Cud. The witch! Mother Sawyer, the witch, the devil!
Rat. O, my dear wife! help, sirs! [Ann is carried off by Ratcliffe and Countrymen.
O. Banks. You see your work, Mother Bumby.[449]
M. Saw. My work? should she and all you here run mad,
Is the work mine?
Cud. No, on my conscience, she would not hurt a devil of two years old.
Re-enter Ratcliffe and Countrymen.
How now! what’s become of her?
Rat. Nothing; she’s become nothing but the miserable trunk of a wretched woman. We were in her hands as reeds in a mighty tempest: spite of our strengths away she brake; and nothing in her mouth being heard but “the devil, the witch, the witch, the devil!” she beat out her own brains, and so died.
Cud. It’s any man’s case, be he never so wise, to die when his brains go a wool-gathering.