of
exertion, left
and agitating
many
internals
— their night watches —their uncertain cHby the cave on the conmate, of sunshine and vapour and storm—
of mental vacuity in solitude
hill-side
all
* Trials
and other Proceedings
in Matters Criminal before the
tlie
High Court
of Justiciary in Scotland, selected from
Records
of that Court.
By
Eobert Pitcaim.
Edinburgh.
SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
tributed to exalt
fear with
49
and keep
alive that superstitious
which ignorance looks on every extra-
From the earliest ordinary movement of nature. period of the Scottish annals, " All was hot gaistis,
and eldrich phantasie;" the meteors and aurorse
boreales which prevailed in this moimtainous re-
gion were tortured into apparitions of horsemen
combating in the
air,
or corpse-candles burning
on the
guests
hill -tops "^.
Skeletons danced as familiar
spectres
at
the nuptials of our kingsf:
warned them back from the battle-field of Flodden, and visionary heralds proclaimed from the
market-cross the long catalogue of the
" Figures that seemed to rise and
die,
slain.
Gibber and sign, advance and fly, WliUe nought confu-med, coidd ear or eye Discern of sound or mien Yet darkly did it seem as there Heralds and pursuivants appear. With trimipet soimd and blazon fair,
;
A
summons
to proclaim."
Marmion, canto
v.
Incubi and succubi wandered about in
all direc-
tions, with a degree of assm-ance and plausibility which would have deceived the very elect J ; and wicked churchmen were cited by audible voices
and an accompaniment of thunder before the
* Holingshed, vol.
i.
tri-
pp. 50, 317.
III.,
t At the second marriage of Alexander
p. 128.
Fordim,
vol.
ii.
Boece, p. 294, ed. 1574.
X Boece, p. 149.
E
50
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
bunal of Heaven"'^,
wizards, before
The annals of the
thirteenth
century are dignified with the exploits of three
whom Nostradamus
Thomas
and MerHn
must stoop
their crests,
of ErcUdoune,
Sir Michael Scott, and Lord Soulis. The Tramontane fame of the second had even crossed the Alps, for Dantef accommodates him mth a place in Hell, between Bonatto, the astrologer of Guido di Monte Feltro, and Asdente of Parma. But previous to the Reformation, these superstitious notions, though generally prevalent, had hardly assumed a form much calculated to disturb the peace of society. Though in some cases, where these powers had been supposed to have been exercised for treasonable piu'poses, the punishment of death had been inflicted on the witches J, men
did not as yet think
it
necessary, merely for the
supposed possession of such powers, or their benevolent exercise, to apply the piu'ifying power of fire
to eradicate the disorder.
Sii' Michael and the and died peaceably ; and the tragical
Ehymer
lived
fate of the tyrant Soulis
on the Nine Stane Rigg
* In the case of Cameron, Bishop of Glasgow, 1466.
chanan. Pitscottie. + " Quell' altro, che nei fianchi e cosi poco,
llichele Scotto fu, che veramente
—Bu-
Delle magiche frode seppe
il
giuoco."
Canto xx.
J As in the case of the witches at Forres, who attempted to destroy King Duifus by the favourite pagan charm of roasting his unage in wax, and those burnt at Edinburgh for a similar
attempt against James
III., in
1479.
SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
51
was
OTving,
not to the supposed sorceries
wMch
had polluted his Castle of Hermitage, but to those more palpable atrocities which had been dictated by the demon of his own evil conscience, and executed
agents,
who were
the
by those iron-handed and iron-hearted so readily eA^oked by the simpler
spell of feudal despotism.
From
commencement
of the Records of the
Scottish Justiciary Court,
down
to the reign of
Mary, no
trial
properly for witchcraft appears on
the record.
For though in the case of the unfor1536,
tunate Countess of Glammis^ executed in
during the reign of James V., on an accusation of
treasonably conspiring the king's death by poison,
some
hints of sorcery are tlirown into the dittay,
probably with the ^dew of exciting a popular prejudice against one whose personal beauty and high
spu'it
is
rendered her a favourite with the people,
it
ob^dous that nothing was really rested on this
charge.
But with the introduction of the Reformation " novus rerum nascitur ordo.'' Far from divesting themselves of the dark and bloody superstitions
propagated, the
this,
which Innocent's bull had systematized and German reformers had preserved
while they demoHshed every other idol, and
" In dismal dance around the fiu-nace blue,"
moving
had made even children pass through the
Moloch.
E 3
fire
to
Their Scottish brethren, adopting im-
52
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
of their continental prototypes^
plicitly the creed
transplanted to our
nately but too
Avell
own
country^ a soil unfortu-
prepared for such a seed^ the
Aisible
whole doctrine of Satan^s
^yith all
agency on earthy
liis
the grotesque horrors of
commerce
with mankind.
The
aid of the sword of justice
was immediately found to be indispensable to the weapons of the spirit; and the verse of Moses which declares that a witch shall not be suffered to live, was forthmth made the groundwork of the Act 73 of the ninth parliament of Queen ^Nlary^ which enacted the pmiishment of death against
Antches or considters Avith vritches.
The consequences of
this avithoritative recogni-
tion of the creed of witchcraft
became immediately
ob\ious with the reign of James which followed.
Witchcraft became the all-engi"ossing topic of the
day, and the ordinary accusation resorted to whenever
it
was the object of one indiAidual
to ruin
another, just as certain other offences were during
the reign of Justinian, and during the fom'teenth
fifteenth centimes in Italy. In Scotland the was not less busy in high places, than among the humbler beings, who had generally been pro-
and
evil
fessors of the art
magic.
A
sort of relation of
clientage seems to have been established between
the operative performers, and those noble patrons
(chiefly,
we
regret to say, of the
fail-
sex)
by
whom
their services
were put in requisition.
The Lady
SCOTTISH SUPERSTITION.
furnished our
his
53
of
own Northern Wizard with some
pictures^
most striking
—the Countess of Athol^
the Coimtess of Huntly, the wife of the Chancellor
Arran, the Lady Ker, wife of James, Master of
Reqiiests, the Countess of Lothian, the Countess
of Angus, (more fortimate in her generation than
her grandmother Lady Glammis), were
all, if
we
are to believe the scandal of Scotstarvet, either protectors of witches
arf^.
or themselves dabblers in the
liimself did not escape the ac-
Even Knox
cusation of witchcraft; the power and energy of
mind with which Providence had
source.
raise
gifted him, the
enemies of the Reformation attributed to a darker
He was
;
accused of ha\'ing attempted to
St.
"some
sanctes" in the churchyard of
Andrew's
but in the course of this resuscitation
upstarted the de^dl himself, having a huge pair of
horns on his head, at which terrible sight Knox's
secretary
died.
became mad with fear, and shortly after Nay, to such a height had the mania gone,
that Scot of Scotstarvet mentions that Sir Lewis
Ballantyne, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland,
curiosity dealt
"by
with a warlock
called
Richard
Grahame,"
trial
(the
same person who
figures in the
of Alison Balfom% as a confederate of Both-
well),
"to
raise the devil,
who having
raised
him
in his
own yard
in the Canongate, he was thereby
so terrified
that he
took sickness and
thereof
died."
This was a "staggering state of Scots
* Scot of Scotstarvet,
Home
of G-odscroft, passim.
54
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
statesmen" indeed, when even the supreme criminal judge of Scotland was thus at the head of the
delinquents.
have said
Avith
Well might any unfortunate criminal Angelo
steal themselves."
" Tliieves for their robbeiy have authority,
When judges
Nor, in
Measure f. Measure,
fact,
ii. 2.,
was the Church
less deeply impli-
cated than the com't and the hall of justice ; for
in the case of Alison Pearson, (1588)
celebrated Patrick
we find the Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrew^ s, laying aside the fear of the Act of Parliament, and condescending to apply to this poor Avretch for a potion to cure him of his sickness A faith so strong and so general coiild not In 1572 be long in manifesting itself in works.
occurs the
trial
first
entry in the Justiciary Record, the
of Janet
Bowman,
of which no particulars
are given, except the emphatic sentence " Convict
and Brynt."
No
fewer than thirty-five
trials
appear to have taken place before the Coui't of
Justiciary dm'ing the remainder of Jameses reign,
(to
1625), in almost aU of which the residt
as in the case of
is
the
same
Bowman.
Two or
three of these are peculiarly interesting
one, from the difference between its details and
those which form the usual materials of the witch
trials
;
the others, from the high rank of some of
those involved in them, and the strange and almost
inexpKcable extent of the delusion.
The
first
to
TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.
55
which we allude
victed
is
that of Bessie Dnnlop"^, con-
on her own confession ; the peculiarity in
this case is that, instead of the de^dl himself in
propria persona, the spiritual beings to
whom we
are introduced are our old friends the fairies, the
same sweet elves whom Paracelsus defends, and old Aubrey delighted to honom\ Bessie^s familiar was a being whom she calls Thorn Reed, and
whom
she describes in her judicial declarationf as
'^an honest weel elderlie
man, gray
bairdit,
and
had ane gray
coitt
with
Lumbard
sleeves of the
auld fassoun, ane pair of gray brekis, and quhyte schankis gartarrit
abone the kne/'
Their
first
meeting took place as she was going to the pasture,
"gi'ctand (weeping) verrie fast for her
kow
that
was dead, and her husband and child that were
lyand sick in the land-ill (some epidemic of the
and she new risen out of gissane (childbed) ." Thom, who took care that his character shoidd open upon her in a favourable light, chid her for
time),
her distrust in Providence, and told her that her
sheep and her child would both
die,
but that her
husband should recover, which comforted her a little. His true character, however, appeared at a second "forgathering,^^ when he unblushingly urged her " to denye her Christendom and renounce her baptism, and the faith she took at the fount stane.^' The poor witch answered, that " though
*
Nov.
8,
1576.
Pitcaim, vol.
i.
p. 48.
t Ibid.
p. 51.
56
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
she should be riven at horse-tails she would never
do that/' hut promised him obedience in
else^
all
things
—a
qualified concession vrith
which he rather
grumblingiy departed.
place in her
His third appearance took
(three
own
house, in presence of her hus!)
.
band and
three tailors
To the
infinite
consternation of this trio and of the gudeman, he
took her by the apron and led her out of the house
to the kiln-end, where she saw eight
women and
four
ing,
men
sitting
;
the
men
in gentlemen's cloth-
and the women with plaids round about them,
and "very seemly to see." They said to her, " Welcome Bessie, wilt thou go with us but as
V
made no answer to this invitation, some conversation among themselves
she
they, after
Avhich she
could not understand, disappeared of a sudden, and
" a hideous ugly sough of wind followed them."
these
She was told by Thom, after theu' departure, that "were the gude "n'ights that wonned in the Court of Elfane," and that she ought to have acShe afterwards received a cepted their imitation.
the
visit fi'om
Queen of Elfane
in person,
who
con-
descendingly asked a drink of her, and prophesied
the death of her child and the recovery of her
husband.
privileges
spells
The use which poor Bessie made of her was of the most harmless kind, for her seem to have been all exerted to cure, and
kill.
not to
Most of the
articles of
is
her indictment
are for cures performed, nor
there any charge
against her of exerting her powers for a malicious
REMARKABLE TRIALS.
pui'pose.
hui'nt.
57
As
usual however she was con\icted and
This was evidently a pure case of mental delu-
but it was soon followed by one of a darker and more complex character, in which, as far as the principal actor was concerned, it seems doubtsion^
ful
whether the
mummery
of witchcraft formed
anything more than a mere pageant in the dark
to the trials of
drama of human passions and crimes. We allude Lady Fowlis and of Hector INIunro
is
of Fowlis, for witchcraft and poisoning, in 1590.
This
one of those cases which might plausibly
be quoted in support of the ground on wliich the
witch
trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle, and the writers of the Encyclopedic, namely, the
—
necessity
of punishing the pretensions to such
powers, or the belief in their existence, with as
great rigour as if their exercise
had been
real.
" The law against
witches,^' says Selden,
it
" does not
prove there be any, but
pimishes the malice
of those people that use such
means
to take
away
men^s
lives.
If one should profess that, by turn-
ing his hat and crying buz, he could take away a
man's
life,
thing, yet this were a just
though in truth he could do no such law made by the state,
that whoever should turn his hat thrice and cry
buz, with an intention to take
shall
away a man's
life,
be put to death."
We
shall hardly stop to
expose the absiu'dity of this doctrine of Selden in
the absti'act, which thus
makes the
will univer-
58
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
deed ; but when we read such
sally equal to the
cases as that of
Lady
Fowlis^
it
cannot at the
same time be denied, that the power which the pretended professor of such arts thus obtained over
the popular mind, and the relaxation of moral prin-
the indi\idual himseK, rendered
was naturally accompanied in him a most dangerous member of society. In general, the prociple
with which
it
fession of sorcery
was associated with other crimes,
and was frequently employed as a mere cover by which these might with the more security and The philters and loveeifect be perpetrated. potions of La Voisin and Forman, the private court calendar of the latter, containmg "what ladies loved what lords best," (Avhich the Chief Justice prudently would not allow to be read in
Charms of a more disgusting nature appear to have been supplied by our own witches, as in the case of Roy, tried
court), are sufficiently well kno\Mi.
before
the
sheriff
of Perth, in
1601*, and in
that of Colquhoun, of Luss, tried for sorcery and
incest, 1633, where the instrument of seduction In was a jewel obtained from a necromancer. short, wherever any flagitious purpose was to be effected, notliing more was necessary than to have In poisoning, recourse to some notorious witch. in particular, they were accomplished adepts, as was natm-ally to be expected from the power which
* Rec. of Just.
May
27, 1601.
CASE OF LADY FOWLIS.
it
59
prophecies.
gave them of realizing their
own
;
Poisoners and witches are classed together in the
conclusion of Lonis
before the
XIV/s
edict
and the
trials
Chambre Ardente prove
that the two
trades were generally found in harmonious juxtaposition.
aflfords
.
Our own Mrs.
Tiu'ner,
in
England,
while
us no bad specimen of this union of the
;
poisoner with the procuress and the witch
the prevalence of the same connection in Scotland
appears fi-om the
details
of the case of Robert
Erskine, of Dun, from that of the daughter of
Lord Cliffconhall, Euphemia ]\Iacalzean, and stiU more from the singular case of Lady Fowlis. The object of the conspirators in this last case was the destruction of the young lady of Balnagown, which would have enabled George Ross, of Balnagovvn, to many the young Lady Fowlis. But in order to entitle them to the succession of
Fowlis, supposing the alliance to be effected, a
more extensive slaughter was required. Lady Fowlis's stepsons, Robert and Hector, with their families, stood in the way, and these were next to
be removed,
^ay, the indictment goes the length
of charging her with projecting the mm'der of more
than thirty individuals, including an accomplice of
her own, Katharine Ross, the daughter of Sir David
Ross,
whom
she had seduced into her schemes, a
woman
apparently of the most resolute temper,
lect: there
and obviously of an acute and penetrating intelseems reason to doubt whether she
60
had any
ceries
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
faith in the
to
power of the charms and sorwhich she resorted, but she probably
thought that, in availing herself of the ser\ices of
those hags
whom
she employed, the
more prudent
course woidd be to allow
them
to play off their
mummeries in their own way, while she combined them with more effective hiunan means. Accordingly the work of destruction commenced with the common spell of making two pictures of clay, representing the intended victims; but instead of
exposing them to the
their heads
fire, or burying them with downward, the pictm'cs were in this case hung up on the north side of the room, and
the lady, with her familiars, shot several arrows,
shod with
effect.
elf- arrow
heads, at them, but without
Though
the
Lady Fowlis gave orders
that
other two pictures should be prepared, in order to
renew the attempt, she seems
resorted to
forth^vith to have
more vigorous measures, and
to have
associated Katharine Ross and her brother George
in her plans.
The
first
composition prepared for
ale,
her victims was a stoupfiil of poisoned
but this
ran out in making.
She then gave orders to prepare "a pig of ranker poison, that would kill shortly," and this she dispatched by her nurse to ProWdence however the young Laird of Fowlis. again protected him the "pig" fell and was broken by the way, and the nurse, who could not resist
:
the temptation of tasting the contents, paid the
penalty of her curiosity with her
life.
So corrosive
CASE OF LADY FOWLIS.
61
was the nature of the potion, that the very grass on which it fell was destroyed. Nothing however
could
move Lady Fowlis from her
pm-pose.
Like
Mrs. Turner, who treated Ovcrbury with spiders,
cantharides, and arsenic, alternately, that she
might
be able to " hit his complexion," she
to try the effect of
now proceeded
" ratton poyson," (ratsbane,) of
" in eggs, browis, or kale," but
constitution apparently pro-
which she seems to have administered several doses
to the
still
young
laird,
without
effect, his
ving too strong for them.
She had more nearly
succeeded, however, with her sister-in-law, her fe-
male victim. The " ratton poyson" which she had Lady Balnagown, she contrived, by means of one of her subsidiary hags, to mix in a
prepared for
dish of kidneys,
her company supped ; and
lent,
on which Lady Balnagown and its effects were so viothat even the wretch by whom it was admi-
nistered revolted at the sight.
trial,
At
the date of the
however,
still
it
was
alive.
would seem the unfortunate lady Lady Fowlis was at last appre-
hended, on the confession of several of the witches
she had employed, and
more than one of whom
trial
had been executed before her own
took place.
The proceedings
tal,
after all
is
terminated in an acquit-
a result which
only explicable by observing
that the jury was evidently a packed one, and consisted principally of the
dependants of the houses
of
Munro and
Fowlis.
This scene of diablerie and poisoning, however^
62
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
It
did not terminate here.
Hectox',
now appeared
that
Mr.
one of his stepmother's intended Adetims,
life
had himself been the principal performer in a witch
nnderplot directed against the
of his brother
George.
Unlike
liis
more
energetic stepmother,
credulous to the last degree, he seems to have been
entirely
under the control of the hags by whom he was surrounded, and who harassed and tenified
him Avith
of
all
fearful predictions
and ghastly exhibitions
kinds.
He
docs not appear to have been
naturally a -nicked man, for the very
same witches
who
life
Avere aftcnvards leagued
^nth him against the
of George, he had consulted with a ^iew of cu-
ring his elder brother Robert, by whose death he
would have succeeded to the
seized with a lingering illness,
estates.
But being
and told by his familiars that the only chance he had of recovering
his health
was that
his brother should die for him,
he seems quietly to have devoted him to death,
imder the strong instinct of
order to prevent suspicion,
self-presentation.
it
In
was agreed that his death should be lingering and gradual, and the officiating witch, who seemed to have the same
confidence in her
own
nicety of calculation as the
celebrated inventress of the poudre de successions,
warranted the victim until the 17th of April
loTiving.
fol-
It
must be admitted that the incantations
wliich followed were well calculated to produce a
strong effect, both moral and physical, on the weak and credulous being on whom they were played oflf.
CASE OF LADY FOWLIS.
Shortly after midnight, in the
the witches
left
month
of January,
the house in which Mr. Hector Avas
lying sick at the time, and passed to a piece of
periors,
ground lying betwixt the lands of two feudal suwhere they dug a large grave. Hector
Mu.m'o, wrapped in blankets, was then carried
forth, the bearers all the
time remaining dumb,
and
silently deposited in the grave, the turf being
laid over
him and
pressed
down with
riggs,
staves.
His
foster-mother. Christian Neill, was then ordered
to
run the breadth of nine
the grave, to ask the chief witch
choice."
and returning to '^ which was her
choice to
him.
She answered that Mr. Hector was her and his brother George to die for This cooling ceremony being thi'ee times
live,
and terror, Mr. Hector's witches were more successful than the hags employed by George died in the month of his stepmother. April, as had been predicted, doubtless by other spells than the force of sympathy, and Hector apHe had the advantage, pears to have recovered. however, of a selected jury on his trial, as well as Lady Fowlis, and had the good fortune to be acrepeated, the patient, fi-ozen with cold
was carried back to bed.
quitted.
Scarcely had the agitation produced by these
trials subsided,
when the
public
mind was again
confoimded by a new, a more extensive, and almost inexplicable scene of enchantment, directed against
the
life
of James and his Queen, in 1591.
64
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
The
first liint
of those strange proceedings which
were afterwards disclosed, was derived from the confessions of a
gii'l
named
Gellie, or Gellis Drnican,
servant to the
Deputy
Bailiff of Tranent.
Some
sudden cm'cs performed by
this girl,
and other
suspicious points in her conduct, ha^^Jlg attracted
the observation of her master, he, with a laudable
anxiety for the discovery of the truth, " did, with
the help of others, torment her with the torture of the pillic^vinkis
[a species
is
of thumbscrew] upon
her fingers, wliich
a grievous paine, and binding
or wi-enching her head with a cord or rope, which
is
a
most cruel torment
also^.^'
But, notwithstand-
ing these persuasive applications,
no confession
was suggested by some of the operators, that her silence was owing to her haA-ing been marked by the devil, and on a diligent examination the mark was found on the
could be extorted.
last it
At
fore part of the throat.
No
:
sooner was
it
detected
all
than the charm was bm'st
dcAil,
she confessed that
her cm-es were performed by the assistance of the
and proceeded to make disclosures
gviilt,
relative
to the extent of her
ciates,
and the number of
all
asso-
which utterly eclipse
the preceding " dis-
coveries
of Avitchcraft," with which the criminal
records fiu'nish us
down
to this time.
Thirty or
forty different individuals,
pamphlet obsen^es,
*
some of whom, as the were "as civill honest women
damnable
life
Xews
il-om Scotland, declaring the
vol.
i.
of Dr. Fian.
—Pitcaim,
p. 213.
JAMES THE FIRST.
65
as anie that dwelled within the city of Edinljui'gh/'
were denounced by her, and forthwith apprehended
upon her
confession.
Nor was
this list confined to
the lower classes, from
to this superstition
whom
the victims offered
;
had generally been selected for among those apprehended on Duncan's information was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators of the College of Justice.
To
trace out the wide field of witchcraft
to
which
was opened
him by
the confessions of the ac-
cused, as they were successively examined,
was an
employment highly congenial
to
the credulous
mind
of James, prone to every superstition, and
all
versed in
the traditionary lore of Sprenger and
after
Bodinus.
Day
day he attended the examitrait of
nations in person, was put into a " wonderful admiration^'
by every new
grotesque horror
which
their confessions disclosed,
and even carried
his curiosity so far as to send for Gellie
herself,
Duncan
who
had, according to the confession of
another witch, Agnes Sampson (the wise wife of
Keith), played a reel or dance before the witches,
as they
moved
in procession to
meet the
devil in
the kirk of North Berwick, in order that he might
himself listen to this infernal air
like
" who upon the trumpe did play the said dance before the
—
King's majestic, who, in respect of the strangeness
of these matters, took great delight to be present
at these examinations."
G6
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT,
it
All these disclosures, liowever,
may
be
antici-
pated, were not without a liberal application of the
usual compulsitor in such cases
chief sufferer was a person
figures in the trials
the torture. The named Cuningham, who under the name of Dr. Fian,
—
a schoolmaster near Tranent, and apparently a per-
son of dissolute character, although, as appeared
fi'om his conduct
on
tliis
inquisition, also of sin-
gidar strength of
mind and
firmness of nem^e.
He
was put to the question, "first, by thr awing of his head Avith a rope, whereat he woidd confess nothing; secondhj, he was persuaded by fair means to confess his folly," (woidd it not have been as natural to have tried the fail' means first ?) " but that Avould prevail as little; lastly, he was put to the most cruel and severe pam in the world, called the Boots^, who, after he had received three strokes, being inquired if he would confess his damnable acts and wicked life, his tongue would not serve him to speak." Being released from this instrument of torture, he appears, imder the influence of the agony produced by it, to have subscribed a confession, embracing not only the alleged charges of conspiracy against the King by means of witchcraft,
but a variety of particulars relative to his
own
life
and conversation, by no means of an
edi-
fying character.
* We need hardly remind our readers of the torture of Macbriar bv the Boots, before the Privy Council, in the Tales of my
'
Landlord.'
TORTURES.
67
But the weight to be attached to this confession was soon made apparent by what followed; for Fian, who had been recommitted to prison, and who had appeared for a day or two to be "very soHtarye" and penitent, contrived in the course of the next night to make his escape, and on his reapprehension and second examination thought fit,
to the great discomposure of James, to deny the
whole of the charges which he had previously ad" Whereupon the King's majestic, permitted.
cei\ing his stubborn wilfolnesse," prescribed the
following
remedy
for his relapse.
" His nayles
and pulled with an instrument called in Scottish a Turkas*. And under
his fingers were riven
upon
every naile there was thrust in two needles over
even up to the heads.
At
all
which torments, notit
withstanding, the doctor never shrunke anie whitt,
neither would he then confess
the sooner for
all
the tortures inflicted upon him.
all convenient
Then was he with speed by commandment conveyed
again to the torment of the boots, where he continued a long time, and abode so
many
blows in
and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made
them
that his legs were crushed
unserviceable for ever."
The
*
doctor,. it will
;
be seen, did not long reqrdre
their services
but whether his confession was obfi'om torquere.
Old French, Turquois, a smith's pmcers,
p 3
G8
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
tained by fair
startling
means or
foul, it certainly bears so
a
resemblance to that of the leading
witch,
Agnes Sampson, a woman
it is
whom
Spottis-
wood
describes as " matron-like, grave and settled
in her answers," that
hardly to be wondered
mind of James should have been confounded by the coincidence. Nothing, in fact, can exceed the general harmony of
at that the superstitious
the accounts given by the different \vitches of their
proceedings, except the ludicrous and yet hon'ible
character of the incidents which they record, and
which might well
extort,
even from James himself,
the observation he appears to have
made
in the
commencement
all
of the proceedings, that they were
" extreme lyars."
James,
it
appears, fr'om his singular piety, and
the active part which, long before the composition of his
'
Dsemonologie,' he had taken against
Satan and his invisible world, had been, from the
first,
most obnoxious to
his servants
upon
earth.
On
one occasion, when an unsuccessful attempt
had been made against his life, the fiend pleaded (though we do not see why a Scotch devil should speak French) that he had no power over him, The A-isit adding, " II est homme de Dieu'^."
which, in a sudden
fit
of romantic gallantry, he
paid to Norway, to bring over his queen, was too
favourable an opportunity for the instruments of
Satan to be neglected; and accordingly
* Sir James Melville, p. 294.
it
was
re-
CONVENTION OF WITCHES.
solved
69
by the conclave that every exertion should
infal(as
be made to raise such a tempest as should
libly
put an end to the greatest enemy
to
Satan
the
himself confidentially admitted
one
of
mtches)
whom
the devil ever had in the world.
therefore
The preparations were
all
commenced with
first
due solemnity.
Satan undertook^ in the
instance^ to raise a mist so as to strand the
King
on the English
coast, but,
more
is
active measures
being thought necessary, Dr. Fian, as the devil's
secretary, or register, as
he
called throughout
these trials, addressed a letter to a distingiiished
-ndtch,
Marion Linkup, and others of the
sister-
hood, directing them to meet their master on the
sea within five days, for the purpose of destroying
the King^.
partj^, to
On
All-hallowmas Eve the infernal
of about two hundred, embarked, " each in a riddle or sieve, and went into
the
number
the same very substantially."
In what latitude
they met with Satan
cruizing about he
is
not stated, but after some
his appearance,
made
and dehit
vered to Robert Grierson a cat, which
appears
had previously been drawn nine times through the cruikt, giving the Avord to " cast the same into the
charm was not whose fleet was at that time clearing the Danish coast, afterwards
sea!
Hola!"
And
this notable
Avithout its efiect, for James,
* Pitcairn, vol.
i.
p. 211.
f Crook
kitchen
—the
hook from which pots are himg oyer a Scottish
fii'e.
I
70
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
declared that his ship alone had the wind contrary,
while
all the other vessels had a fair one. The charm upon the water being finished, the
witches landed, and after enjoying themselves with
wine, which they drank out of the same sieves in
which they had previously
tially,"
sailed
so
" substan-
they moved on in procession towards the
kirk of North Berwick, which had been fixed on
as their place of rendezvous with their master. The company exceeded one hundred, of whom thirtytwo are enumerated in Agnes Sampson's confession. And they were preceded by Gellie Dmican, playing upon the Jew's-harp the following ditty " Cummer, goe ye before, dimmer, goe ye, Gif ye will not go before, Cimimer, let me
!
Here
less
their master
common
was to appear in a character in Scotland than on the Continent,
Doctor Fian, who, as the
took the lead in the ceremonies at
black candles sticking round
that of a preacher.
devil's register,
the kirk, blew up the doors, and blew in the lichts,
which resembled
about the pulpit, while another of the party. Grey
Meill, acted as door-keeper.
Suddenly the
de\dl
himself started up in the pulpit, attired in a
gown
and
hat, both black.
The sketch of
his appear-
ance given in Sir James Mehdlle's IVIemoirs has
something of the power and pictm-esqueness of " His body was hard lyk ym, as they Dante. thocht that handled him; his faice was terrible,
his nose lyk the
bek of an
egle, gret
bournyng
DR. FIAN.
71
hanclis
eyn "
(occlii di
bragia)
;
"
liis
and
leggis
feit
were berry, with clawis upon his handis, and
lyk the Griffin, and spak with a
first
how
voice/^
He
called the roll of the congregation, to
which
each answered by name; he then demanded of them whether they had been good servants, what they had done since the last time they had convened, and what had been the success of their Gray Meill, the conjurations against the King. doorkeeper, who was rash enough to remark, that " naething ailet the King yet, God be thankit,'^ was rewarded for this mal-a'propos observation by a great blow. The devil then proceeded to admonish them to keep his commandments, which were simply to do all the evil they could; on his leaving the pulpit, the whole congregation, male and
female, did homage to him, by saluting him in a way and manner which we must leave those who
are curious in such ceremonies to ascertain from
the original indictments.
Such
is
the strange story in which
all
the cri-
minals examined before James and the Council
substantially agree;
and unquestionably the
difficult
sin-
gular coincidence of their narratives remains at
this
day one of the most
problems in the
fate of the
pliilosophy of Scottish history.
The
un-
fortunate beings
who
confessed these enormities
could not, in that age of credulity, be for a
doubtful.
moment
tor-
Fian, to
whom,
after the
inhuman
life
tures to which he
had been subjected,
could
t\C
MAGIC A\D WITCHCRAFT.
be of
jiot
much
value,
was condemned, strangled,
similar
and burnt.
fate.
Agnes Sampson underwent a
Barbara Napier, another person said to have been present at the convention, though acquitted
of this charge, was condemned on certain other
charges
of
sorcery in the indictment:
but so
that,
strongly Avas the
mind of James
excited,
though he had secured a conviction against her, he actually brought the assize to trial for wiKul error
in acqiutting her
on this point of dittay. But the most distinguished %dctim connected with this scene of witchcraft was Euphemia Macalzean, the daughter of an eminent judge, Lord Cliftouhall, a woman of strong mind and licentious passions, a devoted adherent to the
Roman
Catholic faith, a partisan of Bothwell (who Avas
accused by several of the Avitches as implicated
in these practices against the King^s
life),
and a
determined enemy to James and to the Reformed
religion.
^\Tiatever
may have been
the precise
extent of this lady's acquirements in sorcery, there
can be no doubt that she had been on terms of the most famihar intercourse with abandoned wretches of both sexes, pretenders to witchcraft, and that she had repeatedly employed their aid in attempting to remove out of the way persons who were
obnoxious to her, or
poisonings,
agrainst
who
stood in the
indulgence of her passions.
ceries,
way of the The number of sorat
and
attempts
poisoning,
charcrcd
her in the indictment,
almost
EUPHEMIA MACALZEAN.
rivals
VO
and,
the accusations against Brinvilliers ;
though the jury acquitted her of several of these, they competed her of participation in the murder
of her
own
godfather, of her husband's nephew,
and of Douglas of Pennfrastone ; besides being present at the convention of North Berwick, and
various other meetings of witches, at which the
King's death had been contrived. Her pmiishment was the severest which the com-t could pronounce
instead of the ordinary sentence, directing her to
be
first strangled at a stake and then burned, the unhappy woman was doomed to be " bund to ane staik and burnt in assis, quick, to the death," a
fate
which she endured with the greatest firmness,
on the 25th of June, 1591.
the King's mind, that
So deep and permato
nent was the impression made by these scenes upon
we owe
them the prepa-
ration of an Act of Parliament anent the form of
process against witches, mentioned
among
the un-
printed acts for 1597, and
more immediately the composition of that notable work of the Scottish
Solomon, the
'
DEemonologie.'
of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of
In the
trials
Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel
Gardiner"^, the charges are principally of taking
ofi"
and laying on diseases either on
raising
men
or cattle
meetings with the devil in various shapes and
places
;
and dismembering dead bodies for
destroying crops
the pm-pose of enchantments;
* Just. Eecords, 1590-1610.
74
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
;
scaring lionest persons in the sliape of cats
taking
away women's milk; committing housebreaking and theft by means of encbantmentSj and so on.
South-running water^
flints
salt^
rowan-tree^ enchanted
(probably elf-arrow heads), and doggrel verses
(generally a translation of the Creed or Lord's
Prayer) were the means employed for effecting a
cure.
Diseases again were laid on by forming pic-
tures of clay or wax, which were placed before the
fire
or
bmied
Aiith the
heads downward ; by plaas in the
tlirow-
cing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in
the house of the intended victim
case of Grierson,
;
or,
by the simpler process of
tailzie (slice)
ing an enchanted
door.
of beef against his
It Avas immaterial
whether the supposed
CA-il,
powers of the A^tch were exerted for good or
In the case of Grie\'e, no malefice (to use the technical term) was charged against him, but simply that he had cured diseases by means of charms;
both were executed.
and the same in the case of Alison Pearson ; but Bartie Paterson seems to have been the most pious of warlocks, for his patients Avere uniformly directed, in addition to his
prescriptions, to " ask theu' health at all livand
vrichtis
abone or under the earth, in the name of
Jesus."
The
trial
of Robert Erskine of Dim,
for witchcraft,
though given as one
seems to have
]\Iargaret
been a simple case of poisoning, he haA-ing merely
resorted to a notorious
Ir\"ine, for
AA-itch,
named
the herbs by which he despatched his
CHARLES THE FIRST.
nephews.
75
The
case of Margaret Wallace^ towards
the close of James's reign^ deserves notice as being
the
first
against
where something like a stand was made some of the fundamental positions of the
3
demonologists
the counsel for the prisoner con-
tending strongly against the doctrine that^ in the
case of a person accused of witchcraft^ eveiy cure
performed by her was to be
of the devil.
set down to the agency The defence however, though it seems
to have been ably conducted, was unsuccessfid.
Matters continued
much
I.
in the same state dur-
ing the reign of Charles
From 1625
to
there are eight entries of trials for witchcraft
1640 on
the Record, one of which, that of Elizabeth Bathgate, is remarkable, as being followed
tal.
by an acquit-
In that of Katharine Oswald"^, the prisoner's
counsel had the boldness to argue, that no credit
witches,
was to be given to the confessions of the other who had sworn to the presence of the
prisoner at
some of
their orgies
;
" for
all
lawyers
agree," argued he, " that they are not really transported, but only in their fancies, while asleep, in wliich they sometimes
dream they
see others there."
This reasoning however appears to have
made no
impression on the jury, any more than the argu-
ment
mill,
*
in Yoimg's casef, that the stoppage of the which she was accused of having effected
tlie
Most of
4,
cases here cited are
found in the Justiciary
Eecords, from about 1605 to 1640.
t Feb.
1629.
76
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
twenty-nine years before, by sorceiy^ might have
been the
effect of natural causes.
About one-half
of the condctions dm-ing this period proceed on
judicial confessions
;
whether voluntary or extorted
details in the trial of
does not appear.
ingj
Tliey are not in general interest-
though some of the
differ a little
Ha-
milton*
from the ordinary routine of
Ha\'ing met the de^il on Kingston Hills, in East Lothian, he was persuaded by the tempter to renoimce his baptism piece of apostasy for which he received only four shillings. The dcA-il fui-ther directed him to em-
the witch trials of the time.
—
ploy the following polite adjuration
when he wished
to raise him, namely, to beat the ground three
times with his stick, and say, " Rise up, foul thief!''
On
the other hand, the devil's beha\'iour towards
him was equally unceremonious; for on one occasion, when Hamilton had neglected to keep his appointment, he gave him a severe drubbing with
a baton.
The scene darkens however, towards the
Puritans.
close
of this reign, with the increasing dominion of the
In 1640 the General Assembly passed
all
an
act,
that
ministers should take particular
note of witches and charmers, and that the commissioners should
recommend
to the
supreme judi-
cature the tmsparing application of the laws against
them.
In 1643 (August
19), after setting forth the
increase of the crime, they
recommend the
grant-
* Just. Eecords, Jan. 1630.
THE PURITANS,
ing a standing commission from
tlie
77
Privy Council
or Justiciary to any " understanding gentlemen or
I
magistrates," to apprehend, try, and execute justice against the delinquents.
The
subject appears
I
[
to have been
I
and their been without
resumed in 1644, 1645, and 1649; remonstrances, it would seem, had not
eflFect,
for in 1649, the year after the
execution of Charles, an Act of ParHament was passed confirming and extending the pro^dsions
of
Queen Mary^s,
so as
more
effectually to reach
consulters Avith witches, in regard to
whom
it
was
thought (though we do not see why) that the
terms of the former act were a
little
equivocal.
From
tliis
time, not only does the
victions,
which since the death of on the decline, increase, but the features of the The old, cases assume a deeper tinge of horror. impossible, and abominable fancies of the 'Malleus' were revived in the trials of Janet Barker and Margaret Lauder"^, which correspond in a remarkable manner with some of the evidence in the Mora trials. About thirty trials appear on the record
between
quittal;
this last date
number of conJames had been
and the Restoration, only
one of which appears to have terminated in an acwhile at a single circuit-court, held at
Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in 1659, seventeen persons were convicted and burnt for this crime.
Numerous however
Records of Justiciary,
as
it,
are the
cases
in
the
must be kept
in ^dew
* Just. Eec, Dec. 1643.
/»
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
that these afford an extremely inadequate idea of
the extent to which this pest prevailed over the
countiy.
For though Sir George Mackenzie doubts
whether, in virtue merely of the general powers
given by the act, 1563, inferior judges did at any
time, of their
own
authority, try
and condemn
of Jus-
criminals accused of witchcraft, the same end was
managed
ticiaiy
in a different Avay.
The Court
was anxious to get rid of a jimsdiction
sufficient
which would alone have afforded them
and the Privy Council were in use to grant commissions to resident gentlemen and ministers, to examine, and afterwards to try and execute, AA-itches all over Scotland; and so numerous
;
employment
were these commissions, that
his astonishment at the
gisters.
Wodrow
expresses
in the Re-
number found
Under these commissions multitudes were
In Mercer^s
bm-nt in every part of the kingdom.
Manuscript Diary, Lamont's Diary, and TMiitelock's jMemorials, occasional notices of the
num-
bers burnt are peiiDCtually occurring.
In every case of the kind
It
it
would appear that
the clergy displayed the most intemperate zeal.
was before them that the poor wretches " defirst
lated" of witchcraft were
nation,
brought for exami-
—in most
cases after a preparatoiy course
of solitary confinement, cold, famine, want of sleep, or actual torture.
On some
occasions the clergy
themselves
prickers,
actiially
pci^formed
the part
of the
flesh of
and inserted long pins into the
THE RESTOKzVTTON.
the witches in order to try their sensibility
in
all
;
79
and
they laboiu'ed^ by the most persevering in-
vestigations, to obtain
sion,
from the accused a confes-
which might afterwards be used against them on their trial, and which in more than one instance, even though retracted, formed the sole evidence on
which the convictions proceeded. In some cases, where the charge against the criminal was that she was " habit and repute a witch," the notoriety
of her character was proved before the Justiciary
Court by the oath of a minister, just as habit and
repute
is
now proved
in cases of theft
by that of a
police officer.
Though the
this
tide of popular delusion in regard to
crime
may
be said to have turned during the
its
reign of Charles II.,
opening was perhaps more
its
bloody than that of any of
the
first
predecessors.
In
year after the Restoration (1661), about
twenty persons appear to have been condemned by
the Justiciary Coiu't, two of whom, though acquitted
on their first trial, were condemned on the second on new charges. The numbers executed throughout the country are noticed by Lamont. Fourteen commissions for trials in the provinces ap-
pear to have been issued by the Privy Council in
one day (November
nameless wretches
7,
1661).
Of
the numbers of
who
died and
made no
sign,
under the hands of those " understanding gentlemen'^ (as the General Assembly's overture styles
them) to
whom
the commissions were granted,
80
it is
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
now
almost impossible to form a conjecture.
tlie
In reference however to
in sucli cases,
course of procedure
we may
in
refer to
some singular ma-
nuscripts relative to the examination of two confessing witches
Morayshire in 1663, in the
possession of the family of Rose, of Kilravock;
more
particularly as the details they contain are,
both from their minuteness and the unparalleled
singularity
of their contents, far
more
striking
than anytliing to be fomid on the Records of
Justiciary about this time.
The names of these crazed beldames were Isobel Gowdie and Janet Braidhead. Two of the latter's
examinations are preserved ; the former appears to
have been four times examined at different dates
between the 13th April and 27th May, 1662, before the sheriff and several gentlemen and mmisters of the
neighbourhood
;
and on one of these
is
a marldng by the Justice Depute Colville, as fol-
lows
:
—
''
Having read and considered the confeswith divers
sion of Isobel Gowdie, Avithin contained, as paction
Avith Sathan, renunciation of baptism,
malefices, I find that a
commission may be vciy
A.
Colville^.'' The hand of a notary
justly given for her last trial.
confessions are written under the
pixblic,
and subscribed by
all
the clergymen, gen-
The paper is mai-ked on the back, " Edinburgh, July 10th, 1662 considered and found relevant by the Justice Depute." The part of Janet Braidhead's deposition, which appears to have boiiie a suuilar marking by the Justice Depute, is torn off.
*
:
ISOBEL GOWDIE.
tlemen, and otlier witnesses present
;
81
as
would ap-
pear to have been the practice where the precognitions were to be transmitted to the Justiciary, with
the view of obtaining a commission to try
and
punish the crime. What the result of Isobel Gowdie^s " last trial" was, it is easy, fi'om the nature of
her confessions, to conjecture. " Nou ragioniam di lor, ma guarda,
e passa."
Though examined on
four different occasions, at
considerable intervals of time, and imdoubtedly undergoing solitary confinement in the interim, so
minute and invariable are the accounts given by Gowdie in particular, of the whole life and conversation of the witches to
whom
she belonged, that a
pretty complete institute of infernal science might
be compiled from her confession. The distinctness
with which the visions seem to have haunted her,
the consistency they had assumed in her
own mind, and yet the inconceivable absmxlity and monstrosity of these conceptions, to many of which we cannot even allude, furnish some most important
contributions to the history of hypochondriac insanity.
Her
tized
devotion to the ser^dce of the devil took
place in the kirk of Auldearn, where she was bap-
by him with the name of Janet, being held up by a companion, and the devil sucking the blood from her shoulder^. The band or coven to which
* Her fellow-witch, Braidhead, was baptized by the very iaajipropriate
name
of Christian.
82
tliey
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
belonged consisted of thirteen (whose names
she enumerates, and some of
whom
appear to
have been apprehended upon her delation), that
being the usual number of the covens.
provided -vnth an
the
officer,
Each
is
whose duty
it is
to repeat
names of the party
to hold
who seems
is
after Satan; and a maiden, sway over the women, and who
is
the particular favourite of the devil,
placed
at his right
hand
at feasts.
A
grand meeting of
the covens takes place quarterly,
given.
when
a ball
is
Each \ntch has a "sprite" to wait upon her, some appearing "in sad dun, some in grass green, some in sea green, some in yellow." Those
of Gowdie's coven were, " Robert the Jakes, Sanders the Reed-Reever,
Thomas the
Faiiy, Swein
the Roaring Lion, Thief of Hell wait-upon-herself,
MacIIector," and so on.
it
Some
of these spirits,
wotdd appear, did not stand high in Isobel's opinion for Robert the Jakes, she says, was aged, and seemed to be " a gowkit glaikit spirit." Each of the -witches too received a sobriquet, by which Satan himself had they were generally knoAAn''^. several spirits to wait upon him; "sometimes he had boots and sometimes shoes upon his feet, but The witches, still his feet are forked and cloven.'^
;
it
appears, occasionally took considerable liberties
with his character, on which occasions Satan, on
* This seems to have been a
ritual.
common
practice in the Infernal
Law
gives the
nicknames of the Renfrewshire witches,
(Memorials,
p. 122.)
in the
Bangarran Case.
AMUSEMENTS OF WITCHES.
83
detecting the calumny, used to beat the delinquents
"up and down like naked gaists" with a stick, as Charon does the naked spirits in the 'Inferno/ He found it much more with his oar. (Cant, iii.) easy however to deal with the warlocks than with the fair sex. "Alexander Elder/' says the confessing witch, " was soft, and could not defend himself, and did naething but greit and crye while he will be scourging him but INIargaret Wilson in Aiddearn would defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to cape the blows, and Bessie Wilson would speak crustily with her tongue, and would
;
be bellin again to him stoutly."
are described with the
The amusements and occupations of the witches same firmness and minute-
ness of drawing.
When
the devil has appointed
an infernal
bed, a
their shape
diet,
the witches leave behind them, in
stool,
besom or three-legged
till
which assumes
their retm'n, a feature exactly cor-
responding with the
Mora
trials.
is
When
proceed-
ing to the spot where their work
to be performed,
they either adopt the shape of
else,
cats, hares, etc.,
or
mounting upon corn or bean straws, and pro" Horse and hattock, horse and go,
nouncing the following charm,
Horse and
pellats,
ho
!
ho
!"
they are borne through the air to the place of their
destination.
If any see these straws in motion,
and "do not sanctify themselves," the witches
may
shoot
them
dead.
This feat they perform
g2
84
Avitli
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
elf-arrow heads, which are manufactm'ccT
by
Satan himself; and his assistants the elf boys, who are described, like the Scandina\dan trolls, as
little
humpbacked creatures who speak "goustie
;
like" (gruffly)
certain
each witch receiving from Satan a
these " Freischiitze."
is
number of
A list
of
forty or fifty persons
given by the witch,
who
had been destroyed by herself and her companions, by these means while she also mentions that she had made an unsuccessful attempt against the life of Mr. Harry Forbes, minister of Auldearn, one of the witnesses actually present and subscriljing her
;
confession.
Another attempt against the
is
life
of this minister
described very grapliically. The instrument employed was " a bag made of the flesh and guts
and
galls of toads, the liver of a hare, pickles of
corn, parings of nails, of feet,
olio being steeped all night,
and toes," which and mixed secundum
artem by Satan himself, was consecrated by a
charm dictated by Satan, and repeated by the
witches, " all on their knees, and their hair about
their shoulders
and
eyes, holding
up their hands, he might
and looking
stedfastly
on the
devil, that
destroy the said Mr. Harry."
This composition
one of the witches, who made her way into the
minister's chamber, attempted to throw
upon him,
but was prevented by the presence of some other
holy
men
in the room.
Another composition of
the same kind, intended for the destruction of the
ANECDOTES OF WITCHES.
lairds of
85
Park and Lochloy, was more successful^ from the deposition of the other witch, Janet Braidhead. Having prepared the venom, " they came to Inshock in the night time, and scattered it up and down, above and about the gate, and other places, where the lairds and their sons would most haunt. And then we, in the likeness of crows and rooks^, stood above the gate, and in
as appears
the trees opposite the gate.
that, if
It
was appointed so
it fall
any of them
shoiild
it
touch or tramp upon
any of
it
it,
as well as that
or any of
on them,
them,
it
should strike them with boils and
it
kill
which
did,
and they
shortly died.
We
did
to
make
this
house
heirless.'^
It is needless to pursue further these strange
details,
which however form a valuable appendix
if
to the records at that time.
It
would seem as
the 'sdolence of this popular
* Taking the form of foul and ominous birds was a favourite
practice of witches in all ages.
Apuleius, in his character
of Lucius, thus describes the metamorphosis of his hostess at
Larissa
:
"Pamphile divested
herself of all her garments,
it
and opening
a certain cabinet took out of
a
number of boxes.
From one
of
these slie selected a salve, and anoiated herself from head to foot and after much muttering, she began to rock and wave herself Presently a soft down covered her limbs, and a paii* to and fro. of wings sprang from her shoulders her nose became a beak her nails talons. Pamphile was now in form a complete owl. Then uttering a low shriek she began to jump from the floor, and after a brief while flew out of the window and vanished. She winged her way, I was assured by Fotis, to some expectant And this was the last I saw of the old lady." lover.
:
86
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
delirium began after 1662 to relax.
of six years
An
trial
interval
for this
now
occurs without a
crime, while the record bears that James
Welsh "^
se-
was ordered to be publicly whipped for accusing
veral individuals of
likely
it,
—a
fate
which he was hardly
to
have encountered some years before.
Fountainliall, in noticing the case of the ten poor
women
convicted on their
own
Sir
confession in 1678tj,
obviously speaks of the whole aftair with great
doubt and hesitation.
in his
'
And
George Mackenzie,
edition of which
Criminal Law,^ the
first
appeared in the same year, though he does not
yet venture to deny the existence of the crime or
the expediency of
its
pmdshment,
lays
down many
of
all
principles very inconsistent with the practice of
the preceding century.
the crime," says he,
" From the horridness "I do conclude that of
crimes
it
requires the clearest relevancy and
most
convincing probature ; and I condemn, next to the
wretches themselves, those cruel and too forward
judges
who burn
persons by thousands as guilty
of this crime."
And
accordingly, acting on these
humane and
cautious principles. Sir George, in his
Report to the Judges in 1680, relative to a number of persons then in prison for this crime, stated
that their confessions had been procured by torture,
and that there seemed to be no other proof against
them, on which they were
* Just. Eecords.
set at liberty.
Jan. 27, 1662.
" Since
t Vol.
i.
Decisions, p. 14.
SUPERSTITIOUS ENTHUSIASM.
n liich
87
time/' adds Lord Royston, " there has been
no
trial for this
crime before that court, nor before
of,
any other court, that I know
except one at
Paisley by commission from the Privy Council in
aimo 1697."
is
v\
This observation of Lord Royston
not altogether correct.
hich he alludes
is
The
trial at Paisley to
evidently the noted case of the
Renfrewshire witches, tried on a charge of sorcery
against a girl
named
Christian Shaw, the daughter
of
Shaw
of Bargarran.
The conviction of the
ac-
cused apj)ears to have taken place principally on
tiie
evidence of the girl herself,
who
in the pre-
sence of the commissioners played off a series of
and convulsion fits, similar to those by which the nuns of Loudon had sealed the fate of Grandier the century before. In this atrocious case, the Commissioners (in the Report presented by them to the Privy Council, 9th March, 1697), reported that there were twenty-four persons, male and female, suspected of being concerned in the sorceries ; and among them, it is to be observed, is a girl of fom'teen, and a boy not twelve years
ecstasies
of age.
out of about twenty
we almost feel surprised that who were condemned, only five appear to have been executed. They were burnt on the gi-een at Paisley. The last trial before the
After this,
Court of Justiciary was that of Elspet Ride, tried
before
Lord Anstruther, on the Dumfries
circuit,
3rd of May, 1708, where the prisoner, though convicted by a plurality of voices, was merely sentenced
88
to be biu-ned
for
life.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
The
on the cheek and banished Scotland last execution which took place was
that of an old
woman
in the parish of Loth, ex-
ecuted at Dornoch in 1722, by sentence of the
Sheriff depute of Caithness,
Captam David Koss,
that being brought
of Little Dean.
" It
is said,
out for execution, the weather proving very severe,
she sat composedly
!"
warming
herself
by the
fire,
while the other instruments of death were
made
ready
So ends in Scotland the tragical part of the history of Avitchcraft. In 1735, as already mentioned, the penal statutes were repealed much to the annoyance however of the Seeeders, who, in their an;
nual confession of national
sins,
printed in an act of
their Associate Presbytery at Edinburgh, in 1743,
enumerated, as a gi'ievous transgression, the repeal of the penal statutes " contrary to the express laws
of God \"
And though in remote districts the belief
minds of the ignorant,
it
may yet
linger in the
has
now, like the belief in ghosts, alchemy, or second
sight, only that sort of vague hold on the fancy which enables the poet and romance \\Titer to adapt it to the purposes of fiction, and therewith to point And, of a truth, no una moral or adorn a tale. important moral is to be gathered from the consi-
deration of the history of this delusion
;
namely,
the danger of encouraging those enthusiastic conceits of the possibility of direct spiritual influence,
which, in one shape or other, and even in
oui'
own
SUPERSTITIOUS ENTHUSIASM.
89
days, are found to haunt the brain of the weak and presumptuous. For it is but the same principle
which
lies at
the bottom of the persecutions
itself
of the witches, and which shows
in the
quietism of Bourignon, the reveries of
Madame
Guyon, the raptures of
denborg^s prospect of the
Sister Nativity, the pro-
phecies of Naylor, the dreams of Dr. Dee, or Swe-
New Jerusalem
;
still
but
an emanation of that
spirit of pride,
which, refusing
to be " but a little lower than the angels," asserts
an immediate communion and equality with them, and Avhich, according to the temper of the patient,
feeds
him with
the gorgeous visions of quietism,
or impels him, like a furious Malay, along the path
of persecution.
Some
persons assert that, in this
nineteenth century of ours, we have no enthusiasm.
the contrary, we have a great deal too much no period has enthusiasm of the worst kind been more rife witness the impostures of South-
On
at
;
and Hohenlohe, and the thousand phantasies which are daily running their brief course of popucott
larity.
At no time has
that calenture of the brain
been more widely
agency of the
devil,
diffused, which, as it formerly
converted every natural occurrence into the actual
now
transforms every leader of
a petty circle into a saint, and invests
him with
the garb and dignity of an apostle.
practical
Daily, are the
and active duties of life more neglected under the influence of this principle the charity which thinketh no evil of others daily becomes
;
90
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
wliich of
more rare; the stream of benevolence
poverty and sickness at home,
old stole deep and silently tlirougli the haunts of
is now but poorly compensated by being occasionally throAvn up in a few pompous and useless jets, at public subscrip-
tions for distant objects
;
while even in those whose
evils to which away in vain
minds are untinctured by the grosser
enthusiasm gives
rise,
life
passes
and
illusive
dreams of self-complacent superiority,
rarely
Avhicli, as
they are based only in pride and constisusceptibility,
tutional
endure when age
Thus, the en-
and infirmity have shaken or removed the materials
out of Avhich they were reared.
thusiast who, like Mirza, has been contemplating
through the long day the Elysian islands that
lie
beyond the
feels,
gulf,
and already walking in a fancied
their myrtle-crowned inhabitants,
communion with
in spite of all his efforts, that, as evening
creeps upon the landscape, the phantasmagoria becomes dimmer and more dim; the bridge, the
islands, the genius
who
stood beside
them
its
disap-
pear
;
till
at last
nothing remains for him but his
oxen,
its sides
own
long hollow valley of Bagdad, with
;
sheep, and camels grazing on
—
this sol)er,
weary, working world, in short, with
all its
cares
and
duties,
through which,
if
he had been wisely
it,
fulfilling
the end for which he was sent into
he should have been labouring onward with a beneficent actiAity, not idly dreaming
side of the
Eden
for
which he
is
by the waybound and so he
;
PAGAN WITCHCRAFT.
91
awakes to a conscioiisness of his true vocation in
life
wlien he
is
ceives the value
on the point of lea\ing it, and perand the paramount necessity of
exertion, only
and
its
energies, lies behind
when youth, with its opportunities, him for ever, like the
shadows of a dream.
The work
review of
its
of Church-Councillor Horst, and the
principal contents, leave however one
least of the subject of
hemisphere at
urgy, and
Magic, Thearts,
Necromancy unnoticed.
These
or
at least the popular belief in
them, are
much more
ancient than any of the forms of Christianity, and
by Paganism to the creeds which supplanted it. It needs no ghost to tell the reader hoAV firmly the
were, in fact, a most unlucky legacy bequeathed
ancients believed in
all
supernatural influences
how
populous, in their conceptions, were the ele-
ments with omens, portents, and prodigies; how abject and unreasoning was their credulity; and how dependent both their public and their domestic life upon the exorcisms of the priest and the science of the augm*. The Canidias and Ericthos of antiquity were not mere creations of the poets the most sober and sceptical of historians does not
disdain to relate that, in the house of the dying
Germanicus, were found bm'nt bones and
vered limbs of dead bodies
phical of the
;
disse-
and the most philoso-
Roman
poets recounts with compla-
92
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
cent gravity the charms
by which the dead might
did the belief in witches
be evoked^ or the faithless lover recalled by his
forsaken mistress.
Nor
and supernatm-al agencies decay or decline with the disbelief in the state-religion which marked
the latter ages of the
Roman
Empire.
On
the
contrary, as scepticism increased in one direction,
credulity and abject superstition grew and prevailed
in another.
Neither were these infirmities of the
mind by any means confined to the ^a^lgar or the profane. The later Platonists were deeply infected
with the malady of superstition, and there are few
more cmnous chapters
sophers,
in the history of
human
inconsistency, than the lives of
many
of the philo-
who argued
if
against the being of a God,
and who trembled
^vith a
a hare crossed their path, at
a sinister flight of crows, or at a sudden encounter
beldame or a blackamoor in the
art of the ancients,
gi'ey of the
morning.
The magical
more
especially
towards the decline of Pagandom, was indeed of
an extremely dark and atrocious complexion.
the poet of the iEneid
" Sin has ne possim naturae accedere partes
Un-
mindful of the wise and reverent forbearance of
Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,"
the ancient wizards pried, or affected to pry, into the very " incunabula \it0e."
Could we recover a
St. Paul,
few of those books which the sorcerers at Corinth
burned and brought the price of them to
LUCIAN AND APULEIUS.
'we should probably find in
tlieir
93
pages^
among
some curious physical or medical secrets^ nearly all the elements of a cruel and obscene superstition. Rome, we know, was both early and deeply infected with the orgiastic worship of the East,
especially with the
of
Isis.
the Isiac
and impure ceremonies of the priests It was of no avail to level to the ground chapels, and to banish their ministers.
for the
In an age of unbelief there was a passion
mysteries of darkness; and although Christianity gradually superseded Paganism in form, the spirit
of the latter long survived in the multitude, and
especially
among
the ignorant rural population.
his erudite
James Grimm, in
tiquities of the
work upon the
'
An-
German
Race,' traces with great
acuteness the connection between the superstitions
of the
Heathenism.
Dark Ages and the magical formularies of The spells of witches, the abraca-
dabra of quacks, and the loathsome furniture of
Sidrophel's laboratory are genuine descendants of
the impostures and abominations which were practised for ages both in the
Roman and
Parthian
empires.
In Lucian and Apuleius indeed we are presented
with a singular and terrible aspect of social existence.
life
The most ordinary
acts
and functions of
invisible
were believed to be affected by the
powers, and those powers were supposed to be
willing to do service to all
who were malignant
fearless
enough to seek
their aid,
and
enough to
94
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
serve the apprenticesliip whicli was
demanded
it
of
them.
lieved
It is easy to decry the weakness
and detect
the absurdity of such a creed.
:
Yet
was be:
it
excited terror
:
it
nurtured revenge
it
wrought withering and wastmg eflPects upon the it cast a dark shade feeble and the credulous
:
was potent over the sinews of the strong and over the bloom of the beautiful it exercised " upon the inmost mind" all " its fierce
over
life
:
it
:
accidents/' and preyed
upon the
pui-est spii'its,
"As on entrails, joints and limbs, With answerable pains, but more
intense."
It is idle to regard such a belief as a
perficial
all
mere su-
or individual superstition.
It pervaded
ranks of society, from the philosopher
first
who
dis-
puted about a
police, to the
cause, and the magistrate
who
\iewed religion in the light of a useful system of
shepherd who watched Orion and the
Pleiades,
and the miner who rarely beheld either sun or star. It was an erroneous, but it was an
earnest, belief ^^•hich di'ove
diviners,
men
to consult with
and to question the elements for signs
and wonders.
Availing ourselves of Sir George Head's excellent translation,
we
its
extract
from the
'
Golden Ass'
is
of Apuleius a story Avhich, to our conceptions,
unsiu'passed for
horror by any of the di'cariest
legends of Pagan or Medieval sorcery.
"
My master,
the baker, was a well-behaved, tohis wife, of all the
lerably
good man, but
women
THE baker's wife.
95
in the world, was the most wicked creature in
existence,
and continually rendered his home such
is
a painful scene of tribtdation to him, that, by Hercules,
many
the time and oft that I have silently
deplored his
table
all
fate.
The heart
like a
woman was
the evil dispositions
most deteswhere of om- nature were collected
of that
common
cess-pool,
together.
She was
cruel, treacherous, malevolent,
obstinate, penurious^ yet profuse in
dissipation, faithless to
expenses of
her husband, a cheat and
I heard
bill
it
a drimkard.
One day
said that the
baker had procured a
of divorce against his
execrable helpmate, and this intelligence turned
out in due time to be true.
She, exasperated by
the proceedings instituted against her,
communi-
cated with a certain
woman who had
the reputation
of being a witch, and whose spells and incantations
were of power milimited.
Having conciliated
this
woman by
gifts
and urgent supplications, she be-
sought of her one of two things
conciled to her
— either to soften
him
to a -siolent
the heart of her husband, so that he might be re;
or if unable to do that, to send a
ghost or some evil spirit to put
death.
failed,
In the
first
endeavour the sorceress totally
set
whereupon she
about contriving the death
of
my
unfortunate master.
To
effect
her pm'pose,
she raised from the grave the shade of a
woman
who had been murdered.
half- clad,
So one day, about noon,
there entered the bakehouse a bare-footed
woman
wearing a mourning mantle thrown across
96
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
licr
her shoulders^
pale sallow features
marked by
a lowering expression of guilt, her grisly dishevelled
hair
sprinkled with ashes, and her front
locks streaming over her face.
Unexpectedly ap-
proaching the baker, and taking him gently by the
hand, she drew him aside, and led him into an adjoining chamber, as
to communicate.
if
she had private intelligence
After the baker had departed,
his
and a considerable period had elapsed without
returning, the servants Avent to his chamber-door
lence, called several times,
and knocked very loudly, and, after continued siand thumped still harder
than before.
They then perceived
that the door
was carcfvdly locked and bolted; upon which, at once concluding that some serious catastrophe had
happened, they pushed against
strength,
it A;ith
their utmost
and by a violent
it
effort, either
its
breaking
the hinge or driAdng
out of
socket, they ef-
fected an entrance by force.
The moment they were
ceiling,
within the chamber, they saw the baker hanging
quite dead
l)ut
from one of the beams of the
the
woman who had accompanied him had
liAing,
disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen."
This evoking of the dead to destroy the
this
warring of a corpse with a living soul, and
its foul
then the sudden dismissal, when
grave, presents to the
wliicli
and
fatal
its
ciTand had been accomplished, of the ghost to
mind a climax
of terrors, for
fic-
wc do not know where,
in history or in
tion, to find a counterpart.
HIGH TREASON.
97
The Lex
Majestatis, or law of
effectual
High Treason,
weapons
placed in
was one of the most
the hands of
its
and
terrible
which the imperial constitution of
military despots.
offence this double-handled
Rome
Against one and sure-smiting enagainst the crime
gine was frequently levelled^
viz.
or the charge of inquiring into the probable duration of the Emperor's
life.
This was done in va-
rious ways,
—by
fire
applied to
consulting the stars, by casting nativities, by
waxen images, by em-
ploying prophets, by casual omens, but especially
by
certain permutations and combinations of
num-
bers,
^'numeros Babylonios," or the
letters of the
alphabet.
The
following extract from
Ammianus
on so " mait
Marcellinus affords an example of this treasonable
sacrilege, the practice or suspicion of which,
many
occasions, led to the expulsion of the
thematicians'' fi'om Italy.
The Romans indeed,
profoundly ignorant of science, or contemning
as the
ai't
Greek adventurers or Egyptian priests, neither of whom were in good odour with the government at any period, gave to the current impostors of those days an appellation which Camof
bridge wranglers
nobility.
now account
equal to a patent of
The following
story seems to have been substan-
tially a deposition
taken before the magistrates of
Constantinople, and extracted from the Avitnesses
or defendants by torture.
is
The
principal deponent
said to have been brought " ad
summas angusH
08
tias"
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
— to
the last gasp almost^ before
lie
"vroiild
confess.
"Tins unlucky
table/' lie said,
"which
is
now
produced in court, we made up of laurel boughs,
after the fashion of that
which stands before the
curtain at Deli)hi.
Terrible were the auspices^
awful the
charms, long and painful the dances,
Avhich preceded and accompanied its construction
and consecration.
procedure.
^diich
And
as often as
we consulted
this disc or table, the following
was our mode of
It was set in the midst of a chamber had previously been well purified by the On the smoke of Arabian gums and incense. table was placed a round dish, welded of divers On the rim of the dish were engraven metals.
the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, separated
from one another by equal and exactly measured
spaces.
Beside the table stood a certain
man
clad
in linen,
and having linen buskins or boots on his feet, with a handkerchief bound around his head. He waved in one hand a branch of vervain, that
propitious herb;
verses, such
he recited a
set
formulary of
as are
Averruncal gods.
wont to be sung before the He that stood by the table was
no ordinary magician. With his other he held and shook a ring which was attached to curtains, spun from the finest Carpathian thread, and which had often before been used for such mystic incantations. The ring thus shaken dropped ever and anon between the interspaces of the letters, and
LATER PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
formed by striking the
letters together
99
certain
words, wliich the sorcerer combined into
number
priests
und measure,
much
after the
manner of the
who manage the
chidian Apollo.
oracles of the Pythian
and Bran-
Then, when we inquired who per-
chance would succeed to the reigning Emperor,
the bright and smooth ring, leaping
letters,
among
the
struck together T, H, E, O, and afterwards
a final S, so that one of the bystanders at once
exclaimed that
THEO[DORU]S
was the emperor
designated by the Fates.
tions
:
We
asked no more ques-
seeing that Theodorus was the person
whom
and
in
we had sought for." The lingering belief
in the old religion,
the magical and thaumaturgical practices which had, like ivy around an oak, gradually accrued to
it,
was productive in the decline of Paganism of
poetical forms of superstition.
It is curious
many
and instructive to remark the increasing earnestness with which the decaying creed of
Heathendom
which the
sought to array
Christianity.
itself against
the encroachments of
The hght
persiflage with
philosophy of the Aiigustan age treated the statereligion nearly disappears.
The
indifference of the
magistrate gives place to an intolerant and indig-
nant tone of reclamation.
attack the
The Pagan
Csesars
new religion
as a formidable antagonist
the Christian emperors, in their turn, assail direct^
or ferret out perseveringly the superstitions which
The
100
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
ancient gods are no longer regarded by either their
worshipers or their opponents as simply deified
heroes or men^ but
iDeings,
as powerful
and mysterious
evil,
informed with demoniac energies and ca-
pable of conferring temporal good or
—beauty,
power, and Avealth, on the one hand; deformity,
ignominy, and disease, on the other,
upon those Such conceptions of blessing or of bale were embodied in strange
—
who honoured
or abjured them.
narratives of weeping or jubilant processions
of
majestic forms
when
the
moon
w'as hid in
her va-
cant interkmar cave, of
of fair enchantresses
demons assuming the shape
beguiled
who
men
to their un-
doing, of palaces reared in a night and disHmning
in the day, of banquets, like that Adsionary banquet in the wilderness,
all
which Milton has adorned with
'Paradise
the graces of imagination in his
Lost.'
We
tives
can afford room for only two of the narraof demoniac influence in which the later
their belief in the influence of
Pagans expressed
the early gods.
1.
The
superstition of the Lamia.
One
result
of the consoHdation of Western Asia with Europe,
under the
Roman Empire, was
The
to spread widely
over the latter continent the germs of the ser-
pent-worship of the East.
the
field,
subtlest beast of
retaining in full vigour his powers of
assuming tempting forms and uttering beguduig
words, was wont,
it
seems, to disport himself among
LATEE PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
101
the sons and daughters of men which he deceived our general mother^ the overEspecially did he delight to entrap curious Eve.
under the shape in
some hopeful youth who was stiidying philosophy schools of Athens or Berytus^ or some neophyte in the Christian Church. A fair young gentleman at Corinth had been abroad on a pleasure excm-sion^ and might perchance be returning home a Httle the worse for wine. However this may have been, at the gates of Corinth he encounin the
tered a damsel richly attired, "beautiful exceedingly/^ but with hair dishevelled,
tears.
distress.
litter
and drowned in
He
and
began by inquiring the cause of her Faithless servants had carried off her
her lone.
left
He offered
her consolation,
also,
wldch she accepted, and his arm
did not decline.
in a
which she
bye
street
its
been.
At
She led him to a lordly palace of the city, where he had never yet marble portico waited a crowd of
fond, were ushered into
slaves with torches awaiting their absent mistress,
and the
pair,
now become
with
all
a sumptuous banqueting hall, where a board was
sjDread covered
the delicacies of the season,
and garnished with effulgent plate. In this palace of delight the young man abode many days, taking no account of time. But at length, cloyed with
sweets, he proposed inviting a party of his college
friends,
who, with
much to the dismay of his fair hostess^ many tears and embraces, besought him
In an
evil
to forego his wish.
hour however he
102
MAGIC ANB WITCHCRAFT.
persevered^ and his
rooms were filled with gownsmen, marvelling much, not Avithout emy, at the good fortune that had befallen their chum, Lucius, no one knew how or why. But among the undergraduates came a grave and grey college tutor,
deeply read in conjurors' books,
who
could detect
by
his skill the devil
under any shape.
Pale and
silent the old
man
sat at the festive board,
and was
grev/
ill-bred
enough to
stare the lady not only out of
also.
countenance, but out of her beauty
the palace melted also
She
pale, livid, an indiscriminate form: she
;
melted away;
the plate, the viands, and
;
the wines vanished also
and in place of columns
was a loatlisome serpent,
and
ceiled roofs
was a void square in Corinth, and
in place of the damsel
v\Tithing in the agonies of dissolution.
The white-
bearded fellow had scanned and scotched and slain
the snake
—the Lamia—but he
destroyed his pa-
tient also, for
Lucius became a maniac; had the
charm lasted awhile longer, his soul would have become the fiend's property. 2. A young man had sorely offended the great
goddess Venus,
city,
or, as
she was called in his native
the Syrian Byblus, Astarte.
self
from the curse upon his board and bed,
fair wife,
had recently married a
wise astrologer.
— —he applied
his case,
To redeem himfor
he
to a
The sage heard
and adcertain
vised him, as his only remedy, to go
on a
night, at its very noon, to a spot just without the
gates, called the Pagan's
Tomb,
—
to station himself
LATER PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS.
on the roof of
it,
103
and to
recite,
at a prescribed
moment, a
sel,
certain formulary, with which his coun-
learned in magical law, furnished him.
the Pagan^s
Tomb
accordingly the young
On man
placed himself at the noon of night, and awaited
his deliverance.
fines
And
presently, towards the con-
of morning, Avas heard a sound of sad and
solemn music, and of much wailing, and of the
measured tread of a long procession. And there drew nigh a mournful company of persons, who might have seemed men and women, but for their
extraordinary stature, and their surpassing majesty
and beauty
:
and the young
man remembered
the
words of the magician, and knew that before him
was the goodly company of the gods
forefathers
whom
his
in
past
generations had worshiped.
One
only of that august and weeping band was
borne in a chariot
—the
god Saturn
—perhaps by
Astarte to
reason of his great age; and to Saturn he addressed his prayer, which was of such potency
that Saturn
straightway
commanded
release the petitioner
from the cm'se she had laid
upon him.
We
a
have been able merely to indicate
how wide
beyond the proper domain of medieval witchcraft. It would be cui'ious to trace the similarity of the Heathen and Christian superstitions, or rather the derivation of one from the other. But we must reserve this subject to some other
field lies
101
MAGIC AND AVITCHCRAFT.
occasion, and conclude with repeating the wish
with wliich we commenced, that some competent
hand Avonhl midertake
to
trace
througli
all
its
ramifications the obscm'e yet recompensing subject
of ]Magic and Witchcraft.
THE END.
JOHIf EDTVABD TAYLOR, PriXTEB,
LITTLE
QUEEN STEEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
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