CHAPTER III. WITCHCRAFT, &c. "High in air, amid the rising storm -wrapt in midnight Her doubtful form appears and fades! Her spirits are abroad! they do her bidding!" "Macb,-How now you secret black and midnight hags? what is't you do ?” SNAKESPEARE. WHAT nation has not produced witches, warlocks, and like beings? even the most heathen and most refined have given birth to these delegates of the devil, and from the days of the first diviner, and originator of the Persian magi, Zoroaster, king of the Bactrians, down to the days of good king George III. of England, history informs us of the existence of these hags and wizards. The magici.. ans and cunning men mentioned in various parts of Scripture, were nothing more or less than wizards, and although no mention I believe is made of them until the reign of Saul, there probably were, before that period, ladies of the broomstick. Manasses and Balaam are stated to have dealt in sorcery and enchantments; Abraham was famed for magic, as Sir Walter Raleigh says, "Qui contemplatione creaturarum cognovit creatorum;" and Socrates, Agrippa, Cagliostro, Roger Bacon, Faustus, &c. are said to have possessed familiars, who inspired them with knowledge. Chaldæa, (where magic was first practised,) Arabia, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Rome, China, and India, have had their magicians, necromancers, wizards, oracles, Sian Szees, paw waws, &c. as well as Britain. Some suppose Witch to be derived from the Saxon word Wittich, implying wit, and Brand imagines it to be from witchelin, the neighing or whining of a horse, because Tacitus informs us the Germans divined from the neighing of their horses. It seems strange that wizards and witches are denoted to be ugly and hideous,* as we are inform "When the Devil for weighty dispatches, He pass'd by the beautiful faces, And pick'd out the ugly and old. But whoever has been his adviser, As his kingdom increases in growth, ed the Sybils of old were; Merlin, Nostradamus, Nixon, Mother Lakeland, and others: "To look like a witch" is a common saying in England, and if we may infer from the case of Mother Shipton, their business converts them into ugly creatures.— "Witches, that is the unsophisticated breed, are those who are supposed to give information of future events, raise departed spirits, and occasionally his serene lowness the devil, who can command any thing by their agency, give informatiou where any lost article is to be found, and at whose bidding people are bewitched, being possessed of an inward irresistible influence to dance and tumble about; old Mothers Shipton and Lakeland, of English memory, had great propensities to carry on these sort of jokes with those who did not please them. The ceremony of initiating these "oracles of human destiny" is very singular, and is given in the 12th vol. of the Mirror, p. 71. Beelzebub, Baal, Mooned Ashtaroth, Agares, Marbas, and He now takes his measures much wiser, Disguis'd in the wanton and witty, He haunts both the church and the court; And sometimes he visits the city, History of the Devik several other demons assuming the different titles of kings, dukes, marquisses, &c. were devoted exclusively to their service, and had each a legion of 6,666 devils at their beck! Reginald Scott in his work, book 15th, chap. 2, gives a list of these infernal forces, and a "full, true, and particular account" of the periods when they were to be invoked, with the prayers used, forms of adjuring, citing them, &c. It appears that these fiends were very obsequious to their commands, as we find from the story of the devil carrying a witch over the brook, and being compelled to build Crowland Abbey, because he had disturbed the workmen in laying the foundation; also the demon who constructed the ditch, called after him the Devil's Ditch, bordering upon Suffolk and Essex; and (as some say) a devil who brought the stones out of Wales to build Stonehenge. It was generally supposed that these witches, &c. sold their souls to the devil, signing the agreement with their own blood, and at the expiration of the lease, the latter was very punctual in his demand, taking them by force, house and all, if they were obstinate; as the cases of Dr. Faustus, the two men of Salisbury, and others, will demonstrate. In order to take voyages to the aerial regions, (in which voyages they outvied all our aeronauts,) they used dead bodies, which they seethed in a cauldron, and the ointment so produced, with some ceremonies best known to themselves, enabled them to stride the broom, and to be off dans un clin d'œil, to regions unkenn'd. To drive bad spirits away, they used fumigations, and it is well known that the Romans burnt sulphur to drive the evil ones; we have also an account in Tobit, of the flight of a demon, occasioned by the burnt liver of a fish; and among the methods used to raise the devil or his imps, were those of making a circle and dancing in it, pronouncing at the same time some mysterious words, and repeating the Lord's prayer backwards; casting figures; using a skull, or (as Lilly says) a beryl engraven with hieroglyphics.— Familiars were also indispensable appendages to witches, and were supposed to appear as dogs, cats, &c. some in human shapes, conversing with voices as if they were men, according to the confession of Mother Lakeland, who had three familiars attending her as two dogs and a mole; and we have accounts in Scripture of familiar spirits, both in the Old and New Testaments. And hated like a sickness-made a scorn Talk of familiars in the shape of mice, Witch of Edmonton. |