[G 4 b]. "Romleyes Moore.">[ Romilly's or Rumbles Moor, a wild and mountainous range in Craven, not unaptly selected for a meeting on a special emergency of a conclave of witches.
[H 2 a 1]. "Was so insensible, weake, and vnable in all thinges, as he could neither speake, heare, or stand, but was holden vp.">[ Pitiable, truly, was the situation of this unhappy wretch. Brought out from the restraint of a long imprisonment, before and during which he had, as we may conjecture, been subjected to every inhumanity, in a state more dead than alive, into a court which must have looked like one living mass, with every eye lit up with horror, and curses, not loud but deep, muttered with harmonious concord from the mouths of every spectator.
[H 2 a 2]. "Anne Towneley, wife of Henrie Townely, of the Carre.">[ Would this be Anne, the daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Catterall, of Catterall and Little Mitton, Esq., who married Henry Townley, the son of Lawrence Townley? (See Whitaker's Whalley, p. 396.) The Townleys of Barnside and Carr were a branch of the Townleys, of Townley. Barnside, or Barnsete, is an ancient mansion in the township of Colne, which, Whitaker observes, was abandoned by the family, for the warmer situation of Carr, about the middle of the last century.
[H 2 a 3]. "Master Nowel humbly prayed Master Towneley might be called.">[ It is to be regretted we have no copy of the viva voce examination of Mr. Townley, the husband of the lady whose life was said to have been taken away by witchcraft. The examinations given in this tract are altogether those of persons in a humble rank of life. The contrast between their evidence and that of an individual occupying the position of the descendant of one of the oldest families in the neighbourhood, with considerable landed possessions, might have been amusing and instructive.
[H 2 a 4]. "Master Nowell humbly prayed, that the particular examinations taken before him and others might be openly published and read in court.">[ This kind of evidence, the witnesses being in court, and capable of being examined, would not be received at the present day. At that time a greater laxity prevailed.
[H 3 a]. "Sheare Thursday.">[ The Thursday before Easter, and so called, for that, in the old Fathers' days, the people would that day, "shave their hedes, and clypp their berdes, and pool their heedes, and so make them honest against Easter Day."—Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i., p. 83, edition 1841.
[K b 1]. "A Charme.">[ Sinclair, in his Satan's Invisible World Discovered, informs us, that "At night, in the time of popery, when folks went to bed, they believed the repetition of this following prayer was effectual to preserve them from danger, and the house too.
"Who sains the house the night,
They that sains it ilka night.
Saint Bryde and her brate,
Saint Colme and his hat,
Saint Michael and his spear,
Keep this house from the weir;
From running thief,
And burning thief;
And from and ill Rea,
That be the gate can gae;
And from an ill weight,
That be the gate can light
Nine reeds about the house;
Keep it all the night,
What is that, what I see
So red, so bright, beyond the sea?
'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands,
Through the feet, through the throat,
Through the tongue;
Through the liver and the lung.
Well is them that well may
Fast on Good-friday."
which lines are not unlike some of those in the present "charme," which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in poetical spirit.
[K b 2]. "Ligh in leath wand.">[ Leath is no doubt lithe, flexible. What "ligh in" is intended for, unless it be lykinge, which the Promptorium Parvulorum (vide part i. p. 304) explains by lusty, or craske, Delicativus, crassus, I am unable to conjecture. It is clear, that the wand in one hand is to steck, i.e. stake, or fasten, the latch of hell door, while the key in his other hand is to open heaven's lock.