STORMS RAISED BY WITCHES, ETC. 355 



-Calypso, in the same work, is said to have been able to con- 

 trol the winds. 



The belief in human agency to influence the ocean was 

 prevalent in the fifteenth century. A curious confession was 

 made in Scotland about the year 1469, by one Agnes Samp- 

 son, a reputed sorceress, who avowed that " at the time His 

 Majesty (James YI.) was in Denmark, she took a cat and 

 christened it, and afterwards bound to each part of that cat 

 the chiefest parts of a dead man, and several joints of his 

 body ; and that in the night following, the said cat was con- 

 veyed into the midst of the sea, by herself and other 

 witches, sailing in their baskets, and so left the said cat right 

 before the town of Leith in Scotland. This done, there 

 arose such a tempest in the sea as a greater hath not been 

 seen, which tempest Avas the cause of the perishing of a 

 boat or vessel wherein were sundry jewels and rich gifts, 

 Avhicli should have been presented to the new Queen of 

 Scotland at Her Majesty's coming to Leith." 



Such was the language of a silly old woman, probably 

 extorted by torture from a Aveak imagination. 



King James, in his " Demonology," states " that witches 

 can raise stormes and tempestes in the aire, either on sea or 

 land," which was in answer to Reginald Scot, Avho in his 

 ** Discoverie of Witchcraft " ridiculed the " black art '' 

 severely, and he had the advantage of his royal master, the 

 "British Solomon," as he had been equivocally termed, in 

 this and many other statements. 



The Evil One was supposed to have a direct influence on 

 the winds and waves. 



Some sailors have a strange opinion of satanic power and 

 agency in stirring up winds, and that is the reason they so 

 seldom whistle on shipboard, esteeming it to be a mockery, 

 and consequentl}^ an enraging of the devil. 



We should scarcely expect that the mere turning of a 

 stone was supposed to have had an effect in procuring favor- 



