[26] Wordsworth’s ‘Dion.’
[27] The prefixed characters which Ashmole interprets to mean Responsum Raphaelis seem remarkably to resemble that cabalistic-looking initial which in medical prescriptions is commonly interpreted “Recipe.”
[28] Dapper (Beschreibung von Amsterdam, p. 150) describes her as a melancholy or hypochondriac girl. She was burned however as usual. These rhyming or alliterative charms are of very remote antiquity. Cato, in his treatise on Husbandry, recommends the following formulary for a sprain or fracture: “Huat Hanat, Huat Ista, Pista Sista, Domiabo Damnaustra,” or “Motas Væta, Daries Dardaries, Astataries Dissunapiter.”
[29] This, indeed, is an almost invariable feature in the witch trials, and, if the subject could justify the discussion, might lead to some singular medical conclusions.
[30] The trade of a pricker, as it was called, i. e. a person who put pins into the flesh of a witch, was a regular one in Scotland and England, as well as on the Continent. Sir George Mackenzie mentions the case of one of them who confessed the imposture (p. 48); and a similar instance is mentioned by Spottiswood (p. 448). Sir Walter Scott gives the following account of this trade:—“One celebrated mode of detecting witches, and torturing them at the same time, to draw forth confession, was, by running pins into their body, on pretence of discovering the devil’s stigma, or mark, which was said to be inflicted by him upon all his vassals, and to be insensible to pain. This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was in Scotland reduced to a trade; and the young witch-finder was allowed to torture the accused party, as if in exercise of a lawful calling, although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatizes it as a horrid imposture. I observe in the Collections of Mr. Pitcairn, that, at the trial of Janet Peaston of Dalkeith, the magistrates and ministers of that market-town caused John Kincaid of Tranent, the common pricker, to exercise his craft upon her, ‘who found two marks of what he called the devil’s making, and which appeared indeed to be so, for she could not feel the pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did they (the marks) bleed when they were taken out again; and when she was asked where she thought the pins were put in, she pointed to a part of her body distant from the real place. They were pins of three inches in length.’ Besides the fact, that the persons of old people especially sometimes contain spots void of sensibility, there is also room to believe that the professed prickers used a pin, the point or lower part of which was, on being pressed down, sheathed in the upper, which was hollow for the purpose, and that which appeared to enter the body did not pierce it at all.”—Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 297.
[31] Peter died in prison just in time to escape the flames. He was burned in effigy however after his death.
[32] Lindon, cited by Wyttenbach, ‘Versuch einer Geschichte von Trier,’ vol. iii. p. 110.
[33] Beyträge zur Beförderung einer nähern Einsicht in das gesammte Geisterreich, vol. i. p. 284.
[34] The Abbé Fiard, one of the latest believers on record, has printed the Requête at full length in his ‘Lettres sur la Magie,’ p. 117 et seq.
[35] Even now a complaint of ‘being bewitched’ is occasionally made to Justices of the Peace by the very ignorant or the very malignant.