PC, 



WITCHCRAFT. 



WITCHCRAFT. 



970 



the character of the superstition had degenerated both in the magni- 

 tude of the objects accomplished and the rank of the actors, witchcraft 

 came to be considered a power exclusively possessed by old women. 

 It is probable that a propensity to attribute the faculty of divination 

 and the art of perpetrating supernatural mischief to females may have 

 legitimately descended from the Pythia of the more early classical 

 times, and the venefica or poisoner of the later periods of Roman 

 history ; and that the account of the witch of Endor may have tended 

 to strengthen the opinion. In the superstitions, however, of nations 

 which have had no means of acquiring knowledge from these sources 

 the African negroes, the North American Indians, and the Scandinavians 

 anterior to their adoption of Christianity females seem to have always 

 been the prominent agents in the application of the minor supernatural 

 influences. In the practice of witchcraft within the limits assigned to 

 it in this article, it might be possible to find, in the nature of the con- 

 nection between the supernatural being and the earthly agent, a 

 tolerably sufficient reason why the influence of a female must generally 

 be greater in the infernal court than that of a male. Whoever has 

 perused the full records of the trials for witchcraft, or the books in 

 which the subject is most minutely investigated, will observe how 

 necessarily it must follow that the power of evil being endowed with 

 the masculine gender, and communicating his sex to those spiritual 

 emanations of his power which sometimes in his stead do his bidding 

 upon earth, the mortal recipients of his malign influence must neces- 

 sarily be of a different sex. The institutional writers on the subject, 

 however, are not found to allude to such a cause, though they lay it 

 down as a general principle that women are more liable to be the agents of 

 Satan than men, a circumstance which Sprenger, in his ' Malleus Male- 

 ncarum,' traces to what he calls their inferiority in mental strength, 

 and the natural wickedness of their hearts. 



In going back to an earlier period than that which is here assigned 

 as the time when the superstition of witchcraft was full grown, it will 

 be found that the accusations most nearly resembling the more modern 

 offence of witchcraft are of two distinct kinds attempts to accomplish 

 ini.-chief through the operation of poison or other natural agents, and 

 lapses from Christianity into heathen practices. The Anglo-Saxon 

 laws against sorcery or witchcraft are simply levelled against the prac- 

 tice* connected with tlie heathen worship from which the people had 

 not been long converted. The corresponding accusations in the south 

 of Europe are levelled against intercourse with demons who represent 

 Diana and her nymphs, or Pan and his satyrs ; and down to the ancient 

 period of the belief in witchcraft we find the same personages officiating 

 with changed names, and with natures adjusted to the religious opinions 

 of the age. The secrecy with which the V\ aldenses and other early 

 scceders from the Church of Rome were compelled to hold their 

 religious assemblages, brought upon them charges of indulging in such 

 unhallowed rites as were traditionally considered the characteristics of 

 ancient heathenism. One remarkable practice of which the V\ aldenses 

 were accused will be recognised by every schoolboy who has heard a 

 witch legend in the nursery: they were called "scobaces," because 

 they rode to their meetings on a scoba, or broom. The ' Narrative of 

 the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted for Sorcery in 

 iyj4,' edited by Mr. Wright for the C'amden Society, and which is 

 perhaps still more curious from the light it throws on the early con- 

 flicts between the ecclesiastical and the civil power than in its reference 

 to this subject, exhibits both the classes of offence here alluded to. 

 She was charged with having prepared noxious compounds, productive 

 "f debilitation which ended in death, and also with abjuring her belief 

 in the Holy Church, with having deserted the mass and the eucharist, 

 with having sacrificed to demons, and with having attempted to usurp 

 the keys of the Church by impiously imitating the ceremony of 

 excommunication. 



During its earlier stages, the art of witchcraft was in far higher 

 ]ianl< than those to which it afterwards descended, and was used for 

 greater purposes. Witchcraft or sorcery was the means by which Joan 

 of Arc was charged with having obtained her power as a warrior. The 

 Duchess of Gloucester waa banished to the Isle of Man for sorcery 

 against Henry VI. Richard HI. made repeated accusations of this 

 "tFence, the most noted of which is the charge against Jane Shore. 

 The earlier witch trials in Scotland generally implicate persons of rank. 

 Sometimes the women who are accused are young, and they do not 

 always UK their power for mischievous and malicious purposes. Bessie 

 finnl'ip, who was tried in 157tf, appears to have used her art for no 

 other purpose than the cure of diseases and the performance of other 

 benevolent acts, accomplishing them through the instrumentality, not 

 of Satan or any of his emanations, as they are spoken of in the later 

 canon* of witchcraft, but through the aid of an amiable old gentleman, 

 who had the misfortune to be a prisoner among the fairies in Elfland. 

 Alesoun Pearson, tried in 1588, had a long intercourse with Elfland, 

 which appears to have commenced when she was but twelve years old. 

 She had many personal friends among the fairies there, one of whom 

 was her cousin William Symsoun, a doctor of medicine and " ane great 

 scholar." She was in the practice of appealing to her friends in fairy- 

 land for the means of curing earthly diseases, and Archbishop Adamson 

 ili>l not disdain to follow a prescription which she obtained for him, his 

 reliance on it being probably not weakened by his acquaintance with 

 the virtues of the principal ingredient, which was claret. These two 

 n fir exhibit the darker characteristics of the witchcraft of later 



times, that Bessie Dunlop's adviser from Elfland wished her to put her 

 soul in his possession ; and Alesoun Pearson was told that of the fairy 

 host the tithe is taken every year to hell. The method in which the 

 same occurrences are mentioned by writers of different ages shows the 

 progress towards the accepted doctrines of the authorities of witch- 

 craft ; and, as may be afterwards more particularly mentioned, both in 

 England and Scotland the investigations of King James did much to 

 establish a settled creed in relation to this dark subject. Wyutoun, 

 who wrote early in the 15th century, in describing the prophecies 

 made to Macbeth, brings the three weird or fatal sisters to him in a 

 dream, and makes him inquire after the auguries of his fate, as Croesus 

 is made to consult the Pythia. By the time the history had descended 

 to Shakspere's days, it had acquired from the state of opinion on the 

 subject which it passed through such adjuncts as enabled the poet, by 

 selecting the grander and more terrific features, and adding some ele- 

 ments from the current superstitions of his day, to create those hags 

 " so withered and so wild in their attire, that look not like the inha- 

 bitants o'th' earth, and yet are on't." Perhaps the latest conspicuous 

 occasion in which rank and beauty have been allied with charges of 

 the nature of witchcraft, is that of the Countess of Essex and Mrs. 

 Turner, in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury and the practices 

 against the Earl of Essex ; but the direct and palpable crimes exhibited 

 in this horrible history throw the attempts at evil through supernatural 

 influences into the shade. When in later ages it ceased to be encou- 

 raged by the great and the learned, witchcraft degenerated, till, in tho 

 end of the 1 7th and the beginning of the 1 8th centuries, it was entirely 

 confined to such persons as Harsnet, so early as the year 1 599, describes 

 in this passage : ' An old weather-beaten crone, having her chiu and 

 her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a staff, hollow- 

 eyed, untoothed, furrowed in her face, having her lips trembling with 

 the palsy, going mumbling in the streets, one that hath forgotten her 

 Pater-noster, and yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab. If 

 she hath learned of an old wife in a chimney end Pax Max Fax for a 

 spell ; or can say Sir John Grantham's curse on the miller's eels All 

 ye that have stolen the miller's eels, laudato Dominura de coclis ; and 

 all they that have consented thereto, benedicamus Domino : why then 

 beware, look about you, my neighbours. If any of you have a sheep 

 sick of the giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers, 

 or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young 

 drab of the sullens. and hath not fat enough for her porridge or butter 

 enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or 

 cramp, teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, 

 startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, &c., and then, if 

 an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her idle young housewife, 

 or bid the devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the 

 witch, and the young girl is owl-blasted." . 



There are two causes which account for the similarity often found 

 to exist in the superstitions of different and distant nations : 1. Phy- 

 sical and mental phenomena common to all mankind and to all parts 

 of the globe, producing like effects when brought into the same com- 

 binations; 2. A reference to a common origin anterior to the com- 

 mencement of the superstition, by which the same opinions adopted 

 by families of mankind separated far apart may be traced by ascent to 

 a common parentage. A great portion of the witchcraft superstition 

 of Europe may be traced to both these causes ; but at the same timo 

 the identity of the phenomena of this mental disease, as exhibited in 

 different nations, is so remarkable, as well as the rapidity with which 

 the opinions adopted in one part of the world travelled to others, that 

 it is evident some other causes have contributed to produce the effect. 

 The similarity of the incidents narrated, not only in the books which 

 convey the knowledge of these mysteries, but in the reports of criminal 

 trials, and even in the confessions of the wretched victims of the creed, 

 is so remarkable, down to the most minute particulars, as to justify 

 the supposition that a large proportion of the witchcraft superstition 

 was propagated by means of books or through the tuition of men of 

 letters ; and that thus, in that age of imperfect science, literature 

 became for a time the means of propagating and concentrating the 

 influence of one of the most baneful superstitions which has ever 

 visited the human mind. 



Among the most obvious means which the imagination would sug- 

 gest for indicating to supernatural powers the exact evil effect which 

 they are solicited to produce on mortal beings, would be the symbolical 

 accomplishment or exhibition of its performance on an efligy of the 

 person intended to be injured. The principles of human action which 

 originally suggested this device are so wide spread as to include the 

 deification of idols and the burning of an obnoxious politician in effigy ; 

 but in the practice of witchcraft, the method of symbolically producing 

 death or corporal injury is so far uniform as to predicate a systematic 

 opinion on the subject. An image of the devoted person was made of 

 wax and melted before a fire, stuck through with pins or needles, or 

 perforated with arrows. Sometimes the model was of the heart, or 

 some other vital part ; sometimes a picture was used in its stead. 

 Ben Jonson, whose ' Masque of Queens ' brings together all the pro- 

 minent witch superstitions to bo found in the classic authors, in the 

 commentators, and in the practice of his own days, says in the third 

 charm : 



" With pictures full of wax and of wool 

 Their livers I stirk with nceillca qnick :" 



