MINOR SUPERSTITIONS. 



raged to a degree almost inconceivable. Bain- 

 berg, Paderborn, Wiirzburg, and Treves were its 

 chief seats, though for a century and a half after 

 the introduction of the trials under the commis- 

 sion, no quarter of that great empire was free from 

 its baneful influence. A catalogue of the execu- 

 tions at Wiirzburg for the period from 1627 to 

 February 1629, about two years and two months, 

 is printed by Hauber in the conclusion of his 



third volume of the A eta et Scripta Magica. It 

 is regularly divided into twenty-nine burnings, 

 and contains the names of 157 persons, Hauber 

 stating at the same time that the catalogue is 

 not complete. It is impossible to peruse this 

 list without shuddering with horror. The greater 

 part of this catalogue consists of old women or 

 foreign travellers, seized, as it would appear, as 

 foreigners were at Paris during the days of Marat 

 and Robespierre : it contains children of twelve, 

 eleven, ten, and nine years of age ; fourteen vicars 

 of the cathedral ; two boys of noble families, the 

 two little sons of the senator Stolzenburg ; a 

 stranger boy ; a blind girl ; Gobel Babelin, the 

 handsomest girl in Wiirzburg, &c. And yet, 

 frightful as this list of 157 persons executed in the 

 short space of two years appears, the number is 

 not taking the population of Wiirzburg into 

 account so great as the Lindheim process from 

 1660 to 1664 > f r m that small district, consisting 

 at the very utmost of 600 inhabitants, thirty 

 persons were condemned and put to death, mak- 

 ing a twentieth part of the whole population 

 consumed in four years. 



'If Bainberg, Paderborn, Treves, and the other 

 Catholic bishoprics, whose zeal was not less 

 ardent, furnished an equal contingent, and if the 

 Protestants, as we know, actually vied with them 

 in the extent to which these cruelties were carried, 

 the number of victims from the date of Innocent's 

 bull to the final extinction of these prosecutions, 

 must considerably exceed 100,000 in Germany.' 



Witchcraft in Scotland. 



The mania respecting witchcraft, which sprang 

 up into vigour throughout Southern Europe in 

 consequence of the edicts of Innocent and Leo, 

 spread in time to Scotland, and acquired strong 

 possession of the public mind during the reign 

 of Queen Mary. At that period an act was 

 passed by the Scottish parliament for the sup- 

 pression and punishment of witchcraft ; but this 

 only served, as the papal bulls had done, to 

 confirm the people in their maniacal credulity, 

 and to countenance and propagate the general 

 delusion. In terms of these ill-judged statutes, 

 great numbers of persons, male as well as female, 

 were charged with having intercourse with the 

 devil, convicted, and burned on the Castle-hill 

 of Edinburgh and elsewhere. This continued 

 during the earlier part of the reign of James VI., 

 whose mind, unfortunately for the more aged 

 of the female part of his subjects, was deeply 

 impressed with the flagrant nature of the crime 

 of witchcraft. In 1590, James, it is well known, 

 made a voyage to Denmark to see, marry, and 

 conduct home in person his appointed bride, the 

 Princess Anne. Soon after his arrival, a tremend- 

 ous witch-conspiracy against the happy conclu- 

 sion of his homeward voyage was discovered, 

 in which the principal agents appeared to be 



persons considerably above the vulgar. One was 

 Mrs Agnes Sampson, commonly called the Wise 

 Wife of Keith (Keith being a village in East 

 Lothian), who is described as 'grave, matron- 

 like, and settled in her answers.' On this occa- 

 sion, the king was induced by his peculiar tastes 

 to engage personally in the business of judicial 

 investigation. He had all the accused persons 

 brought before himself for examination, and even 

 superintended the tortures applied to them to- 

 induce confession. The statements made by these 

 poor wretches form a singular tissue of the 

 ludicrous and horrible in intimate union. 



'The said Agnis Sampson was after brought 

 again before the king's majestie and his council, 

 and being examined of the meetings and detest- 

 able dealings of those witches, she confessed that 

 upon the night of All-hallow-even, she was accom- 

 panied, as well with the persons aforesaid, as also- 

 with a great many other witches, to the number 

 of two hundred, and that all they together went 

 to sea, each one in a riddle, or sieve, and went 

 in the same very substantially, with flagons of 

 wine, making merrie, and drinking by the way 

 in the same riddles or sieves, to the kirk of 

 North Berwick in Lothian ; and that after they 

 had landed, took hands on the land, and danced 

 this reil, or short daunce, singing all with one 

 voice : 



Cummer, goe ye before, cummer, goe ye ; 

 Gif ye will not goe before, cummer, let me. 



At which she confessed that Geillis Duncan did 

 goe before them, playing this reil or daunce upon 

 a small trump, called a Jew's-harp, until they 

 entered into the kirk of North Berwick. These 

 made the king in a wonderful admiration, and he 

 sent for the said Geillis Duncan, who upon the 

 like trump did play the said daunce before the 

 king's majestie, who, in respect of the strangeness 

 of these matters, took great delight to be present 

 at their examinations.' 



In the sequel of Agnes Sampson's confession,, 

 we find some special reasons for the king's passion- 

 ate liking for these exhibitions, in addition to the 

 mere love of the marvellous. The witches pan- 

 dered to his vanity on all occasions, probably 

 in the vain hope of mitigating their own doom. 

 Agnes Sampson declared that one great object 

 with Satan and his agents was to destroy the 

 king ; that they had held the great North Berwick 

 convention for no other end ; and that they had 

 endeavoured to effect their aim on many occasions, 

 and particularly by raising a storm at sea when 

 James came across from Denmark. 'The witches 

 demanded of the divell why he did beare such 

 hatred to the king ; who answered, by reason 

 the king is the greatest enemie hee hath in the 

 world.' Such a eulogy, from such a quarter, 

 could not but pamper the conceit of ' the Scottish 

 Solomon.' 



In her confession, Agnes Sampson implicated 

 one Dr Fian, otherwise called John Cunningham, 

 master of the school at Saltpans in Lothian, a 

 man whose story may be noticed at some length, 

 as one of the most curious and instructive in the 

 whole annals of Scottish witchcraft. 



Mrs Sampson deposed that Dr Fian was always 

 a prominent person at the witch-meetings, and 

 Geillis Duncan, the marvellous trump-player, con- 

 firmed this assertion. Whether made through 



