Witches and Conjurors.
From and before the days of King Saul, to the present moment, witches have held dreaded sway over the affairs of man. Cruel laws have been promulgated against them, they have been murdered by credulous and infuriated mobs,
they have lost their lives after legal trial, but still, witches have lived on through the dark days of ignorance, and even in these days of light and learning they have their votaries. There must be something in the human constitution peculiarly adapted to the exercise of witchcraft, or it could not have lived so long, nor could it have been so universal, as it undoubtedly is, unless men lent themselves willingly to its impositions.
It is curious to notice how good and enlightened men have clung to a belief in witchcraft. It is, consequently, not to be wondered at that the common people placed faith in witches and conjurors when their superiors in learning professed a like faith.
I have often spoken to intelligent men, who did not scruple to confess that they believed in witches and conjurors, and they adduced instances to prove that their faith had a foundation in fact.
Almost up to our days, the farmer who lost anything valuable consulted a conjuror, and vowed vengeance on the culprit if it were not restored by such and such a time, and invariably the stolen property was returned to its owner before the specified period had expired. As detectives, the conjurors, therefore, occupied a well-defined and useful place in rural morality, and witches, too, were indirectly teachers of charity, for no farm wife would refuse refreshments to the destitute lest vengeance should overtake her. In this way the deserving beggar obtained needed assistance from motives of self-preservation from benefactors whose fears made them charitable.
But, if these benefits were derived from a false faith, the evils attending that faith were nevertheless most disastrous to the community at large, and many inhuman Acts were passed in various reigns to eradicate witchcraft. From the
wording of these Acts it will be seen what witches were credited with doing.
An Act passed 33 Henry VIII. adjudged all witchcraft and sorcery to be felony. A like Act was passed 1 James, c.12, and also in the reign of Philip and Mary. The following is an extract:—
“All persons who shall practise invocation, or conjuration, of wicked spirits, any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed, or destroyed, shall, with their aiders, and abettors, be accounted felons, without benefit of clergy; and all persons practising any witchcraft, etc., whereby any person shall happen to be wasted, consumed, or lamed in his or her body, or members, or whereby any goods, or chattels, shall be destroyed, wasted, or impaired, shall, with their counsellors, and aiders, suffer for the first offence one year’s imprisonment and the pillory, and for the second the punishment of felony without the clergy.” . . . “If any person shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or wicked spirit, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave; or, the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person to be employed in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, etc., he shall suffer death as a felon, without benefit of clergy.”
The law of James I. was repealed in George II.’s. reign, but even then persons pretending to use witchcraft, tell fortunes, or discover stolen goods, by skill in the occult sciences, were to be punished by a year’s imprisonment; and by an Act, 5 George IV., c.83, any person or persons using any subtle art, means, or device, by palmistry, or otherwise, to deceive his Majesty’s subjects, were to be deemed rogues and vagabonds, and to be punished with imprisonment and hard labour.
Acts of Parliament did not succeed in eradicating witchcraft. Its power has waned, but it still exercises an influence, shadowy though it be, on certain minds, though in its grosser forms it has disappeared.
Formerly, ailments of all kinds, and misfortunes of every description, were ascribed to the malignant influence of some old decrepit female, and it was believed that nature’s laws could be changed by these witches, that they could at will produce tempests to destroy the produce of the earth, and strike with sickness those who had incurred their displeasure. Thus Lady Macbeth, speaking of these hags, says:—
“I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further they made themselves air, into which they vanished.”
Macbeth, Act. i, S. 5.
The uncanny knowledge possessed by witches was used, it was thought, to injure people, and their malice towards good, hard-working, honest folk was unmistakable. They afflicted children from sheer love of cruelty, and bewitched animals gratuitously, or for slights which they supposed their owners had shown towards them; consequently their knowledge was considered to be greatly inimical to others, and particularly baneful to the industrious, whom witches hated.
There was hardly a district that had not its witches. Children ran away when they saw approaching them an aged woman, with a red shawl on, for they believed she was a witch, who could, with her evil eye, injure them. It was, however, believed that the machinations of witches could be counteracted in various ways, and by and by some of these charms shall be given. Life would have been intolerable but for these antidotes to witchcraft.
Shakespeare’s knowledge of Welsh Folk-lore was extensive and peculiarly faithful, and what he says of witches in general agrees with the popular opinion respecting them in Wales. I cannot do better than quote from this great Folk-lorist a few things that he tells us about witches.
Mention has been made of witches taking dead bodies out of their graves to make use of them in their enchantments, and Shakespeare, in his description of the witches’ cauldron, shows that they threw into the seething pot many portions of human beings. The first witch in Macbeth says:—
Round about the cauldron go,
In the poisoned entrails throw.
The third witch mentions other things that are thrown into the pot, as:—
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab.Macbeth, A. IV., S. 1.
It was thought that witches could change themselves, and other people, into the form of animals. In Wales, the cat and the hare were the favourite animals into which witches transformed themselves, but they did not necessarily confine themselves to these animals. They were able to travel in the air on a broom-stick; make children ill; give maids the nightmare; curse with madness, animals; bring misfortune on families; hinder the dairy maid from making
butter; and many more imaginary things were placed to their credit.
The personal appearance of witches, as given by Shakespeare, corresponds exactly with the Welsh idea of these hags. On this subject the poet writes:—
What are these
So wither’d and so wild in their attire
That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,
And yet are on’t?—Live you? Or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her chappy fingers laying
Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.Macbeth, Act I., S. 3.
A striking and pathetic portrait of a witch, taken from Otway’s Orphan, Act. II., is given in No. 117 of the Spectator. It is so true to life and apposite to our subject that I will quote it:—
In a close lane, as I pursu’d my journey,
I spy’d a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself.
Her eyes with scalding-rheum were gall’d, and red,
Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed wither’d,
And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt
The tatter’d remnant of an old striped hanging,
Which served to keep her carcass from the cold;
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o’er coarsely patched,
With different colour’d rags, black, red, white, yellow.
And seem’d to speak variety of wretchedness.
A picture such as this is enough to create sympathy and charity in a selfish heart, but in those dark days, when faith in witchcraft prevailed, such a poor old decrepit woman inspired awe, and was shunned as a malicious evil-doer by all her neighbours.
Llanddona Witches.
There is a tradition in the parish of Llanddona, Anglesey, that these witches, with their husbands, had been expelled from their native country, wherever that was, for practising witchcraft. They were sent adrift, it is said, in a boat, without rudder or oars, and left in this state to the mercy of the wind and the wave. When they were first discovered approaching the Anglesey shore, the Welsh tried to drive them back into the sea, and even after they had landed they were confined to the beach. The strangers, dead almost from thirst and hunger, commanded a spring of pure water to burst forth on the sands. This well remains to our days. This miracle decided their fate. The strangers were allowed, consequently, to land, but as they still practised their evil arts the parish became associated with their name, and hence the Witches of Llanddona was a term generally applied to the female portion of that parish, though in reality it belonged to one family only within its boundaries.
The men lived by smuggling and the women by begging and cursing. It was impossible to overcome these daring smugglers, for in their neckerchief was a fly, which, the moment the knot of their cravats was undone, flew right at the eye of their opponents and blinded them, but before this last remedy was resorted to the men fought like lions, and only when their strength failed them did they release their familiar spirit, the fly, to strike with blindness the defenders of the law.
The above-mentioned tradition of the coming of these witches to Anglesey is still current in the parish of Llanddona, which is situated on the north coast of Anglesey.
It was thought that the witching power belonged to families, and descended from mothers to daughters. This was supposed to be the case with the witches of Llanddona.
This family obtained a bad report throughout the island. The women, with dishevelled hair and bared breasts, visited farm houses and requested charity, more as a right than a favour, and no one dared refuse them. Llanddona Witches is a name that is not likely soon to die. Taking advantage of the credulity of the people, they cursed those whom they disliked, and many were the endeavours to counteract their maledictions. The following is one of their curses, uttered at Y Ffynon Ocr, a well in the parish of Llanddona, upon a man who had offended one of these witches:—
Crwydro y byddo am oesoedd lawer;
Ac yn mhob cam, camfa;
Yn mhob camfa, codwm;
Yn mhob codwm, tori asgwrn;
Nid yr asgwrn mwyaf na’r lleiaf,
Ond asgwrn chwil corn ei wddw bob tro.
The English is as follows, but the alliteration and rhythm of the Welsh do not appear in the translation:—
May he wander for ages many;
And at every step, a stile;
At every stile, a fall;
At every fall, a broken bone;
Not the largest, nor the least bone,
But the chief neck bone, every time.
This curse seemed to be a common imprecation, possibly belonging to that family. Such was the terror of the Llanddona Witches that if any of them made a bid for a pig or anything else, in fair or market, no one else dared bid against them, for it was believed they would witch the animal thus bought. There were also celebrated witches at Denbigh. Bella Fawr (Big Bella) was one of the last and most famous of her tribe in that town, and many other places were credited with possessing persons endowed with witching powers, as well as those who could break spells.
The following tales of the doings of witches will throw light upon the matter under consideration.