Witch, Warlock, and Magician

36

See also Louis Figuier’s ‘L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes,’ a popular and agreeable survey; and the more erudite work of Professor Buhle.

37

This is sometimes ascribed to Joachim Fritz, but no one can doubt that virtually it is Fludd’s, who accompanied it with a defence of his general philosophical teaching, entitled ‘Sophiæ cum Moriâ Certamen.’ But whose was ‘the Wisdom,’ and whose ‘the Folly’?

38

Waite, ‘History of the Rosicrucians,’ p. 385.

39

Author of ‘A Defence of Judiciall Astrologie,’ printed at Cambridge in 1603.

40

So in Duclerq’s ‘Memoires’ (‘Collect. du Panthéon’), p. 141, we read of a case at Arras, in which the sorcerers were accused of using such an ointment: ‘D’ung oignement que le diable leur avoit baillé, ils oindoient une vergue de bois bien petite, et leurs palmes et leurs mains, puis mectoient celle virguelte entre leurs jambes, et tantost ils s’en volvient où ils voullvient estre, purdesseures bonnes villes, bois et cams; et les portoit le diable au lieu où ils debvoient faire leur assemblée.’

41

That is, of sacrificing to the Evil One, of meeting the demon Robert Artisson, and so on; though it is quite possible that strange unguents were made and administered to different persons, and that Dame Alice and her companions played at being sorcerers. Some of the so-called witches, as we shall see, encouraged the deception on account of the influence it gave them.

42

Thomas Pott’s ‘Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancashire’ (1615), reprinted by the Chetham Society, 1845.

43

Potts, ‘Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster’ (1613).

44

Pitcairn, ‘Criminal Trials,’ i. 49-58. This chapter is mainly founded on the reports in Pitcairn.

45

Pitcairn, ut ante, i. 192, 202, 285.

46

So the witch in ‘Macbeth’ (Act I., sc. 3) says:

‘In a sieve I’ll thither sail.’

47

It is a singular circumstance, as Pitcairn remarks, that in almost all the confessions of witches, or at least of the Scottish witches, their initiation, and many of their meetings, are said to have taken place within churches, churchyards, and consecrated ground; and a certain ritual, in imitation, or mockery, of the forms of the Church, is uniformly said to have been gone through.

48

In the Forfarshire reports, alluded to on p. 332 (#Page_332), the witches always speak of the devil’s body and kiss as deadly cold.

49

Pitcairn remarks, with justice, that the above details are, perhaps, in all respects the most extraordinary in the history of witchcraft of this or of any other country. Isabel Gowdie must have been a woman with a powerful and rank imagination, who, had she lived in the present day, might, perhaps, have produced a work of fiction of the school of Zola.

50

There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the bracketed words are conjectural.

51

There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the bracketed words are conjectural.

52

There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the bracketed words are conjectural.

53

There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the bracketed words are conjectural.

54

There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the bracketed words are conjectural.

55

There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the bracketed words are conjectural.

56

These, it is needless to say, were pure inventions, and by no means amusing ones.

57

From the ‘Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen,’ printed for the Spalding Club, 1841.

58

Some authorities doubt the authorship; but the internal evidence seems to me to justify the claim made for it as Defoe’s.