Discovery of Witches Part 25

[Footnote 64: Pounded, or powdered it, like meal.]

[Footnote 65: To make the plaster fine, and free from earthy particles.]

[Footnote 66: Probably a sort of stir-about, or hasty-pudding, made of rye-flour.]

[Footnote 67: In another deposition it is thus expressed, 'lyk a _pow or feadge_.' A _feadge_ was a sort of _scone_, or roll, of a pretty large size. Perhaps this term signifies, as large as the quant.i.ty of dough or paste necessary for making this kind of bread.]

[Footnote 68: A flayed sucking pig, after being scalded and sc.r.a.ped.]

[Footnote 69: Shrivelled with the heat.]

[Footnote 70: Red like a coal.]

[Footnote 71: Each alternate day.]

[Footnote 72: Knew.]

[Footnote 73: It is written _meall_ in the other Confession; and the metre (such as it is) requires this liberty. _Mowld_ signifies 'earth'

or 'dust.']

[Footnote 74: Stubble.]

[Footnote 75: Parched; shrivelled.]

[Footnote 76: Until.]

[Footnote 77: Harm; injury.]

B 4 _b_ 1. "_And sayd that she should haue gould, siluer, and worldly wealth at her will._"] These familiars, to use Warburton's expression, always promised with the lavishness of a young courtier, and performed with the indifference of an old one. Nothing seems to puzzle Dr. Dee more, in the long and confidential intercourse he carried on so many years with his spirits, than to account for the great scarcity of specie they seemed to be afflicted with, and the unsatisfactory and unfurnished state of their exchequer. Bills, to be sure, they gave at long dates; but these constantly required renewing, and were never honoured at last. Any application for present relief, in good current coin of the realm, was invariably followed by what Meric Casaubon very significantly calls "sermonlike stuff." The learned professor in witchery, John Stearne, seems to fix six shillings as the maximum of money payment at one time which in all his experience he had detected between witches and their familiars. He was examining Joan Ruccalver, of Powstead, in Suffolk, who had been promised by her spirit that she should never want meat, drink, clothes, or money. "Then I asked her whether they brought her any money or no; and she said sometimes four shillings at a time, and sometimes six shillings at a time; but that is but seldom, _for I never knew any that had any money before_, except of Clarke's wife, of Manningtree, who confessed the same, and showed some, which, she said, her impe brought her, which was proper money." Confirmation, page 27. Judging from the anxiety which this worthy displays to be "satisfied and paid with reason" for his itinerant labours, such a scanty and penurious supply would soon have disgusted him, if he had been witch, instead of witch-finder.

B 4 _b_ 2. "_She had bewitched to death Richard Ashton, sonne of Richard Ashton, of Downeham, Esquire._"] Richard a.s.sheton, (as the name is more properly spelled,) thus done to death by witchcraft, was the son of Richard a.s.sheton, of Downham, an old manor house, the scite of which is now supplied by a modern structure, which Dr. Whitaker thinks, in point of situation, has no equal in the parish of Whalley.

Richard, the son, married Isabel, daughter and heiress of Mr. Hanc.o.c.k, of Pendleton Hall, and died without offspring. The family estate accordingly descended to the younger brother, Nicholas a.s.sheton, whose diary for part of the year 1617 and part of the year following is given, page 303 of Whitaker's _History of Whalley_, edition 1818, and is a most valuable record of the habits, pursuits, and course of life of a Lancashire country gentleman of that period. It well deserves detaching in a separate publication, and ill.u.s.trating with a more expanded commentary.

C _b_. "_Piggin full._"] Piggin is properly a sort of bowl, or pail, with one of the staves much longer than the rest, made for a handle, to lade water by, and used especially in brewhouses to measure out the liquor with.

C 2 _a_. "_Nicholas Banister._"] Dr. Whitaker, in the pedigree of the Banisters, of Altham, (genealogy was, it is well known, one of the vulnerable parts of this Achilles of topography,) erroneously states this Nicholas Banister to have been buried at Altham, December 7, 1611. It appears, however, from a deed, an inspection of which I owe to the kindness of my friend, Dr. Fleming, that his will was dated the 15th August, 1612. In all probability he did not die for some years after that date. He married, first, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Richard Elston, of Brockall, Esq.; and, second, Catherine, daughter of Edmund Ashton, of Chaderton, Esq. The manor house of Altham, for more than five centuries the residence of this ancient family, stands, to use Dr. Whitaker's words, upon a gentle elevation on the western side of the river Calder, commanding a low and fertile domain. It has been surrounded, according to the prudence or jealousy of the feudal times, with a very deep quadrangular moat, which must have included all the apparatus of the farm.

C 3 _a_. "_At Malking Tower, in the forrest of Pendle._"] Malkin Tower was the habitation of Mother Demdike, the situation of which is preserved, for the structure no longer exists, by local tradition.

Malkin is the Scotch or north country word for hare, as this animal was one into which witches were supposed to be fond of transforming themselves. Malkin Tower is, in fact, the Witches' Tower. The term is used in the following pa.s.sage in Morison's _Poems_, p. 7, which bears upon the above explanation:--

"Or tell the pranks o' winter's nights, How Satan blazes uncouth lights; Or how he does a core convene Upon a witch-frequented green, Wi' spells and cauntrips h.e.l.lish rantin', Like mawkins thro' the fields they're janting."

C 4 _b_. "_We want old Demdike, who dyed in the castle before she came to her tryall._"] Worn out most probably with her imprisonment, she having been committed in April, and the cruelties she had undergone, both before and after her commitment. Master Nowell and Master Potts both _wanted_ her, we may readily conceive, to fill up the miserable pageant; but she was gone where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. With the exception of Alice Nutter, in whom interest is excited from very different grounds, Mother Demdike attracts attention in a higher degree than any other of these Pendle witches. She was, beyond dispute, the Erictho of Pendle. Mother Chattox was but second in rank. There is something fearfully intense in the expression of the former,--blind, on the last verge of the extreme limit of human existence, and mother of a line of witches,--"that she would pray for the said Baldwin, both still and loud." She is introduced in Shadwell's play, the _Lancashire Witches_, 1682, as a _persona dramatis_, along with Mother d.i.c.kinson and Mother Hargrave, two of the witches convicted in 1633, but without any regard to the characteristic circ.u.mstances under which she appears in the present narrative. The following invocation, which is put into her mouth, is rather a favourable specimen of that play, certainly not one of the worst of Shadwell's, in which there are many vigorous strokes, with an alloy of coa.r.s.eness not unusual in his works, and some powerful conceptions of character:

Come, sisters, come, why do you stay?

Our business will not brook delay; The owl is flown from the hollow oak, From lakes and bogs the toads do croak; The foxes bark, the screech-owl screams, Wolves howl, bats fly, and the faint beams Of glow-worms light grows bright a-pace; The stars are fled, the moon hides her face.

The spindle now is turning round, Mandrakes are groaning under ground: I'th' hole i'th' ditch (our nails have made) Now all our images are laid, Of wax and wooll, which we must p.r.i.c.k, With needles urging to the quick.

Into the hole I'le poure a flood Of black lambs bloud, to make all good.

The lamb with nails and teeth wee'l tear.

Come, where's the sacrifice? appear.

Oyntment for flying here I have, Of childrens fat, stoln from the grave: The juice of smallage, and night-shade, Of poplar leaves, and aconite, made With these.

The aromatic reed I boyl, With water-parsnip and cinquefoil; With store of soot, and add to that The reeking blood of many a bat.

_Lancashire Witches_, pp. 10, 41.

One of the peculiarities of Shadwell's play is the introduction of the Lancashire dialect, which he makes his clown Clod speak. The subjoined extract may perhaps amuse my readers. Collier would have enjoyed it:

_Clod._ An yeow been a mon Ay'st talk wy ye a bit, yeow mun tack a care o your sells, the plecs haunted with Buggarts, and Witches, one of 'em took my Condle and Lanthorn out of my hont, and flew along wy it; and another Set me o top o'th tree, where I feel dawn now, Ay ha well neegh brocken my theegh.

_Doubt._ The fellows mad, I neither understand his words, nor his Sence, prethee how far is it to Whalley?

_Clod._ Why yeow are quite besaid th' road mon, yeow Shoulden a gon dawn th' bonk by _Thomas_ o _Georges_, and then ee'n at yate, and turn'd dawn th' Lone, and left the Steepo o'th reeght hont.

_Bell._ Prithee don't tell us what we should have done, but how far is it to Whalley?

_Clod._ Why marry four mail and a bit.

_Doubt._ Wee'l give thee an Angel and show us the way thither.

_Clod._ Marry thats Whaint. I canno see my hont, haw con Ay show yeow to Whalley to neeght.

_Bell._ Canst thou show us to any house where we may have Shelter and Lodging to night? we are Gentlemen and strangers, and will pay you well for't.

_Clod._ Ay byr Lady con I, th' best ludging and diet too in aw Lancashire. Yonder at th' hough where yeow seen th'

leeghts there.

_Doubt._ Whose house is that?

_Clod._ Why what a pox, where han yeow lived? why yeow are Strongers indeed! why, 'tis Sir _Yedard Harfourts_, he Keeps oppen hawse to all Gentry, yeou'st be welcome to him by day and by neeght he's Lord of aw here abauts.

_Bell._ My Mistresses Father, Luck if it be thy will, have at my _Isabella_, Canst thou guide us thither?

_Clod._ Ay, Ay, there's a pawer of Company there naw, Sir _Jeffery Shaklehead_, and the Knight his Son, and Doughter.

_Doubt._ Lucky above my wishes, O my dear _Theodosia_, how my heart leaps at her! prethee guide us thither, wee'l pay thee well.

_Clod._ Come on, I am e'n breed aut o my sences, I was ne'er so freeghtened sin I was born, give me your hont.--_Lancashire Witches_, p. 14.

D _b_. "_Ann Whittle, alias Chattox._"] Chattox, from her continually chattering.

D 2 _a_ 1. "_Her lippes euer chattering and walking._"] Walking, _i.e._, working. Old Chattox might have sat to Archbishop Harsnet for her portrait. What can exceed the force and graphic truth, the searching wit and sarcasm, of the picture he sketches in 1605?

Out of these is shaped vs the true _Idoea_ of a Witch, an old weather-beaten Croane, hauing her chinne, & her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow eyed, vntoothed, furrowed on her face, hauing her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgott[=e] her _pater noster_, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee haue learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: _Pax, max, fax_, for a spel: or can say Sir _Iohn of Grantams_ curse, for the Millers Eeles, that were stolne: All you that haue stolne the Millers Eeles, _Laudate dominum de coelis_: And all they that haue consented thereto, _benedicamus domino_: Why then ho, beware, looke about you my neighbours; if any of you haue a sheepe sicke of the giddies, or an hogge of the mumps, or an horse of the staggers, or a knauish boy of the schoole, or an idle girle of the wheele, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porredge, nor her father, and mother, b.u.t.ter enough for their bread; and she haue a little helpe of the _Mother_, _Epilepsie_, or _Cramp_, to teach her role her eyes, wrie her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, holde her armes and hands stiffe, make anticke faces, grine, mow, and mop like an Ape, tumble like a Hedge-hogge, and can mutter out two or three words of gibridg, as _obus, bobus_: and then with-all old mother _n.o.bs_ hath called her by chaunce, idle young huswife, or bid the deuill scratch her, then no doubt but mother _n.o.bs_ is the Witch: the young girle is Owle-blasted, and possessed: and it goes hard but ye shall haue some idle adle, giddie, lymphaticall, illuminate dotrel, who being out of credite, learning, sobriety, honesty, and wit, will take this holy aduantage, to raise the ruines of his desperate decayed name, and for his better glory wil be-pray the iugling drab, and cast out _Mopp_ the deuil.

They that haue their braines baited, and their fancies distempered with the imaginations, and apprehensions of Witches, Coniurers, and Fayries, and all that Lymphatical _Chimaera_: I finde to be marshalled in one of these fiue rankes, children, fooles, women, cowards, sick, or blacke, melancholicke, discomposed wits. The Scythians being a warlike Nation (as _Plutarch_ reports) neuer saw any visions.--_Harsnet's Declaration_, p. 136.

D 2 _a_ 2. "_From these two sprung all the rest in order._"] The descent from these two rival witch stocks, between which a deadly feud and animosity prevailed, which led to the destruction of both families, is shewn as follows: