When imps do * * *
We make them act unlucky feats;
In puppets' wax, sharp needles' points
We stick, to torture limbs and joints.
With frogs' and toads' most poys'nous gore
Our grizly limbs we 'noint all o'er,
And straight away, away we go,
Sparing no mortal, friend or foe.
We'll sell you winds, and ev'ry charm
Or venomous drug that may do harm;
For beasts or fowls we have our spells
Laid up in store in our dark cells;
For there the devils used to meet,
And dance with horns and cloven feet;
And when we've done, we frisk about,
And through the world play revel-rout.
We ride on cows' and horses' backs,
O'er lakes and rivers play nice knacks;
We grasp the moon and scale the sun,
And stop the planets as they run.
We kindle comets' whizzing flames,
And whistle for the winds by names;
And for our pastimes and mad freaks,
'Mongst stars we play at barley-breaks.[127]
We are ambassadors of state,
And know the mysteries of fate;
In Pluto's bosom there we ly,
To learn each mortal's destiny.
As oracles their fortunes show,
If they be born to wealth or wo,
The spinning Sisters' hands we guide,
And in all this we take a pride.
To Lapland, Finland, we do skice,
Sliding on seas and rocks of ice,
T' old beldames there, our sisters kind,
We do impart our hellish mind;
We take their seals and hands in blood
For ever to renounce all good.
And then, as they in dens do lurk,
We set the ugly jades a-work.
We know the treasures and the stores
Lock'd up in caves with brazen doors;
Gold and silver, sparkling stones,
We pile on heaps, like dead men's bones.
There the devils brood and hover,
Keep guards, that none should them discover;
Put upon all the coasts of hell,
'Tis we, 'tis we, stand sentinel.
SUPERSTITIOUS FEAR OF WITCHCRAFT.
During the sixteenth century whole districts in some parts of Lancashire seemed contaminated with the presence of witches; men and beasts were supposed to languish under their charm, and the delusion which preyed alike on the learned and the vulgar did not allow any family to suppose that they were beyond the reach of the witch's power. Was the family visited by sickness? It was believed to be the work of an invisible agency, which in secret wasted the image made in clay before the fire, or crumbled its various parts into dust. Did the cattle sicken and die? The witch and the wizard were the authors of the calamity. Did the yeast refuse to ferment, either in the bread or the beer? It was the consequence of a "bad wish." Did the butter refuse to come? The "familiar" was in the churn. Did the ship founder at sea? The gale or hurricane was blown by the lungless hag who had scarcely sufficient breath to cool her own pottage. Did the Ribble overflow its banks? The floods descended from the congregated sisterhood at Malkin tower. The blight of the season, which consigned the crops of the farmer to destruction, was the saliva of the enchantress, or distillations from the blear-eyed dame who flew by night over the field on mischief bent. To refuse an alms to a haggard mendicant, was to incur maledictions soon manifest in afflictions of body, mind, and estate, in loss of cattle and other property, of health, and sometimes even of life itself. To escape from evils like these no sacrifice was thought too great. Superstitions begat cruelty and injustice; the poor and the rich were equally interested in obtaining a deliverance; and the magistrate in his mansion, no less than the peasant in his cot, was deeply interested in abating the universal affliction. The Lancashire witches were principally fortune-tellers and conjurors. The alleged securities against witchcraft were numerous, the most popular being the horse-shoe; hence we see in Lancashire so many thresholds ornamented with this counter-charm. Under these circumstances the situation of the reputed witch was not more enviable than that of the individuals or families over whom she exerted her influence. Linked by a species of infernal compact to an imaginary imp, she was shunned as a common pest, or caressed only on the same principle which leads some Indian tribes to pay homage to the devil. The reputed witches themselves were frequently disowned by their families, feared and detested by their neighbours, and hunted by the dogs as pernicious monsters. When apprehended they were cast into ponds in the belief that witches swim; so that to sink or swim was almost equally perilous to them; they were punctured by bodkins to discover the witch imp or devil marks; they were subjected to hunger and kept in perpetual motion till confessions were obtained from a distracted mind. On their trials they were listened to with incredulity and horror, and consigned to the gallows with as little pity as the basest of malefactors. Their imaginary crimes created a thirst for their blood; and people of all stations, from the highest to the lowest, attended their trials at Lancaster with an intensity of interest that such mischievous persons, now divested of their sting, naturally excited. It has been said that witchcraft and kingcraft in England came in and went out with the Stuarts. This is not true. The doctrine of necromancy was in universal belief in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and there was not perhaps a man in Lancashire who doubted its existence. The belief in witchcraft and in demoniacal possession was confined to no particular sect or persuasion; the Roman Catholics, the members of the Church of England, the Presbyterians, Independents, and even the Methodists (though a sect of more recent standing) have all fallen into this delusion; and yet each denomination has upbraided the other with gross superstition, and not unfrequently with wilful fraud. It is due, however, to the ministers of the Established Church to say that they were among the first of our public writers to denounce the belief in witchcraft with all its attendant mischiefs; and the names of Dr. Harsnett, afterwards Archbishop of York, of Dr. John Webster (who detected Robinson, the Lancashire witch-hunter), of Zach. Taylor, one of the king's preachers for Lancashire, and of Dr. Hutchinson, the chaplain in ordinary to George I., are all entitled to the public gratitude for their efforts to explode these pernicious superstitions. For upwards of a century the sanguinary and superstitious laws of James I. disgraced the English statute-book; but in the ninth year of George II. (1735) a law was enacted repealing the statute of James I., and prohibiting any prosecution, suit, or proceeding against any person for witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration. In this way the doctrine of witchcraft, with all its attendant errors, was finally exploded, except among the most ignorant of the vulgar.[128]