Were it true, could we summon to our side the spirits of those whom

we have so fondly cherished and converse with them of things holy and

eternal, could we learn wisdom from their fuller knowledge, could we be

assured in their own sweet accents of their fadeless love, could we now

and again be comforted with a sight of their well-known faces, the touch

of their hands upon ours, were it God’s will that this should be so, then

assuredly Spiritism is a most blessed and sacred thing, consolation to

the afflicted, succour to the distressed, a shining light upon earth’s

dark ways, a very ready help to us all. But if on the other hand there

is reason and grave reason to suppose that the spirits, with whom it is

possible under certain exceptional conditions and by certain remarkable

devices to establish a contact, although often claiming to be departed

friends or relatives and supporting their contention (we acknowledge)

with no little plausibility, are again and again found to be masquerading

intelligences, in some cases undoubtedly actors of excellence who play

their part for a time with consummate skill, but who have never at any

séance whatsoever anywhere been able conclusively to demonstrate their

identity, if in fact these manifesting intelligences are deceivers,

imposing for purposes of their own a fraudulent impersonation upon those

who with breaking hearts are so eagerly longing to communicate with son

or husband fallen in battle, it may be, or on some lone shore, if they

are proven liars, if their messages are trivial, ambiguous, cryptic,

incapable of verification, shifty, ignorant, nay worse, blasphemous and

hideously obscene, then are we justified—and we are in point of fact

fully and completely justified—in concluding that the spirits are not

those of the departed, but evil intelligences who never have been and

never will be incarnate, unclean spirits, demons, and then assuredly

Spiritism is most foul, most loathly, most dangerous, and most damnable.

The mediums, who of their own will freely open the door to these spirits,

who invite them to enter, stand in the most deadly peril. A Spiritist of

many years’ experience who saw not too late the hazard and abandoned that

creed, writes as follows: “Spirit communion soon absorbs all the time,

faculties, hopes, fears, and desires of its devotees, and herein lies one

of the greatest dangers of spiritualism. Infatuated by communication with

the unseen inhabitants of the hidden world, the medium loses his or her

interest in the things pertaining to everyday life and interest. A soft

and pleasing atmosphere appears to surround them. The realities of flesh

and blood are lost in ideal dreaming and there is no incentive to break

away from a state of existence so agreeable, no matter how monstrous are

the delusions practised by the spirits. Their consciences are so callous

as if seared with a hot iron, sin has to them lost its wickedness, and

they are willing dupes to unseen beings who delight to control their

every faculty. Very seldom has a full-fledged spiritualist been able to

comprehend the necessity and blessedness of the religion of Jesus Christ,

and to withdraw from the morbid conditions into which he has fallen....

“For about three months I was in the power of spirits, having a

dual existence, and greatly tormented by their contradictory and

unsatisfactory operations.... They tormented me to a very severe extent,

and I desired to be freed from them. I lost much of my confidence in

them, and their blasphemy and uncleanness shocked me. But they were

my constant companions. I could not get rid of them. They tempted me

to suicide and murder, and to other sins. I was fearfully beset and

bewildered and deluded. There was no human help for me. They led me

into some extravagances of action, and to believe, in a measure, a few

of their delusions, often combining religion and devilry in a most

surprising manner.”[89]

[Illustration: PLATE VII

S. JAMES VISITS THE WARLOCK’S DEN. Breughel

[_face p. 250_]

In my own experience, I myself, not once, but over and over again, have

seen all these symptoms unmistakably marked in those whose sole interest

and aim in life seemed to be a constant attendance at séances. I have

watched, in spite of every effort unable to check and dissuade, the

fearfully rapid development of such characteristics in persons who have

begun to dabble with Spiritism, at first no doubt in moods of levity

and wanton curiosity, but soon with hectic anxiety and the most morbid

absorption. Some fifteen years ago in a well-known English provincial

town a circle was formed by a number of friends to experiment with

table-turning, psychometry, the planchette, ouija-boards, crystal-gazing,

and the like. They were, perhaps, a little tired of the usual round

of social engagements, dances, concerts, bridge, the theatre, dinner

parties, and all those mildly pleasurable businesses which go to make

up life, or at least a great portion of life, for so many. They wanted

some new excitement, something a little out of the ordinary. A lady,

just returned home from a prolonged visit to London, had (it seems) been

taken to some Spiritistic meeting, and she was full of the wonders both

witnessed and heard there. The sense of the eerie, the unknown, lent a

spice of adventure too. The earlier meetings were informal, first at one

house, now at another. They began by being infrequent, almost casual, at

fairly long intervals. Next a certain evening each week was fixed for

these gatherings, which soon were fully attended by all concerned. No

member would willingly miss a single reunion. Before long they met twice,

three times, every evening in the week. Professional mediums were engaged

who travelled down from London and other great cities, some at no small

distance, to give strange exhibitions of their powers. I myself met two

of these experts, a man and a woman, both of whose names I have since

seen advertised in Spiritistic journals of a very recent date, and I am

bound to say that I was most unfavourably impressed in each instance.

Not that I for a moment think they were fraudulent, nor do I suspect

any vulgar trickery or pose; they were undoubtedly honest, thoroughly

convinced and sincere, which makes the matter ten times worse. And so

from being mere idle triflers at a new game, incredulous and a little

mocking, the whole company became besotted by their practices, fanatics

whose thoughts were always and ever centred and concentrated upon their

communion with spirits, who talked of nothing else, who seemed only to

live for those evenings when they might meet and enter—as it were—another

world. Argument, pleading, reproof, authority, official admonishment,

all proved useless; one could only stand by and see the terrible thing

doing its deadly work. The symptoms were exactly as above described. In

two cases, men, the moral fibre was for a while apparently destroyed

altogether; in another case, a woman, there was obsession, and persons

who either knew nothing of, or had no sort of belief in, Spiritism,

whispered of eccentricities, of outbursts of uncontrolled passion and

ravings, which pointed to a disordered mind, to an asylum. All sank into

a state of apathy; former interests vanished; the amenities of social

intercourse were neglected and forgotten; old friendships allowed to

drop for no reason whatsoever; a complete change of character for the

worse, a terrible deterioration took place; the physical health suffered;

their faces became white and drawn, the eyes dull and glazed, save

when Spiritism was discussed, and then they lit with hot unholy fires;

one heard covert gossip that hinted of crude debauch, of blasphemous

speeches, of licence and degradation. Fortunately by a series of

providential events the circle was broken up; outside circumstances

compelled the principals to fall away, and what was doubtless a more

potent factor than any, one or two were suddenly brought to realize

the deadly peril and the folly of their proceedings. It proved a hard

struggle indeed to rid themselves of the controls to which they had

so blindly and so utterly submitted; their wills were weakened, their

health impaired; more than once they slid back again into the old danger

zone, more than once they were on the verge of giving up the contest in

despair. But under direction and availing themselves of those means of

grace the Church so bounteously proffers they persevered, and were at

length made clean.

There must be many who have had similar experiences, who know intimately,

even if they have not actually had to rescue and to guide, those who have

been meshed and trapped by Spiritism and are endeavouring to escape.

They will appreciate how difficult is the task, they will realize how

pernicious, how potent, how evil, such toils may be. Nobody who has had

to deal with sensitives, with poor dupes who are eager to abandon their

practices, can think lightly of Spiritism.

That Spiritism opens the door to demoniac possession, so often classed

as lunacy, is generally acknowledged by all save the prejudiced and

superstitious. As far back as 1877 Dr. L. S. Forbes Winslow wrote in

_Spiritualistic Madness_: “Ten thousand unfortunate people are at the

present time confined in lunatic asylums on account of having tampered

with the supernatural.” And quoting an American journal he goes on to

say: “Not a week passes in which we do not hear that some of these

unfortunates destroy themselves by suicide, or are removed to a lunatic

asylum. The mediums often manifest signs of an abnormal condition of

their mental faculties, and among certain of them are found unequivocal

indications of a true demoniacal possession. The evil spreads rapidly,

and it will produce in a few years frightful results.... Two French

authors of spiritualistic works, who wrote _Le Monde Spirituel_ and

_Sauvons le genre humain_, died insane in an asylum; these two men were

distinguished in their respective professions; one as a highly scientific

man, the other as an advocate well learned in the Law. These individuals

placed themselves in communication with spirits by means of tables. I

could quote many such instances where men of the highest ability have, so

to speak, neglected all and followed the doctrines of Spiritualism only

to end their days in the lunatic asylum.”

Some half a dozen years ago an inquiry was undertaken and there was

circulated an interrogatory or _enquête_ which invited opinions upon (1)

“the situation as regards the renewed interest in psychic phenomena”;

(2) whether this “psychic renewal” denoted a “passing from a logical and

scientific (deductive) to a spiritual and mystic (inductive) conception

of life,” or “a reconciliation between the two, that is between science

and faith”;[90] (3) “the most powerful argument for, or against, human

survival”; (4) “the best means of organizing this (psychic) movement in

the highest interest, philosophical, religious and scientific, of the

nation, especially as a factor of durable peace.” Five-and-fifty of the

answers were collected and published under the title _Spiritualism: Its

Present-Day Meaning_,[91] a book which certainly makes most interesting

and illuminating if extremely varied reading. Being a symposium, all

schools of thought are represented, and I would venture to add that among

the contributions are some outpourings which evince no thought at all, a

fact which is of itself not without considerable significance. We have

the unflinching logic and sound common-sense of Father Bernard Vaughan,

whose verdict is reiterated by the Rev. James Adderley and the Rev. J.

A. V. Magee; the concise, outspoken, pertinent and telling comments of

General Booth; the vague hopelessly inadequate flotsam of Dr. Percy

Dearmer,[92] vapid stuff which makes a theologian writhe; the sweet

sugary sentimentalism of Miss Evelyn Underhill, so anæmic, so obviously

popular, and so ingenuously miscalled mysticism; the dull worthless dross

of Mr. McCabe’s superstitious materialism; the feverish panicky special

pleading of the convinced Spiritists. Here, too, we have much that

directly bears out our present contention, the medical evidence of such

names as Sir Bryan Donkin; Dr. W. H. Stoddart, who treats of “The Danger

to Mental Sanity”; with Dr. Bernard Hollander on “The Peril of Spirits”;

and Dr. A. T. Schofield on “The Spiritist Epidemic.” Thus Dr. Stoddart

writes: “In some cases the spiritualistic hallucinations so dominate

the whole mental life that the condition amounts to insanity; and I

can confirm Sir Bryan Donkin’s statement that spiritualistic inquiries

tend to induce insanity.”[93] Dr. Hollander is even more emphatic: “The

practice is a dangerous one. Persons become intoxicated with spirits of

that nature as others do with spirits of another kind. And similarly, as

not all persons who take alcohol get drunk, so not all spiritualists show

the effects of their indulgences.... But that is no proof against the

harmful nature of these practices, and, as a mental specialist, I confess

I have seen victims of both, and that the one addicted to material

spirits is the easier to treat.”[94] Spiritism, Dr. Schofield points

out, “has been known to Christians for 2000 years. Any benefit derived

therefrom is more than neutralized by the very doubtful surroundings and

character of the supposed revelation (I say ‘supposed’ because it has

been known so long). If, however, it must be coupled with the dangers,

horrors, and frauds that so often in modern Spiritism accompany the

knowledge of the unseen, we are almost as well without it, at any rate

from such a source.... There can be no doubt the epidemic will eventually

subside, but before it does, the vast mischief of a spiritual tidal wave

of very doubtful origin will be most disastrously done, and thousands

of unstable souls will be wrecked in spirit, if not in mind and body

as well.... To class it as a religion is an insult to the faith of

Christ.”[95]

Sir William Barrett utters a word of grave import: “All excitable

and unbalanced minds need to be warned away from a subject that may

cause, and in many cases has caused, serious mental derangement.”[96]

“Spiritualism,” says Father Bernard Vaughan, “only too often means loss

of health, loss of morals and loss of faith. Consult not Sir Oliver Lodge

or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Mr. Vale Owen, but your family medical

adviser, and he will tell you to keep away from the séance-room as you

would from an opium den. In fact, the drug habit is not more fatal

than the practice of Spiritualism in very many cases. Read the warning

note sounded by Dr. Charles Mercier, or by Dr. G. H. Robertson or by

Colonel R. H. Elliot, and be satisfied that yielding to Spiritualism is

qualifying for an asylum. You may not get there but you deserve to be

an inmate.”[97] The following letter written by Miss Mary G. Cardwell,

M.B., Ch.B., from the Oldham Union Infirmary, speaks for itself: “One

day recently I admitted a woman of thirty-five years to the hospital of

which I have the honour to be resident medical officer. She was sent in

as incapable of looking after herself or her family. She told me that she

was a medium, having been introduced into Spiritualism by a man, also

a medium, who said he could thereby help her over some family worries.

As a direct result of this, she has neglected her children, so that the

public authorities have removed them from her care, her home is ruined,

and she herself is a mental and moral wreck. She had paid the other

medium for his services by the sacrifice of her virtue.”[98] And this is

no isolated, no exceptional, instance. I have myself known precisely

similar cases.

Occasionally some particularly shocking incident will find its way into

the public Press and we have records such as the following, which was

headed “Family of Eleven Mad. Burning Mania after Séance. Child to be

Sacrificed.

“The story of an entire family of eleven persons, in the village of

Krucktenhofen, Bavaria, going out of their minds after a spiritualistic

séance is sent by the Exchange Paris correspondent, quoting the _Berliner

Tageblatt_.

“Renouncing the goods of this world, the father, mother, three sons, two

elder daughters, and subsequently the remaining four younger members of

the family, joined in burning their furniture and bedding.

“Finally, the three-months-old child of one of the daughters was about

to be burnt when neighbours interfered. The whole family is now in an

asylum.” (_Daily Mirror_, 19 May, 1921.)

“Camouflage it as you will, Spiritualism with its kindred superstitions,

such as necromancy and occultism, is a recrudescence of the old, old

practices cultivated in the days of long ago.”[99] In other words this

“New Religion” is but the Old Witchcraft. There is, I venture to assert,

not a single phenomenon of modern Spiritism which cannot be paralleled in

the records of the witch trials and examinations; not a single doctrine

which was not believed and propagated by the damnable Gnostic heresies of

long ago.

Some of the definitions of Spiritism given by spiritists themselves

are sufficiently startling. They frankly tell us that “Spiritualism is

the science or art of communion with spirits.... It does not follow

that because a communication comes from ‘the unseen,’ it is therefore

from God, as a revelation. It may be from the latest dead lounger, as

an amusement,”[100] or, I would add, from a demon as a snare. There

is something inexpressibly ugly and revolting about this cold-blooded

necromancy defined in set categorical terms.

Modern Spiritism is usually considered to have had its origin in America.

In the year 1848 there lived at Hydesville, Wayne, New York State, a

family of the Methodist persuasion named Fox; a father, mother, and two

daughters, Margaretta and Katie, aged fifteen and twelve respectively.

During the month of March all the household began to declare that they

were kept awake at night by the most extraordinary noises, loud knockings

on the wall, and footsteps. The children amused themselves by trying

to imitate the noises; they tapped on the wainscot, and to their great

surprise answering taps came back, so that they found they could get into

communication with the unknown agency. They would ask a question and

invite it to respond with one sharp rap for “no” and three for “yes,” and

thus it continually replied. They further held actual conversations in

this way by repeating the alphabet and establishing a regular code. Mrs.

Fox then began to make inquiries concerning the former occupants of the

house, and soon discovered that a pedlar named Charles Rayn was said to

have been murdered in the very bedroom where her two girls were sleeping,

and that his body had been buried in the cellar. Public curiosity was

aroused, and it was now generally believed that it was the spirit of the

unfortunate victim who haunted the farm-house, endeavouring to convey

some message to those whom he had left. Actually no body was found in

the cellar, and the alleged murderer whose name was given, appeared

at Hydesville and “threw very hot water on the story.” Later when the

family moved to Rochester—it is said they were practically driven out of

Hydesville by the Methodist minister there—the rappings followed them,

and the whole town was speedily on the tiptoe of excitement. It was

then given out that the noises were communications from the spirits of

those recently dead, and that the Fox girls, who apparently attracted

them, were gifted with some special faculty which rendered intercourse

of this kind possible. People soon began to flock round them asking

their assistance in getting messages from their departed relatives and

friends; the two girls held regular séances, and netted a fair sum of

money. It was not long before other persons discovered that they also

possessed this extraordinary faculty of attracting spirit manifestations,

and of getting into communication with the other world at will. But

the Fox sisters were first in the field, and to them came a continuous

stream of persons with well-filled pockets from all parts of America.

There was also opposition, which sometimes took a very violent form.

As early as November, 1850, an attack was made upon Margaretta Fox,

who was staying at West Troy in the house of a Mr. Bouton. A rough mob

surrounded the premises, stones were thrown at the windows, and shots

fired, whilst both men and women uttered threats and imprecations against

the “unholy witch-woman within.” At one of the séances Dr. Kane, a famous

Arctic explorer was present, and he was so fascinated by the beauty of

Margaretta Fox that he never rested until he had taken her away from

her sordid and harmful surroundings, had her educated at Philadelphia,

and finally, much to the annoyance of his relations, who loathed any

connexion with the Fox family, made her his wife.

Dr. Kane died soon after his marriage, but in the book published by his

widow there are several references to his abhorrence of Spiritism. “Do

avoid spirits,” he urges, “I cannot bear to think of you as engaged in a

course of wickedness and deception.” For ten years Mrs. Kane did indeed

abandon it; in fact in August, 1858, she was baptized as a Catholic at

New York; but then,[101] owing perhaps to the pinch of poverty, she

again took up work as a medium, and was received back with acclamations

by the whole Spiritistic community. From that moment dates her steady

deterioration, both physical and moral.

Kate Fox, Mrs. Jencken as she had become, the wife of a London barrister,

was the mother of a baby whom popular talk credited with mediumistic

powers of the most extraordinary kind. The whole Spiritistic following

prophesied a brilliant future for the poor child, of whom, however, there

is nothing recorded save that he was sadly neglected by his miserable

mother, who died of chronic alcoholism in June, 1892. Mrs. Kane survived

her sister for nine months, a pitiable and hopeless wreck, craving only

for drink. The last few weeks of her life were spent in a derelict

tenement house. “This wreck of womanhood has been a guest in palaces and

courts. The powers of mind now imbecile were the wonder and the study

of scientific men in America, Europe, and Australia.... The lips that

utter little else now than profanity, once promulgated the doctrine of a

new religion.”[102] It would, indeed, be difficult to conceive anything

more sordid and more miserable than this sad and shocking story of utter

degradation. The collapse and moral corruption of the first apostles of

modern Spiritism should surely prove a timely warning and a danger signal

not to be mistaken.[103]

In the earliest days of Spiritism the subject was investigated by men

like Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison, Robert Hare, professor of

chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, and John Worth Edmonds,

a judge of the Supreme Court of New York State. Conspicuous among the

spiritists we find Andrew Jackson Davis, whose work _The Principles of

Nature_ (1847), dictated by him in trance, contained theories of the

universe closely resembling those of the Swedenborgians. From America the

movement filtered through to Europe, and when in 1852 two mediums, Mrs.

Haydon and Mrs. Roberts, came to London, not merely popular interest but

the careful attention of the leading scientists of the day was attracted.

Robert Owen, the Socialist, frankly accepted the Spiritistic explanation

of the various phenomena, while Professor De Morgan, the mathematician,

in his account of a sitting with Mrs. Haydon declared himself convinced

that “somebody or some spirit was reading his thoughts.” In the spring

of 1855 Daniel Dunglas Home (Hume)—Home was the son of the eleventh

Lord Home and a chambermaid at the Queen’s Hotel, Southampton, but was

brought up in America—who was then a young man of twenty-two, crossed

to England from America. In 1856 Home was received into the Church at

Rome by Father John Etheridge, S.J., and he then gave a promise to

refrain from all exercise of his mediumistic powers, but in less than

a year he had broken his pledge and was living as before. This famous

medium is almost the only one who, as even Podmore admits, was never

clearly convicted of fraud. Sir David Brewster, the scientist, and Dr.

J. J. Garth Wilkinson, a scholar of unblemished integrity and one of the

leading homœopathic physicians, both avowed that they were incapable of

explaining the phenomena they had witnessed by any natural means. It was

in 1855 that the first English periodical dealing exclusively with the

subject, _The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph_, was published at Keighley,

in Yorkshire. In 1864 the Davenport brothers visited England, and in 1876

Henry Slade. Amongst English mediums the Rev. William Stainton Moses

became prominent in 1872,[104] and about the same year Miss Florence

Cook, so well known for the materializations of “Katie King,” which

were scrupulously investigated by the late Sir William Crookes. In 1873

and in 1874, however, the trickery of two mediums, Mrs. Bassett and Miss

Showers, was definitely exposed.[105] In 1876 and 1877 the sensitive

“Dr.” Monck was at the height of his reputation, and both Dr. Alfred

Russel Wallace, F.R.S., and the late Archdeacon Colley state that in

various séances with him they witnessed on several occasions phenomena,

including materialization, under rigid test conditions which admitted

of no dispute as to their genuineness. It is true that in 1876 Monck

had been in trouble and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment under

the Vagrant Act. About the same time William Eglinton, who figures in

Florence Marryat’s work _There is No Death_, appeared on the scenes

and for a while loomed largely in the public eye. He became famous for

his slate-writing performances as well as his materializations. He

was, however, exposed by Archdeacon Colley, who during the discussion

which had centred round a medium named Williams, detected in fraudulent

practices during séances in Holland, wrote to _The Medium and Daybreak_

to say: “It unfortunately fell to me to take muslin and false beard from

Eglinton’s portmanteau.... Some few days before this I had on two several

occasions cut pieces from the drapery worn by, and clipped hair from the

beard of, the other figure representing Abdullah. I have the pieces so

cut off beard and muslin still. But note that when I took these things

into my possession I and a medical gentleman (25 years a Spiritualist and

well known to the old members of the Movement) found the pieces of muslin

cut fit exactly into certain corresponding portions of the drapery thus

taken.”[106]

The medium Slade, who was famous for slate-writing, was upon one

occasion suddenly seized as he was about to put the slate under the

table. His hands were held fast, and when the slate was snatched from

him it was seen to be already covered with characters. Anna Rothe, who

died in 1901, a medium well known for her apports of flowers, suffered

a term of imprisonment in Germany on a charge of fraud. When Baily, the

Australian sensitive, visited Italy he refused to sit under the strict

conditions which were arranged in answer to a challenge of his powers.

Charles Eldred of Clowne, an adept at materialization, employed a chair

skilfully made with a double seat, and in this recess were discovered the

whole paraphernalia he employed in his performances.

Mrs. Williams, an American medium, who for a long while was a centre of

spiritistic attention at Paris, used to materialize a venerable doctor

with a flowing beard who was sometimes accompanied by a young girl

dressed in white. At one circle Mons. Paul Leymaric gave a prearranged

signal. He and a friend each laid hold of one of the apparitions; a

third spectator seized Mrs. Williams’ assistant; and a fourth turned on

the lights. Mons. Leymaric was seen to be struggling with the medium,

who had donned a grey wig and a long property beard; the young girl was

a mask from which were draped folds of fine white muslin and which she

manipulated with her left hand. Miller, a Californian medium, was more

than suspected of producing spirits from gauze and nun’s veiling.[107]

From one of the mediums of Mons. de Rochas, Valentine, there emanated

mysterious lights, which moved quickly hither and thither during the

séances. Colonel de Rochas, when this manifestation was once at its

height, suddenly switched on a powerful electric torch and Valentine was

seen to have slipped off his socks and to be waving in the air his feet,

which were covered with some preparation of phosphorus.[108] As early as

June, 1875, a photographer named Buguet was convicted of selling faked

photographs of spirits by which he netted a very pretty sum.[109]

It is notorious that in Spiritistic séances and circles charlatanry and

swindling of every kind are rife; that again and again mediums have

been convicted of fraud; that not infrequently all kinds of properties,

stuffed gloves, gauzes, yards of diaphanous muslin, invisible wires,

hooks, beards, wigs, have been discovered; that the use of luminous

paint is very effective and far from uncommon; that a sliding trap or

panel may on occasion prove of inestimable service; that we must allow

for self-deception, delusions, suggestion, hypnotism even; but when all

has been said, when we candidly acknowledge the imposture, the adroit

legerdemain, the conjurer’s clever tricks, the significant _mise en

scène_, the verbal wit and quibbling, the deliberate and subtle cozenage

contrived by shrewd minds and the full play of dramatic instinct and

energy, nevertheless there yet remain numbers of instances when it has

been repeatedly proven that acute and trained observers have witnessed

phenomena which could not by any possibility whatsoever have been

fraudulently produced; that clear-headed, cold-hearted, suspicious, hard

men of science with every sense keenly alert at that very moment have

conversed with, inspected, nay, actually handled, materialized forms and

figures no personation could have devised and manifested.

The proceedings against Monck plainly showed that he had at any rate

a firm belief in his own psychic powers, and although Eglinton was

detected in a trick upon more than one occasion there is irrefutable

evidence to prove that in other instances when he assisted at séances

any normal mode of production of the phenomena seen there was quite

impossible. A large number of Miller’s manifestations also were

genuine.[110] The same may be said of very many mediums. This means,

in fine, that although the manifestations of almost any medium may in

some cases have been artificially contrived, such phenomena are not on

any account to be adjudged _always_ fraudulent, and even if the charge

of imposture could be brought home far more conclusively than has so

far been possible as regards the majority of sensitives, yet it were

a false inference indeed to deduce therefrom that all phenomena are

equally fraudulent and devised. It is only the recklessly illogical mind

and the loose thinker who will in the face of absolutely conclusive

proof of genuine manifestations continue to maintain that a certain

quota of quackery can invalidate the whole. Writers of the temper of

Messrs. Edward Clodd, Joseph McCabe, J. M. Robertson must, of course, be

expected to condemn Spiritism without knowing the facts or weighing the

evidence as an obvious absurdity which calls for no serious refutation.

But this, I think, matters little. The superstitious dogmatism of the

materialist is gravely discredited nowadays. True, the sort of book

he produces is widely circulated and very successful within certain

limits. We should expect tenth-rate ideas which could only emanate from

a lack of understanding, a total want of imagination, and no training

in metaphysics or philosophy, to have a direct appeal to the immature

intelligences, the uneducated vulgar and the blatant yet presumptuous

ignorance, which alone are eager for this kind of outmoded fare.

In France Spiritism was first proclaimed by a pamphlet of Guillard

_Table qui danse et Table qui répond_. The way had been long paved owing

to the interest which was generally taken in the doctrines of Emanuel

Swedenborg. Balzac had published in 1835 his esoteric hybrid _Séraphita_

(_Séraphitus_), a fanciful yet interesting work, in which there are many

pages of theosophic philosophy. Perhaps he meant these seriously, but

it is impossible to take them as other than flights of romance. In 1848

Cohognet more immediately heralded Guillard by publishing at Paris the

first volume of his _Arcanes de la vie future devoilées_, which actually

contains what purport to be communications from the dead. In 1853

séances were being held at Bourges, Strasburg, and Paris, and a regular

furore ensued. Nothing was talked of but the wonders of Spiritism,

which, however, soon met an opponent, Count Agénor de Gasparin, a Swiss

Protestant, who carefully investigated table-turning with a circle of

his friends and came to the conclusion that the phenomena originated

in some physical force of the human body. It must be admitted that his

_Des Tables Tournantes_ (Paris, 1854) is unconvincing and to some extent

superficial, but more perhaps could hardly be expected from a pioneer in

so tortuous an investigation. The Baron de Guldenstubbe, on the contrary,

declared his firm belief in the reality of these phenomena and spirit

intervention in general. His work _La Réalité des Esprits_ (Paris, 1857)

eloquently argued for his convictions, whilst _Le Livre des Esprits_

(Paris, 1853) by M. Rivail or Rival, better known under his pseudonym

Allan Kardec, became a world-wide textbook to the whole subject. In these

early days the most distinguished men were wont to meet in the rue des

Martyrs at Paris for séances. Tiedmen Marthèse, governor of Java; the

academician Saint-René-Taillandier; Sardou, with his son; Flammarion; all

were constant visitors. The notorious Home was, it is said, expelled from

France after a séance at the Tuileries, during which he had touched the

arm of the Empress with his naked foot, pretending that it was a caress

from the tiny hands of a little child who was about fully to materialize.

No one, I think, could be surprised to know that the famous Joris Karl

Huysmans, an epicure in the byways of the occult, made many experiments

in Spiritism, and séances were frequently held at No. 11 rue de Sèvres

where he lived. Extraordinary manifestations took place, and upon one

occasion at least the circle effected a materialization of General

Boulanger, or an apparition of the General appeared to them.

At the present time Spiritism is as widely spread in France as in

England, if indeed not far more widely. Thus _La Science de l’Ame_ is a

new bi-monthly journal issued under the auspices of _La Revue Spirite_.

It has articles on Magnetism and Radio-activity, the analysis of the

soul, and vital radiations. In the number of _La Revue Spirite_, which

commences the year 1925, Mons. Camille Flammarion prints a signed letter

from Heliopolis, which describes a first experience of a séance, where

the death of the writer’s father was predicted in six months and took

place ten days after the allotted time. Elsewhere in the issue are

particulars of the International Congress of Spiritism which was to be

held at Paris in September, 1925, and would be open to all Federations,

Societies, and Groups everywhere. An immense concourse was expected.

The President is Mr. George F. Berry, a well-known name in English

Spiritistic circles, and the compliment of honorary membership is paid to

Léon Denis,[111] Gabriel Delanne, Sir William Barrett, and Ernest Bozzano.

A glance at the pages of any Spiritistic journal in England will show

almost endless activities in every direction. In one issue of the

weekly _Light_ (Saturday, 21 February, 1925) we have amongst other

announcements nine “Sunday’s Society Meetings” in various districts of

London, with addresses on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The following seems

sufficiently startling and a close enough imitation: “_St. Luke’s Church

of the Spiritual Evangel of Jesus the Christ, Queen’s-road, Forest

Hill, S.E._—Minister: Rev. J. W. Potter. February 22nd, 6.30, Service,

Holy Communion and Address. Healing Service, Wed., Feb. 25th, 7 p.m.”

In the next column are details of “Rev. G. Vale Owen’s Lecture Tour.”

The “London Spiritualist Alliance, Ltd.” has a list of meetings. There

are discussion classes and demonstrations of clairvoyance, psychometry,

and Mystic Pictures. Among “Books that will Help you” we find _Talks

with the Dead_, _Report on Spiritualism_, _The Aquarian Gospel of

Jesus the Christ_—(is this used at St. Luke’s Church of the Spiritual

Evangel?)—_Spirit Identity, Spiritualism_, and many more of similar

import. There is a “British College of Psychic Science” where Mr. Horace

Leaf, a medium of some repute, lectures on “The Psychology and Practice

of Mediumship,” Mrs. Barker demonstrates Trance Mediumship, and Mrs.

Travers Smith the Ouija-Board and Automatic Writing. There is a “London

Spiritual Mission” and a “Wimbledon Spiritualist Mission.” At Brighton

“St. John’s Brotherhood Church” provides “The Spiritual Evangel of Jesus

the Christ,” “Minister, Brother John.” And all this is scarcely a tithe

of the various announcements and advertisements.

However grotesque, and indeed often puerile in its bombast and

grandiloquence, such a mass of heterogeneous notices may seem we must

remember that these people are in deadly earnest, and I doubt not but

their meetings and assemblies are well attended by enthusiastic devotees.

In a report of an address by the Rev. G. Vale Owen at the “Spiritualist

Community Services in the County Hall” on Sunday evening, 15 February,

1925, I read “all seats were filled long before the advertised hour

for starting. The doors were closed and many for a time were denied

admission. A little later they were allowed to enter and take up

positions along the edges of the dais and other odd places about the

hall.”[112] This, of course, was possibly some exceptional occasion, but

there is no indication that such was the case. Mr. Vale Owen may be a

very eloquent speaker and able to hold his audience spell-bound with the

magic of his words. It must assuredly be his manner and not his matter,

for his so-called revelations of the life beyond the grave, written under

control and presumed to be directly derived from spirit agency, which

appeared in _The Weekly Dispatch_ are vapid, inept, idle, and insipid to

the last degree. Such banal ramblings would provoke a smile, were it not

for the pity that any person can be so self-deluded, and can apparently

induce others to give credit to his silliness.

There have been large numbers of mediums in recent years who owing to

one cause or another attracted considerable attention from time to

time, and there are many well-known contemporary sensitives widely

practising to-day. Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, who were believed to

have obtained spirit messages from the late F. W. H. Myers, occupied

the serious attention of the Society of Psychical Research[113] for a

considerable period; Mrs. Piper is an automatic writer of no little

repute; Mr. Vout Peters specializes in psychometry and clairvoyance;

Mr. Vearncombe and Mrs. Deane have recently enjoyed their full share

of notoriety;[114] the Rev. Josie K. Stewart (Mrs. Y.), a lady hailing

from the United States, has a gift for the production of “writing and

drawings on cards held in her hand”; Mrs. Elizabeth A. Tomson, in spite

of being detected of fraud at a Spiritistic “Church” in Brooklyn, still

has devoted followers; Franek Kluski, Stella C., and Ada Besinnet, are

in the forefront of American mediums; whilst the famous Goligher circle

at Belfast was carefully and patiently investigated for no less than

three months by Dr. Fournier d’Albe, who has published the result of

his experiences.[115] The very cream of these occult manifestations

is materialization, the most complex problem of all, which has been

described as “the exercise of the power of using of the matter of the

medium’s and the sitters’ bodies in the formation of physical structures

on a principle totally unknown to ordinary life, although probably

present there.”[116] Recently (1922) Erto, the Italian medium, appears to

have been the subject of careful experiments at the French Metaphysical

Institute during a period of several months, those who assisted being

pledged to silence until a decision had been reached. The particular

phenomena produced by or in his presence were chiefly characterized by

the radiation of an extraordinary light about his person. At the end

of 1922 two papers appeared in _La Revue Métapsychique_ on the part of

Dr. Sanguinetti and Dr. William Mackenzie of Genoa indicating their

assurance (1) that every scientific precaution had been taken, and

(2) that the phenomena were genuine. However, the experiments seem to

have continued and later there appeared in _Le Matin_ an enthusiastic

contribution by Dr. Stephen Chauvet, which caused Dr. Gustave Geley,

Director of the Metaphysical Institute, to come forward in confirmation

of the testimony. It is only fair to add that immediately afterwards

Dr. Geley to a certain extent retracted his statement, as he suggested

that the psychic lights could be produced with _ferro-cerium_, and

it was thought that traces of this substance could be found on Erto’s

clothes. The medium protested his innocence of any deception, and offers

himself for further experiments. A writer in _Psychica_ is inclined to

believe that the phenomena were genuine, but that later some fraud may

have been practised owing to waning power. This is possibly the case,

for that the radiations were at first supernormal cannot, I think, be

gainsaid in view of the high testimony adduced. For this phenomenon Mr.

Cecil Hush and Mr. Craddock have sat repeatedly; of the extraordinary

manifestations of the late Eusapia Palladino there can be no reasonable

doubt at all; the materializations of Mlle “Eva Carrère,”[117] although

on several occasions not altogether successful, are at other times

supported by the strongest evidence; Nino Pecoraro, who is described as

“a remarkably muscular young Neapolitan,” is famous for “ectoplasmic

effects”; and Stanislava P., Willy S., the Countess Castelvicz, and

very many more psychics possess these supernormal powers, although, as

we might expect, they have to be used with the utmost caution and often

prove very exhausting to the subject. After all, it must be remembered

that probably under certain conditions materialization cannot take place,

whilst under favourable conditions it can be completely effected. For an

exhaustive and authoritative discussion of the whole matter the Baron Von

Schrenck-Notzing’s _Phenomena of Materialization_ (Kegan Paul, 1923),

should be consulted. The 225 photographic reproductions are of the utmost

importance, whilst the investigations were carried on under conditions

of such pitiless severity to eliminate any hypothesis of fraud that the

mediums cannot but have been subjected to the intensest physical and

moral strain.

Among recent psychic phenomena very general attention has been attracted

by what is known as “The Oscar Wilde Script,” which was widely discussed

in 1923-24. Briefly, this purports to be a number of communications which

were delivered by the spirit of the late Oscar Wilde at the rate of 1020

words in an hour by means of automatic writing through the mediumship

of Mrs. Travers Smith (Mrs. Hester M. Dowden)[118] and a certain Mr. V.

True, there were published in _The Sunday Express_ pages which had a

superficial resemblance to the more flashy characteristics of Wilde’s

flamboyant style, but it seemed as if the wit and point had vanished,

leaving only a somewhat heavy and imitative prose; one had a sense of

damp fireworks, and personally I do not for a moment accept this script

as being inspired or dictated by Wilde. I hasten to add that I do not

suggest there was any conscious fraud or trickery on the part of those

concerned; it is quite probable that these psychic messages were conveyed

by some intelligence of no very high standing, and the result in fine is

not of any value. It is said that a three act play is being or has been

communicated through the ouija-board from what purports to be Wilde. This

I have not read, and therefore I am not in a position to pronounce upon

it.

Spiritism is upheld by many distinguished names. Sir Oliver Lodge,

F.R.S., has battled on its behalf, as also have Sir William Barrett,

F.R.S., and Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., Professors Charles Richet,

Janet, Bernheim, Lombroso, and Flammarion lend it the weight of their

authority, whilst Sir Conan Doyle has poured forth his benedictions upon

occultism of every kind.[119] He has even presided over the opening

of a most attractive bookshop in Victoria Street, Westminster, where

Spiritistic publications are sold.

How then are we to regard this mighty movement at which it were folly

to sneer, which it is impossible to ignore? The Catholic Church does

neither. But none the less she condemns it utterly and entirely. Not

because she disbelieves in it, but because she believes in it so

thoroughly, because she knows what is the real nature of the moving

forces, however skilfully they may disguise themselves, however quick

and subtle their shifts and turns, the intelligences which inform and

direct the whole. It is a painful subject since (I reiterate) many

good people, no doubt many thoughtful seekers after truth, have been

fascinated and swept along by Spiritism. They are as yet conscious of

neither physical nor moral harm, and, it may be, they have been playing

with the fire for years. Nay more, Spiritism has been a sweet solace

to many in most poignant hours of bitter sorrow and loss; wherefore

it is hallowed in their eyes by tenderest memories. They are woefully

deceived. Hard as it may seem, we must get down to the bed-rock of

fact. Spiritism has been specifically condemned on no less than four

occasions by the Holy Office,[120] whose decree, 30 March, 1898, utterly

forbids all Spiritistic practices although intercourse with demons be

strictly excluded, and communication sought with good spirits only.

Modern Spiritism is merely Witchcraft revived. The Second Plenary Council

of Baltimore (1866), whilst making ample allowance for prestidigitation

and trickery of every kind, warns the faithful against lending any

support whatsoever to Spiritism and forbids them to attend séances even

out of idle curiosity, for some, at least, of the manifestations must

necessarily be ascribed to Satanic intervention since in no other manner

can they be understood or explained.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI

[1] E. de Rougé, _Étude sur une stèle Égyptienne_, Paris, 1858: E. A. W.

Budge, _Egyptian Magic_, VII.

[2] _Rekh Khet_, “knower of things.”

[3] Euripides, _Bacchæ_: passim; Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, III. 513, _sqq._;

Apollodorus, III. v. 2.; Hyginus, _Fabulæ_, 184; Nonnus, _Dionysiaca

(Bassarica)_, XIV, 46.

[4] Sophocles, _Ajax_; Pindar, _Nemea_, VII, 25; Ovid, _Metamorphoses_,

XIII, 1-398.

[5] Pausanias, III, xvi, 6.

[6] Valerius Maximus, I, 11, 5. Lacinium was a promontory on the east

coast of Bruttium, a few miles south of Croton, and forming the western

boundary of the Tarentine gulf. The remains of the temple of Juno Lacinia

are still extant, and have given the modern name to the promontory, _Capo

delle Colonne_ or _Capo di Nao_ (ναός).

[7] Xenophon, _Memorabilia_, II. i. 5; Demosthenes, XCIII, 24; Dinarchus,

CI, 41; Plutarch, _Lucullus_, IV.

[8] Euripides, _Orestes_, l. 854, and l. 79.

[9] Cf. μάντις.

[10] Cf. Vergil _Æneid_, IV. 471-3:

Agamemnonius scænis agitatus Orestes

armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris

cum fugit, ultricesque sedent in limine Diræ.

(Or as the Atridan matricide

Runs frenzied o’er the scene,

What time with snakes and torches plied

He flees the murdered queen,

While at the threshold of the gate

The sister-fiends expectant wait.)

[11] Plautus, _Amphitruo_, II. 2. 145. Nam hæc quidem edepol lauarum

plenast.

[12]

Quid esset illi morbi, dixeras? Narra, senex.

Num laruatus, aut cerritus? fac sciam.

_Menæchmei._ V. I, 2. Apuleuis has _laruans_ = a madman: “hunc

[pulcherrimam Mercurii imaginem] denique qui laruam putat, ipse est

laruans.” (_Laruatus_ is a poorer reading in this passage.) _Cerritus_,

a rare word, is contracted from _cerebritus_ (_cerebrum_), and not

connected with Ceres, as was formerly suggested. Cf. Horace, _Sermonum_,

II, iii. 278.

[13] _Bibl._ III, v, 1.

[14] 471, _sqq._

[15] 56, Nauck.

[16]

τἀπιχώρἰ ἐν πόλει φρυγῶν τύμπανα,

Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμά θ’ εὑρήματα.

[17] _Circa_ 185-135 B.C.

[18] Professor Leuba, _The Psychology of Religious Mysticism_ Kegan Paul,

London, 1925, p. 11 _sqq._ has some very important references to the

worship of Dionysus.

[19]

σὺ γὰρ ἔνθεος, ὦ κούρα,

εἴτ’ ἐκ Πανὸς εἴθ’ Ἑκάτας

ἢ σεμνῶν Κορυβάντων

φοιτᾷς, ἢ ματρὸς ὀρείας.

[20]

δόξασά που

ἢ Πανὸς ὀργὰς ἢ τινὸς θεῶν μολεῖν.

[21]

ἀλλ’ ἦ Κρονίου Πανὸς τρομερᾷ

μάστιγι φοβεῖ;

[22] Pythagoras prescribes music for mental disorders, Eunapius _Uita

philosophurum_, 67; and Cælius Aurelianus by his references shows that

this was a common remedy in such cases, _De Morbis Chronicis (Tardarum

Passionum)_ VI. Origen, _Aduersus Celsum_, III, x, and Martianus Capella

_De Nuptiis Philologiæ et Mercurii_ IX, 925, have similar allusions.

[23] 1 Kings xvi. 14 (A.V. 1 Samuel xvi. 14): “Exagitabat eum [Saul]

spiritus nequam a Domino.”

[24] _Antiquitates Iud._, VI, viii, 2; ii, 2.

[25] _La Mystique Divine_, Ribet, II, ix, 4, it is true, speaks of

“l’obsession intérieure,” but he makes the above distinction, and

further says: “L’obsession purement intérieure ne diffère des tentations

ordinaires que par la véhémence et la durée.”

[26] Multæ sunt tentationes eius, et die noctuque uariæ dæmonum

insidiæ.... Quoties illi nudæ mulieres cubanti, quoties esurienti

largissimæ apparuere dapes? _Uita S. Hilarionis._ VII. Migne. vol. XXIII.

col. 32.

[27] Sustinebat miser diabolus uel mulieris formam noctu induere,

feminæque gestus imitari, Antonium ut deciperet. S. Athanasius, _Uita S.

Antonii_, V. Migne. vol. XXVI. col. 847.

[28] Feast (duplex maius apud Minores), 22 February.

[29] It may perhaps not be amiss to point out that S. Margaret before

her conversion was by no means the woman of scandalous life so many

biographers have painted her.

[30] Sectando per cellam orantis et flentis, cantauit [diabolus]

turpissimas cantationes, et Christi famulam lacrymantem et se Domino

commendantem procaciter inuocabat ad cantum ...; tentantem precibus et

lacrymis repulit ac eiecit. Bollandists, 22 February. Vol. VI.

[31] Ceterum consilium est semper de talibus inuasionibus suspicionem

habere, non enim negandum maiorem earum partem esse aut fictiones,

aut imaginationes, aut infirmitates, præsertim in mulieribus. _Praxis

confessariorum_, n. 120.

[32] Sæpissime, quæ putantur dæmonis obsessiones, non sunt nisi morbi

naturales, aut Naturales imaginationes, uel etiam inchoata aut perfecta

amentia. Quare caute omnino procedendum, usquedum per specialissima signa

de obsessione constet. _Theologia mystica_, I. n. 228.

[33] _Biblisches Realworterbuch_, Leipsig, 1833.

[34] This word is found nowhere else in the New Testament, and wherever

it is used in the LXX, it is invariably of the sayings of lying prophets,

or those who practised arts forbidden by the Jewish Law. Thus of the

witch of Endor (1 Kings (1 Samuel) xxviii. 8) μάντευσαι δή μοι ἐν τῷ

ἐγγαστριομύθῳ, and (Ezechiel xiii. 6) βλέπουτες ψευδῆ, μαντευόμενοι

μάταια.

[35] Ordinandi, filii charissimi, in officium Exorcistarum, debitis

noscere quid suscipitis. Exorcistam etenim oportet abiicere dæmones; et

dicere populo, ut, qui non communicat, det locum; et aquam in ministerio

fundere. Accipitis itaque potestatem imponendi manum super energumenos,

et per impositionem manuum uestrarum, gratia spiritus sancti, et

uerbis exorcismi pelluntur spiritus immundi a corporibus obsessis.

Studete igitur, ut, sicut a corporibus aliorum dæmones expellitis,

ita a mentibus, et corporibus uestris omnem immunditiam, et nequitiam

eiiciatis; ne illis succumbatis, quos ab aliis, uestro ministerio,

effugatis. Discite per officium uestrum uitiis imperare; ne in moribus

uestris aliquid sui iuris inimicus ualeat uindicare. Tunc etenim recte

in aliis dæmonibus imperabitis, cum prius in uobis eorum multimodam

nequitiam superatis. Quod nobis Dominus agere concédât per Spiritum suum

sanctum.

[36] Accipite, et commendate memoriæ, et habete potestatem imponendi

manus super energumenos, siue baptizatos, siue catechumenos.

[37] Deum Patrem omnipotentem, fratres charissimi, supplices deprecamur,

ut hos famulos suos bene ✠ dicere dignetur in officium Exorcistarum;

ut sint spirituales imperatores, ad abiiciendos dæmones de corporibus

obsessis, cum omni nequitia eorum multiformi. Per unigenitum Filium suum

Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, qui cum eo uiuit et regnat in unitate

Spiritus sancti Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. _R._ Amen.

[38] Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, æterne Deus, bene ✠ dicere dignare

hos famulos tuos in officium Exorcistarum; ut per impositionem manuum,

et oris officium, potestatem, et imperium habeant spiritus immundos

coercendi: ut probabiles sint medici Ecclesiæ tuæ, gratia curationum

uirtuteque cœlesti confirmati. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium

tuum, qui tecum uiuit, et regnat in unitate Spiritus sancti Deus, per

omnia sæcula sæculorum. _R._ Amen. _Post hæc, suggerente Archidiacono,

redeunt ad loca sua._

[39] Sulpitius Severus (d. 420-5) in his _Dialogues_, III (II), 6;

(Migne, _Patres Latini_, XX, 215) tells us that S. Martin of Tours was

wont to cast out demons by prayer alone without the imposition of hands

or the use of the formulæ recommended to the clergy. Similar instances

occur in the lives of the Saints.

[40] Translated from the _Rituale Romanum_. There are several forms

extant, some authorized, but more, perhaps, unauthorized. There is

an authorized form in the Greek _Euchologion_. It commences with the

Trisagion, and Psalms, _Domine exaudi_ (cxlii.), _Dominus regit me_

(xxii.), _Dominus illuminatio mea_ (xxvi.), _Esurgat Deus_ (lxvii.),

_Miserere_ (lvi.), _Domine ne in furore_ (vi.), _Domine exaudi orationem_

(ci.). Then follows the Consolatory Canon, with a long Hymn addressed to

Our Lord, Our Lady, and All Saints. Next the priest anoints the patient,

saying a prayer over him, and so the office closes.

[41] It is also given in the _Horæ Diurnæ O.P._, Rome, 1903, where an

indulgence of 300 days is attached, plenary once a month.

[42] Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos Domine; Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura

tibi facias libertate seruire, te rogamus, audi nos; Ut inimicos sanctæ

Ecclesiæ humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos. _Et aspergatur locus

aqua benedicta._

[43] Holy water, the commonest of the sacramentals, is a mixture of

exorcised salt and exorcised water.

[44] Of Eastern origin. It should be remembered that the Baptism of

Christ in Jordan is commemorated on the Epiphany. In the present Breviary

office in Nocturn I the first response for the day, the Octave, and

the Sunday within the Octave deal with the Baptism, as does the second

response. The antiphon to the Benedictus and the Magnificat antiphon at

Second Vespers also make mention of the same mystery. In Rome the Latin

rite of the Blessing of the Waters is pontificated by a Cardinal at

S. Andrea della Valle on 5 January, about 3.30 p.m., at the church of

the Stimmate of S. Francesco at 9.30 a.m. on the Feast itself. On the

Vigil the Oriental rite is performed at the Greek church of S. Atanasio,

beginning about 3.30 a.m.

[45] See Wilson, _Western Africa_; and the article “Possession

diabolique” by Waffelaert in the _Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi

catholique_, Paris, 1889. The opinion of the Cistercian Dom Robert de la

Trappe (Dr. Pierre-Jean-Corneille Debreyne), who, whilst acknowledging

that the demoniac possessions as detailed in the New Testament are _de

fide_, supposes that all other cases are to be attributed to fraud or

disease, must be severely censured as regrettably rash and even culpable.

_Essai sur la théologie morale_, IV. p. 356.

[46] S. Justin. Martyr, _Apologia_, VI; _Dialogues_, XXX, LXXXV: Minutius

Felix, _Octavius_, XXVII; Origen, _Contra Celsum_, I, 25; VII, 4, 67:

Tertullian, _Apologia_, XXII, XXIII.

[47] Paulinus, _Uita Ambrosii_, 28, 43.

[48] S. Gregory of Nyssa, _De Uita Ephraem_.

[49] Upon this passage Servatius Galle (1627-1709), a Dutch minister at

Haarlem, in his edition of Lactantius, 1660, writes the most absurd note

I have ever met with in any commentator.

[50] Published between 304-313. De Labriolle, _Histoire de la Littérature

Latine Chrétienne_, p. 272.

[51] A very full and scholarly monograph upon this subject may

be recommended: _La Réalité des Apparitions Démoniaques_, by Dom

Bernard-Marie Maréchaux, Olivetan, O.S.B., Paris, Téqui, 1899.

[52] It is true that on one occasion S. Maurus, who was with S. Benedict,

beheld an apparition, and S. Benedict once enabled a monk to see a

similar vision.

[53] One of Sodoma’s exquisite frescoes at Monte Oliveto (Siena) depicts

an exorcism by S. Benedict.

[54] The letters have been thus translated by Dom Benedict McLaughlin of

Ampleforth:

Holy Cross be thou my light,

Put the evil one to flight.

Behind me Satan speedily,

Whisper not vain things to me.

You can give but evil, then

Keep it for yourself. Amen.

[55] All English Benedictine priests hold the special faculty to use

this (bestowed 23 February, 1915), and it has also been granted to many

others, religious and seculars.

[56] Omnis virtus aduersarii, omnis exercitus diaboli, et omnis incursus,

omnis phantasma Satanæ, eradicate et effugare ab his numismatibus....

[57] Domine Iesu Christe ... per hanc tuam sanctissimam passionem

humiliter exoro; ut omnes diabolicas insidias et fraudes expellas ab eo,

qui nomen sanctum tuum, his litteris ac characteribus a te designatis,

deuote inuocauerit, et eum ad salutis portum perducere digneris. Qui

uiuis et régnas....

[58] The _Rituale Romanum_ has “Benedictio Infirmorum cum Ligno SS.

Crucis, D.N.J.C. _seu_ Signum S. Mauri Abbatis.” This is a blessing of

the sick with a Relic of the Holy Cross and the invocation of S. Benedict

and S. Maurus.

[59] The _Uita S. Mauri_ (Mabillon, _Acta S.S. O. S.B._, I, 274)

is ascribed to a companion, the monk Faustus of Monte Cassino.

Père Delehaye, in his unfortunate and temerarious work _Légendes

Hagiographiques_ (translation. London, 1907), indecorously attacks this

and treats S. Maurus with scant respect. A worthy defence was made by

Adlhoch, _Stud. u. Mittheil._, 1903, 3; 1906, 185. According to Peter the

Deacon he also wrote a _Cantus ad B. Maurum_.

[60] Blessed Victor III. _Dialogues_, I, 2.

[61] Abbé Lebeuf. _Histoire du diocèse de Paris_, V. 129 _sqq._

[62] Portraits of him are preserved at Rome and Valladolid.

[63] A hearty believer in witchcraft. He had sent at least one witch to

the gallows, and another to prison.

[64] Apparently the work of Darrel himself, but in the Huth catalogue (V,

1643) ascribed to James Bamford.

[65] Darrel in his _Detection of that sinnful, shamful, lying, and

ridiculous discours of Samuel Harshnet_, 1600, writes: “There is no

doubt but that S.H. stand for Samuell Harsnet, chapline to the Bishop of

London, but whither he alone, or his lord and hee, have discovered this

counterfeyting and cosonage there is the question. Some think the booke

to be the Bishop’s owne doing: and many thinke it to be the joynt work of

them both.”

[66] On 10 November, 1629, he was sworn of the Privy Council.

[67] Whence Shakespeare derived the names of various evil spirits whom

Edgar mentions in _King Lear_.

[68] I do not conceive that at the present time many, if any, Bishops

of the Church of England would license exorcism. Certainly the more

scientifically minded and modernistic Lords Spiritual of the Anglican

bench have rid themselves of such an idle superstition. How they would

explain Our Blessed Lord’s words and actions I do not pretend to know,

but I suppose that according to their wider knowledge Christ—_sit uenia

uerbis_—was mistaken in this as in other particulars.

[69] _Colloquia Mensalia_, passim.

[70] It is difficult to see how the teachings of such a Protestant leader

as Gaspar von Schwenckfeld (1489-90—1561) are anything save tantamount to

mere personal morality and a vague individual pietism. A critical edition

of his numerous works is in course of publication under the editorship

of Hartranft, Schlutter, and Johnson: _Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum_, I,

Leipzig, 1907.

[71] Parker’s _Correspondence_, Parker Society, Cambridge, 1856, pp.

465-6.

[72] By vomiting pins and straws they had made many believe that they

were bewitched, but the tricks were soon found out and they were

compelled to public penance at S. Paul’s. There is a black letter

pamphlet _The discloysing of a late counterfeyted possession by the devyl

in two maydens within the Citie of London_ [1574], which describes

this case. See also Holinshed, _Chronicles_ (ed. London, 1808), IV, 325,

and Stow _Annales_, London, 1631, p. 678. But the fact that there are

malingerers does not mean there are none sick.

[73] _Marie Glover’s late woefull case.... A defence of the truthe

against D. J. his scandalous Impugnations_, British Museum, Sloane

MSS., 831. Sinclar, _Satan’s Invisible World Discovered_, Edinburgh,

1685, Relation XII quotes an account of Mary Glover from Lewis Hughes’

_Certaine Grievances_ (1641-2); and hence Burton, _The Kingdom of

Darkness_, and Hutchinson, _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_, both

assign a wrong date (1642) to the occurrence.

[74] Enlarged edition, 1720.

[75] _The Other World_, London, 1875, I, pp. 59-69. The incident is

narrated by Fortescue Hitchins, _The History of Cornwall_, Helston, 1824,

II, pp. 548-51; and also in fuller detail by the Rev. R. S. Hawker,

_Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall_, London, 1870, who quotes from

Ruddle’s MS. Diary.

[76] Six miles north of S. Columb and three miles due south from Padstow.

[77] A full and documented account of these strange happenings may be

found in _Lucifer, or the True Story of the Famous Diabolic Possession in

Alsace_, London, 1922, with the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Brentwood.

Compiled from original documents by the abbé Paul Sutter and translated

by the Rev. Theophilus Borer.

[78] Jesus ... comminatus est spiritui immundo, dicens illi: Surde et

mute spiritus, Ego præcipio tibi, exi ab eo: et amplius ne introcas in

eum. _Euan. sec. Marcum._ IX. 25.

[79] 1726-1755. This great Saint was then Venerable; he was beatified by

Leo XIII, 29 January, 1893, and canonized by Pius X, 11 December, 1903.

His feast is kept on 16 October.

[80] Peter Paul Stumpf succeeded Andreas Räss as Bishop of Strasburg,

1887-1890.

[81] _Une Possédée Contemporaine_ (1834-1914). _Hélène Poirier de

Coullons_ (_Loiret_). Paris, Téqui, 1924. An ample study, profusely

documented, of 517 pages, edited by M. le Chanoine Champault of the

diocese of Orleans.

[82] A partir de cette époque, la vie d’Hélène s’écoulera au milieu de

souffrances physiques et morales si grandes, que dans sa bouche les

plaintes de Job ne seraient point déplacées.

[83] Mr. G. R. S. Mead, however, in this connexion not impertinently

recalls the “controlling” of members of the Shaker communities by what

purported to be spirits of North American Indians. This was prior to 1848.

[84] Ses souffrances physiques et morales, commencées le 25 mars,

1850, se poursuivirent jusqu’à sa mort, 8 janvier, 1914, soit pendant

soixante-quatre ans. Toutefois les vexations diaboliques cessèrent vers

la fin de 1897. Ces vexations durèrent donc près de quarante-sept années,

dont six de possession.

[85] Du 25 mars, 1850, au courant de mars, 1868, Hélène _fut seulement

obsédée. Cette obsession dura donc 18 années_. Au bout de ce temps et

pendant 13 _mois_ elle fut _obsédée et possédée tout ensemble_.

De I’obsession et de la possession elle fut complètement délivrée par les

exorcismes officiels, à Orléans, le 19 avril, 1869.

Suivirent quatre mois de tranquillité, jusqu’au recommencement volontaire

et généreux de ses peines.

A la fin d’août, 1869, elle accepta de la main de Notre Seigneur les

tourments d’une nouvelle obsession et possession afin d’obtenir la

conversion du célèbre général Ducrot. La conversion obtenue, elle fut

délivrée à Lourdes le 3 septembre, 1875, par les prières des 15,000

pèlerins qui s’y trouvaient réunis. _Obsession et possession renouvelées_

avaient duré cinq ans.

Plus jamais, pendant les quarante ans qu’elle avait encore à vivre, elle

ne fut possédée; mais elle continua à être obsédée tantôt plus, tantôt

moins. Les souffrances de toutes sortes, qu’elle endura alors, eurent

pour but d’obtenir le salut et le triomphe du clergé.

Quant aux raisons et au but des premières persécutions diaboliques

qu’elle subit pendant dix-neuf ans et dont elle fut délivrée par

les exorcismes officiels, ils sont restés inconnus. _Une Possédée

Contemporaine_ (1834-1914), pp. 171-2.

[86] A fragment of the soutane of this most holy Pontiff was taken to

Hélène and during one of her fits placed upon her forehead. At the

contact she cried out: “Le Pape est un saint, oui un grand saint.” (The

Pope is a Saint, truly a great Saint!)

[87] Pour y être admis, il faut apporter une ou plusiers hosties

consacrées, les remettre au démon qui, sous forme corporelle ou visible,

préside l’assemblée. Il faut les profaner d’une manière horrible, adorer

le démon lui-même et commettre avec lui et les autres sociétaires les

actes d’impudicité les plus révoltants. Trois villes: Paris, Rome, et

Tours sont les sièges de cette société infernale.

[88] La seconde possession fut plus terrible que la première. 1ᵉ: Par la

durée; la première fut de treize mois, la seconde de cinq ans. 2ᵉ: La

première fut adoucie par de nombreuses consolations surnaturelles; la

seconde très peu. 3ᵉ: Les dévices abondèrent dans la première; dans la

seconde les avanies morales l’emportèrent de beaucoup sur les avanies

physiques. _Une Possédée Contemporaine_ (1834-1914), p. 405.

[89] _Spirit Possession_, Henry M. Hugunin, published in Sycamore, Ill.,

U.S.A.

[90] One should note the implication that science and faith are opposed.

Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell pointedly comments: “This question seems inept.

To me the terms are not in antithesis, i.e. logical _v._ spiritual.”

[91] Edited by Huntly Carter. Fisher Unwin, 1920.

[92] Whose contribution, _From Non-Religion to Religion_, opens with the

following ineptitude: “I think that the renewal of Spiritualism is mainly

due to a real increase in our knowledge of psychical facts.” This phrase

could only have been written by one wholly ignorant of mystical theology,

and, it would seem, of historical Christianity.

[93] _Spiritualism, Its Present-Day Meaning_, p. 258.

[94] _Idem_, p. 269.

[95] _Idem_, pp. 270-1.

[96] _Idem_, p. 245.

[97] _Idem_, p. 206.

[98] _Idem_, pp. 206-7.

[99] _Idem_, p. 205. The words are those of Father Bernard Vaughan.

[100] “Seventeen Elementary Facts concerning Spiritualism.” _Light_, 21

February, 1925. Here we also have the frank avowal: “Modern Spiritualism

is only a revival of phenomena and experiences that were well known in

ancient times.” It should be remarked that similar phenomena, believed

to be a genuine case of haunting, occurred at the house of Mr. Samuel

Wesley, at Epworth, Lincolnshire, in 1716, and attracted universal

attention. It is said that the knockings at the house of Parsons, Cock

Lane, West Smithfield, in 1760, were proved to be fraud, but I do not

know that the case has ever been candidly studied.

[101] She took part in a séance on 25 October, 1860, but this seems to

have been exceptional.

[102] _Washington Daily Star_, 7 March, 1893, quoted in _The Medium and

the Daybreak_, 7 April, 1893.

[103] In the “educational” primers prepared by certain spiritists for use

by children the story of the Fox Sisters is told in glowing colours to a

point, but the history of their downfall is suppressed.

[104] He died at Bedford, 5 September, 1892. His control was the spirit

Imperator, who claimed to be the prophet Malachias. For a very full

biography see Arthur Lillie’s _Modern Mystics and Modern Magic_. London.

1894.

[105] For Mrs. Bassett see _The Medium_, 11 April and 18 April, 1873, pp.

174 and 182; for Miss Showers, _The Medium_, 8 May and 22 May, pp. 294

and 326.

[106] _Medium and Daybreak_, 15 November, 1878, p. 730.

[107] _L’Eclair_, 6 April, 1909.

[108] Dr. Grasset, _L’Occultisme_, pp. 56, _sqq._; p. 424.

[109] _Procès des Spirites_, 8vo. Paris. 1875.

[110] _La Revue Spirite_ and _L’Echo du Mentalisme_, Nov., 1908.

[111] Who apparently believes that Spiritism is authorized by the

Scriptures, and that many of the prophets, nay, even Our Divine Lord

Himself, were but mediums.

[112] _Light._ Saturday, 21 February, 1925, p. 89.

[113] Organized in 1882 for the scientific examination of “debatable

phenomena.”

[114] See the Report presented 11 May, 1922, and published by The Magic

Circle, Anderton’s Hotel, Fleet Street.

[115] _The Goligher Circle, May to August, 1921._ Experiences of E. E.

Fournier d’Albe, D.SC. London, Watkins, 1922.

[116] _The Classification of Psychic Phenomena_, by W. Loftus Hare. _The

Occult Review_, July, 1924, p. 38.

[117] Her real name appears to be Marthe Béraud. Professor Richet is

satisfied that in his experiments with this medium at the Villa Carmen

(Algiers) in 1905 genuine materialization was effected.

[118] Who, as noted above, specializes in the Ouija-Board and Automatic

Writing.

[119] He has written such works as _The New Revelation_, and compiled

_The Spiritualists’ Reader_, “A Collection of Spirit Messages from many

sources, specially prepared for Short Readings.”

[120] In all of whose documents the distinction is clearly drawn between

legitimate scientific investigation and superstitious abuses.

CHAPTER VII

THE WITCH IN DRAMATIC LITERATURE

The English theatre, in common with every other form of the world’s

drama, had a religious, or even more exactly a liturgical, origin.

At the Norman Conquest as the English monasteries began to be filled

with cultured French scholars there is evidence that Latin dialogues,

the legends of saints and martyrs, something after the fashion of

Hrotsvitha’s comedies, which we do not imagine to have been a unique

phenomenon, found their way here also, and from recitation to the

representation of these was an easy and indeed inevitable step. For it is

almost impossible to declaim without appropriate action. From the very

heart of the liturgy itself arose the Mystery Play.

The method of performing these early English guild plays has been

frequently and exactly described, and I would only draw attention to one

feature of the movable scaffold which passed from station to station,

that is the dark cavern at the side of the last of the three sedes,

Hell-mouth. No pains were spared to make this as horrible and realistic

as might be. Demons with hideous heads issued from it, whilst ever and

anon lurid flames burst forth and dismal cries were heard. Thus the

Digby S. Mary Magdalen play has the stage-direction: “a stage, and Helle

ondyrneth that stage.” At Coventry the Cappers had a “hell-mouth” for

the Harrowing of Hell, and the Weavers another for Doomsday. This was

provided with fire, a windlass, and a barrel for the earthquake. In

the stage-directions to Jordan’s Cornish Creation of the World Lucifer

descends to hell “apareled fowle wᵗʰ fyre about hem” and the place is

filled with “every degre of devylls of lether and spirytis on cordis.”

Among the “establies” required for the Rouen play of 1474 was “Enfer fait

en maniere d’une grande gueulle se cloant et ouvrant quant besoing en

est.” The last stage-direction of the _Sponsus_, a liturgical play from

Limoges,—assigned by M. M. W. Cloetta and G. Paris to the earlier half of

the twelfth century—which deals with the Wise and Foolish Virgins runs as

follows: “_Modo accipiant eas [fatuas uirgines] dæmones et præcipitentur

in infernum_.”

The Devil himself is one of the most prominent characters in the Mystery,

the villain of the piece. So the York cycle commences with _The Creation

and the Fall of Lucifer_. Whilst the Angels are singing “Holy, Holy,

Holy” before the throne of God, Satan appears exulting in his pride to

be cast down speedily into hell whence he howls his complaint beginning

“Owte, owte! harrowe!” There is a curious incident in the episode of the

Dream of Pilate’s wife. Whilst she sleeps Satan whispers in her ear the

vision which moves her to try to stay the condemnation of Jesus whereby

mankind is to be redeemed. The last play of the York cycle is the _Day of

Judgement_.

In like manner the Towneley cycle opens with _The Creation_, and

presently we have the stage-direction _hic deus recedit à suo solio &

lucifer sedebit in eodem solio_. The scene soon shifts to hell when we

hear the demons reproaching Lucifer for his pride. After the creation of

Adam and Eve follows Lucifer’s lament. In the long episode of _Doomsday_

a number of demons appear and are kept inordinately busy.

The Devil was represented as black, with goat’s horns, ass’s ears, cloven

hoofs, and an immense phallus. He is, in fact, the Satyr of the old

Dionysiac processions, a nature-spirit, the essence of joyous freedom

and unrestrained delight, shameless if you will, for the old Greek

knew not shame. He is the figure who danced light-heartedly across the

Aristophanaic stage, stark nude in broad midday,[1] animally physical,

exuberant, ecstatic, crying aloud the primitive refrain, Φαλῆς, ἑταῖρε

Βακχίου, ξύγκωμε, νυκτεροπλάνητε, μοιχε, παιδεραστά, (Phales, boon mate

of Bacchus, joyous comrade in the dance, wanton wanderer o’ nights,

fornicating Phales), in a word he was Paganism incarnate, and Paganism

was the Christian’s deadliest foe; so they took him, the Bacchic

reveller, they smutted him from horn to hoof, and he remained the

Christian’s deadliest foe, the Devil.[2]

It was long before the phallic demon was banished the stage, for strange

as it may seem, positive evidence exists that he was known there as late

as Shakespeare’s day. In 1620 was published in London by Edward Wright

_A Courtly Masque: The Deuice called, The World tost at Tennis_. “As it

hath beene diuers times Presented to the Contentment of many Noble and

Worthy Spectators: By the Prince his Seruants.” It was “Inuented and set

downe by Tho: Middleton, Gent, and William Rowley, Gent.” The title-page

presents a rough engraving of the various characters in this masque,

doubtless from a sketch made at the actual performance. Outside the main

group stands a hideous black figure “The Diuele,” who made his appearance

towards the end to take part in the last dance, furnished with horns,

hoofs, talons, tail, and a monstrous phallus. It may be remarked that

these horns are prominent on the goat-like head (a clear satyr) of the

Devil in _Doctor Faustus_ as depicted on the title-page of the Marlovian

quarto. A phallus, to which reference is made in the text, was also worn

by the character dressed up as the monkey (_Bavian_) in the May-dance

scene in Shakespeare & Fletcher’s _The Two Noble Kinsman_, Act III, 5,

1613. It is worth remembering that troops of phallic demons formed a

standing characteristic of the old German carnival comedy. Moreover,

several of the grotesque types of the Commedia dell’ arte in the second

decade of the seventeenth century were traditionally equipped in like

manner.[3] That the Devil was so represented in the English theatre

is important. It gives us the popular idea of the Prince of Evil, and

incidentally throws a side-light upon much of the grotesque and obscene

evidence in the contemporary witch-trials.

In Skelton’s lost _Nigramansir_ one of the stage directions is stated to

have been “Enter Balsebub with a beard,” no doubt the black vizard with

an immense goatish beard familiar to the old religious drama. Presumably

the chief use of the Necromancer, who gives his name to this play, was

indeed but to speak the Prologue which summons the Devil who buffets and

kicks him for his pains. However, we only know the play from Warton,

who describes it as having been shown him by William Collins, the poet,

at Chichester, about 1759. He says: “It is the Nigramansir, a morall

_Enterlude_ and a pithie, written by Maister Skelton laureate, and plaid

before the King and other estatys at Woodstoke on Palme Sunday. It was

printed by Wynkyn de Worde in a thin quarto, in the year 1504. It must

have been presented before Henry VII, at the royal manor or palace at

Woodstock in Oxfordshire, now destroyed. The characters are a Necromancer

or conjurer, the devil, a notary public, Simony, and Philargyria or

Avarice. It is partly a satire on some abuses in the Church.... The

story, or plot, is the trial of Simony and Avarice.” Beyond what Warton

tells us nothing further is known of the play. Ritson, _Bibliographia

Poetica_, 106, declared: “it is utterly incredible that the _Nigramansir_

... ever existed.” It has been shown, too, that Warton as a literary

historian is not infrequently suspect, and E. G. Duff, _Hand Lists of

English Printers_, can trace no extant copy of this “morall _Enterlude_.”

In the English moralities the Devil plays an important part, and, as

in their French originals or analogues, he is consistently hampering

and opposing the moral purpose or lesson which the action of these

compositions is designed to enforce. In the later English plays also

which evolved with added regularity from these interludes the Devil is

always a popular character. He is generally attended by the Vice, who

although in some sort a serving-man or jester in the fiend’s employ,

devotes his time to twitting, teazing, tormenting, and thwarting his

master for the edification, not unmixed with fun, of the audience. In

_The Castell of Perseverance_ Lucifer appears shouting in good old

fashion “Out herowe I rore,” just as he was wont to announce himself in

the Mysteries, and he is wearing his “devil’s array” over the habit of a

“prowde galaunt.” Wever’s _Lusty Juventus_ has unmistakable traces of the

slime of the evil days of Edward VI, in whose reign it was written, and

when the Devil calls Hipocrisy to his aid we are prepared for a flood of

empty but bitter abuse which embodies the sour Puritan hatred against the

Catholic Church, and towards the end, under the misnomer God’s Merciful

Promises, we are not surprised to meet a tiresome old gentleman who

cantingly expounds the doctrine of Justification by Faith.

In the interlude to which Collier has assigned the name _Mankind_

Mischief summons to her aid the fiend Titivillus, who had appeared in

the _Judicium_ of the Towneley Mysteries. Once the Devil’s registrar and

tollsman, he is best known as “Master Lollard.” According to a silly old

superstition Titivillus was an imp whose business it was to pick up the

words any priest might drop and omit whilst saying Mass.

When we pass to the beginnings of the regular drama we find an extremely

interesting play that introduces, if not magic, at least fortune-telling,

John Lyly’s “Pleasant Conceited Comedie” _Mother Bombie_, acted by the

children of Paul’s and first printed in 1594. Although the plot is of

the utmost complexity and artificiality it does not seem to be derived,

as are most of Lyly’s stories, from any classical or pseudo-classical

source, whilst the cunning old woman of Rochester, who supplies the

title, has in fact little to say or do, except that her intervention

helps to bring about the unravelling of a perfect maze and criss-cross of

incidents. When Selena addresses the beldame with “They say, you are a

witch,” Mother Bombie quickly retorts “They lie, I am a cunning woman,” a

passage not without significance.

Upon a very different level from Lyly’s play stands Marlowe’s magnificent

drama _The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus_. The legend of a man who

sells his soul to the Devil for infinite knowledge and absolute power

seems to have crystallized about the sixth century, when the story of

_Theophilus_ was supposed to have been related in Greek by his pupil

Eutychianus. Of course, every warlock had bartered his soul to Satan, and

throughout the whole of the Middle Ages judicial records, the courts of

the Inquisition, to say nothing of popular knowledge, could have told of

a thousand such. But this particular legend seems to have captured the

imagination of both Western and Eastern Christendom; it is met with in

a variety of forms; it was introduced into the collections of Jacopo à

Voragine; it found its way into the minstrel repertory through Rutebeuf,

a French _trouvère_ of the thirteenth century; it reappeared in early

English narrative and in Low-German drama. Icelandic variants of the

story have been traced. It was made the subject of a poem by William

Forrest, priest and poet, in 1572; and it also formed the material for

two seventeenth-century Jesuit “comedies.”

That the original Faust was a real personage,[4] a wandering conjurer and

medical quack, who was well known in the south-west of the German Empire,

as well as in Thuringia, Saxony, and the adjoining countries somewhere

between the years 1510-1540, does not now admit of any serious doubt.

Philip Begardi, a physician of Worms, author of an _Index Sanitatis_

(1539), mentions this charlatan, many of whose dupes he personally knew.

He says that Faust was at one time frequently seen, although of later

years nothing had been heard of him. It has indeed been suggested the

whole legend originated in the strange history of Pope S. Clement I and

his father Faustus, or Faustinianus, as related in the _Recognitions_,

which were immensely popular throughout the Middle Ages. But Melanchthon

knew a Johannes Faustus born at Knütlingen, in Wurtemberg, not far from

his own home, who studied magic at Cracow, and afterwards “roamed about

and talked of secret things.” There was a doctor Faustus in the early

part of the sixteenth century, a friend of Paracelsus and Cornelius

Agrippa, a scholar who won an infamous reputation for the practice of

necromancy. In 1513 Conrad Mutt, the Humanist, came across a vagabond

magician at Erfurt named Georgius Faustus Hermitheus of Heidelberg.

Trithemius in 1506, met a Faustus junior whose boast it was that if

all the works of Plato and Aristotle were burned he could restore them

from memory. It seems probable that it was to the Dr. Faustus, the

companion of Paracelsus and Cornelius[5] Agrippa, that the legend became

finally and definitely attached. The first literary version of the story

was the _Volksbuch_, which was published by Johann Spies in 1587, at

Frankfort-on-the-Main, who tells us that he obtained the manuscript “from

a good friend at Spier,” and it soon afterwards appeared in England

as _The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John

Faustus_, a chap-book to which Marlowe mainly adhered for the incidents

in his play. The tragedy was carried across to Germany by the English

actors who visited that country in the last years of the sixteenth and

the earlier part of the seventeenth century, and thus, while it was

itself derived from a German source, it greatly influenced, if it did

not actually give rise to, the treatment of the same theme by the German

popular drama and puppet-play. These were seldom printed, and usually for

the most part extemporized, keeping all the while more or less closely

to the theme. Scheible in his _Kloster_ (1847), Volume V, gives the

excellent Ulm piece, and there are marionette versions edited by W. Hamm

(1850; English translation by T. C. H. Hedderwick, 1887), O. Schade

(1856), K. Engel (1874), Bielschowsky (1882), and Kralik and Winter

(1885).

Lessing projected two presentations of the story, and Klinger worked the

subject into a romance, _Fausts Leben, Thaten, und Höllenfahrt_ (1791;

translated into English by George Barrow in 1826). A bombast tragedy was

published by Klingemann in 1815, whilst Lenau issued his epico-dramatic

_Faust_ in 1836. Heine’s ballet _Der Doctor Faust, ein Tanzpoem_ appeared

in 1851. The libretto for Spohr’s opera (1814) was written by Bernard.

Goethe’s masterpiece, planned as early as 1774, was given to the world in

1808, but the second part was delayed until 1831.

General evidence points to 1588 as the date of the first production of

Marlowe’s _Doctor Faustus_, for it seems certain that the ballad of the

_Life and Death of Doctor Faustus the great Conjurer_, entered in the

Stationers’ Register, February, 1589, did not precede but was suggested

by the drama. The first extant quarto is 1604, but already it had been

subjected to more than one revision. Upon the stage _Doctor Faustus_

long remained popular, and in England, at least, however fragmentary

Marlowe’s tragedy may be it has never been supplemented by any other

literary handling of its theme. Old Prynne in his _Histriomastix_

(1633) retails an absurd story to the effect that the Devil _in propria

persona_ “appeared on the stage at the _Belsavage_ Playhouse in Queen

_Elizabeth’s_ days” whilst the tragedy was being performed, “the truth

of which I have heard from many now alive who well remember it.” It was

revived after the Restoration, and on Monday, 26 May, 1662, Pepys and

his wife witnessed the production at the Red Bull, “but so wretchedly

and poorly done that we were sick of it.” It was being performed at the

Theatre Royal in the autumn of 1675, but no details are recorded. In

1685-6 at Dorset Garden appeared William Mountfort’s _The Life and Death

of Doctor Faustus, Made into a Farce, with the Humours of Harlequin

and Scaramouch_, a queer mixture of Marlowe’s scenes with the Italian

_commedia dell’ arte_. Harlequin was acted by nimble Thomas Jevon, the

first English harlequin, and Scaramouch by Antony Leigh, the most

whimsical of comedians. At the end of the third act after Faustus has

been carried away by Lucifer and Mephistopheles, his body is discovered

torn in pieces. Then “Faustus _Limbs come together. A Dance and Song_.”

This farce was continually revived with great applause, and during the

whole of the eighteenth century Faust was the central figure of pantomime

after pantomime. Nearly forty dramatic versions of the Faust legend might

be enumerated. Many are wildly romantic and were especially beloved of

the minor theatres: such are _Faustus_ by G. Soane and D. Terry, produced

at Drury Lane 16 May, 1825, with “O” Smith as Mephistopheles; H. P.

Grattan’s _Faust, or The Demon of the Drachenfels_ performed at Sadlers

Wells, 5 September, 1842, with Henry Marston, Mephistopheles, T. Lyon,

Faust, “the Magician of Wittenberg,” Caroline Rankley, Marguerite; T.

W. Robertson’s _Faust and Marguerite_, played at the Princess’s Theatre

in April, 1854: some are operatic; the ever-popular _Faust_ of Gounod,

with libretto by Barbier and Carré, first seen at the Théâtre Lyrique,

Paris, in 1859; and Hector Berlioz’ _The Damnation of Faust_, which,

adapted to the English stage by T. H. Friend, was performed at the Court,

Liverpool, 3 February, 1894; many more are burlesques, descendants

of the eighteenth-century farces, amongst which may be remembered F.

C. Burnard’s _Faust and Marguerite_, S. James, 9 July, 1864; C. H.

Hazlewood’s _Faust: or Marguerite’s Mangle_, Britannia Theatre, 25 March,

1867; Byron’s _Little Doctor Faust_ (1877); _Faust in Three Flashes_

(1884); _Faust in Forty Minutes_ (1885); and the most famous of all the

travesties _Faust Up to Date_, produced at the Gaiety, 30 October, 1888,

with E. J. Lonnen as Mephistopheles and Florence St. John as Marguerite.

In France the _Faust_—après Goethe—of Theaulou and Gondelier first seen

at the Nouveautés, 27 October, 1827, had a great success, and in the

following year no less than three pens, Antony Béraud, Charles Nodier,

and Merle, combined to produce a _Faust_ in three acts, the music of

which is by Louis Alexandre Piccini, the grandson of Gluck’s famous

rival. In 1858 Adolphe Dennery gave the Parisian stage _Faust_, a “drame

fantastique” in five acts and sixteen tableaux, a drama of the Grattan

school, effective enough in a lurid Sadlers Wells way, which is, at any

rate, a vein greater dramatists have exploited with profit and applause.

Of more recent English dramas which have the Faust legend as their theme

the most striking is undoubtedly the adaptation by W. G. Wills from the

first part of Goethe’s tragedy, which was produced at the Lyceum 19

December, 1885, with H. H. Conway as Faust; George Alexander, Valentine;

Mrs. Stirling, Martha; Miss Ellen Terry, Margaret; and Henry Irving,

Mephistopheles. Not merely in view of the masterpieces of Marlowe and

Goethe, but even by the side of theatrical versions of the legend

from far lesser men the play itself was naught, a superb pantomime, a

thing helped out by a witches’ kitchen, by a bacchanalia of demons, by

chromo-lithographic effects, by the mechanist and the brushes of Telbin

and Hawes Craven, but it was informed throughout and raised to heights

of greatness, nay, even to awe and terror, by the genius of Irving as

the red-plumed Mephistopheles, that sardonic, weary, restless figure,

horribly unreal yet mockingly alert and alive, who dominated the whole.

To attempt a comparison between Marlowe and Goethe were not a little

absurd, and it is superfluous to expatiate upon the supreme merits of

either masterpiece. In Goethe’s mighty and complex work the story is

in truth refined away beneath a wealth of immortal philosophy. Marlowe

adheres quite simply to the chap-book incidents, and yet in all profane

literature I scarcely know words of more shuddering dread and complete

agony than Faust’s last great speech:

Ah, Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live.

And then thou must be damned perpetually!

The scene becomes intolerable. It is almost too painful to be read, too

overcharged with hopeless darkness and despair.

As it is in some sense at least akin to the Faust story it may not be

impertinent briefly to mention here an early Dutch secular drama, which

has been called “one of the gems of Dutch mediæval literature,” _A

Marvellous History of Mary of Nimmegen, who for more than seven years

lived and had ado with the Devil_,[6] printed by William Vorsterman of

Antwerp about 1520. It is only necessary to call attention to a few

features of the legend. Mary, the niece of the old priest Sir Gysbucht,

one night meets the Devil in the shape of _Moonen with the single eye_.

He undertakes to teach her all the secrets of necromancy if she will but

refrain from crossing herself and change her name to Lena of Gretchen.

But Mary, who has had a devotion to our Lady, insists upon retaining

at least the M in her new nomenclature, and so becomes Emmekin. “Thus

Emma and Moonen lived at Antwerp at the sign of the Golden Tree in the

market, where daily of his contrivings were many murders and slayings

together with every sort of wickedness.” Emma then resolves to visit

her uncle, and insists upon Moonen accompanying her to Nimmegen. It is

a high holiday and she sees by chance the mystery of _Maskeroon_ on a

pageant-waggon in a public square. Our Lady is pleading before the throne

of God for mankind, and Emma is filled with strange remorse to hear such

blessed words. Moonen carries her off, but she falls and is found in a

swoon by the old priest, her uncle. No priest of Nimmegen dared shrive

her, not even the Bishop of Cologne, and so she journeyed to Rome, where

the Holy Father heard her confession and bade her wear in penitence three

strong bands of iron fastened upon neck and arms. Thus she returned to

Maestricht to the cloister of the Converted Sinners, and there her sorrow

was so prevailing and her humility so unfeigned that an Angel in token of

Divine forgiveness removed the irons as she slept.

And go ye to Maestricht, an ye be able

And in the Converted Sinners shall ye see

The grave of Emma, and there all three

The rings be hung above her grave.[7]

Magic and fairy-land loom large in the plays of Robert Greene, whose

place in English literature rests at least as much upon his prose-tracts

as on his dramas. It seems to me fairly obvious that _The Honourable

History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, which almost certainly dates

from 1589, although the first quarto is 1594, was composed owing to the

success of Marlowe’s _Doctor Faustus_. Greene was not the man to lose an

opportunity of exploiting fashion, and with his solid British bent I have

no doubt he considered an old English tale of an Oxford magician would be

just as effective as imported legends from Frankfort and Wittenberg. To

say that the later play is on an entirely different level is not to deny

it interest and considerable charm. But in spite of Bacon’s avowal

Thou know’st that I have divèd into hell

And sought the darkest palaces of fiends;

That with my magic spells great Belcephon,

Hath left his lodge and kneeled at my cell,

his sorceries are in lighter vein than those of Faustus; moreover neither

his arts nor the magic of Friar Bungay form the essential theme of the

play, which also sketches the love of Edward, Prince of Wales (afterwards

Edward I) for Margaret, “the fair Maid of Fressingfield.” It is true

Bacon conjures up spirits enough, and we are shown his study at Brasenose

with the episode of the Brazen Head. It may be noted that Miles, Bacon’s

servant, is exactly the Vice of the Moralities, and at the end he rides

off farcically enough on the Devil’s back, whilst Bacon announces his

intention of spending the remainder of his years in becoming penitence

for his necromancy and magic.

In Greene’s _Orlando Furioso_, 4to, 1594, which is based on Ariosto,

canto XXIII, we meet Melissa, an enchantress: and in _Alphonsus, King

of Arragon_, 4to, 1599, which is directly imitative of _Tamburlaine_,

a sibyl with the classical name Medea, conjures up Calehas “in a white

surplice and cardinal’s mitre,” and here we also have a Brazen Head

through which Mahomet speaks. A far more interesting play is _A Looking

Glasse for London and England_, 4to, 1594, an elaborated Mystery upon

the history of the prophet Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh. Among

the characters are a Good Angel, an Evil Angel, and “one clad in

Devil’s attire,” who is soundly drubbed by Adam the buffoon. In 1598

was published, “As it hath bene sundrie times publikely plaide,” _The

Scottish Historic of Iames the fourth, slaine at Flodden. Entermixed

with a pleasant Comedie, presented by Oboram, King of Fayeries._ But

the fairies only appear in a species of prose prologue, and in brief

interludes between the acts.

George Peele’s charming piece of folk-lore _The Old Wives’ Tale_

introduces among its quaint commixture of episodes the warlock Sacripant,

son of a famous witch Meroe,[8] who has stolen away and keeps under a

spell the princess Delia. His power depends upon a light placed in a

magic glass which can only be broken under certain conditions. Eventually

Sacripant is overcome by the aid of a friendly ghost, Jack, the glass

broken, the light extinguished, and the lady restored to her lover and

friends.

Other magicians who appear in various dramas of the days of Elizabeth and

her immediate successors are Brian Sansfoy in the primitive _Sir Clyomon

and Sir Clamydes_, 4to, 1599; the Magician in _The Wars of Cyrus_; Friar

Bacon, Friar Bungay, and Jaques Vandermast in Greene’s _Friar Bacon and

Friar Bungay_, Merlin and Proximus in the pseudo-Shakespearean _The Birth

of Merlin_, where the Devil also figures; Ormandini and Argalio in _The

Seven Champions of Christendom_, where we likewise have Calib, a witch,

her incubus Tarpax, and Suckabus their clownish son; Comus in Milton’s

masque; Mago the conjurer with his three familiars Eo, Meo, and Areo in

Cokain’s _Trappolin Creduto Principe, Trappolin suppos’d a Prince_, 4to,

1656, excellent light fare, which Nahum Tate turned into _A Duke and No

Duke_ and produced at Drury Lane in November, 1684, and which in one form

or another, sometimes “a comic melodramatic burletta,” sometimes a ballad

opera, sometimes a farce, was popular until the early decades of the

nineteenth century.

Seeing that actors are “the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time,”

it is not surprising to find that Witchcraft has a very important part

in the theatre of Shakespeare. Setting aside such a purely fairy fantasy

as _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, such figures as the “threadbare juggler”

Pinch in _The Comedy of Errors_, such scenes as the hobgoblin mask

beneath Herne’s haunted oak, such references as that to Mother Prat, the

old woman of Brainford, who worked “by charms, by spells, by the figure,”

or the vile abuse by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, of “Edward’s wife, that

monstrous witch, Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore,” we have

one historical drama _King Henry VI_, Part II, in which an incantation

scene plays no small part; we have one romantic comedy _The Tempest_, one

tragedy _Macbeth_, the very motives and development of which are due to

magic and supernatural charms. It must perhaps be remarked that _King

Henry VI_, Part I, is defiled by the obscene caricature of S. Joan of

Arc, surely the most foul and abominable irreverence that shames English

literature. It is too loathsome for words, and I would only point out the

enumeration in one scene where various familiars are introduced of the

most revolting details of contemporary witch-trials, but to think of such

horrors in connexion with S. Joan revolts and sickens the imagination.

In _King Henry VI_ (Part II) the Duchess of Gloucester employs John Hume

and John Southwell, two priests; Bolingbroke, a conjurer; and Margery

Jourdemain, a witch, to raise a spirit who shall reveal the several

destinies of the King, and the Dukes of Suffolk and Somerset. The scene

is written with extraordinary power and has not a little of awe and

terror. Just as the demon is dismissed ’mid thunder and lightning the

Duke of York with his guards rush in and arrest the sorcerers. Later the

two priests and Bolingbroke are condemned to the gallows, the witch in

Smithfield is “burn’d to ashes,” whilst the Duchess of Gloucester after

three days’ public penance is banished for life to the Isle of Man.

The incidents as employed by Shakespeare are fairly correct. It is

certain that the Duchess of Gloucester, an ambitious and licentious

woman, called to her counsels Margery Jourdemain, commonly known as the

Witch of Eye, Roger Bolingbroke an astrologer, Thomas Southwell, Canon of

S. Stephen’s, a priest named Sir John Hume or Hun, and a certain William

Wodham. These persons frequently met in secret, and it was discovered

that they had fashioned according to the usual mode a wax image of the

King which they melted before a slow fire. Bolingbroke confessed, and

Hume also turned informer; and in 1441 Bolingbroke was placed on a high

scaffold before Paul’s Cross together with a chair curiously carved and

painted, found at his lodging, which was supposed to be an instrument of

necromancy, and in the presence of Cardinal Beaufort of Winchester, Henry

Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and an imposing array of bishops,

he was compelled to make abjuration of his wicked arts. The Duchess of

Gloucester, being refused sanctuary at Westminster, was arrested and

confined in Leeds Castle, near Maidstone. She was brought to trial with

her accomplices in October, when sentence was passed upon her as has been

related above. Margery Jourdemain perished at the stake as a witch and

relapsed heretic; Thomas Southwell died in prison; and Bolingbroke was

hanged at Tyburn, 18 November.

In _The Tempest_ Prospero is a philosopher rather than a wizard, and

Ariel is a fairy not a familiar. The magic of Prospero is of the

intellect, and throughout, Shakespeare is careful to insist upon a

certain detachment from human passions and ambitions. His love for

Miranda, indeed, is exquisitely portrayed, and once—at the base

ingratitude of Caliban—his anger flashes forth, but none the less, albeit

superintending the fortunes of those over whom he watches tenderly,

and utterly abhorring the thought of revenge, he seems to stand apart

like Providence divinely guiding the events to the desired issue of

reconciliation and forgiveness. Even so, the situation was delicate to

place before an Elizabethan audience, and how nobly and with what art

does Shakespeare touch upon Prospero’s “rough magic”! In Sycorax we

recognize the typical witch, wholly evil, vile, malignant, terrible for

mischief, the consort and mistress of devils.

There are few scenes which have so caught the world’s fancy as the wild

overture to _Macbeth_. In storm and wilderness we are suddenly brought

face to face with three mysterious phantasms that ride on the wind and

mingle with the mist in thunder, lightning, and in rain. They are not

agents of evil, they are evil; nameless, spectral, wholly horrible. And

then, after the briefest of intervals, they reappear to relate such

exploits as killing swine and begging chestnuts from a sailor’s wife,

to brag of having secured such talismans as the thumb of a drowned

pilot, businesses proper to Mother Demdike or Anne Bishop of Wincanton,

Somerset. Can this change have been intentional? I think not, and its

very violence and quickness are jarring to a degree. The meeting with

Hecate, who is angry, and scolds them “beldames as you are, Saucy and

overbold” does not mend matters, and in spite of the horror when the

apparitions are evoked, the ingredients of the cauldron, however noisome

and hideous, are too material for “A deed without a name.” There is a

weakness here, and it says much for the genius of the tragedy that this

weakness is not obtrusively felt. Nevertheless it was upon this that

the actors seized when for theatrical effect the incantation scenes had

to be “written up” by the interpolation of fresh matter. Davenant also

in his frankly operatic version of _Macbeth_, produced at Dorset Garden

in February, 1672-3 elaborated the witch scenes to an incredible extent,

although by ample conveyance from Middleton’s _The Witch_ together with

songs and dances he was merely following theatrical tradition.[9]

There seems no reasonable doubt that _The Witch_ is a later play than

_Macbeth_, but it is only fair to say that the date of _The Witch_

is unknown—it was first printed in 1778 from a manuscript now in the

Bodleian—and the date of _Macbeth_ (earlier than 1610, probably 1606) is

not demonstrably certain. _The Witch_ is a good but not a distinguished

play. Owing to the incantation scenes and its connexion with _Macbeth_

it has acquired an accidental interest, and an enduring reputation. The

witches themselves, Hecate and her crew, stand midway between the mystic

Norns of the first scene in _Macbeth_, and the miserable hag of Dekker

in _The Witch of Edmonton_; they are just a little below the Witches in

_Macbeth_ as they appear after the opening lines. There is a ghastly

fantasy in their revels which is not lessened by the material grossness

of Firestone the clown, Hecate’s son. They raise “jars, jealousies,

strifes, and heart-burning disagreements, like a thick scurf o’er life,”

and although their figures are often grotesque their power for evil is

not to be despised. Much of their jargon, their charms and gaucheries

complete, are taken word for word from Reginald Scott’s _Discoverie of

Witchcraft_, London, 1584.

The village witch, as she appeared to her contemporaries, a filthy old

doting crone, hunch-backed, ignorant, malevolent, hateful to God and man,

is shown with photographic detail in _The Witch of Edmonton; A known True

Story_ by Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, produced at the Cockpit in Drury Lane

during the autumn or winter of 1621. It seems to have been very popular

at the time, and not only was it applauded in the public theatre, but it

was presented before King James at Court. It did not, however, find its

way into print until as late as 1658.

[Illustration: PLATE VIII

THE WITCH OF EDMONTON. The First Quarto

[_face p. 290_]

The trial and execution (19 April, 1621) of Elizabeth Sawyer attracted

a considerable amount of attention. Remarkable numbers of ballads and

doggerel songs were made upon the event, detailing her enchantments,

how she had blighted standing corn, how a ferret and an owl constantly

attended her, and of many demons and familiars who companied with her

in the prison. Not only were these ditties trolled out the day of the

execution but many were published as broadsides, and sold widely.

Accordingly the Newgate Ordinary hastened to pen _The Wonderfull

Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch, Late of Edmonton, Her

Conviction, and Condemnation, and Death, Together with the Relation of

the Divels Accesse to Her, and Their Conference Together_, “Written by

Henry Goodcole, Minister of the Word of God, and her Continual Visiter in

the Gaole of Newgate,” Published by Authority, 4to, 1621. This tractate

is in the form of a dialogue, question and answer, between Goodcole and

the prisoner, who makes ample confession of her crimes.

In some ways _The Witch of Edmonton_ is the most interesting and valuable

of the witch dramas, because here we have the hag stripped of the least

vestige of glamour and romance presented to us in the starkest realism.

We see her dwelling apart in a wretched hovel, “shunned and hated like

a sickness,” miserably poor, buckl’d and bent together, dragging her

palsied limbs wearily through the fields, as she clutches her dirty rags

round her withered frame. And if she but dare to gather a few dried

sticks in a corner she is driven from the spot with hard words and blows.

What wonder her mouth is full of cursing and revenge?

’Tis all one

To be a witch as to be counted one.

Then appears the Black Dog and seals a contract with her blood. She

blights the corn and sends a murrain on the cattle of her persecutors;

here a horse has the glanders, there a sow casts her farrow; the maid

churns butter nine hours and it will not come; above all a farmer’s wife,

whom she hates, goes mad and dies in frantic agony; mischief and evil

run riot through the town. But presently her familiar deserts her, she

falls into the hands of human justice, and after due trial is dragged to

Tyburn shrieking and crying out in hideous despair. It is a sordid and a

terrible, but one cannot doubt, a true picture.

It is obvious that in this drama[10] Frank Thorney, a most subtle and

minute study of weakness and degeneracy, is wholly Ford’s. Frank Thorney

may be closely paralleled with Giovanni in _’Tis Pity She’s a Whore_.

Winnifride, too, has all the sentimental charm of Ford’s heroines,

Annabella and Penthea.

Carter is unmistakably the creation of Dekker. Simon Eyre and Orlando

Friscobaldo are the same hearty, bluff, hospitable, essentially honest

old fellows. To Dekker also I would assign Mother Sawyer herself.

Rowley’s hand is especially discernible in the scenes where Cuddy Banks

and the clowns make their appearance.

It may be mentioned that Elizabeth Sawyer figures in Caulfield’s

_Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons_, 1794; and she

is also referred to in Robinson’s _History and Antiquities of the Parish

of Edmonton_ with a woodcut “from a rare print in the collection of W.

Beckford, esq.”

A second drama which was also actually founded upon a contemporary trial

is Heywood and Brome’s _The Late Lancashire Witches_, “A Well Received

Comedy” produced at the Globe in 1634.[11] In the previous year, 1633, a

number of trials for Witchcraft had drawn the attention of all England to

Pendle Forest. A boy, by name Edmund Robinson, eleven years of age, who

dwelt here with his father, a poor wood-cutter, told a long and detailed

story which led to numerous arrests throughout the district. Upon All

Saints’ Day when gathering “bulloes” in a field he saw two greyhounds,

one black, the other brown, each wearing a collar of gold. They fawned

upon him, and immediately a hare rose quite near at hand. But the dogs

refused to course, whereupon he beat them with a little switch, and

the black greyhound started up in the shape of an old woman whom he

recognized as Mother Dickenson, a notorious witch, and the other as a

little boy whom he did not know. The beldame offered him money, either to

buy his silence or as the price of his soul, but he refused. Whereupon

taking something like a Bridle “that gingled” from her pocket she threw

it over the little boy’s head and he became a white horse. Seizing young

Robinson in her arms they mounted and were conveyed with the utmost speed

to a large house where had assembled some sixty other persons. A bright

fire was burning on the hearth with roast meat before it. He was invited

to partake of “Flesh and Bread upon a Trencher and Drink in a Glass,”

which he tasted, but at once rejected. He was next led into an adjoining

barn where seven old women were pulling at seven halters that hung from

the roof. As they tugged large pieces of meat, butter in lumps, loaves

of bread, black puddings, milk, and all manner of rustic dainties fell

down into large basins which were placed under the ropes. When the seven

hags were tired their places were taken by seven others. But as they

were engaged at their extraordinary task their faces seemed so fiendish

and their glances were so evil that Robinson took to his heels. He was

instantly pursued, and he saw that the foremost of his enemies was a

certain Mother Lloynd. But luckily for himself two horsemen, travellers,

came up, whereupon the witches vanished. A little later when he was sent

in the evening to fetch home two kine, a boy met him in the dusk and

fought him, bruising him badly. Looking down he saw that his opponent had

a cloven foot, whereupon he ran away, only to meet Mother Lloynd with a

lantern in her hand. She drove him back and he was again mauled by the

cloven-footed boy.[12]

Such was the story told to the justices and corroborated by Robinson’s

father. A reign of terror ensued. Mother Dickenson and Mother Lloynd were

at once thrown into jail, and in the next few days more than eighteen

persons were arrested. The informer and his father netted a good sum

by going round from church to church to point out in the congregations

persons whom he recognized as having been in the house and barn to which

he was led. A little quiet blackmail of the wealthier county families,

threats to disclose the presence of various individuals at the witches’

feast, brought in several hundreds of pounds.

The trial took place at Lancaster Assizes and seventeen of the accused

were incontinently found guilty. But the judge, completely dissatisfied

with so fantastic a story, obtained a reprieve. Four of the prisoners

were sent up to London, where they were examined by the Court physicians.

King Charles himself also questioned one of these poor wretches and,

discerning that the whole history was a fraud, forthwith pardoned all who

had been involved. Meantime Dr. John Bridgeman, the Bishop of Chester,

had also been holding a special inquiry into the case. Young Robinson

was lodged separately, being allowed to hold no communication with his

relatives, and when closely interrogated he gave way and confessed that

the scare from beginning to end had been manœuvred by his father, who

carefully coached him in his lies. In spite of this fiasco the talk did

not die down immediately, and there were many who continued to maintain

that Mother Dickenson was indeed a witch, however false the evidence on

this occasion might be. It must be remembered, moreover, that twenty-two

years before, in the very same district, a coven of thirteen witches, of

whom the chief was Elizabeth Demdike, had been brought to justice, “at

the Assizes and Generall Gaole-Delivery, holden at Lancaster, before Sir

Edward Bromley and Sir James Eltham.” Old Demdike herself—she was blind

and over eighty years of age—died in prison, but ten of the accused were

executed, and the trial, which lasted two days, occasioned a tremendous

stir.

It seems not at all improbable that Heywood had written a topical play

in 1612 dealing with this first sensational prosecution, and that when

practically the same events repeated themselves in the same place less

than a quarter of a century after he and the ever-ready Brome fashioned

anew the old scenes. In the character of the honourable country-gentleman

Master Generous, whose wife is discovered to be guilty of Witchcraft,

there is something truly noble, and his tender forgiveness of her crime

when she repents is touched with the loving pathos that informs _A

Woman Kilde with Kindnesse_, whilst his agony at her subsequent relapse

is very real, although Heywood has wisely refrained from any attempt

to show a broken heart save by a few quite simple but poignant words.

The play as a whole is a faithful picture of country life, homely

enough, yet not without a certain winsome beauty. The comic episodes

are sufficiently broad in their humour; we have a household turned

topsy-turvy by enchantment, a wedding-breakfast bewitched: the kitchen

invaded by snakes, bats, frogs, beetles, and hornets, whilst to cap all

the unfortunate bridegroom is rendered impotent. In Act II we have the

incident of a Boy with a switch (young Edmund Robinson) and the two

greyhounds. Gammer Dickison carries him off against his will “to a brave

feast,” where we see the witches pulling ropes for food:

Pul for the poultry, foule and fish,

For emptie shall not be a dish.

In Act V the Boy tells Doughty the story of his encounter with the Devil:

“He came to thee like a boy, thou sayest, about thine owne bisnesse?”

they ask him, and the whole scene meticulously follows the detailed

evidence given before the judge at Lancaster. Of the witches, Goody

Dickison, Mal Spencer, Mother Hargrave, Granny Johnson, Meg, Mawd, are

actual individuals who were accused by Robinson; Mrs. Generous alone

is the poet’s fiction. When Robin, the blunt serving-man, refuses to

saddle the grey gelding she shakes a bridle over his head and using

him as a horse makes him carry her to the satanical assembly. There is

a mill, which is haunted by spirits in the shape of cats, and here a

soldier undertakes to watch. For two nights he is undisturbed, but on

the third “_Enter_ Mrs. Generous, Mal, _all the_ Witches and _their

Spirits_ (_at severall dores_).” “_The_ Spirits _come about him with a

dreadfull noise_,” but he beats them thence with his sword, lopping off

a tabby’s paw in the hurly-burly. In the morning a hand is found, white

and shapely, with jewels on the fingers. These Generous recognizes as

being his wife’s rings, and Mrs. Generous, who is in bed ill, is found to

have one hand cut off at the wrist. This seals her fate. All the witches

are dragged in and in spite of their charms and bug-words are identified

by several witnesses including the boy who “saw them all in the barne

together, and many more, at their feast and witchery.”

The play was evidently produced just after the Lancaster Assizes, whilst

four of the accused were in the Fleet prison, London, for further

examination, and the King’s pardon had not as yet been pronounced. This

is evident from the Epilogue, which commences:

Now while the witches must expect their due,

By lawfull justice, we appeale to you

For favourable censure; what their crime

May bring upon ’em ripens yet of time

Has not reveal’d. Perhaps great mercy may,

After just condemnation, give them day

Of longer life.

It will be convenient to consider in this connexion a drama largely

founded upon Heywood and Brome, and produced nearly half a century later

at the Duke’s House, Dorset Garden, Shadwell’s _The Lancashire Witches

and Teague o Divelly, the Irish Priest_, which was first seen in the

autumn of 1681 (probably in September). The idea of using magic in a

play was obviously suggested to Shadwell by his idolized Ben Jonson’s

_Masque of Queens_, performed at Whitehall, 2 February, 1609. In close

imitation of his model Shadwell has further appended copious notes to

Acts one, two, three, and five, giving his references for the details of

his enchantments. In the Preface (4to, 1682) he naïvely confesses: “For

the magical part I had no hopes of equalling _Shakespear_ in fancy, who

created his witchcraft for the most part out of his own imagination (in

which faculty no man ever excell’d him), and therefore I resolved to take

mine from authority. And to that end there is not one action in the Play,

nay, scarce a word concerning it, but is borrowed from some antient, or

modern witchmonger. Which you will find in the notes, wherein I have

presented you a great part of the doctrine of witchcraft, believe it who

will.” And he has indeed copious citations from Vergil, Horace, Ovid,

Propertius, Juvenal, Tibullus, Seneca, Tacitus, Lucan, Petronius, Pliny,

Apuleius, Aristotle, Theocritus, Lucian, Theophrastus; S. Augustine, S.

Thomas Aquinas; Baptista Porta; Ben Jonson (_The Sad Shepherd_); from

the _Malleus Maleficarum_ of James Sprenger, O.P., and Henry Institor

(Heinrich Kramer), written _circa_ 1485-89, from Jean Bodin’s (1520-96)

_La Demonomanie des Sorciers_, 1580; the _Dæmonolatria_, 1595, of Nicolas

Remy; _Disquisitionum Magicarum libri six_ of Martin Delrio, S.J.

(1551-1608); _Historia Rerum Scoticarum_, Paris, 1527, of Hector Boece

(1465-1536); _Formicarius_, 5 vols., Douai, 1602, of John Nider, O.P.

(1380-1438); _De Præstigiis Dæmonum_, 1563, by the celebrated John Weyer,

physician to the Duke of Cleves; _De Gentibus Septentrionalibus_,[13]

Rome, 1555, by Olaus Magnus, the famous Archbishop of Upsala; _Discoverie

of Witchcraft_, 1584, by Reginald Scot; _Dæmonomagia_, by Philip Ludwig

Elich, 1607; _De Strigimagis_, by Sylvester Mazzolini, O.P. (1460-1523),

Master of the Sacred Palace and champion of the Holy See against

the heresiarch Luther; _Compendium Maleficarum_ (Milan, 1608), by

Francesco Maria Guazzo of the Congregation of S. Ambrose; _Disputatio

de Magis_ (Frankfort, 1584), by Johan Georg Godelmann; _Tractatus de

Strigiis et Lamiis_ of Bartolommeo Spina, O.P.; the _Decretum_ (about

1020) of Burchard, Bishop of Worms; the _De Sortilegiis_ (Lyons, 1533)

of Paolo Grilland; the _De Occulta Philosophia_ (Antwerp, 1531) of

Cornelius Agrippa; the _Apologie pour tous les Grands Hommes qui ont

este faussement supconnez de Magie_ (1625) of Gabriel Naudé, librarian

to Cardinal Mazarin; _De Subtilitate_ (libri XXI, Nuremberg, 1550) of

Girolamo Cardano, the famous physician and astrologer; _De magna et

occulta Philosophia_ of Paracelsus; _IIII Livres des Spectres_ (Angers,

1586) by Pierre le Loyer, Sieur de Brosse, of which Shadwell used the

English version (1605) _A treatise of Specters_ ... translated by Z.

Jones.

It will be seen that no less than forty-one authors, authorities on

magic, are quoted by Shadwell in these notes, whilst not infrequently the

same author is cited again and again, and extracts of some length, not

merely general references, are given.

But for all this parade of learning, perchance because of all this parade

of learning, Shadwell’s witch scenes are intolerably clumsy, they are

gross without being terrible. Shadwell was a clever dramatist, he was

able to draw a character, especially a crank, with quite remarkable

vigour, and his scenes are a triumph of photographic realism. True, he

could not discriminate and select; he threw his world _en masse_ higgledy

piggledy on to the stage, and as even in the reign of the Merry Monarch

there were a few tedious folk about, so now and again—but not very

often—one chances upon heavy passages in Shadwell’s robust comedies. On

the other hand _The Sullen Lovers_, _Epsom Wells_, _The Virtuoso, Bury

Fair_, _The Squire of Alsatia_, _The Volunteers_, in fact all his native

plays, are full of bustle and fun, albeit a trifle riotous and rude

as the custom was. Dryden, who very well knew what he was about, for

purposes of his own cleverly dubbed Shadwell dull. And dull he has been

dubbed ever since by those who have not read him. But Shadwell had not a

spark of poetry in his whole fat composition. And so his witches become

farcical, yet farcical in a grimy unpleasant way, for we are spared

none of the loathsome details of the Sabbat, and should anyone object,

why, there is the authority of Remy or Guazzo, the precise passage from

Prierias or Burchard to support the author. Indeed we feel that these

witches are very real in spite of their materialism. They present a clear

picture of one side of the diabolic cult, however crude and crass.

Even so, these incantation scenes are not, I venture to think, the worst

thing in the play. The obscene caricature of the Catholic priest, Teague

o Divelly, is frankly disgusting beyond words. He is represented as

ignorant, idle, lecherous, a liar, a coward, a buffoon, too simiously

cunning to be a fool, too basely mean to be a villain. It is a filthy

piece of work, malignant and harmful prepense.[14]

But Shadwell showed scant respect for the Protestants too, since Smerk,

Sir Edward Hartfort’s chaplain, is described as “foolish, knavish,

popish, arrogant, insolent; yet for his interest, slavish.”

It is hardly a matter for surprise that after the play had been in the

actors’ hands about a fortnight complaints from such high quarters were

lodged with Charles Killigrew, the Master of the Revels, that he promptly

sent for the script, which at first he seems to have passed carelessly

enough, and would only allow the rehearsals to proceed on condition

that a quantity of scurrilous matter was expunged. Even so the dialogue

is sufficiently offensive and profane. There was something like a riot

in the theatre at the first performance, and the play was as heartily

hissed as it deserved. Yet it managed to make a stand: those were the

days of the Third Exclusion Bill and rank disloyalty, but the tide was

on the turn, a rebel Parliament had been dissolved on the 28th March, on

the 31st of August Stephen College, a perjured fanatic doubly dyed in

treason and every conceivable rascality, had met his just reward on the

gallows, whilst the atrocious Shaftesbury himself was to be smartly laid

by the heels in the November following. That part of the dialogue which

was not allowed to be spoken on the stage Shadwell has printed in italic

letter,[15] and so we plainly see that the censor was amply justified in

his demands. The political satire is of the muddiest; the railing against

the Church is lewd and rancorous.

Such success as _The Lancashire Witches_ had in the theatre—and it was

not infrequently revived—was wholly due to the mechanist and the scenic

effects, the “flyings” of the witches, and the music, this last so

prominent a feature that Downes does not hesitate to call it “a kind of

Opera.”

In Shadwell’s Sabbat scenes the Devil himself appears, once in the form

of a Buck Goat and once in human shape, whilst his satellites adore

him with disgusting ceremonies. The witches are Mother Demdike, Mother

Dickenson, Mother Hargrave, Mal Spencer, Madge, and others unnamed.

Elizabeth Demdike and Jennet Hargreaves belonged to the first Lancashire

witch-trials, the prosecutions of 1612; Frances Dickenson and Mal Spencer

were involved in the Robinson disclosures of 1633; so it is obvious

that Shadwell has intermingled the two incidents. In his play we have a

coursing scene where the hare suddenly changes to Mother Demdike; the

witches raise a storm and carouse in Sir Edward’s cellar something after

the fashion of Madge Gray, Goody Price, and Goody Jones in _The Ingoldsby

Legends_; Mal Spencer bridles Clod, a country yokel, and rides him to a

witches’ festival, where Madge is admitted to the infernal sisterhood;

the witches in the guise of cats beset a number of persons with horrible

scratchings and miauling, Tom Shacklehead strikes off a grimalkin’s paw

and Mother Hargreave’s hand is found to be missing: “the cutting off the

hand is an old story,” says Shadwell in his notes. It will be seen that

the later dramatist took many of his incidents from Heywood and Brome,

although it is only fair to add that he has also largely drawn from

original sources.

Shortly after the Restoration was published a play dealing with one of

the most famous of English sibyls, _The Life of Mother Shipton_. “A New

Comedy. As it was Acted Nineteen dayes together with great Applause....

Written by T[homas] T[homson].” Among the Dramatis Personæ appear Pluto,

the King of Hell, with Proserpina, his Queen; Radamon, A chief Spirit;

Four other Devils. The scene is “The City of York, or Naseborough Grove

in Yorkshire.” It is a rough piece of work, largely patched together

from Middleton’s _A Chaste Maid in Cheapside_ and Massinger’s _The City

Madam_, whilst the episodes in which Mother Shipton is concerned would

seem to be founded on one of the many old chap-books that relate her

marvellous adventures and prophetic skill. Agatha Shipton (her name

is usually given as Ursula) is complaining of her hard lot when she

encounters Radamon, a demon who holds high rank in the court of Dis. He

arranges to meet her later, and returns to his own place to boast of his

success. He reappears to her dressed as a wealthy nobleman; he marries

her; and for a while she is seen in great affluence and state. At the

commencement of Act III she finds herself in her poor cottage again. As

she laments Radamon enters, he informs her who he really is, and bestows

upon her magical powers. Her fame spreads far and wide, and as popular

story tells, the abbot of Beverley in disguise visits her to make trial

of her art. She at once recognizes him, and foretells to his great

chagrin the suppression of the monasteries with other events. In the end

Mother Shipton outwits and discomforts the devils who attempt to seize

her, she is vouchsafed a heavenly vision, and turns to penitence and

prayer. The whole thing is a crude enough commixture, of more curiosity

than value.

There are some well-written episodes in Nevil Payne’s powerful tragedy

_The Fatal Jealousie_,[16] produced at Dorset Garden early in August,

1672. Among the characters we have Witch, Aunt of Jasper, the villain

of the piece. Jasper, who is servant to Antonio, applies to his aunt to

help him in his malignant schemes. At first he believes she is a genuine

sorceress, but she disabuses him and frankly acknowledges:

I can raise no Devils,

Yet I Confederate with Rogues and Taylors,

Things that can shape themselves like Elves,

And Goblins——

Her imps _Ranter_ and _Swash_, _Dive_, _Fop_, _Snap_, _Gilt_, and

_Picklock_, are slim lads in masquing habits, trained to trickery. None

the less they manage an incantation scene to deceive Antonio and persuade

him that his wife, Caelia, is false. An “Antick Dance of Devils” which

follows is interrupted by the forcible entry of the Watch. The Aunt shows

Jasper a secret hiding-place, whereupon he murders her and conceals the

body in the hole. He pretends that she was in truth a witch and has

vanished by magic. The Captain of the Watch, however, had detected her

charlatanry long before, and presently a demon’s vizor and a domino are

found on the premises. Later a little boy, who is caught in his devil’s

attire, confesses the impostures, and trembling adds that in one of their

secret chambers they have discovered their mistress’s corpse stabbed to

death. Finally Jasper is unmasked, and only escapes condign punishment by

his dagger. The character of the Witch is not unlike that of Heywood’s

_Wise Woman of Hogsdon_, although in _The Fatal Jealousie_ the events

take a tragic and bloody turn. Smith acted Antonio; Mrs. Shadwell,

Caelia; Mrs. Norris, the Witch; and Sandford was famous in the rôle of

Jasper.

There are incantation scenes in Dryden’s tragedies, but these hardly come

within our survey, as the magicians are treated romantically, one might

even say decoratively, and certainly here no touch of realism is sought

or intended. We have the famous episode in _The Indian-Queen_ (produced

at the Theatre Royal in January, 1663-4), when Zempoalla seeks Ismeron

the prophet who raises the God of Dreams to prophesy her destiny;[17]

in the fourth act of _Tyrannick Love_ (Theatre Royal, June, 1669), the

scene is an Indian cave, where at the instigation of Placidius the

magician Nigrinus raises a vision of the sleeping S. Catharine, various

astral spirits appear only to fly before the descent of Amariel, the

Saint’s Guardian-Angel; in _Œdipus_, by Dryden and Lee (Dorset Garden,

December, 1678), Teresias plays a considerable part, and Act III is

mainly concerned with a necromantic spell that raises the ghost of Laius

in the depths of a hallowed grove. In _The Duke of Guise_, moreover

(Theatre Royal, December, 1682), there is something of real horror in the

figures of Malicorne and his familiar Melanax, and the scene[18] when the

miserable wizard, whose bond is forfeit, is carried shrieking to endless

bale, cannot be read without a shudder even after the last moments of

Marlowe’s _Faustus_. Act IV of Lee’s _Sophonisba_ (Theatre Royal, April,

1675) commences with the temple of Bellona, whose priestesses are shown

at their dread rites. Cumana is inspired by the divinity, she raves in

fury of obsession, there is a dance of spirits, and various visions are

evoked.

In Otway’s curious rehandling of _Romeo and Juliet_ which he Latinized

as _The History and Fall of Caius Marius_ produced at Dorset Garden in

the autumn of 1679, the Syrian witch Martha only appears for a moment to

prophesy good fortune to Marius and to introduce a dance of spirits by

the waving of her wand.

Charles Davenant’s operatic _Circe_ (Dorset Garden, March, 1676-7) is

an amazing distortion of mythological story. There are songs without

number, a dance of magicians, storms, dreams, an apparition of Pluto in a

Chariot drawn by Black Horses, but all these are very much of the stage,

stagey, born of candle-light and violins, hardly to be endured in cold

print. Ragusa, the Sorceress in Tate’s _Brutus of Alba: or the Enchanted

Lovers_ (Dorset Garden, May, 1678) is a far more formidable figure. Tate

has managed his magic not without skill, and the conclusion of Act III,

an incantation, was deservedly praised by Lamb. Curiously enough the

plot of _Brutus of Alba_ is the story of Dido and Æneas, Vergil’s names

being altered “rather than be guilty of a breach of Modesty,” Tate says.

But Tate supplied Henry Purcell with the libretto for his opera _Dido

and Æneas_, wherein also witches appear. It must not be forgotten that

_Macbeth_ was immensely popular throughout the whole of the Restoration

period, when, as has been noted above, the witch scenes were elaborated

and presented with every resource of scenery, mechanism, dance, song, and

meretricious ornament. Revival followed revival, each more decorative

than the last, and the theatre was unceasingly thronged. Duffett

undertook to burlesque this fashion, which he did in an extraordinary

Epilogue to his skit _The Empress of Morocco_, produced at the Theatre

Royal in the spring of 1674, but for all his japeries _Macbeth_ never

waned in public favour.

Spirits in abundance appear in the Earl of Orrery’s unpublished tragedy

_Zoroastres_,[19] the principal character being described as “King of

Persia, the first Magician.” He is attended by “several spirits in black

with ghastly vizards,” and at the end furies and demons arise shaking

dark torches at the monarch whom they pull down to hell, the sky raining

fire upon them. It was almost certainly never acted, and is the wildest

type of transpontine melodrama.

Edward Ravenscroft’s “recantation play” _Dame Dobson, or, The Cunning

Woman_ (produced at Dorset Garden in the early autumn of 1683) is an

English version of _La Devineresse; ou les faux Enchantements_ (sometimes

known as _Madame Jobin_), a capital comedy by Thomas Corneille and Jean

Donneau de Vise. This French original had been produced in 1679, and

both the stage-craft and the adroit way in which the various tricks and

conjurations are managed must be allowed to be consummately clever. An

English comedy on a similar theme is _The Wise Woman of Hogsdon_, the

intricacies of which are a triumph of technique. _La Devineresse_ was

published in 1680 with a frontispiece picturing a grimalkin, a hand of

glory, noxious weeds, two blazing torches and other objects beloved of

necromancy. There are, moreover, eight folding plates which embellish

the little book, and these have no small interest as they depict

scenes in the comedy. But _Dame Dobson_ cannot be accounted a play of

witchcraft; it is no more than an amusing study of dextrous charlatanry.

The protagonist herself[20] is of that immortal sisterhood graced by

Heywood’s sibyl, of whom it is said “She is a cunning woman, neither hath

she her name for nothing, who out of her ignorance can fool so many that

think themselves wise.”

Mrs. Behn, in her amusing comedy _The Luckey Chance; or, An Alderman’s

Bargain_, produced at Drury Lane in the late winter of 1686, 4to, 1687,

has made some play with pretended magic in the capital scenes where

Gayman (Betterton) is secretly brought by the prentice Bredwel (Bowman),

disguised as a devil, to the house of Lady Fulbank (Mrs. Barry). Here

he is received by Pert, the maid, who is dressed as an old witch, and

conducted to his inamorata’s embraces. But the whole episode is somewhat

farcically treated, and it is, of course, an elaborate masquerade for the

sake of an intrigue.[21]

Shadwell in 1681 took Witchcraft seriously, and notwithstanding the

half-hearted disclaimer in his address “To the Reader” that prefaces

_The Lancashire Witches_ I think he was sensible enough to recognize the

truth which lies at the core of the matter in spite of the grotesqueness

of the formulæ and spells doting hags and warlocks are wont to employ.

Witchcraft was still a capital offence when some fifteen years later

Congreve lightly laughed it out of court. Foresight (_Love for Love_),

“an illiterate old Fellow, peevish and positive, superstitious, and

pretending to understand Astrology, Palmistry, Phisiognomy, Omens,

Dreams, etc.,” is in close confabulation with his young daughter’s Nurse,

when Angelica his niece trips in to ask the loan of his coach, her

own being out of order. He says no, and presses her to remain at home,

muttering to himself some old doggerel which bodes no good to the house

if all the womenfolk are gadding abroad. The lady fleers him, twits him

with jealousy of his young wife: “Uncle, I’m afraid you are not Lord

of the Ascendant, ha! ha! ha!” He is obstinate in his refusal; and she

retorts: “I can make Oath of your unlawful Midnight Practices; you and

the Old Nurse there.... I saw you together, through the Key-hole of

the Closet, one Night, like _Saul_ and the Witch of _Endor_, turning

the Sieve and Sheers, and pricking your Thumbs to write poor innocent

Servants’ Names in Blood about a little Nutmeg-Grater, which she had

forgot in the Caudle-Cup.” “Hussy, Cockatrice,” storms the old fellow

beside himself with rage. Angelica mocks him even more bitterly, accuses

him and the Nurse of nourishing a familiar, “a young Devil in the shape

of a Tabby-Cat,” and with a few last thrusts she departs, trilling with

merriment, in a sedan-chair.

To return for a brief space to an earlier generation when it would have

hardly been possible, or at least highly inadvisable, to treat Witchcraft

in this blithesome mood, of two plays that would almost certainly have

been of great interest in this connexion we have only the names, _The

Witch of Islington_, acted in 1597, and _The Witch Traveller_, licensed

in 1623.

In addition to _The Masque of Queens_, which as has already been

noted, served to some extent for a model to Shadwell when inditing his

encyclopædic notes on magic, Ben Jonson in that sweet pastoral _The Sad

Shepherd_ introduces a Scotch witch, Maudlin. The character is drawn with

vigorous strokes; realism mingles with romance.

During the quarrel scene which opens _The Alchemist_ Face threatens

Subtle:

I’ll bring thee, rogue, within

The statute of sorcerie, _tricesimo tertio_

Of Harry the Eight.

Dapper the gull asks Subtle for a familiar, as Face explains (I, 2):

Why, he do’s aske one but for cups, and horses,

A rifling flye: none o’ your great familiars.

And later in order to trick him thoroughly Dol Common appears as the

“Queene of Faerie.” The Queen of Elphin or Elfhame, who is particularly

mentioned in the Scotch witch-trials, seems to be identical with the

French Reine du Sabbat. In 1670 Jean Weir confessed: “That when she

keeped a school at Dalkeith, and teached childering, ane tall woman came

to the declarant’s hous when the childering were there; and that she had,

as appeared to her, ane chyld upon her back, and one or two at her foot;

and that the said woman disyred that the declarant should imploy her to

spick for her to the Queen of Farie, and strik and battle in her behalf

with the said Queen, (which was her own words).”[22]

Beaumont and Fletcher afford us but few instances of witchcraft in the

many dramas that conveniently go under their names. We have, it is true,

a she-devil, Lucifera, in _The Prophetess_, but the incident is little

better than clowning. Delphia herself is a severely classical pythoness

far removed from the Sawyers, Demdikes, and Dickensons Sulpitia, in _The

Custom of the County_ dons a conjurer’s robe and at Hippolita’s bidding

blasts Zenocia almost to death by her spells, but yet she is more bawd

than witch. Peter Vecchio in _The Chances_, “a reputed wizard,” is as

sharp and cozening a practitioner as Forobosco, the mountebank, a petty

pilferer, who is exposed and sent to the galleys at the end of _The Fair

Maid of the Inn_; or Shirley’s Doctor Sharkino[23] whom silly serving-men

consult about the loss of silver spoons and napkins; or Tomkis’s

Albumazar; nay, Jonson’s Subtle himself.[24]

In Marston’s _Sophonisba_ (4to, 1606) appears Erictho, borrowed from

Lucan. The Friar in Chapman’s _Bassy d’Ambois_ (4to, 1607) puts on a

magician’s habit, and after a sonorous Latin invocation raises the

spirits Behemoth and Cartophylax in the presence of Bussy and Tamyra.

A far more interesting drama than these is Shirley’s _S. Patrick for

Ireland_, acted in Dublin, 1639-40, which has as its theme the conversion

of Ireland by S. Patrick and the opposition of the Druids under their

leader Archimagus. The character of S. Patrick moves throughout with a

quiet spiritual dignity that has true beauty, and the magicians in their

baffled potency for evil are only less effective. This drama is a work of

stirling merit, to which I would unhesitatingly assign a very high place

in Shirley’s theatre. We are shown the various attempts upon S. Patrick’s

life: poison is administered in a cup of wine, the Saint drinks and

remains unharmed; Milcho, a great officer, whose servant S. Patrick once

was, locks him and his friends in a house and fires it. The Christians

pass out unscathed through the flames which devour the incendiary. In

the last scene whilst S. Patrick sleeps Archimagus summons a vast number

of hideous serpents to devour him, but the Apostle of Ireland wakes, and

expels for ever all venomous reptiles from his isle, whereon the earth

gapes and swallows the warlock alive. Particularly impressive is the

arrival of S. Patrick, when as the King and his two sons, his druids

and nobles, are gathered in anxious consultation at the gates of their

temple, they see passing in solemn procession through the woods a fair

company with gleaming crosses, silken banners, bright tapers and incense,

what time the sweet music of a hymn strikes upon the ear:

Post maris sæui fremitus Iernæ

(Nauitas cœlo tremulas beante)

Uidimus gratum iubar enatantes

Littus inaurans.

(Now that we have crossed the fierce waves of ocean to Ireland’s coast,

and Heaven has blessed its poor fearful wanderers, wending our way along

with joy do we see a sunbeam of light gilding these shores.)

As Marlowe’s _Dr. Faustus_ has already been treated in this connexion it

may not be altogether impertinent very briefly to consider some three

or four other Elizabethan plays in which the Devil appears among the

Dramatis Personæ, even if he act no very prominent part. These for the

most part fluctuate between the semi-serious and merest buffoonery. Thus

the prologue of _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ (4to, 1608), in which

the enchanter Peter Fabell tricks the demon who has come to demand the

fulfilment of his contract, is at the opening managed with due decorum,

but it soon adopts a lighter, and even trivial, vein. William Rowley’s

_The Birth of Merlin, or The Childe hath found his Father_ (not printed

until 1662) is a curious medley of farce and romance, informed with a

certain awkward vigour and not wholly destitute of poetry. Dekker’s _If

it be not good, the Divel is in it_ (4to, 1612), which may be traced

to the old prose _History of Friar Rush_, depicts the exploits of three

lesser fiends who are dispatched to spread their master’s kingdom in

Naples. It is an unequal play, the satire of which falls very flat, since

it is obvious that the poet was not sincere in his extravagant theme.[25]

Ben Jonson’s _The Devil is an Ass_, acted in 1616, is wholly comic. Pug,

“the less devil,” who visits the earth, and engages himself as servant to

a Norfolk squire, Fabian Fitzdottrel, is hopelessly outwitted on every

occasion by the cunning of mere mortals. Eventually he finds himself

lodged in Newgate, and in imminent danger of the gallows were he not

rescued by the Vice, Iniquity, by whom he is carried off rejoicing to

the nether regions. His fate may be compared with that of Roderigo in

Wilson’s excellent comedy _Belphegor: or, The Marriage of the Devil_

(produced at Dorset Garden in the summer of 1690), who with his two

attendant devils flies back to his native hell to escape the woes of

earth.

In _The Devil’s Charter_, however, by Barnaby Barnes (1607), we have

what is undoubtedly a perfectly serious tragedy, which if not exactly

modelled upon, at least owes many hints to Marlowe’s _Faustus_. It is

flamboyant melodrama and wildly unhistorical throughout, a very tophet of

infernal horror. The chief character is a loathsome caricature of Pope

Alexander VI,[26] and, as we might expect, all the lies and libels of

Renaissance satirists and Protestant pamphleteers are heaped together to

portray an impossible monster of lust and crime. The filthiest scandals

of Burchard, Sanudo, Giustiniani, Filippo Nerli, Guicciardini, Paolo

Giovio, Sannazzaro and the Neapolitans, have been employed with one might

almost say a scrupulous conscientiousness. The black art, in particular,

occupies a very prominent place in these lurid scenes. Alexander has

signed a bond with a demon Astaroth, and it is to this contract that all

his success is ascribed. In Act IV there is a long incantation when the

Pope puts on his magical robes, takes his rod and pentacle, and standing

within the circle he has traced conjures in strange terms, commencing

a Latin exorcism which tails off into mere gibberish. Various devils

appear, and he is shown a vision of Gandia’s murder by Cæsar,[27] with

other atrocities. At the climax of the piece we have the banquet with

Cardinal Adrian of Corneto, and whilst the guests talk “The Devill

commeth and changeth the Popes bottles.” The Borgias are poisoned, and

in a far too protracted “Scena Ultima” Alexander discourses and disputes

frantically with the demons who appear to mock and torment him. There

is the old device of an ambiguous contract; presently a “Devil like a

Poast” enters winding a horn to summon the unhappy wretch, who raves

and shrieks out meaningless ejaculations as he is dragged away amid

thunder and lightning. This sort of thing pandered to the most brutalized

appetites of the groundlings, and _The Devil’s Charter_ may be summed up

as a disgusting burlesque not without its quota of vile stuff that is so

repulsive as to be physically sickening.

Upon a careful consideration of those seventeenth-century plays which

have Witchcraft as their main theme, and leaving on one side, for our

purpose, the essentially romantic treatment of the subject, however

realistic some details of the picture may be, it is, I think, beyond

dispute that _The Witch of Edmonton_ in the figure of Mother Sawyer

offers us the best contemporary illustration of the Elizabethan witch.

The drama itself is one of no ordinary merit and power, whilst the

understanding and restraint which set the play apart from its fellows

also raises it to the level of genuine tragedy. It should be noticed that

we see a witch, so to speak, in the process of making. Mother Sawyer is

in truth the victim of the prejudices of the village hinds and ignorant

yokels. When she first appears it is merely as a poor old crone driven

to desperation by her brutal neighbours; the farmers declare she is a

witch, and at length persecution makes her one. She is malignant and evil

enough once the compact with the demon has been confirmed; she longs from

the first to be revenged upon her enemies and mutters to herself “by

what art May the thing called Familiar be purchased?” But, in one sense,

she is urged and hounded to her destiny, and the authors, although never

doubting her compact with the powers of darkness, her vile and poisonous

life, show a detached but very real sympathy for her. It is this touch

of humanity, the pathos and pity of the poor old hag, repulsive, wicked,

and baleful as she may be, which must place _The Witch of Edmonton_ in my

opinion among the greatest and most moving of all Elizabethan plays.

It is no pleasant task to turn now to the theatre of the eighteenth

century in this connexion. The witch became degraded; she was comic,

burlesqued, buffooned; a mere property for a Christmas pantomime:

_Harlequin Mother Bunch_, _Mother Goose_, _Harlequin Dame Trot_, Charles

Dibdin’s _The Lancashire Witches, or The Distresses of Harlequin_[28]

whose tinsel, music, and mummery drew all the macaronis and cyprians in

London to the Circus during the winter of 1782-3.