Part 8

Or even a bishop. See Southey's pithy and profitable tale of 'Eleemon, or a Sinner Saved.'

In the case of St. Lydvina, when he pleaded his case in person, and thought it a clear one, he was fairly laughed out of court, "deriso explosoque Dæmone." (Brugmann, Vita Lydvinæ, p. 290.) He was hoaxed in a still more ingenious manner by Nostradamus, who having agreed that the devil should have him, if he was buried either in the church or out of it, left directions that he should be buried in a hole in the wall. Sometimes however he was the gainer in such equivocal compacts,--as, for example, in the case of the monk who was to live so long as he abstained from sleeping between sheets. The monk always slept in a chair; but in an unlucky hour Satan caught him as fast as a top with his head between the sheets of a sermon, and claimed his bond.

Inferno, canto vi.

The trials at Arras, in 1459. Vide Monstrelet's Chronicle, vol. iii. p. 84: Paris, 1572. But these were rather religious prosecutions against supposed heretics, and the crime of witchcraft only introduced as aggravating their offences.

Christoph von Ranzow, a nobleman of Holstein, burned eighteen at once on one of his estates.

Some of our readers may wish to see a specimen of this precious production. We shall take a stanza or two, descriptive of the joke of which the poor witch was the victim.

Ein Hexen hat man gefangen, zu Zeit die war sehr reich Mit der man lang umbgaben ehe sie bekannte gleich, Dann sie blieb darauf beständig es gescheh ihr Unrecht gross, Bis man ihr macht nothwendig diesen artlichen Poss(!),

Das ich mich drüber wunder; man schickt ein Henkersknecht Zu ihr ins Gefängniss 'nunter, den man hat kleidet recht Mit einer Bärnhaute als wenns der Teufel wär; Als ihm die Drut anschaute meynts ihr Buhl kam daher.

Sie sprach zu ihm behende, wie lestu mich so lang In der Obrigkeit Hände? Hilf mir aus ihren Zwang, Wie du mir hast verheissen, ich bin ja eben dein; Thu mich aus der Angst entreissen, o liebster Bule mein!

Sie thet sich selbst verrathen, und gab Anzeigung viel Sie hat nit geschmeckt den Braten, was das war für ein Spiel(!). Er tröstet sie und saget, ich will dir helfen wohl; Darum sey unverzaget, Morgens geschehen soll.

It bears the colophon "Printed at Smalcald in the year 1627."

When these horrors were thus versified, it is not wonderful to find them "improved" by the preachers of the time. At Riga, in 1626, there appeared 'Nine Select Witch Sermons, by Hermann Sampsonius, superintendent at Riga,' and many others in the course of that century.

Criminal Law. Tit. x.

Records of Justiciary. Trial of the Master of Orkney.

Calef's Journal.

Cobbett's State Trials.

Trial of Bartie Paterson. Records of Scottish Justiciary. Dec. 18, 1607.

In Wenham's case, Mr. Chauncy deposed that a cat belonging to Jane Wenham had come and knocked at his door at night, and that he had killed it. This was founded on evidence at the trial.

Rec. of Just. 1613, Dec. 1.

See the 'Neue Necrologie der Deutschen, 1823,' for an account of these remarkable appearances.

Divina et Vera Metaphysica.

Wordsworth's 'Dion.'

The prefixed characters which Ashmole interprets to mean Responsum Raphaelis seem remarkably to resemble that cabalistic-looking initial which in medical prescriptions is commonly interpreted "Recipe."

Dapper (Beschreibung von Amsterdam, p. 150) describes her as a melancholy or hypochondriac girl. She was burned however as usual. These rhyming or alliterative charms are of very remote antiquity. Cato, in his treatise on Husbandry, recommends the following formulary for a sprain or fracture: "Huat Hanat, Huat Ista, Pista Sista, Domiabo Damnaustra," or "Motas Væta, Daries Dardaries, Astataries Dissunapiter."

This, indeed, is an almost invariable feature in the witch trials, and, if the subject could justify the discussion, might lead to some singular medical conclusions.

The trade of a pricker, as it was called, i. e. a person who put pins into the flesh of a witch, was a regular one in Scotland and England, as well as on the Continent. Sir George Mackenzie mentions the case of one of them who confessed the imposture (p. 48); and a similar instance is mentioned by Spottiswood (p. 448). Sir Walter Scott gives the following account of this trade:--"One celebrated mode of detecting witches, and torturing them at the same time, to draw forth confession, was, by running pins into their body, on pretence of discovering the devil's stigma, or mark, which was said to be inflicted by him upon all his vassals, and to be insensible to pain. This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was in Scotland reduced to a trade; and the young witch-finder was allowed to torture the accused party, as if in exercise of a lawful calling, although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatizes it as a horrid imposture. I observe in the Collections of Mr. Pitcairn, that, at the trial of Janet Peaston of Dalkeith, the magistrates and ministers of that market-town caused John Kincaid of Tranent, the common pricker, to exercise his craft upon her, 'who found two marks of what he called the devil's making, and which appeared indeed to be so, for she could not feel the pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did they (the marks) bleed when they were taken out again; and when she was asked where she thought the pins were put in, she pointed to a part of her body distant from the real place. They were pins of three inches in length.' Besides the fact, that the persons of old people especially sometimes contain spots void of sensibility, there is also room to believe that the professed prickers used a pin, the point or lower part of which was, on being pressed down, sheathed in the upper, which was hollow for the purpose, and that which appeared to enter the body did not pierce it at all."--Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 297.

Peter died in prison just in time to escape the flames. He was burned in effigy however after his death.

Lindon, cited by Wyttenbach, 'Versuch einer Geschichte von Trier,' vol. iii. p. 110.