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A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
[Illustration: Demon and woman kissing]
A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
in which is reflected the Life, Machinations,
and Death of Famous DOLL BILBY, who,
with a more than _feminine perversity_, preferred
a Demon to a Mortal Lover. Here is
also told how and why a Righteous and Most
Awful JUDGEMENT befell her, destroying
both Corporeal Body and Immortal Soul.
By
ESTHER FORBES
With woodcuts by
ROBERT GIBBINGS
[Illustration: Decoration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY ESTHER FORBES HOSKINS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
MARY AND GERHART JENTSCH
A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
A MIRROR FOR WITCHES
CHAPTER I
1
_Certain Examples to Show Doll Bilby not alone among Women in her
preference for Evil. The Cases of Ry, Goose, Leda, Danaë, etc., cited._
It has long been known that, on occasions, devils in the shape of
humanity or in their own shapes (that is, with horns, hoofs, and tails)
may fancy mortal women. By dark arts, sly promises of power, flattery,
etc., they may prevail even upon Christian women, always to the
destruction of these women’s souls and often to that of their bodies.
For in Northumberland, Meslie Ry was burned in 1616 because she had
taken a fiend to love.
A few years later, Christie Goose, a single woman upwards of forty
years, suddenly flew lunatic—and that upon the Lord’s Day. Then she did
confess that each night and every night the Devil, wickedly assuming
the shape of Mr. Oates, God’s minister at Crumplehorn, Oxon., came to
her through her window. This fact amazed Crumplehorn, for Goose was of
all women most pious, and had sat for years in humble prayerfulness at
the feet of Mr. Oates. Some were astonished that even a devil should
find need for this same Goose, who was of hideous aspect.
There was a young jade, servant in an alderman’s house in London, who,
although she confessed nothing and remained obdurate to the end, was
hanged and then burned because she bore a creature with horns on its
head and a six-inch tail behind. Such a creature the just magistrates
determined no mortal man might beget, although the saucy wench
suggested that an alderman might. Moreover, certain children in the
neighbourhood testified that they had twice or thrice seen ‘a burly big
black man’ sitting on the ridgepole.
Some assume that as the gods of antiquity were in no way gods (being
seekers after evil—not after light), they should therefore be
considered caco-demons or devils. The Reverend Pyam Plover, of Boston,
has written learnedly on this subject, saying, in part, ‘For is it
not possible that the Lord God of Israel, being those days but the
God of _Israel_, may have permitted certain of his Fallen Angels to
stray from the vitals of Hell and disport themselves through Greece
and ancient Italy? Here they revealed themselves ... in many ways to
heathen people, who falsely worshipped them as _gods_. If this be true
Zeus might better assume his true name of _Satan_, and let us call
Apollo but _Apollyon_ and recognize in Mars, Hermes, etc., Beelzebub
and Belial. Then may the female “divinities” be true descendants of
Lilith.’ So one may learn from antiquity (consider Leda, Io, Danaë, and
others) how great is the ardour felt by devils for mortal women.
As is not yet forgotten, in 1662, near threescore years ago, a woman
called Greensmith, living at Hartford in New England, confessed the
Devil had carnal knowledge of her. For this she was hanged.
More strangely yet, lived, for brief space of years, famous Doll Bilby,
best known as ‘Bilby’s Doll’. She flourished at Cowan Corners, close
by the town of Salem, but an afternoon’s journey from my own parish of
Sudbury. Of other women devil-ridden, be it Leda or Ry, Greensmith or
Danaë, Christie Goose or La Voisin, little can be said, for but little
is known. All were witches (if we accept as witches such women as
traffic with fiends), but little else is known. Yet of Bilby’s famous
Doll, in the end all things were known. From old wives’ tales, court
records, and the diaries of certain men, from the sworn affidavits and
depositions of others, from the demonologies of Mr. Cotton Mather, and
the cipher journal of Mr. Zacharias Zelley, we may know with a nicety
what this woman was and how she lived, from whence she came, how she
grew to witchcraft, how she felt, thought, and at the last how she died.
2
_Mr. Bilby sails far to seek out_ TROUBLE, _and, having found Trouble,
nurtures it._
She was born of a wicked witch-woman and begotten by one who was no
better, that is, by a warlock. These two devil-worshippers and, they
say, two hundred more were burned in one great holocaust at Mont Hoël
in Brittany. Black smoke, screams of death, stench of flesh settled
down over town and harbour, causing sickness and even vomiting.
On that same day, by evil fortune, a brig manned by Dawlish men stood
in the Bouche de Saint-Hoël. These men, seeing that it was fête day,
and curious because of the smoke, the screams, and the stench, went to
the holocaust. There they saw a wild child, more animal or goblin than
human being. This wild child would have followed her mother, who burned
in the heart of the fire, if soldiers had not pushed her back. A priest
bade the soldiers let her pass to death, for, being of witch-people,
she would undoubtedly burn sooner or later. The Englishmen protested,
and Mr. Jared Bilby, captain and owner of the brig, caught and held
the wild child, who did not struggle against him as she had against
the soldiers. Instead she held fast to him, for even the wicked may
recognize goodness. The priest showed his yellow fangs at the Dawlish
men. He hated and scorned them. ‘Take the child and be gone. She was
born of a witch-woman and will grow to witchcraft and do much harm—but
in England among the heretics. Be gone.’
The child clung to Mr. Bilby and he to her. He took her in his arms,
and she lay corpse-pale and glass-eyed like one about to die. This men
remembered. When he put her down upon the deck of the brig, he was
badly sweated as though his burden had been more than he, a strong
young man, might bear. He told his men the child weighed as though a
child of stone. Some thought that his heart mistook him, and that he
already regretted the acceptance of so dangerous a gift.
Gathering his men about him and having prayed, he gave thanks to
Jehovah, Who, although He had never given him a child of his own body,
yet had seen fit to send this poor little one to him. Then he bade his
men keep their tongues behind their teeth, telling no one from whence
was this child (which in the future should be his child), nor the
manner of her parents’ death, nor the harm which the priest swore she
should live to perform. This promise his men kept for years, but in the
end, when they were old men, they preferred to serve Gossip and Scandal
rather than a kind master, long, long dead.
For days the child lay like death, only occasionally jumping madly from
her pallet, screaming ‘Le feu! Le feu! Le feu!’ then falling back,
covering her face with her hands and laughing horribly. The captain
coaxed and petted her, urged her to eat, and quieted her with his
hands. So by love he restored her to humanity.
Because of her small size he called her ‘Doll,’ which name she well
lived up to, never acquiring the height and weight of other women. No
one ever knew her real age. She may have been seven or perhaps six when
she first came to England. Being unable to talk English and at first
unable to serve herself, she may have seemed younger than she was. Yet,
on the other hand, Fear, Grief, and Sickness often make their Hosts
appear older than the fact.
Mr. Bilby believed that the shock of her parents’ death (for they were
burned before her eyes, her mother crying out to her most piteously
from the midst of flame) had broken the reins of memory. He thought she
had forgotten everything that lay back of her reawakening to life on
board his brig, which was called God’s Mercy. Also he comforted himself
with the belief that if—as might be—she had learned any little tricks
of witchery, or if she had ever been taken to Sabbat or Black Mass, or
if she had looked upon the Prince of Hell, or even if (being led on
by her parents) she had sworn to serve him, she would have forgotten
all these things. She was born again and this time of God and to God,
whom Mr. Bilby piously swore she should serve—Him and Him alone. The
child had been so vehemently frightened she had forgotten all good and
needful things, how to dress herself, how to eat with knife and spoon.
She had forgotten the language of her birth.
But of evil she remembered everything.
3
_He brings the Foundling to his own hearth and to the bosom of his
Goodwife. There the goblin-child rewards Kindness and Mercy with
Malediction and Evil. She overlooks the Goodwife._
Hannah, wife of Jared Bilby, would not accept her sterility with
Christian fortitude. She railed against the wisdom of God, saying,
‘Mrs. Such-and-Such is but half so big and fine a woman as I, yet she
has three sons. Goody This-and-That, the jade, can find but little
favour in the eyes of her Maker, yet, to _her_ He sends more children
than she can feed; but I, a pious, godly, praying woman, remain
barren.’ Which, she wickedly averred, showed the injustice of Divinity.
However, by curious chance or mischance, soon after Mr. Bilby set out
with his men and brig for the coasts of France and Spain, she found
herself with child. Some say the Lord tired of her railing, and, to
punish her, first raised up her hopes and then sent Doll to blight them
for her.
Summer wore away. The nights grew chill. She was four months with
child. Then Mr. Bilby, late one evening, came to Dawlish harbour. With
him was his goblin-child, now grown pretty and playful. He arrived
home in the black of the night and through pelting rain. The child he
carried wrapped in his greatcoat to protect her from the cruel storm.
He shook the shutter which he knew was by his wife’s bedboard.
‘Woman, woman, get up and open to me.’
The woman lay for warmth with her servant wench, Susan Croker. The fury
of the night shewed forth the grandeur of God. The wind howled above
the beating of the rain. Croker cried to her mistress not to open the
door on such a night. It could be no living man who knocked, for it is
on such vexed and angry nights as these the sea gives up its dead.
Hannah was a fearless woman. She got quickly to the door, unbarred it,
and, in a deluge of wind and wet, Mr. Bilby entered with his burden.
Her heart mistook her. She cried out, ‘Jared, what have you there in
that great bundle?’ So he took it to the hearth and, as the women
knelt, throwing kindling on the fire, he opened the bundle and out
popped the goblin-child. She shuddered away from the fire (a thing she
always feared) and clutched her foster father with her little hands,
gazing into his face with round black eyes. Every thread of her spikey
hair was tumbled up on end. The women cried in horror that this was no
child. This was an imp, a monkey, a pug. But Jared Bilby on his knees
protected the foundling, both from the fire and the women’s angry
glances. He soothed her with his body and kind words, ‘Ah, the fire
would never devour her.’ He was here, and he would never leave her.
She was his child, etc. He would always love and cherish her—and the
like. The child pushed her tously head under his chin and froze into
stillness.
[Illustration: Child holding man]
Susan Croker told many that, from the beginning, the child bewitched
him. Nor did the affection which Bilby gave his Doll ever seem like the
love which men feel to their children, but rather the darker and often
unholy passion which is evoked by mature, or almost mature women—a
passion which witches, when young and comely, have often engendered
with ferocious intensity. As long as he lived he was forever stroking
her shaggy black hair, looking lovingly into those button-round eyes,
and kissing a wide hobgoblin mouth which many a Christian would fear
to kiss. Hannah was a lusty, jealous woman who could not abide such
mean rivalry as that of a foundling child. The woman, who had always
been a gossiping wife, now, under the baleful influence of Doll, seemed
like to become a shrew. She was steely set in her hatred of the child,
although she fed her, gave her a corner to sleep in, and taught her
some small prayers. With her the child seemed dull, indifferent, but
with Mr. Bilby she was merry, playful, and loving. So the one thought
her a knowing child and the other a zany.
Mr. Bilby would not tell his wife where he had found Doll, but it did
trouble him that the woman so cunningly insisted that either she was
the child of a witch or the begotten of the Devil. Even Susan Croker,
who was kind to the foundling, had horrid suspicions of her. She could
not teach Doll the noble, sonorous lines of Our Lord’s Prayer, although
the imp was quick to learn worthless things, such as ‘This Little Pig
Goes to Market’ or ‘A Cat Comes Fiddling Out of the Barn.’
The child, having been in the house a month, there occurred a chance to
show what she could do—that is, what evil she could do.
4
_Doll covets a ship for a toy and the whole of her Foster Father’s
love. She nefariously gains her ends and slays a Dangerous Rival._
The midwife promised Hannah a great thumping boy handsome as his
mother, strong as his father. He should either wear the bands of the
clergy or walk the quarter-deck of the king’s navy. Because her husband
favoured the nautical life for his unborn son, he made him a rattle in
the shape of a ship. In the hull were seven balls which, when the ship
was shaken, rattled. Now Doll was forever leaning against his knees and
watching him as he carved out this bauble. As one after another of the
seven balls were liberated in the heart of the wood, she would laugh
and gloat. It was not a toy for her, but for him who should (according
to nature) supplant her in her foster father’s love. In her evil heart
she must have brooded on these things and come to hate this other child
that would possess the ship and Bilby’s affection. Her hands were
always outstretched to the rattle and she cried, ‘Give, give, give.’
One day as they were thus—man and child—Hannah came in from the
milk-house. The woman was jealous—not only for her own sake, but for
the sake of the unborn. ‘For,’ she thought, ‘what shall he, who gives
all to a foundling, have left for his own son? Not only has this wicked
girl turned him away from me, but she takes the rightful place of his
own child.’ Then she said:
‘It is not well that a woman in my condition should be exposed to
contrary and evil influences. Jared, send away your “pretty pet”;
give her to the wife of your ship’s cook to keep—at least until I am
delivered. Many wiser than I, yes, and wiser than you....’ Her jaw
swung loose as though broke. Her teeth stuck out, her eyes bulged, for
the goblin-child, through her mat of hair and out of her wild bright
eyes, was staring at her. She stared and moved her lips in a whisper,
then she skipped across the room, grinning in diabolical glee. Mrs.
Hannah felt the curse go through her. The babe in her womb moved in its
wretchedness, and was blasted. The woman felt its tiny soul flutter to
her lips and escape. She knew that Doll (being of some infernal origin)
could see this same soul, and she guessed, from the roving of her
eyes, how it clung for a moment to its mother’s lips, how it flew to
the Bible upon the stand (in which its name would never be recorded),
how it poised upon the window-sill, then, unborn and frustrated, it
departed to whatever Paradise or Hell God prepares for such half-formed
souls. Hannah began to screech and wail, then fell back upon the bed
in a swoon.
The body of the unborn child shrivelled within her, and, when a male
midwife was called from Dawlish, he said she had been but full of air.
She never was again with child. Some said (and Captain Bilby among
them) that she never had been—even on the ’bove-related most famous
occasion.
But if, as the most informed and thoughtful have said, the blasting of
Hannah’s infant was indeed a fact, then we have to hand, and early in
the life history of Doll Bilby, an actual case of witchcraft. And is it
likely such monstrous power (blasting unborn life with a glance or at
most a muttered curse) should be given to any one who had not already
set her name to the Devil’s Book, and compacted herself to Hell?
5
_The New Land holds greater promise than the Old. Mr. Bilby, Ux et
filia say fare-you-well to England and take up residence close to Salem
and not far from Boston, in the Bay Colony. They prosper. The child
grows an evil pace._
In those days England offered little peace to men (like Captain Bilby)
who would worship God in their own way, and in accordance with His
own holy teachings and the dictates of their own hearts—not according
to teachings of bishops or priests. So Mr. Bilby often yearned towards
that newer land which lay far west beyond the Atlantic. In time he sold
his brig, God’s Mercy, and his freehold. The agent of the Bay Colony,
in his office at Maiden Lane, London, told him to get to Southampton
with his wife, child, and gear. Within the month he should sail.
Mrs. Hannah protested that if the child went she would not. Then he
would humour and praise her, so at last she went, although with much
bad grace.
In the year 1663 the ship Elizabeth arrived, by the goodness of
God, to the colony at Massachusetts Bay, and in her came an hundred
souls. There were yeomen, farmers, braziers, wainers, pewterers,
etc., indentured servants, apprentices, etc., and certain gentlemen
scholars, etc. But in after years the most famous of all these people
was Bilby’s Doll, and it is she who has made the name of the ship
Elizabeth remembered. There was in the hold a cargo of close to an
hundred Bibles, and to this beneficent influence many attributed the
quick fair passage which the Elizabeth enjoyed. No one thought it
possible that the button-eyed foster child of Mr. Bilby could be a
weather breeder. In fact no one thought of the child except to wonder
at the foolish fondness which her ‘father’ continually showed her. They
thought of the Bibles below and thanked God for their sunny voyage.
Rather should they have thought of the witch-child. For good things,
such as fine weather, may spring from evil people.
Also on this ship came one Zacharias Zelley, an Oxford man and a
widower. He was no longer young, nor was he an old man. In demeanour he
was sad and thoughtful. After some shiftings he, too, like the Bilbys,
came to settle at Cowan Corners, and there he preached the Word of God.
But in time he fell from God, and of him more hereafter.
The new land prospered the Bilbys and they were well content. The
plantation which Mr. Bilby was able to buy was not only of admirable
size, well-set-up with house, barns, sheds, etc., but it was already
reduced to good order and its fertility was proved. Yet for many years,
down to this present day, Bilby’s lands can produce little if anything
except that coarse yellow broom which the vulgar call witches’ blood.
The cellar hole of this house still stands upon the skirts of Cowan
Corners, and but six miles removed from Salem. In those days there was
a good road before this house leading from Salem to Newburyport. Beyond
this road were salt meadows and the sea. To the north of the house lay
fields of maize, English grass, corn, peelcorn, barley, oats, pumpkins,
ending only at the waters of the River Inch (as it was called in those
days). To the south were the adjoining lands of Deacon Thumb. But to
the west, beyond the rough pastures, and too close for a wholesome
peace of mind, was a forest of a size and terror such as no Englishman
could conceive of unless he should actually see it. It stretched
without break farther than man could imagine, and the trees of it were
greater than the masts of an admiral or the piers of a cathedral. Yet
was it always a green and gloomy night in this forest, and over all was
silence, unbreakable.
Many thought the tawny savages who lived within were veritable devils,
and that, somewhere within this vastness, Satan himself might be found.
To this Mr. Zacharias Zelley, having taken up the ministry at Cowan
Corners, would not listen. ‘For,’ he said, ‘we left the Devil behind us
in England. Seek God in the heart of this majestic and awful forest—not
the Devil. When I was a boy in Shropshire I knew the very niche in the
rocks where old women said the Devil lived and had his kitchen. It was
there he kept his wife. Every holiday I hid close by the rocks, hoping
to see his children.... Let us leave him there in the Old England, but
in the New keep our eyes pure and open against the coming of the Lord.’
Atheism as the good and learned Glanvill, in his ‘Sadducismus
Triumphatus,’ has proved, is begun in Sadducism and those that dare
not bluntly say ‘there is no God’ (for a fair step and introduction)
content themselves to deny there are spirits or witches or devils. Yet
how sad to see one of the clergy first agree that the Devil could be
left behind in England and soon claim there is no Devil, no witches, no
spirits. For without these awful presences, who may be sure of God?