WITCHES
Amongst the powers with which witches have been credited from time
immemorial are those of transforming themselves into various kinds of
animals, of transforming other people into animals and of sending
forth so-called familiars in various animal shapes. Whether witches
can change human beings into animals through sorcery is a question
which has exercised the minds of hundreds of writers on demonology and
witchcraft, amongst them, to mention a few at random, Bodin, Boguet,
James I, Glanvill, Dr. Webster, Reginald Scott, his more famous
namesake Sir Walter, and Charles Lamb. The last-named, in his essay on
the subject, tells us that he was extremely inquisitive from his
childhood about witches and witch-stories, and that it should cause no
wonder if the wicked, having been symbolised by a goat, should come
sometimes in that body and "assert his metaphor."[63]
In the Middle Ages witches who were condemned to the stake, confessed
to having taken the shapes of cats, hares, dogs, horses, and many
other animals, being prompted to such changes by the devil, with whom
they were in league.
A witch trial took place at Lancaster on the 10th of February, 1633,
in which a batch of witches was accused of such dealings.
Evidence was given by Edmund Robinson, son of Edmund Robinson, of Pendle
forest, eleven years of age, at Padham, before Richard Shuttleworth and
John Starkey, Justices of the Peace, "who upon oath informeth, being
examined concerning the great meeting of the witches of Pendle, saith
that upon All Saints-day last past, he, this informer being with one
Henry Parker a near door-neighbour to him in Wheatley Cave, desired the
said Parker to give him leave to gather some bulloes, which he did. In
gathering whereof he saw two greyhounds, namely a black and a brown; one
came running over the next field towards him, he verily thinking the one
of them to be Mr. Nutter's and the other to be Mr. Robinson's, the said
gentlemen then having suchlike. And saith the said greyhounds came to
him, and fawned on him, they having about their necks either of them a
collar, unto which was tied a string: which collars (as this informant
affirmeth) did shine like gold. And he was thinking that some either of
Mr. Nutter's or Mr. Robinson's family should have followed them, yet
seeing nobody to follow them, he took the same greyhounds thinking to
course with them. And presently a hare did rise very near before him. At
the sight whereof he cried 'Loo, Loo, Loo,' but the dogs would not run.
Whereupon he being very angry took them and with the strings that were
about their collars, tied them to a little bush at the next hedge, and,
with a switch that he had in his hand, he beat them. And instead of the
black greyhound Dickenson's wife stood up, a neighbour whom this
informer knoweth. And instead of the brown one a little boy whom this
informant knoweth not. At which sight this informer being afraid,
endeavoured to run away; and being stayed by the woman, namely
Dickenson's wife, she put her hand into her pocket, and pulled forth a
piece of silver much like to a fair shilling, and offered to give it him
to hold his tongue and not tell: which he refused saying, 'Nay, thou art
a witch.' Whereupon she put her hand into her pocket again, and pulled
out a thing like unto a bridle that jingled, which she put on the little
boy's head; which said boy stood up in the likeness of a white horse,
and in the brown greyhound's stead. Then immediately Dickenson's wife
took the informer before her upon the said horse and carried him to a
new house called Hearthstones, being about a quarter of a mile off."
Here the boy, Edmund Robinson, was witness to the extraordinary
incidents of a feast of witches, all of which he recounted before the
judges, and then his father, being called, gave evidence that he had
sent his son to fetch home two kine, and as he did not return he went to
seek him, finding him eventually "so affrighted and distracted that he
neither knew his father, nor did he know where he was, and so continued
very nearly a quarter of an hour before he came to himself, when he told
the above curious happenings."[64]
The seventeen Pendle forest witches condemned in Lancashire obtained a
reprieve and were sent to London, where they were examined by His
Majesty himself and the Council.
A witch called Julian Cox, aged about seventy years, was indicted at
Taunton, in Somerset, in 1663, for transforming herself into a hare
and for other sorcery.
The evidence given to prove that she was a witch was embodied in a
narrative deposed to by Mr. Pool, a servant and officer in the court
to Judge Archer, then Judge of Assizes at Taunton.
"The first witness was a huntsman, who swore that he went out with a
pack of hounds to hunt a hare, and not far from Julian Cox her house,
he at last started a hare. The dogs hunted her very close, and the
third ring hunted her in view, till at last the huntsman perceiving
the hare almost spent, and making toward a great bush he ran on the
other side of the bush to take her up, and preserve her from the dogs.
But as soon as he laid hands on her, it proved to be Julian Cox, who
had her head grovelling on the ground and her globes (as he expressed
it) upward. He knowing her, was so affrighted that his hair on his
head stood on end, and yet spake to her and asked her what brought her
there; but she was so far out of breath, that she could not make him
any answer. His dogs also came up with full cry to recover the game
and smelt at her, and so left off hunting any farther. And the
huntsman went home presently, sadly affrighted."[65]
In a report dated in the latter half of the nineteenth century on the
state of the county prison at Dingwall, a statement was made by a
fisherman who was imprisoned for assaulting a woman of sixty, whom he
accused of bewitching everything he had. She prevented him from catching
fish and caused his boat to upset. The other fishermen then refused to
work with him as a companion. "She is known in all the neighbourhood to
be a witch," he deposed. "She has been seen a hundred times milking the
cows in the shape of a hare, though I never saw her do it myself."
"People believe that if anyone gets blood from a witch she can do them
no more harm, and that is the reason I cut her with a knife, so that
it might go into her as short a way as possible. All I wanted was to
get blood," was his quaint way of putting it.
The hare has always been closely associated with witches, and for this
reason seems to be of evil augury, though in some parts of the country
its foot, and sometimes its head, are used as a protection against
sorcery, perhaps on the homeopathic principle.
The cat runs the hare very close in its association with witches, and
is a handy animal for transformation purposes, being so frequently met
with in this country.
One of the most celebrated Scottish witch-cat trials took place at
Caithness when Margaret Nin-Gilbert was interrogated on February 8,
1719, by William Innes, minister of Thurso, and confessed that she was
travelling one evening when she was met by the devil in the likeness
of a man who "engaged her to take on with him," which she agreed to
do. From that time she became familiar with him, and sometimes he
appeared to her in the likeness of a huge black horse, sometimes
riding a horse, sometimes like a black cloud, and again in the shape
of a black hen. She apparently obtained the powers of a witch with the
help of this apparition, and the use she made of them appears in the
following story told by one William Montgomery, a mason, whose house
was invaded by cats in such numbers that his wife and maidservant
could not endure to remain in the place.
One night on Montgomery's return he found five cats by the fireside,
and the servant told him they were "speaking among themselves."
The cat-witch on the preceding November 28 had climbed in at a hole in
a chest, and Montgomery watched his opportunity, intending to cut off
her head when she should put it out of the hole. "Having fastened my
sword on her neck," he continues, "which cut her, nor could I hold
her; having (at length) opened the chest, my servant, William Geddes,
having fixed my durk in her hinder quarters by which stroke she was
fastened to the chest; yet after all she escaped out of the chest with
the durk in her hinder quarter, which continued there till I thought,
by many strokes, I had killed her with my sword; and having cast her
out dead, she could not be found next morning." Four or five nights
after, the servant cried out that the cats had come again, and
Montgomery "wrapped his plaid about the cat and thrust the durk
through her body, and having fixed the durk in the ground, I drove at
her head with the back of an axe until she was dead, and being cast
out could not be found next morning."
He further declared that no drop of blood came from the cats, also
that they did not belong to anyone in the neighbourhood, although one
night he saw eight of them and took this to be witchcraft for certain.
On February 12, Margaret Nin-Gilbert, who lived about half a mile from
Montgomery's house, was seen by some of her neighbours to drop one of
her legs at her own door, and she being suspected of witchcraft the
leg, black and putrefied, was taken before the deputy Sheriff who
immediately had the maimed woman arrested and imprisoned. By her own
confession she admitted that she was bodily present at Montgomery's
house "in the likeness of a feltered cat" and that Montgomery had
broken her leg either with his durk or axe, which leg since had fallen
off from the other part of her body. Also that one Margaret Olsone was
also there in the likeness of a cat, and several other women, and that
they were invisible because "the devil did hide and conceal them by
raising a dark mist or fog to screen them from being seen."[66]
Sometimes the apparition of a witch as a cat foretells death.
In 1607 a witch of the name of Isobel Grierson was burnt after being
accused and convicted of entering the house of Adam Clark, in
Prestonpans, in the likeness of his own cat and in the company of a
mighty rabble of other cats, which by their noise frightened Adam, his
wife, and their maid, the last-named being dragged up and down the
stairs by the hair of her head, presumably by the devil in the shape
of a black man. Isobel also visited the house of a certain Mr. Brown
in the shape of a cat, but once being called upon by name she
vanished, but Brown himself died of a disease she had laid upon him.
In 1629 another Isobel, wife of George Smith, was indicted as follows:--
"_Item_ she resett Cristian Grinton, a witch in her house, whom the
pannel's husband saw one night to come out at one hole in the roof, in
the likeness of a cat, and thereafter transform herself in her own
likeness, whereupon the pannel told her husband that it should not
fare well with him, which fell out accordingly, for next day he fell
down dead at the plough."[67]
The witches of Vernon frequented an old castle in the shape of cats.
Three or four brave men determined to pass the night in the
stronghold, where they were assailed by the cats and one of them was
killed, several of the others being hurt, and many of the cats
received wounds. Afterwards the women were found to have returned to
human shape and suffered from corresponding gashes.
The witches of Vernon had their imitators in three witches of
Strasburg who, in the disguise of huge cats, fell upon a workman. He
defended himself courageously and chased away the cats, wounding them.
They were found instantaneously transformed into women, badly hurt and
in their beds.
Another story describes how several cat-witches tormented a poor
labourer, who, wearying of their persistence, drew his broadsword and
sent the animals flying. One less nimble than the rest received a cut
from the sword which severed one of its hind legs, when, to the
labourer's amazement, he discovered on picking up the limb that it was
human in shape, and next morning one of the old hags was discovered to
have only one leg left. Similar stories of the "repercussion" variety
will be found in Chapter XVIII, but they have never been
satisfactorily explained.
M. Henri Gelin tells a good story of a witch who transformed herself
into a dog.[68]
One winter evening dogs were barking all round a lonely house in Niort
far more loudly than usual. The farmer rose from his bed and carefully
opened the shutters. In the middle of the yard he saw a black and
white greyhound, which apparently was enjoying itself molesting the
other dogs, knocking them over with its paws without the least
difficulty, and then picking them up in its jaws and throwing them to
some distance as soon as they ventured within reach. The farmer drew
on his trousers, into the seat of which his wife had sown a
horse-chestnut as a talisman against witchcraft, loaded his gun and
fired on the animal which fell dead. The next day he rose at an early
hour to go and examine the corpse of his prey, and was greatly
astonished to see the body of a beautiful woman dressed in gorgeous
clothes lying in the very spot on which the dog was shot. Round her
neck there hung a rich chain made of five strings of jewels bearing
enamelled medallions beautifully chased, and on her fingers were a
profusion of precious gems. In order to cover all traces of his
involuntary murder, he quickly dug a hole in a corner of the yard and
made a pile of faggots above the newly replaced earth. He had only
just finished his task when a gentleman came into the yard, and asked
whether he had seen a lady pass that way. From the particulars given,
the farmer soon felt certain that the woman in question was the witch
he had killed. Tremblingly he replied that he had not seen the lady.
But a little dog that followed the gentleman ran to the heap of
faggots and began turning them over, howling piteously. "You have
killed my poor wife," cried the gentleman. "I am certain she came
here." But he did not insist on looking into the pile, and presently
withdrew, followed by the still whimpering dog.
A sheep is sometimes, but not frequently, chosen as a medium for
transformation.
A man who was returning late from the market at Verrières in Poitou,
met a lamb, which followed him bleating loudly, at the turn of a
footpath crossing a lonely heath. "Poor thing," he said, "you might be
devoured by a wolf," and, seizing the lamb by its four legs, he
hoisted it on to his shoulders, so as to carry it conveniently. As he
approached his house he found the animal began to weigh very heavily.
At last he arrived in a perspiration and put down his burden amongst
the sheep which had already been penned in the fold. At dawn the next
day, he went to look at his new lamb. But in the spot where he had
placed it the evening before he found a huge demon, busy stitching
straw soles into his shoes. The sorcerer had resumed human shape and,
looking very foolish, begged that he would say nothing about his
little adventure. But the man seized him by the shoulders, kicked him
from behind and chucked him out of the pen, crying, "Get out of this,
you evil being." "If only he had made the slightest scratch from which
the blood flowed," added the old lady who was telling the story, "the
sorcerer would have been cured, and would no longer have been able to
transform himself into an animal."
Although witches are able to transform themselves into horses if they
wish, they usually prefer to use their powers for transforming other
people, and getting the benefit by riding their victims to death.
Margaret Grant, a Scottish witch of the nineteenth century, believed
that she was able to transform herself into various animals, and
"avers that she was, at times, actually changed by evil-disposed
persons into a pony or a hare and ridden for great distances, or
hunted by dogs as the case might be."
Joseph Glanvill in his "Sadducismus Triumphatus," tells the story of a
"great army of witches" who were charged with performing a feat of
horse-transformation on a large scale at Blocula in Sweden in 1669.
A man may be transformed by a woman throwing a magic halter over his
head while he is in bed. Then she mounts the horse, and rides to the
witches' tryst. If, however, the man-horse can manage to slip the
magic bridle off and throw it over her, she becomes a mare, and her
victim mounts her and rides till she is exhausted.
At Yarrowfoot a witch-mare, according to one story, was shod in the
usual manner and afterwards sold to her own husband. To his surprise,
when he removed the bridle, his wife stood before him in human form,
wearing horseshoes on her hands and feet.
There are many variants of this story, another woman having been found
in bed with horseshoe attachments, and it is difficult to trace the
origin of this fantastic idea.
In the neighbourhood of Ostrel in Denmark a man served on a farm, the
mistress of which, unknown to him, was a witch. Although she gave him
good and wholesome food he never thrived, but became thinner every day.
At this, being much troubled, he went to a wise man, to whom he
communicated his case. From this man he learnt that his mistress was a
witch and that at night, while he slept, she transformed him into a
horse, and rode upon him to Troms Church in Norway; so that it was not
to be wondered at that his strength decreased. The wise man at the same
time gave him an ointment with which to rub his head at night, and said
when he fell asleep he would have a violent itching on his head, and
then he would wake up and see that he was standing outside Troms Church.
The man did as he had been told, and on waking up the following night,
he found that he was standing by the church, holding in his hand a
bridle which he had torn off whilst scratching his head. Behind him he
saw many horses bound together by each other's tails. Presently his
mistress came out and cast a friendly look at him, but he nodded for
her to come nearer, and when she stood by, he cast the bridle over her
head and she became a handsome mare on the spot. He mounted and rode
her home. On the way he called at a farrier's, and made him shoe the
mare. When he reached home he told his master that he had been out to
buy a fine mare, which would go handsomely in harness with one already
in the stables. The master paid him a good round sum for the animal,
but when he took off its bridle, there stood his wife with horseshoes
on her hands and feet. He turned her straight out of doors, but she
never managed to get rid of the horseshoes.
When St. Macarius encountered a poor old woman who had been changed into
a horse, he restored her to human shape by sprinkling holy water over
her. The same saint acted mercifully in another case of transformation.
A young girl refused to do the bidding of the man who asked her to be
his wife. He was so infuriated by her refusal that he arranged with a
wizard to turn her into a stoat. A wise man, endeavouring to explain
this incident, says, "This was not a genuine transformation, but was
an illusion of the devil, who so affected the imagination of the girl
and the bystanders, that she appeared to them in the form of a stoat,
although she was still a woman in reality."
The victim of the enchantment was then taken before the holy man of the
name of Macarius, who, on account of his saintliness, could not suffer
deception of the devil's wiles. He looked upon the maiden and saw that
she was a human being and no stoat, and thus, uttering a prayer, freed
her from the spell. This cure is of the hypnotic variety, in which
several people are under the mental spell of one other.
Reginald Scott tells the story of a woman who sold an egg to a man who,
when eating it, speedily turned into an ass. For three years she rode
the animal to market. It was in the city of Salamin in Cyprus where a
ship arrived laden with merchandise. Many of the sailors went ashore in
the hope of procuring fresh provisions. A certain sturdy young
Englishman went to a woman's shop some little way from the town, to see
whether she could let him have some new-laid eggs. She promised to do so
and went off to fetch them, but she was away so long that the young
sailor called out that she must please make haste, as the tide was going
out and he might be left behind when his ship set sail. At last she came
out with the eggs and told him to come back to her house if the ship had
gone. The sailor made the best of his way back to the vessel, but being
hungry, ate an egg on the way. He was then struck dumb and his wits
seemed to have left him. When he reached the side of the vessel and
tried to go aboard, the mariners beat him back with cudgels crying,
"What lacks the ass?" and "Whither the devil does the ass want to come?"
Then the sailor realised that he had been bewitched by the woman's eggs
he had eaten, and had turned into a donkey. Finding it impossible to
board the ship and remembering the witch's words, he went back to her
house and there served her for the space of three years, carrying the
burdens she laid on his back.[69] Here no doubt the egg is used merely
as an instrument for inducing a certain frame of mind in the victim. It
may be presumed that the witch's words of suggestion were equally
necessary in bringing about the transformation.
The sorceress Meroc in "The Metamorphosis or Golden Ass of Apuleius,"
had the power to change, by one word only, her lover into a beaver. "She
likewise changed into a frog an innkeeper who was her neighbour and of
whom she was on that account envious, and now that old man, swimming in
a tub of his own wine, and merged in the dregs of it, calls on his
ancient guests with a hoarse and courteously croaking voice."
"She likewise changed one of the advocates of the court into a ram
because he had declaimed against her, and now that ram pleads
causes."[70]
M. Henri Gelin, whose researches on Poitevin legends and folklore are
very valuable,[71] discusses the conditions under which metamorphosis
takes place, saying it is entirely involuntary and is the result of an
agreement entered into with infernal powers. The soul of the sorcerer is
supposed to remain in a state of distinct entity. But the narrators of
these stories have done little to make clear the actual process which
takes place when the transformation occurs of a man into a wolf, a
sheep, or a colt, or a woman (who seems to be credited with gentler
characteristics) into a goat, a bitch, or a hind. Perhaps the human body
remains temporarily deprived of its soul, which, entering a new shape,
substitutes itself for the obscure and undeveloped soul of the animal,
or perhaps the wizard's body enjoys the faculty of anatomically
modifying its organs, and varying its aspects something in the manner of
the caterpillar which turns into a moth. Who shall say?
A shepherdess in the district of Niort noticed when driving her flock
home that it had become augmented by the presence of a black sheep,
the origin of which she could not trace. She penned up the extra
animal with her own in the shed, and bolted the door, rejoicing at the
addition to her flock. But as soon as night had fallen, a woman's
voice was heard singing in the sheep's shed. The tune was a plaintive
one, interspersed now and again with strident and prolonged laughter.
Not one of the servants or neighbours dared to open the shed and face
the flock to see who could be singing like that. In hushed voices they
said "It's a witch!" The next day at the usual hour of departure, the
shepherdess, in great dread of what she might see, partly opened the
shed door. The black sheep rushed like a whirlwind into the open and
was gone. Now and again, however, the apparition returned to the farm
in the shape of a woman, clapping her hands and laughing loudly as
though to mock at the people who had allowed her to escape so easily.
The following legend of a white hind comes from the same district,
Souché, two miles from Niort. Its peculiar characteristic is that the
young girl, who complains to her mother about the hounds chasing her,
appears to be quite aware of what is happening to her in her dual
personality of woman and hind at the same moment, an important detail
when regarded in the light of scientific occultism.
The story is told by Gelin and is very popular in Poitou. The heroine
is a girl by day and a white hind by night. The pack of hounds
belonging to her brother Renaud chase her in the forest. She complains
of this to her mother who begs Renaud to call back the pack. But it is
too late. The white hind is captured and killed. Her palpitating flesh
is stripped from the carcase and prepared as a dish of venison, and
next day when the guests sit down to the feast, they are terrified to
hear a woman's voice which they recognise as that of their absent
sister, murmuring, "Alas! my breasts are lying on platters of gold."
Then, raising her tone, she announces that Renaud's soul is forfeit
and that his name is written up on the gates of hell. At the sound of
her words Renaud falls down dead and his mother goes off in a swoon.
"La Blanche Biche," as the story is called in the original, is told in
verse which may be rendered roughly as follows:--
Afar in the fields dwell a mother and daughter,
The mother sings on, but the fair maid sighs.
"For what do you sigh, my dear Angèlique?"
"I sigh in great need, for my heart is sad.
In the day I'm a maid, but at night a white hind,
The hounds are upon me and hunters as well,
And the worst pack of all is my brother's pack.
Go forth, mother dear, to his castle and say,
He must call back the hounds and the hunters too."
Then the mother puts her distaff aside
And runs to the castle of Renaud, her son,
To tell him to stay his hounds and his men.
"But my hounds, mother, are after the white hind now."
"Call them back, Renaud, for sweet Angèlique
Dwells in the shape of that same white hind."
Then Renaud seizes his hunter's horn,
But before he can blow two blasts loud and clear,
The white hind is taken and brought by the hounds
To the castle kitchen, where, seized by the cook,
Its joints are severed, its flesh is sliced;
And a shout comes from the castle hall,
"Set a fine feast for us all to-night,
For a number of guests will honour our house,
All but our sister, the fair Angèlique."
Then the smoking dishes appear on the board,
And the guests turn longing eyes on the feast,
When a plaintive sigh is heard through the hall,
And a woman's sad voice rings out in a shriek,
That curdles the blood of the waiting guests.
"My breasts are lying on platters of gold,
My heart's on the spit, and it groans and it moans,
My bright eyes, embedded in pastry, grow dim;
But my soul dwells with angels in paradise,
And that of my brother is destined for hell!"
At these terrible words, from invisible source,
Renaud starts up! Then falls back--_stone dead_.
While his mother slips under the board in a swoon.
This is a far more harrowing story than the Yorkshire legend of a
woman who turns into a white doe, which is found in Wordsworth's "The
White Doe of Rylstone."
When Lady Aăliza mourned
Her son, and felt in her despair,
The pang of unavailing prayer;
Her son in Wharf's abysses drowned,
The noble boy of Egremound,
From which affliction, when God's grace
At length had in her heart found place,
A pious structure fair to see,
Rose up this stately priory!
The lady's work,--but now laid low;
To the grief of her soul that doth come and go,
In the beautiful form of this innocent doe:
Which though seemingly doomed in its breast to sustain
A softened remembrance of sorrow and pain,
Is spotless, and holy, and gentle and bright--
And glides o'er the earth like an angel of light.
Burke has a very different version of the famous and spotless White
Doe of Rylstone,[72] the animal being gifted with human faculties
rather than appearing in human form, and the story having some
affinity with those of the fairy-godmother class. This beautiful white
doe belonged to Emily, the only daughter of Richard Norton of
Rylstone, who had nine warrior sons. The youngest of them, Edward by
name, had made a present of the doe to his sister and the animal was
called Blanche on account of her spotless white skin. She followed her
young mistress everywhere and was like a human companion. So great was
her intelligence that she was thought to be a benevolent witch or
fairy, perhaps rather a sprite bewitched in animal form.
One day she leads her mistress a long way from home, to a spot beside
a brooklet which is held by the people of the neighbourhood to be
haunted. Having reached the desired destination, the doe lies down to
rest and Emily does likewise. Presently she falls into a kind of
dream, in which it seems to her that the brook boils and bubbles up
and a wraith of mist rises on the surface which gradually takes the
shape and outlines of a beautiful woman.
This spirit warns Emily in a vision of coming disaster to her beloved
father and eight of her brothers. She sees them done to death by the
axe. Meanwhile the doe lies immovable in a kind of trance and it may
well be thought that her real womanly self is seen by Emily in its
natural shape.
Soon afterwards Emily is informed by Edward that her father and eight
of her brothers are on the point of breaking out into open rebellion
against the Sovereign of England and that it is necessary for him to
join them, although doing so goes against his convictions, as he is
loyal to Queen Elizabeth. Nothing that Emily can do or say dissuades
him from his decision, and she parts from him in great grief.
At first the rebels succeed in their projects, but presently their
attacks fail and they are forced to retreat. A rumour reaches Emily
that all the Nortons have been captured and condemned to death and
that the rebellion is over.
In the hope of saving her father and brothers, Emily sets out,
accompanied by Blanche, to sue Queen Elizabeth for pardon on behalf
of her relatives. On the long and perilous journey to Court, Blanche
again acts as her adviser, and gives her almost human help in moments
of difficulty, and so charmed is the Queen by the beauty of the
suppliant and her intelligent animal comrade, that she sends Lord
Leicester post-haste to York with a reprieve for the Nortons.
Unfortunately the messenger arrives too late to save any member of the
family except the youngest son, Edward, Emily's favourite, and thus
the beautiful human doe is instrumental in saving him, at least, from
the scaffold.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] "Essays of Elia," 1904, p. 128.
[64] Webster, Dr. John, "The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft," 1677,
pp. 347-9.
[65] Glanvill, Joseph, "Sadducismus Triumphatus," 1726, p. 326.
[66] Extracted from the Wodrow MS., as printed in "An Historical
Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland," by C. K. Sharpe,
1884, pp. 180-94.
[67] Sharpe, C. K., "An Historical Account of the Belief in Witchcraft
in Scotland," 1884, p. 98.
[68] "Legendes de Sorcellerie," 1898.
[69] Scott, Reginald, "The Discovery of Witchcraft," 1886, pp. 75-6.
[70] "The Metamorphosis or Golden Ass of Apuleius," 1822, pp. 7-8.
[71] Gelin, H., "Legendes de Sorcellerie," 1898.
[72] "Anecdotes of the Aristocracy," 1849, pp. 152-81.