By C. R. Straton, FES. 149 
Egyptian God Khons was sent in his ark to cure the little princess 
Bentaresh of the evil movement in her limbs. When he came the 
demon said “ Great god who chasest demons, I am thy slave, I will 
go to the place whence I came.” Then they made a sacrifice for 
that spirit, and he went in peace, leaving the patient cured. Here 
we have demoniacal possession as the disease, and exorcism with 
sacrifice as the remedy. This story of the little Egyptian princess 
suffering from St. Vitus’ dance is older than the Odyssey, and it 
gives a simple picture of primitive belief. There are spots on the 
shores of the Atlantic where vestiges of early beliefs still linger. 
In the Hebrides, the land of Ossian, on the West Coast of Ireland, 
and in Brittany we find traces of these primitive ideas, stranded 
where the westward tide of civilization has left them. Near the 
western point of France is a bay called the Bay of Departed Souls. 
As many a vessel, like the ill-fated Drummond Castile, is wrecked 
on that coast it is often supposed that it takes its name from the * 
number of shipwrecks it sees; but it is not so. The Baie des 
Trépassés was the shore of the stream beyond which the sun sinks 
q into that unknown land we see in dreams, and it was from the 
_ Bay of Souls that the spirit started on its journey. There is one 
custom, too, which the Bretons still preserve of such touching 
sweetness that I cannot forbear mentioning it. Before retiring to 
rest on the festival of All Souls, the peasants in every homestead 
make up the fire, unbolt the door, and leave the supper table spread, 
ready for the spirits of those loved ones who will visit their homes 
that night. 
Very different, however, from this lofty idea of spirits still 
| _ watching over and caring for the living are the later and coarser 
notions of witchcraft. The belief in the Middle Ages was no 
longer ‘that a departed spirit was the agent, but that a living 
_ person had entered into a compact with Satanas, the arch-fiend, 
and was working by his power. There was the same tendency to 
explain whatever they did not understand by a reference to ghostly 
_ interference, but the demons were now sent by living people called 
_ witches instead of by the spirit father. 
_ Certain passages in the Old Testament ordained that sorcerers 
