“‘To the House of William, my son,
Hie all the Wealth of Kilkenny town.’”
—(“History of Ireland,” London, 1639, vol. i. p. 102. The date of the above was about 1325.)
This story is quoted by Vallencey, “Collect. de Rebus Hibernicis,” Dublin, 1774, vol. ii. p. 369, and by Henry C. Lea, “History of the Inquisition,” New York, 1888, vol. iii. p. 457; it is originally to be found in Camden.
In the Island of Guernsey, within the present generation, “John Lane, of Anneville, Lane Parish,” has been tried on the charge of “having practised necromancy,” and “induced many persons in the country parishes to believe that they were bewitched,” and that he could drive away the devil and other bad spirits “by boiling herbs to produce a certain perfume not at all grateful to the olfactory nerves of demons, ... and the sprinkling of celestial water.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 66, article “Sorcerers.”)
In the valuable compilation of superstitious practices interdicted by Roman Catholic councils Thiers includes the persons who bathe their hands with urine in the morning to avert witchcraft or nullify its effect. He says, too, that Saint Lucy was reputed to be a witch, for which reason the Roman Judge, Paschasius, at her trial sprinkled her with urine.[83]
See the extract just quoted from “Mélusine.”
The Romans had a feast to the mother of all the gods, Berecinthia, in which the matrons took their idol and sprinkled it with their urine.[84]
Berecinthia was one of the names under which Cybele or Rhea, the primal earth goddess, was worshipped by the Romans and by many nations in the East. Her priests, the Galli, emasculated themselves in orgies whose frenzy was of the same general type as the Omophagi of the Greeks, previously described.
The emasculation of the priests of Cybele was performed with a piece of Samian pottery.—(See footnote to Rev. Lewis Evans’ translation of the Satires of Lucilius, lib. vii., edition of New York, 1860.)