that was dead. And he told them to go back and so they turned and
went. They were just beginning to come to the grandeur when they were
turned away. Those that are brought away among them never come back,
or if they do they're not the same as they were before.
_Honor Whelan:_
There was a woman beyond at Ardrahan died, and she came back one night
and her husband saw her at the dresser, looking for something to eat.
And she slipped away from him that time, but the next time she came
he got hold of her, and she bid him come for her to the fair at some
place, and watch for her at the Customs' gap and she'd be on the last
horse that would pass through. And then she said, "It's best for you
not come yourself but send your brother." So the brother came and she
dropped down to him and he brought her to his house. But in a week
after he was dead and buried. And she lived a long time, and never
would speak three words to any one that would come into the house, but
working, working all the day. I wouldn't have liked to live in the
house with her after her being away like that. I don't think the old go
among them when they die, but believe me, it's not many of the young
they spare, but bring them away till such time as God sends for them.
It's about fourteen years since so many young women were brought away
after their child being born--Peter Roche's wife, and James Shannan's
wife, and Clancy's wife of Lisdaragh--hundreds were carried off in that
year--they didn't bring so many since then. I suppose they brought
enough then to last them a good time.
All go among them when they die except the old people. And it's
better to be there than in the pains of Purgatory. As to Purgatory, I
don't think it is after being with _them_ we have to go there. But
I know we're told to give some clothing to the poor, and it will be
thrown down afterwards to quench the flames for us.
_A Policeman's Wife:_
There was a girl in County Clare was away, and the mother used to
hear horses coming about the door every night. And one day the mother
was picking flax in the house, and of a sudden there came in her hand
an herb with the best smell and the sweetest that ever was smelt
(_Note_ 44). And she closed it with her hand, and called to the son
that was making up a stack of hay outside "Come in, Denis, for I
have the best smelling herb that ever you saw." And when he came in
she opened her hand, and the herb was gone clear and clean. She got
annoyed at last with the horses coming about the door, and some told
her to gather all the fire into the middle of the floor and to lay
the little girl upon it, and to see could she come back again. So
she did as she was told, and brought the little girl out of the bed
and laid her on the coals. And she began to scream and to call out,
and the neighbours came running in, and the police heard of it, and
they came and arrested the mother and brought her to the Court-house
before the magistrate, Mr. MacWalter, and my own husband was one of
the police that arrested her. And when the magistrate heard all, he
said she was an ignorant woman, and that she did what she thought
right, and he would give her no punishment. And the girl got well
and was married. It was after she was married I knew her.
_An Old Woman at Chiswick:_
There was a woman went to live in a house where the faeries were
known to be very much about. And the first day she was there one of
them came in and asked her for the loan of a pot, and she gave it.
And the next day she came in again and asked for the loan of some
meal, and when she got it the woman said, "I hope you'll find it
to be fine enough." "It is," she said, "and to show you I think it
fine and good, I'll mix it here and boil the stirabout and we'll eat
it together." And so they did. And she said "We'll always be your
friends; and what you may miss in the morning, never grudge it, for
you'll have more than what you lost before night." And her tribe was
going away, and when she was going out the door, she made a hole with
her heel in the stone, and she filled it up with mud and earth, and
she said "If we die or if anything happens to us, blood will come in
this hole and fill it."
* * * * *
There was a girl used to be away with them, you'd never know when it
was she herself that was in it or not till she'd come back, and then
she'd tell she had been away. She didn't like to go, but she had to
go when they called to her. And she told her mother always to treat
kindly whoever was put in her place, sometimes one would be put,
and sometimes another, for she'd say "If you are unkind to whoever's
there, they'll be unkind to me."
* * * * *
Three of my uncles were taken by them, young men; some sort of a
little cold they got between them, and there wasn't more than two
months before the first of them going and the last. They were seen
after by a man that lived in the house between there and the school,
and that used often to see them, and to bring them in to dinner with
him.
WITCHES AND WIZARDS AND IRISH
FOLK-LORE
WITCHES AND WIZARDS AND IRISH
FOLK-LORE
I
Ireland was not separated from general European speculation when much
of that was concerned with the supernatural. Dr. Adam Clarke tells
in his unfinished autobiography how, when he was at school in Antrim
towards the end of the eighteenth century, a schoolfellow told him
of Cornelius Agrippa's book on Magic and that it had to be chained
or it would fly away of itself. Presently he heard of a farmer who
had a copy and after that made friends with a wandering tinker who
had another. Lady Gregory and I spoke of a friend's visions to an old
countryman. He said "he must belong to a society"; and the people
often attribute magical powers to Orangemen and to Freemasons, and
I have heard a shepherd at Doneraile speak of a magic wand with
Tetragramaton Agla written upon it. The visions and speculations
of Ireland differ much from those of England and France, for in
Ireland, as in Highland Scotland, we are never far from the old
Celtic mythology; but there is more likeness than difference. Lady
Gregory's story of the witch who in semblance of a hare, leads the
hounds such a dance, is the best remembered of all witch stories. It
is told, I should imagine, in every countryside where there is even a
fading memory of witchcraft. One finds it in a sworn testimony given
at the trial of Julian Cox, an old woman indicted for witchcraft
at Taunton in Somersetshire in 1663 and quoted by Joseph Glanvill.
"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 towards 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 an end; and yet spake to her, and ask'd 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 full cry to recover
the game, and smelled at her and so left off hunting any further. And
the huntsman with his dogs went home presently sadly affrighted." Dr.
Henry More, the Platonist, who considers the story in a letter to
Glanvill, explains that Julian Cox was not turned into a hare, but
that "Ludicrous Dæmons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and
his dogs, the shape of a hare, one of them turning himself into such
a form, another hurrying on the body of Julian near the same place,"
making her invisible till the right moment had come. "As I have heard
of some painters that have drawn the sky in a huge landscape, so
lively, that the birds have flown against it, thinking it free air,
and so have fallen down. And if painters and jugglers, by the tricks
of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the
sight, it is no wonder that these aerie invisible spirits have far
surpassed them in all such prestigious doings, as the air surpasses
the earth for subtlety." Glanvill has given his own explanation of
such cases elsewhere. He thinks that the sidereal or airy body is
the foundation of the marvel, and Albert de Rochas has found a like
foundation for the marvels of spiritism. "The transformation of
witches," writes Glanvill, "into the shapes of other animals ... is
very conceivable; since then, 'tis easy enough to imagine, that the
power of imagination may form those passive and pliable vehicles into
those shapes," and then goes on to account for the stories where an
injury, say to the witch hare, is found afterwards upon the witch's
body precisely as a French hypnotist would account for the stigmata
of a saint. "When they feel the hurts in their gross bodies, that
they receive in their airy vehicles, they must be supposed to have
been really present, at least in these latter; and 'tis no more
difficult to apprehend, how the hurts of those should be translated
upon their other bodies, than how diseases should be inflicted by the
imagination, or how the fancy of the mother should wound the fœtus,
as several credible relations do attest."
All magical or Platonic writers of the times speak much of the
transformation or projection of the sidereal body of witch or wizard.
Once the soul escapes from the natural body, though but for a moment,
it passes into the body of air and can transform itself as it please
or even dream itself into some shape it has not willed.
"Chameleon-like thus they their colour change,
And size contract and then dilate again."
One of their favourite stories is of some famous man, John Haydon
says Socrates, falling asleep among his friends, who presently see a
mouse running from his mouth and towards a little stream. Somebody
lays a sword across the stream that it may pass, and after a little
while it returns across the sword and to the sleeper's mouth again.
When he awakes he tells them that he has dreamed of himself crossing
a wide river by a great iron bridge.
But the witch's wandering and disguised double was not the worst
shape one might meet in the fields or roads about a witch's house.
She was not a true witch unless there was a compact (or so it seems)
between her and an evil spirit who called himself the devil, though
Bodin believes that he was often, and Glanvill always, "some human soul
forsaken of God," for "the devil is a body politic." The ghost or devil
promised revenge on her enemies and that she would never want, and she
upon her side let the devil suck her blood nightly or at need.
When Elizabeth Style made a confession of witchcraft before the
Justice of Somerset in 1664, the Justice appointed three men, William
Thick and William Read and Nicholas Lambert, to watch her, and
Glanvill publishes an affidavit of the evidence of Nicholas Lambert.
"About three of the clock in the morning there came from her head
a glistering bright fly, about an inch in length which pitched at
first in the chimney and then vanished." Then two smaller flies came
and vanished. "He, looking steadfastly then on Style, perceived
her countenance to change, and to become very black and ghastly
and the fire also at the same time changing its colour; whereupon
the Examinant, Thick and Read, conceiving that her familiar was
then about her, looked to her poll, and seeing her hair shake very
strangely, took it up and then a fly like a great miller flew out
from the place and pitched on the table board and then vanished away.
Upon this the Examinant and the other two persons, looking again in
Style's poll, found it very red and like raw beef. The Examinant
ask'd her what it was that went out of her poll, she said it was a
butterfly, and asked them why they had not caught it. Lambert said,
they could not. I think so too, answered she. A little while after,
the informant and the others, looking again into her poll, found the
place to be of its former colour. The Examinant asked again what
the fly was, she confessed it was her familiar and that she felt it
tickle in her poll, and that was the usual time for her familiar to
come to her." These sucking devils alike when at their meal, or when
they went here and there to do her will or about their own business,
had the shapes of pole-cat or cat or greyhound or of some moth or
bird. At the trials of certain witches in Essex in 1645 reported
in the English state trials a principal witness was one "Matthew
Hopkins, gent." Bishop Hutchinson, writing in 1730, describes him as
he appeared to those who laughed at witchcraft and had brought the
witch trials to an end. "Hopkins went on searching and swimming poor
creatures, till some gentlemen, out of indignation of the barbarity,
took him, and tied his own thumbs and toes as he used to tie others,
and when he was put into the water he himself swam as they did. That
cleared the country of him and it was a great pity that they did not
think of the experiment sooner." Floating when thrown into the water
was taken for a sign of witchcraft. Matthew Hopkins's testimony,
however, is uncommonly like that of the countryman who told Lady
Gregory that he had seen his dog and some shadow fighting. A certain
Mrs. Edwards of Manintree in Essex had her hogs killed by witchcraft,
and "going from the house of the said Mrs. Edwards to his own house,
about nine or ten of the clock that night, with his greyhound with
him, he saw the greyhound suddenly give a jump, and run as she had
been in full course after a hare; and that when this informant made
haste to see what his greyhound so eagerly pursued, he espied a white
thing, about the bigness of a kitlyn, and the greyhound standing
aloof from it; and that by and by the said white imp or kitlyn danced
about the greyhound, and by all likelihood bit off a piece of the
flesh of the shoulder of the said greyhound; for the greyhound came
shrieking and crying to the informant, with a piece of flesh torn
from her shoulder. And the informant further saith, that coming into
his own yard that night, he espied a black thing proportioned like
a cat, only it was thrice as big, sitting on a strawberry bed, and
fixing the eyes on this informant, and when he went towards it, it
leaped over the pale towards this informant, as he thought, but ran
through the yard, with his greyhound after it, to a great gate, which
was underset with a pair of tumble strings, and did throw the said
gate wide open, and then vanished; and the said greyhound returned
again to this informant, shaking and trembling exceedingly." At the
same trial Sir Thomas Bowes, Knight, affirmed "that a very honest
man of Manintree, whom he knew would not speak an untruth, affirmed
unto him, that very early one morning, as he passed by the said Anne
West's door" (this is the witch on trial) "about four o'clock, it
being a moonlight night, and perceiving her door to be open so early
in the morning, looked into the house and presently there came three
or four little things, in the shape of black rabbits, leaping and
skipping about him, who, having a good stick in his hand, struck at
them, thinking to kill them, but could not; but at last caught one
of them in his hand, and holding it by the body of it, he beat the
head of it against his stick, intending to beat out the brains of
it; but when he could not kill it that way, he took the body of it
in one hand and the head of it in another, and endeavoured to wring
off the head; and as he wrung and stretched the neck of it, it came
out between his hands like a lock of wool; yet he would not give over
his intended purpose, but knowing of a spring not far off, he went
to drown it; but still as he went he fell down and could not go, but
down he fell again, so that he at last crept upon his hands and knees
till he came at the water, and holding it fast in his hand, he put
his hand down into the water up to the elbow, and held it under water
a good space till he conceived it was drowned, and then letting go
his hand, it sprung out of the water up into the air, and so vanished
away." However, the sucking imps were not always invulnerable for
Glanvill tells how one John Monpesson, whose house was haunted by
such a familiar, "seeing some wood move that was in the chimney of
a room, where he was, as if of itself, discharged a pistol into it
after which they found several drops of blood on the hearth and in
divers places of the stairs." I remember the old Aran man who heard
fighting in the air and found blood in a fish-box and scattered
through the room, and I remember the measure of blood Odysseus poured
out for the shades.
The English witch trials are like the popular poetry of England,
matter-of-fact and unimaginative. The witch desires to kill some
one and when she takes the devil for her husband he as likely as
not will seem dull and domestic. Rebecca West told Matthew Hopkins
that the devil appeared to her as she was going to bed and told her
he would marry her. He kissed her but was as cold as clay, and he
promised to be "her loving husband till death," although she had,
as it seems, but one leg. But the Scotch trials are as wild and
passionate as is the Scottish poetry, and we find ourselves in the
presence of a mythology that differs little, if at all, from that
of Ireland. There are orgies of lust and of hatred and there is a
wild shamelessness that would be fine material for poets and romance
writers if the world should come once more to half-believe the tale.
They are divided into troops of thirteen, with the youngest witch for
leader in every troop, and though they complain that the embraces of
the devil are as cold as ice, the young witches prefer him to their
husbands. He gives them money, but they must spend it quickly, for it
will be but dry cow dung in two circles of the clock. They go often
to Elfhame or Faeryland and the mountains open before them and as
they go out and in they are terrified by the "rowtling and skoylling"
of the great "elf bulls." They sometimes confess to trooping in the
shape of cats and to finding upon their terrestrial bodies when they
awake in the morning the scratches they had made upon one another in
the night's wandering, or should they have wandered in the images
of hares the bites of dogs. Isobell Godie who was tried at Lochlay
in 1662 confessed that "We put besoms in our beds with our husbands
till we return again to them ... and then we would fly away where we
would be, even as straws would fly upon a highway. We will fly like
straws when we please; wild straws and corn straws will be horses to
us, and we put them betwixt our feet and say horse and hillock in the
devil's name. And when any see these straws in a whirlwind and do
not sanctify themselves, we may shoot them dead at our pleasure."[1]
When they kill people, she goes on to say, the souls escape them
"but their bodies remain with us and will fly as horses to us all
as small as straws." It is plain that it is the "airy body" they
take possession of; those "animal spirits" perhaps which Henry More
thought to be the link between soul and body and the seat of all
vital function. The trials were more unjust than those of England,
where there was a continual criticism from sceptics; torture was used
again and again to distort confessions, and innocent people certainly
suffered; some who had but believed too much in their own dreams
and some who had but cured the sick at some vision's prompting.
Alison Pearson who was burnt in 1588 might have been Biddy Early or
any other knowledgeable woman in Ireland today. She was convicted
"for haunting and repairing with the Good Neighbours and queen of
Elfhame, these divers years and bypast, as she had confessed in her
depositions, declaring that she could not say readily how long she
was with them; and that she had friends in that court who were of her
own blood and who had great acquaintance of the queen of Elfhame.
That when she went to bed she never knew where she would be carried
before dawn." When they worked cures they had the same doctrine
of the penalty that one finds in Lady Gregory's stories. One who
made her confession before James I. was convicted for "taking the
sick party's pains and sicknesses upon herself for a time and then
translating them to a third person."
II
There are more women than men mediums today; and there have been or
seem to have been more witches than wizards. The wizards of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relied more upon their conjuring
book than the witches whose visions and experiences seem but half
voluntary, and when voluntary called up by some childish rhyme:
Hare, hare, God send thee care;
I am in a hare's likeness now,
But I shall be a woman even now;
Hare, hare, God send thee care.
More often than not the wizards were learned men, alchemists or
mystics, and if they dealt with the devil at times, or some spirit
they called by that name, they had amongst them ascetics and
heretical saints. Our chemistry, our metallurgy, and our medicine are
often but accidents that befell in their pursuit of the philosopher's
stone, the elixir of life. They were bound together in secret
societies and had, it may be, some forgotten practice for liberating
the soul from the body and sending it to fetch and carry them divine
knowledge. Cornelius Agrippa in a letter quoted by Beaumont has hints
of such a practice. Yet, like the witches, they worked many wonders
by the power of the imagination, perhaps one should say by their
power of calling up vivid pictures in the mind's eye. The Arabian
philosophers have taught, writes Beaumont, "that the soul by the
power of the imagination can perform what it pleases; as penetrate
the heavens, force the elements, demolish mountains, raise valleys
to mountains, and do with all material forms as it pleases."
He shewed hym, er he wente to sopeer,
Forestes, parkes ful of wilde deer;
Ther saugh he hertes with hir hornes hye,
The gretteste that evere were seyn with yë.
* * * * *
Tho saugh he knyghtes justing in a playn;
And after this, he dide hym swich plaisaunce,
That he hym shewed his lady on a daunce
On which hymself he daunced, as hym thoughte.
And whan this maister, that this magyk wroughte,
Saugh it was tyme, he clapte his handes two,
And, farewel! al our revel was ago.