Robin: Yes, my master and mistress shall find that I can read, he for his forehead, she for her private study; she’s born to bear with me, or else my art fails.
Rafe: Why, Robin, what book is that?
Robin: What book! Why, the most intolerable book for conjuring that e’er was invented by any brimstone devil.
Rafe: Can’st thou conjure with it?
Robin: I can do all these things easily with it; first, I can make thee drunk with ippocras at any tavern in Europe for nothing; that’s one of my conjuring works.
Rafe: Our Master Parson says that’s nothing.
Robin: True, Rafe; and more, Rafe, if thou hast any mind to Nan Spit, our kitchenmaid, then turn her and wind her to thy own use as often as thou wilt, and at midnight.
Rafe: O brave Robin, shall I have Nan Spit, and to mine own use?
Frequently consulted on erotic difficulties were the ubiquitous witches who flourished in the Middle Ages throughout the European continent. In the literature of these middle centuries their amatory brews are used in a variety of passionate situations, to inspire love, to divert it into strange channels, and, sometimes, to crush it. On occasion the repulsive and abhorrent ingredients, both animal and human, are noted with a land of macabre relish. But the urgent suppliant, bent on his lustful self-appointed mission, rarely hesitated on that account. On the contrary, the rare or obscene nature of the brew was like an added spurt to his frantic libido: and the more distasteful the composition, the more intense the lustfulness that was so inspired.