The True Story vs. Myth of Witchcraft. William Godwin
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Satan is a mere third-rate spirit, as they will find by consulting a list of the Infernal Privy Council for 1669, contained in Faust’s ‘Black Raven.’ But we are not told the exact date of his deposition from his primacy. It is singular that both in the book of Job, where he is mentioned for the first time, and in the Scandinavian mythologers, he appears in a similar character—“The Ranger,” or “Roving Spirit of Tartarus.” See Whiter, Etymologicon, vol. iii., in which very learned, though now forgotten work, there is much diabolical erudition.
5. Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren. Yet, like Cato the Censor, Lucifer may have taken to study late in life.
6. Lotichius, Oratorio super fatalibus hoc tempore Academiarum periculis: 1631. Lotichius took the trouble to compose a Latin poem on the subject of his triumphal entry. A book entitled ‘Mammon’ had some reputation in its day. The acknowledged author’s name indeed is Harris; yet some commentator of the year 2150 will perhaps suggest that it was ‘Old Harry’s Mammon.’ We have seen worse “conjectural emendations.”
7. Colloquia Mensalia.
8. Legenda Aurea Jacob. de Voragine, leg. 123.
9. Ibid. leg. 21.
10. Or even a bishop. See Southey’s pithy and profitable tale of ‘Eleemon, or a Sinner Saved.’
11. In the case of St. Lydvina, when he pleaded his case in person, and thought it a clear one, he was fairly laughed out of court, “deriso explosoque Dæmone.” (Brugmann, Vita Lydvinæ, p. 290.) He was hoaxed in a still more ingenious manner by Nostradamus, who having agreed that the devil should have him, if he was buried either in the church or out of it, left directions that he should be buried in a hole in the wall. Sometimes however he was the gainer in such equivocal compacts,—as, for example, in the case of the monk who was to live so long as he abstained from sleeping between sheets. The monk always slept in a chair; but in an unlucky hour Satan caught him as fast as a top with his head between the sheets of a sermon, and claimed his bond.
12. Inferno, canto vi.
13. The trials at Arras, in 1459. Vide Monstrelet’s Chronicle, vol. iii. p. 84: Paris, 1572. But these were rather religious prosecutions against supposed heretics, and the crime of witchcraft only introduced as aggravating their offences.
14. Christoph von Ranzow, a nobleman of Holstein, burned eighteen at once on one of his estates.
15. Some of our readers may wish to see a specimen of this precious production. We shall take a stanza or two, descriptive of the joke of which the poor witch was the victim.
Ein Hexen hat man gefangen, zu Zeit die war sehr reich
Mit der man lang umbgaben ehe sie bekannte gleich,
Dann sie blieb darauf beständig es gescheh ihr Unrecht gross,
Bis man ihr macht nothwendig diesen artlichen Poss(!), Das ich mich drüber wunder; man schickt ein Henkersknecht Zu ihr ins Gefängniss ’nunter, den man hat kleidet recht Mit einer Bärnhaute als wenns der Teufel wär; Als ihm die Drut anschaute meynts ihr Buhl kam daher. Sie sprach zu ihm behende, wie lestu mich so lang In der Obrigkeit Hände? Hilf mir aus ihren Zwang, Wie du mir hast verheissen, ich bin ja eben dein; Thu mich aus der Angst entreissen, o liebster Bule mein! Sie thet sich selbst verrathen, und gab Anzeigung viel Sie hat nit geschmeckt den Braten, was das war für ein Spiel(!). Er tröstet sie und saget, ich will dir helfen wohl; Darum sey unverzaget, Morgens geschehen soll.
It bears the colophon “Printed at Smalcald in the year 1627.”
16. When these horrors were thus versified, it is not wonderful to find them “improved” by the preachers of the time. At Riga, in 1626, there appeared ‘Nine Select Witch Sermons, by Hermann Sampsonius, superintendent at Riga,’ and many others in the course of that century.
17. Criminal Law. Tit. x.
18. Records of Justiciary. Trial of the Master of Orkney.
19. Calef’s Journal.
20. Cobbett’s State Trials.
21. Trial of Bartie Paterson. Records of Scottish Justiciary. Dec. 18, 1607.
22. In Wenham’s case, Mr. Chauncy deposed that a cat belonging to Jane Wenham had come and knocked at his door at night, and that he had killed it. This was founded on evidence at the trial.
23. Rec. of Just. 1613, Dec. 1.
24. See the ‘Neue Necrologie der Deutschen, 1823,’ for an account of these remarkable appearances.
25. Divina et Vera Metaphysica.
26. Wordsworth’s ‘Dion.’
27. The prefixed characters which Ashmole interprets to mean Responsum Raphaelis seem remarkably to resemble that cabalistic-looking initial which in medical prescriptions is commonly interpreted “Recipe.”
28. Dapper (Beschreibung von Amsterdam, p. 150) describes her as a melancholy or hypochondriac girl. She was burned however as usual. These rhyming or alliterative charms are of very remote antiquity. Cato, in his treatise on Husbandry, recommends the following formulary for a sprain or fracture: “Huat Hanat, Huat Ista, Pista Sista, Domiabo Damnaustra,” or “Motas Væta, Daries Dardaries, Astataries Dissunapiter.”
29. This, indeed, is an almost invariable feature in the witch trials, and, if the subject could justify the discussion, might lead to some singular medical conclusions.
30. The trade of a pricker, as it was called, i. e. a person who put pins into the flesh of a witch, was a regular one in Scotland and England, as well as on the Continent. Sir George Mackenzie mentions the case of one of them who confessed the imposture (p. 48); and a similar instance is mentioned by Spottiswood (p. 448). Sir Walter Scott gives the following account of this trade:—“One celebrated mode of detecting witches, and torturing them