Chapter I.

       Early History of Witchcraft in England

       Table of Contents

      To various conspicuous and easily intelligible causes the witch and the warlock, like the necromancer and the astrologer, owed their power with the multitude. First, there was the eager desire which humanity not unnaturally feels to tear aside the veil of Isis, and obtain some knowledge of that Other World which is hidden so completely from it. Next must be taken into account man’s greed for temporal advantages, his anxiety to direct the course of events to his personal benefit; and, lastly, his malice against his fellows. Thus we see that the influence enjoyed by the sorcerer and the magician had its origin in the unlawful passions of humanity, in whose history the pages that treat of witches and witchcraft are painful and humiliating reading.

      To define the limit between the special functions of the magician and the witch is somewhat difficult, more especially as the position of the witch gradually decreased in reputation and importance. There is a great gulf between the witch of Endor, or the witch of classical antiquity, or the witch of the Norse Sagas, or the witch of the Saxons, and the English or Scottish witch of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The former were surrounded with an atmosphere of dread and mystery; the latter was the creature of vulgar and commonplace traditions. In the early age of witchcraft, the witch, like the magician, summoned spirits from the vasty deep, discovered the hiding-places of concealed treasures, struck down men or beasts by her spells, or covered the heavens with clouds and let loose the winds of destruction and desolation. Both could blight the promise of the harvest, baffle the plans of their enemies, or wither the health of their victims. But while the magician was frequently a man of ability and learning, and belonged to the cultured classes, the witch was almost always a woman of the lower orders, ignorant and uneducated, though occasionally ladies of high rank, and even ecclesiastics, have been accused of practising witchcraft.

      While witchcraft was a power in the land, the witch, or warlock, was popularly supposed to be the direct instrument, and, indeed, the bond-slave, of the Evil One, fulfilling his behests in virtue of a compact, written in letters of blood, by which the witch made over her soul to the Infernal Power in return for the enjoyment of supernatural prerogatives for a fixed period. This treaty having been concluded, the witch received a mark on some part of the body, which was thenceforward insensible of pain—the stigma or devil’s mark, by which he might know his own again. A familiar imp or spirit was assigned to her, generally in the form of an animal, and more particularly in that of a black cat or dog. Round this general idea were gathered a number of horrible and unclean conceptions, on which, happily, it will not be necessary to enlarge. The devil, it was said, resorted to carnal communication with his servants, being denominated succubus when the favourite was a female, and incubus when a male was chosen. It was alleged, too, that on certain occasions the devil, with his familiars, and the great company of witches and warlocks whose souls he had bought, assembled in the dead of night in some remote and savage wilderness, to hold that frightful carnival of the Witches’ Sabbat which Goethe has depicted so powerfully in the second part of ‘Faust.’ The human imagination has not invented, I think, any scene more horrible, more degrading, or more bestial. We may suppose, however, that it was not conceived by any single mind, or even people, or in any single generation, but that it gradually took up additional details from different nations, at different times, until it was developed into the terrible whole presented by the mediæval writers.

      This wild and awful revel was called the Sabbat because it took place after midnight on Friday; that is, on the Jewish Sabbath—a curious illustration of the popular antipathy against the Jews.

      The spot where it was held never bloomed again with flower or herb; the burning feet of the demons blighted it for ever.

      Witch or warlock who failed to obey the summons of the master was lashed by devils with rods made of scorpions or serpents, in chastisement of his or her contumacy.

      The guests repaired thither, according to the belief entertained in France and England, upon broomsticks; but in Spain and Italy it was thought that the devil himself, in the shape of a goat, conveyed them on his back, which he contracted or elongated according to the number he carried. The witch, when starting on her aerial journey, would not quit her house by door or window; but astride on her broomstick made her exit by the chimney. During her absence, to prevent the suspicions of her neighbours from being aroused, an inferior demon assumed the semblance of her person, and lay in her bed, pretending to be ill or asleep.

      A curious story may here be introduced. In April, 1611, a Provençal curé, named Gaurifidi, was accused of sorcery before the Parliament of Aix. In the course of trial much was said in proof of the power of the demons. Several witnesses asserted that Gaurifidi, after rubbing himself with a magic oil, repaired to the Sabbat, and afterwards returned to his chamber down the chimney. One day, when this sort of thing was exciting the imagination of the judges, an extraordinary noise was heard in the chimney of the hall, terminating suddenly in the apparition of a tall black man, who shook his head vigorously. The judges, thinking the devil had come in person to the rescue of his servant, took to their heels, with the exception of one Thorm, the reporter, who was so hemmed in by his desk that he was unable to move. Terror-stricken at the sight before him, with his body all of a tremble, and his eyes starting from his head, he made repeated signs of the cross, until the supposed fiend was equally alarmed, since he could not understand the cause of the reporter’s evident perturbation. On recovering from his embarrassment he made himself known—he was a sweep, who had been operating on a chimney on the roof above, but, when ready to return, had mistaken the entrance, and thus unwillingly intruded himself into the chamber of the Parliament.

      The unclean ceremonies of the Witches’ Sabbat were ‘inaugurated’ by Satan, who, in his favourite assumption of a huge he-goat (a suggestion, no doubt, from Biblical imagery), with one face in front, and another between his haunches, took his place upon his throne. After all present had done homage by kissing him on the posterior face, he appointed a master of the ceremonies, and, attended by him, made a personal examination of any guest to ascertain if he or she bore the stigma, which indicated his right of ownership. Any who were found without it received the mark at once from the master of the ceremonies, while the devil bestowed on them a nickname. Thereafter all began to dance and sing with wild extravagance—

      ‘There is no rest to-night for anyone:

       When one dance ends another is begun’—

      until some neophyte arrived, and sought admission into the circle of the initiated. Silence prevailed while the newcomer went through the usual form of denying her salvation, spitting upon the Bible, kissing the devil, and swearing obedience to him in all things. The dancing then renewed its fury, and a hoarse chorus went up of—

      ‘Alegremos, alegremos,

       Que gente va tenemos!’

      When spent with the violent exercise, they sat down, and, like the witches in ‘Macbeth,’ related the evil things each had done since the last Sabbat, those who had not been sufficiently active being chastised by Satan himself until they were drenched in blood. A dance of toads was the next entertainment. They sprang up out of the earth by thousands, and danced on their hind-legs while Satan played on the bagpipes or the trumpet, after which they solicited the witches