196 SUPERSTITIOX AND WITCHCRAFT. 



properly insulated, the shock might have been given to a 

 whole circle of people." 



Possibly from this lively fiery sparkling tendency, combined 

 with its noiseless motion and stealthy habits, our ancestors 

 were led in the happily bygone superstitious days to regard the 

 unconscious animal as a "familiar" of Satan or some other 

 evil spirit, which generally appeared in the form of a black 

 cat ; hence witches were said to have a black cat as their 

 " familiar," or could at will change themselves into the form 

 of a black cat with eyes of fire. Shakespeare says, "the 

 cat with eyne of burning coal," and in Middleton's Witc/i^ 

 Act III., Hecate says : 



I will but 'noint, and then I'll mount. 

 (A Spirit like a cat descends. Voice above.) 



There's one come down to fetch his dues. 

 {Later on the Voice calls.) Hark ! hark ! the cat sings a brave treble in 



her own language. 

 {The7t Hecate.) Now I go, now I fly, 



Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I, etc. 



Note. — Almost the same words are sung in the music to Macbeth. 



" One of the frauds of witchcraft," says Timbs, " is the 

 witch pretending to transfcrm herself into a certain animal, 

 the favourite and most usual transformation being a cat; 

 hence cats were tormented by the ignorant vulgar." 



''^Ruiterkin was a famous cat, a cat who was 'cater'-cousin 

 to the great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great- 

 grandmother of Grimalkin, and first cat in the caterie of an 

 old woman who was tried for bewitching a daughter of the 

 Countess of Rutland in the beginning of the sixteenth century. 

 The monodis connects him with cats of great renown in the 

 annals of witchcraft, a science whereto they have been allied 

 as poor old women, one of whom, it appears, on the au- 

 thority of an old pamphlet entitled ' Newes from Scotland,' 

 etc., printed in the year 1591, 'confessed that she took a 

 cat and christened it, etc., and that in the night following, 

 the said cat was conveyed into the middest of the sea by all 

 these witches sayling in their Riddles, or Gives, and so left 

 the said cat right before the towne of Leith in Scotland. 



