Modo he’s called, and Mahu.[17]
But the reader will remark how her vision anticipates that of Faust, the transformation of the poodle to finely-dressed Mephistopheles. On the next apparition a bit from Patmos is interpolated, the Devil appearing as a beast with many horns; but the folklore of Yorkshire prevails, and ‘presently he was like a very little dog, and desired her to open her mouth and let him come into her body, and then he would rule all the world.’ Lastly, he ‘filled the room with fire.’
In the account thus far we have the following items of ancient mythology:—1, the Cat; 2, the Dog; 3, the Pride of Life (Asmodeus), represented in the fine dress and manners of the fiend; 4, the Prince of this World, offering its throne; 5, the Egyptian belief in potency of the Name; 6, the Hunger-Demon, who dares not be felt, because his back is hollow, and, though himself a shadow, casts none; 7, the disembodied devil of the rabbins, who seeks to enter a human form, in order to enjoy the higher powers of which man is capable; 8, the fiend of fire.
The period in which Helen Fairfax lived supplied forms for the ‘materialisation’ of these notions flitting from the ancient cemeteries of theology. The gay and gallant Asmodeus had been transformed into a goat under the ascetic eye of Europe; his mistress is a naked witch; her familiar and slave is a cat. This is the conventionalised theologic theory, as we find it in many examples, one of which is here shown ([Fig. 21]), as copied from a stone panel at the entrance of Lyons Cathedral. This is what Helen’s visions end in. She and her younger sister of seven years, and a young neighbour, a girl of twelve, who have become infected with Helen’s hysterics, identify six poor women as witches, and Edward Fairfax would have secured their execution had it not been for the clergyman Smithson.
Fig. 21.—A Witch (Lyons Cathedral).
Cats played a large part in this as in other witch-trials. They had long been regarded as an insurance of humble households. In many regions still may be found beliefs that a three-coloured cat protects against fire; a black cat cures epilepsy, protects gardens; and in Bohemia a cat is the favourite bridal gift to procure a happy wedded life. One who kills a cat has no luck for seven years. The Yorkshire women called witches remembered these proverbs to their cost. Among the cats regarded by the Fairfaxes as familiars of the accused, some names are notable. One is called ‘Gibbe.’ This is the Icelandic gabba, to ‘delude,’ and our gibber; it is the ‘Gib’ cat of Reinicke Fuchs, and of the ‘Romaunt of the Rose.’ In ‘Gammer Gurton’ we read, ‘Hath no man gelded Gyb, her cat;’ and in Henry IV. i. 2, ‘I am as melancholy as a gib cat.’ Another of the cats is called Inges. That is, ignis, fire—Agni maintaining his reign of terror.
Helen’s devil hates the dissenter, and says, ‘Cook is a lying villain,’ because Cook exorcises him with a psalm. On the other hand, the devil praises the clergyman, but Helen breaks out with ‘He is not worthy to be a vicar who will bear with witches.’ Amid the religious controversies then exciting all households, mourning for his dead child, humiliated by the suspicions of his best neighbours that his daughter was guilty of deception, Edward Fairfax, Gentleman, a scholar and author, lent an ear to the vulgar superstitions of his neighbourhood. Could he have stood on the shoulders of Grimm, he would have left us a very different narrative than that preserved by the Philobiblion Society.[18]
It is hardly possible to determine now the value of the alleged confessions of witches. They were extorted by torture or by promises of clemency (the latter rarely fulfilled); they were shaped by cross-examiners rather than by their victims; and their worth is still more impaired where, as is usual, they are not given in detail, but recorded in ‘substance,’ the phraseology in such case reflecting the priest’s preconceived theory of witches and their orgies. It is to be feared, for instance, that ‘devil’ is often written instead of some name that might now be interesting. Nevertheless, there seems to be ground for believing that in many cases there were seances held to invoke supernatural powers.
Among the vast number of trials and confessions, I have found none more significant than the following. In February 1691 a daughter and niece of Mr. Parris, minister in Salem (Massachusetts), girls of ten or eleven years, and several other girls, complained of various bodily torments, and as the physicians could find no cause for them, they were pronounced bewitched. The Rev. Mr. Parris had once been in business at the Barbadoes, and probably brought thence his two slaves, Spanish Indians, man and wife. When the children were declared bewitched, the Indian woman, Tituba, tried an experiment, probably with fetishes familiar in the Barbadoes, to find out the witch. Whereupon the children cried out against the Indian woman as appearing to them and tormenting them. Tituba said her mistress, in her own country, had taught her how to find out a witch, but denied being one herself; but afterwards (urged, as she subsequently declared, by her master) she confessed; and the marks of Spanish cruelty on her body were assumed to be the Devil’s wounds. The Rev. Mr. Parris in a calmer time might have vindicated poor Tituba by taking for text of his sermon on the subject Christ’s saying about a house divided against itself, and reminding the colony, which held public fast against Satan, that the devil was too clever to cover his Salem agent with wounds; but instead of that he preached on the words, ‘Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil.’ During this sermon a woman left the church; she was sister of a woman who had also been accused by the children, and, being offended by something Mr. Parris said, went out of meeting; of course, also to prison. There were three other women involved with Tituba, in whose fetish experiments a well-informed writer thinks the Salem delusion began.[19] The examination before the Deputy-Governor (Danforth) began at Salem, April 11, 1692, and there are several notable points in it. Tituba’s husband, the Indian John, cunningly escaped by pretending to be one of the afflicted. He charged Goody Proctor, and said, ‘She brought the book to me.’ No one asked what book! Abigail Williams, also one of the accusers of Goody, was asked, ‘Does she bring the book to you? A. Yes. Q. What would she have you do with it? A. To write in it, and I shall be well.’ Not a descriptive word is demanded or given concerning this book. The examiners are evidently well acquainted with it. In the alleged confessions preserved in official reports, but not in the words of the accused, the nature of the book is made clear. Thus Mary Osgood ‘confesses that about eleven years ago, when she was in a melancholy state and condition, she used to walk abroad in her orchard, and, upon a certain time she saw the appearance of a cat at the end of the house, which yet she thought was a real cat. However, at that time it diverted her from praying to God, and instead thereof she prayed to the Devil; about which time she made a covenant with the Devil, who, as a black man, came to her, and presented her a book, upon which she laid her finger, and that left a red spot. And that upon her signing that book, the devil told her that he was her god.’ This is not unlikely to be a paraphrase of some sermon on the infernal Book of Satan corresponding to the Book of Life, the theory being too conventional for the court to inquire about the mysterious volume. Equally well known was the Antichrist theory which had long represented that avatar of Satan as having organised a church. Thus we read:—‘Abigail Williams, did you see a company at Mr. Parris’s house eat and drink? A. Yes, sir; that was their sacrament. Q. What was it? A. They said it was our blood.’ ‘Mary Walcot, have you seen a white man? A. Yes, sir, a great many times. Q. What sort of man was he? A. A fine grave man, and when he came he made all the witches to tremble.’ When it is remembered that Mary Osgood had described the Devil as ‘a black man’ (all were thinking of the Indians), this Antiblackman suggests Christ resisting Antichrist. Again, although nothing seems to have been said in the court previously about baptism, one of the examiners asks ‘Goody Laccy how many years ago since they were baptized? A. Three or four years ago I suppose. Q. Who baptized them? A. The old serpent. Q. How did he do it? A. He dipped their heads in the water, saying they were his, and that he had power over them; ... there were six (who) baptized. Q. Name them. A. I think they were of the higher powers.’