Fox-possession and fox-familiars are common beliefs among the Japanese; women, weak men, and even children suffering from the idea of having been transformed into animals. They are cured by being made to snuff up smoke from a heap of burning refuse, or by drinking weak tea, or swallowing roasted leaves of a certain plant; all these things being detested by foxes, and incidentally no doubt useful in cases of ordinary hysteria. Foxes which take the form of men and women soon resume vulpine shape when fumigated, bathed, or attacked by dogs. Even in the present day, fox-possession has as great a hold on the imagination as in earlier centuries, but it is more widely ascribed to human sorcery. Certain sacred temples in Japan still attract crowds of pilgrims who believe that they are possessed by foxes and who come to these holy places to be cured. The bone of a tortoise's foot held in the left hand is prescribed as a talisman against this fearsome spell—probably also many other of the formulæ useful in cases of witchcraft would be found efficacious.

CHAPTER XII
WITCHES

Amongst the powers with which witches have been credited from time immemorial are those of transforming themselves into various kinds of animals, of transforming other people into animals and of sending forth so-called familiars in various animal shapes. Whether witches can change human beings into animals through sorcery is a question which has exercised the minds of hundreds of writers on demonology and witchcraft, amongst them, to mention a few at random, Bodin, Boguet, James I, Glanvill, Dr. Webster, Reginald Scott, his more famous namesake Sir Walter, and Charles Lamb. The last-named, in his essay on the subject, tells us that he was extremely inquisitive from his childhood about witches and witch-stories, and that it should cause no wonder if the wicked, having been symbolised by a goat, should come sometimes in that body and "assert his metaphor."[63]

In the Middle Ages witches who were condemned to the stake, confessed to having taken the shapes of cats, hares, dogs, horses, and many other animals, being prompted to such changes by the devil, with whom they were in league.

A witch trial took place at Lancaster on the 10th of February, 1633, in which a batch of witches was accused of such dealings.

Evidence was given by Edmund Robinson, son of Edmund Robinson, of Pendle forest, eleven years of age, at Padham, before Richard Shuttleworth and John Starkey, Justices of the Peace, "who upon oath informeth, being examined concerning the great meeting of the witches of Pendle, saith that upon All Saints-day last past, he, this informer being with one Henry Parker a near door-neighbour to him in Wheatley Cave, desired the said Parker to give him leave to gather some bulloes, which he did. In gathering whereof he saw two greyhounds, namely a black and a brown; one came running over the next field towards him, he verily thinking the one of them to be Mr. Nutter's and the other to be Mr. Robinson's, the said gentlemen then having suchlike. And saith the said greyhounds came to him, and fawned on him, they having about their necks either of them a collar, unto which was tied a string: which collars (as this informant affirmeth) did shine like gold. And he was thinking that some either of Mr. Nutter's or Mr. Robinson's family should have followed them, yet seeing nobody to follow them, he took the same greyhounds thinking to course with them. And presently a hare did rise very near before him. At the sight whereof he cried 'Loo, Loo, Loo,' but the dogs would not run. Whereupon he being very angry took them and with the strings that were about their collars, tied them to a little bush at the next hedge, and, with a switch that he had in his hand, he beat them. And instead of the black greyhound Dickenson's wife stood up, a neighbour whom this informer knoweth. And instead of the brown one a little boy whom this informant knoweth not. At which sight this informer being afraid, endeavoured to run away; and being stayed by the woman, namely Dickenson's wife, she put her hand into her pocket, and pulled forth a piece of silver much like to a fair shilling, and offered to give it him to hold his tongue and not tell: which he refused saying, 'Nay, thou art a witch.' Whereupon she put her hand into her pocket again, and pulled out a thing like unto a bridle that jingled, which she put on the little boy's head; which said boy stood up in the likeness of a white horse, and in the brown greyhound's stead. Then immediately Dickenson's wife took the informer before her upon the said horse and carried him to a new house called Hearthstones, being about a quarter of a mile off." Here the boy, Edmund Robinson, was witness to the extraordinary incidents of a feast of witches, all of which he recounted before the judges, and then his father, being called, gave evidence that he had sent his son to fetch home two kine, and as he did not return he went to seek him, finding him eventually "so affrighted and distracted that he neither knew his father, nor did he know where he was, and so continued very nearly a quarter of an hour before he came to himself, when he told the above curious happenings."[64]

The seventeen Pendle forest witches condemned in Lancashire obtained a reprieve and were sent to London, where they were examined by His Majesty himself and the Council.

A witch called Julian Cox, aged about seventy years, was indicted at Taunton, in Somerset, in 1663, for transforming herself into a hare and for other sorcery.