WITCHCRAFT. 



nearly a paraphraM of Ovid'* 



. . . . suauUcrsque eereafUit, 

 lit ml rum traue* HI jecur argct cu." 



, vl. 



JOOMD in his note* refer* for tbi practice to so old n example a 

 the epistle of liypsipyle to Juun, from which the above it taken ; he 

 probably had the psssage in hi* eye. He refer* alo to wht he call* 

 the well-known ttury " of King Uuttui, one of the imaginary king* of 

 Scotland, tlia legend of wbo*e sufferings i* M old u the day* of Wyn- 

 tuun, by whom it u metitiom-.l, but would be searched for in vain 

 amonj tho-- (till older annalists who had not the mean* of ornament- 

 ing their writing* with some of the wisdom of the ancient*. Joaoon 

 *ay< be remember* *ume *uch figure* having been dug up in a dung- 

 hill in hU youth The *tory of Hiilingbruke and the witch of Kyr in 

 Fabyan's ' Chronicle,' illustrate* thi* practice. In MiiMlet >n' ' Witch,' 

 Hecate *ay*, " I* the heart of wax stuck full of magic needle* f " King 

 James, in hi* ' Demonologie,' hug a very full examination of the opera- 

 tion of thi* charm ; and utar receiving no high a sanction, it of course 

 cut* a conspicuous figure in the subsequent witch trial* both of Eng- 

 land and Scotland. In the latter country it became united with a 

 belief in the unearthly origin of the numerous small flint arrowheads 

 of ancient workmanship, conspicuous for the regularity and beauty ef 

 their shape, which are frequently dug up in the north of Scotland. 

 The witches of Auldearne, whoe feat* are recorded in I'itcairn's 

 ' Criminal Trials,' described a cavern in the centre of a hill where the 

 arch fiend and hi* attendant imps conducted a complete manufactory 

 of these missiles ; the interior spirit* hewing them out of the rough 

 stone and their master giving each u it was presented to him in a rough 

 state the proper edge and finish, to adapt it for service. 



Those object* which, from their connection with death and decay, 

 are apt to produce loathing and horror in the minds of persons whom 

 habit has not made familiar with them, are favourite instrument)) in the 

 hands of witches, to whom their use seems to have descended from the 

 necromancers. There are few narratives of witchcraft or sorcery, from 

 Apnleius downwards, which do not present us with some of the spoils 

 of the charnel-house. Animals loathsome to the sight from th"ir 

 .structure being associated with notions of deformity, or from the 

 venom with which their otherwise feeble frames are endowed, are 

 naturally made use of by those who among the ignorant aim at-the 

 possession of supernatural powers. In this respect the medicine-man 

 of the Indians, called on to try his charms when the traditionary usages 

 of the tribe in the application of simples have failed, uses many of the 

 game tools as the witch of the loth and l7th centuries. In warm 

 climates the serpent, the scorpion, and the lizard are among the charms 

 resorted to ; but in colder latitudes the adept must be contented with 

 the toad, the frog, the mole, and the bat. 



Cats are animals which hold out many inducement* to the imagina- 

 tive and superstitious. They bring to a certain extent the habits of a 

 wild beast into the domestic circle. The contrast between their 

 strength and agility, their gentle and fragile appearance, their tenacity 

 of hie, their silent and rapid movements their mysterious gatherings 

 at night and strange cries, invest their presence with a fascinating 

 mystery. The tombs of Egypt and the history of the KnightD Tem- 

 plar* show that they have received attention in other quarters ; but 

 the very peculiar position whi li they hold in the councils of the 

 powers of darkness, in connection with the ministrations of witches, 

 shows by it* uniformity that the opinions regarding them entertained 

 by the authorities on witchcraft lore were widely adopted by the 

 l.iithtiil. In several of the Scottish trials and confessions women are 

 found to have assumed the shape of cats, and to have betrayed their 

 pranks by exhibiting when rrxtored to human form the wounds in- 

 flictrd on them in their bestial capacity. At so late a period as the 

 year 17i8 a solemn judicial inquiry was mode in the shire of Caithness, 

 by the sheriff or local judge, into the )>er*ecutions suffered by William 

 Montgomery, whose life was rendered miserable by the gambols of a 

 legion of cat*. The narrative of the circumstance, as given in Mr. 

 Kirkpatrick Sharp's introduction to Law's ' Memorials.' is a lively and 

 somewhat exaggerated picture of those general tumultuous gatherings 

 of domestic cats which sometimes so unaccountably disturb the repose 

 of a neighbourhood. The animals, it was solemnly maintained by the 

 persecuted man's servant, " spoke among themselves;" and at length 

 Montgomery, his patience being entirely exhausted, fell upon the con- 

 cUve with a broadsword and an axe, and dispersed them with several 

 casualties. The consequence was, that two old women in the neigh- 

 bourhood died immediately, and a third lost a leg, which having been 

 broken by a stroke of the hatchet, withered and dropped otf. In a 

 curious little book published at Leyden in 1056, called ' Magica de 

 S|Hjctri et Apparitionibus Spirituum,' ftc., which is a complete repo- 

 -it'.ry of diabolical experience, consisting of a series of narratives ex- 

 tracted without comment from historical chronicle* and books of 

 magic, an occurrence U laid to have taken place at a town in Calabria, 

 so exactly like the above, that where** Mr. Montgomery was a car- 

 penter by profession, the hero of the foreign adventure was in the act 

 of cutting wood when he was distracted by the presence of a turbulent 

 bevy of caU, whom be dispersed with his implements. In this case 

 the metamorphosis was made known by a charge being brought against 

 the individual of having assaulted and wounded some women of rank 



in the neighbourhood, when he disclosed the fashion in which they had 

 appeared, and the atfkir was hushed up. A belief in the mcUmor- 

 phoee* of human being* into brute* i* a *uperstition *o widely exem- 

 plified in classical literature, and in the sculpture and painting* of all 

 societies of men sufficiently civilised to provide nicb testimonies of 

 their cu*tom* and belief, that it cannot be assigned a* a special feature 

 of the belief in witchcraft. The minutenes*, however, of the analogy 

 exhibited in the above, and discoverable in many like cases, seems to 

 those who do not believe in the actual metamorphosis to leave no other 

 alternative but the belief, that the doctrine* promulgated in one part 

 of the world were in all their minute particulars adopted in an 

 Lycanthmpie, or the conversion of men into wolves, was so prevalent a 

 belief in France and Germany as to be the subject of separate treatise* 

 and of various judicial inquiries. It naturally did not ext 

 Britain. This superstition may be perhaps more distinctly traced to 

 the influence of a diseased imagination than most of the others con- 

 nected with this subject : by the Ureek physicians it is understood to 

 have been treated a* a diaease. Both the English and Scottish trials 

 frequently illustrate the power supposed to be possessed by those in 

 league with Satan of converting their victims into beasts of burden, 

 which they employ to convey them to the scenes of their unhallowed 

 assemblies. This feat was performed on a large scale by the great 

 army of witches charged with assembling at Blocula in Sweden, in 

 1669, according to the narrative of (tlanvil, in his ' Saduci-mti 

 Triumphatus.' 



A power over the elements is one of those gift* with which super- 

 stition will be most likely to invest its invisible agents. In its leal 

 striking form it has the aspect of a malign interference with the 

 natural fruits of the earth, either by blasting some particular district, 

 or transferring its elements of fruitfulness that they may increase the 

 produce of some other tract in which the sorcerer is interested. I'his 

 species of incantation is prohibited by the Twelve Tables (l)irksen, 

 ' Uebersicht, 4c. der Zwolf-Tafel-Frogmente'). and the illustrations of 

 it in the witch trials are too numerous to be mentioned. A trading or 

 maritime population living on a stormy coast will endow their malig- 

 nant demons with a more awful authority over the winds and wave*. 

 Olaiu Magntu treats largely of the storm-raising powers of the Scan- 

 dinavian witches. It wa< on his return from these regions with his 

 wife Anne of Denmark, that King James produced so goodly an array of 

 accusations against witches for aiming against his life; and coming 

 from a spot where such a particular department of witch superstition 

 was prevalent, it is natural that the aspect assumed by the accusations 

 should be an attempt to create a storm at sea for the purpose of 

 intercepting his voyage. In the accusations against the witches of 

 Aberdeen in 1596 and 1597, the record of which is printed by the 

 SpalHing Club, the exercise of a power over the elements is one of the 

 charges. In the curious narrative as to Margaret Barclay and others, 

 preserved by Sir Walter Scott in his Demonology,' we find the same 

 feature. This specific superstition does not seem to have taken i 

 England, and 8hakspere, whose witchery in ' Macbeth ' is essentially 

 Scottish in character, has given it a place there : 



" Thouith you untie the iml and lot them fight 

 Agaiiut tbe churches ; though the yesty wares 

 Coufound and swallow navigation up." 



It is a remarkable circumstance that nowhere are the identities 

 between the opinions promulgated in doctrinal works and the practice 

 of witchcraft more fully developed than in the confessions of the 

 witches as produced in official documents. The horrible tortures, winch 

 the alarm produced by the supposed existence of a coalition ith Satan 

 seem* to have prompted men of ordinary humanity to sanction, appear 

 to have generally called from the exhausted victims an assent to wl 

 narrative was dictated to them, and the inquisitors being learned men, 

 acquainted with the best authorities on the subject, would know how 

 to connect the received doctrines of sorcery with whatever train of real 

 circumstances may have been brought home to the victim. Knowing, 

 in fact, the outline of natural events, they would be able to fill up thr 

 supernatural details. Margaret Barclay, tried in 1618, was, ace 

 to the record preserved by Sir Walter Scott, subjected to " 

 torture." Sir Walter calls this " a strange conjunction of wonls ; " 

 but it is not without precedent, ami we can imagine it taken lr n i 

 Biensfeldius, who tells us of a lady who, in 159U, at Cologne was sub- 

 jected to ' uiodurata tortura." The Incubus and the Succubus the 

 former the visitant of females, the latter of males are prominent in 

 the confessions, and open up a world of psycho-physiological inquiry. 

 These notabiUa ore enlarged upon in several of the Scottish trials. 

 Reference may be made to the appendix to Pitcairn's ' Criminal Trials/ 

 p. 610, and to a pamphlet called 'History of tli> \Vitrlni| K< mi, wshire.' 

 Iteginald Scot goes over the same subject, ami further curious i 

 will be found in Olauvil, ' Saducismus Triumphatus ;' Sprengur, ' Mal- 

 leus Maleficarum ;' and Delrio, ' Disqulaitione* Magica).' Tim. 

 doubt that some of the confessions were voluntarily made ; and that, 

 whether dictated by their own imagination or by their reading, the 

 self accusers did not speak on the suggestion of others. There are thus 

 two mingled element* hi these documents, the separation of which 

 would be necessary to and would materially aid a philosophical ex- 

 amination of the causes which have produced such singular effects : the 

 one would bring before us the physical and psychological causes from 



