By C. R. Straton, F.E.S. 



149 



Egyptian God Khons was sent in his ark to cure the little princess 

 Bentaresh of the evil movement in her limbs. "When he came the 

 demon said " Great god who chasest demons, I am thy slave, I will 

 go to the place whence I came." Then they made a sacrifice for 

 that spirit, and he went in peace, leaving the patient cured. Here 

 we have demoniacal possession as the disease, and exorcism with 

 sacrifice as the remedy. This story of the little Egyptian princess 

 suffering from St. Vitus' dance is older than the Odyssey, and it 

 gives a simple picture of primitive belief. There are spots on the 

 shores of the Atlantic where vestiges of early beliefs still linger. 

 In the Hebrides, the land of Ossian, on the West Coast of Ireland, 

 and in Brittany we find traces of these primitive ideas, stranded 

 where the westward tide of civilization has left them. Near the 

 western point of France is a bay called the Bay of Departed Souls. 

 As many a vessel, like the ill-fated Drummond Castle, is wrecked 

 on that coast it is often supposed that it takes its name from the 

 number of shipwrecks it sees ; but it is not so. The Baie des 

 Trepasses was the shore of the stream beyond which the sun sinks 

 into that unknown land we see in dreams, and it was from the 

 Bay of Souls that the spirit started on its journey. There is one 

 custom, too, which the Bretons still preserve of such touching 

 sweetness that I cannot forbear mentioning it. Before retiring to 

 rest on the festival of All Souls, the peasants in every homestead 

 make up the fire, unbolt the door, and leave the supper table spread, 

 ready for the spirits of those loved ones avIio will visit their homes 

 that night. 



Very different, however, from this lofty idea of spirits still 

 watching over and caring for the living are the later and coarser 

 notions of witchcraft. The belief in the Middle Ages was no 

 longer that a departed spirit was the agent, but that a living 

 person had entered into a compact with Satanas, the arch-fiend, 

 and was working by his power. There was the same tendency to 

 explain whatever they did not understand by a reference to ghostly 

 interference, but the demons were now sent by living people called 

 witches instead of by the spirit father. 



Certain passages in the Old Testament ordained that sorcerers 



