[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.”