"Penigent, Pendle Hill, and Ingleborough,
Three such hills be not in all England thorough."[133]
I long to climb up Pendle[134]: Pendle stands
Round cop, surveying all the wild moor lands,
And Malkin's Tower,[135] a little cottage, where
Report makes caitiff witches meet, to swear
Their homage to the devil, and contrive
The deaths of men and beasts. Let who will dive
Into this baneful search, I wonder much
If judges' sentence with belief on such
Doth pass: then sure, they would not for lewd gain
Bad clients favour, or put good to pain
Of long pursuit; for terror of the fiend
Or love of God, they would give causes end
With equal justice. Yet I do confess
Needs must strange fancies poor old wives possess,
Who in those desert, misty moors do live,
Hungry and cold, and scarce see priest to give
Them ghostly counsel. Churches far do stand
In laymen's hands, and chapels have no land
To cherish learned curates,[136] though Sir John
Do preach for four pounds unto Haslingden.
Such yearly rent, with right of begging corn,
Makes John a sharer in my Lady's horn:
He drinks and prays, and forty years this life
Leading at home, keeps children and a wife.[137]
These are the wonders of our careless days:
Small store serves him who for the people prays.
WITCHCRAFT ABOUT 1654.
Dr. Webster, in his Display of Witchcraft, dated February 23, 1673, mentions two cases somewhat vaguely, in the following terms:—"I myself have known two supposed witches to be put to death at Lancaster, within these eighteen years [i.e., between 1654 and 1673] that did utterly deny any league or covenant with the devil, or even to have seen any visible devil at all; and may not the confessions of those (who both died penitent) be as well credited as the confessions of those that were brought to such confessions by force, fraud, or cunning persuasion and allurement?"
A LIVERPOOL WITCH IN 1667.
In the MS. Rental of Sir Edward More (p. 62), dated in the year 1667, it is gravely recorded that one of his tenants residing in Castle-street, Liverpool, was a witch, descended from a witch, and inheriting the faculty of witchcraft in common with her maiden sister:—"Widow Bridge, a poor old woman, her own sister Margaret Ley, being arraigned for a witch, confessed she was one, and when she was asked how long she had so been, replied, since the death of her mother, who died thirty years agone, and at her decease she had nothing to leave her and this widow Bridge, that were sisters, but her two spirits, and named then the elder spirit to this widow, and the other spirit to her, the said Margaret Ley. God bless me and all mine from such legacies. Amen."[138]
THE WITCH OF SINGLETON.
The village of Singleton [in the Fylde] is remarkable only for having been the residence of "Mag Shelton," a famous witch in her day. Her food, we are told, was haggis (at that time commonly used in the district) made of boiled groats, mixed with thyme or parsley. Many are the wild tales related of her dealings in the black art. The cows of her neighbours were constantly milked by her; the pitcher in which she conveyed the stolen milk away, walking before her in the shape of a goose. Under this disguise her depredations were carried on till a neighbour, suspecting the trick, struck the seeming goose, and lo! immediately it was changed into a broken pitcher, and the vaccine liquor flowed. Once only was this witch foiled by a powerful spell, the contrivance of a maiden, who, having seated her in a chair, before a large fire, and stuck a bodkin, crossed with two weaver's healds, about her person, thus fixed her irremovably to her seat.[139]