the fairy country, and gave her herbs to cure various diseases. He even once brought to her the queen of the fairies, who, to the confusion of poetry, was a fat woman, fond of ale, and, in short, most unlike the Titania of romance. Alison Pearson also admitted her familiarity with the fairies, from whom she frequently received herbs for the cure of disease. It is remarkable that Patrick Adamson, an able scholar and divine, who was created archbishop of St Andrews by James VI., actually took the medicines prescribed by this poor woman, in the hope that they would transfer an illness with which he was seized to the body of one of his horses. This feat, it was believed, was accomplished by the supernatural prescription. The unfortunate women who confessed to these things, were deceived in the expectation which led to the act. They could not so save themselves: they were both convicted, and perished at the stake.

It may not be improper in this place to allude to the fancies of the poets on the subject of the fairies. Shakspeare stands pre-eminent in this department. His Midsummer Night's Dream' is a poem of exquisite beauty, and one corresponding in every respect with the delicately-fanciful nature of the subject. In 'Romeo and Juliet' he has also described an important fairy, Queen Mab, who has almost dethroned Titania of late years. Mr Tennant's Anster Fair' has been of great avail to the fame of Mab. Whoever chooses to consult Drayton and the poets mentioned, will have the pleasure of observing and enjoying the exercise of poetical fancy of the highest order on the subject of fairies.

The superstitions now described are not yet extinct in the British Islands. In Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, and Wales, in particular, the fairies are yet objects of common belief. Education has not yet shed its enlightening influence there, and by education alone can the darkness of superstition be dispelled. This is almost a truism; for superstition and ignorance are nothing else than equivalent terms. The spirit is abroad, however, which will extinguish this remnant of barbarism, and it is consoling to think so, for the ills which have flowed from this source are numberless.

WITCHCRAFT.

interests of humanity. As this superstition gained force in the Christian world, which it did by slow and successive steps through the whole of the middle ages, or from the fifth century till about the fifteenth, the devil-for it is impossible to avoid the mention of this emphatic name, disagreeable as it is commonly said to be to ears polite-gradually lost many of the former features of his character; or, rather, a different being was substituted for him, combining the characteristics of the Scandinavian Lokke with those of a Satyr of the heathen mythology-a personage equally wicked and malicious as the sterner spirit of evil, but rendered ludicrous by a propensity for petty trickery, and by such personal endowments as a pair of horns, a cow's tail, and cloven feet. There can be no doubt that the demon of the middle ages borrowed these attributes from his human representatives in the old mysteries and plays, where a laudable endeavour was made to make the evil one as ugly as possible. We are told, it is true, that he could at will assume any specious disguise that suited him, but the eye of the initiated observer could readily detect the cloven foot'-or, in other words, penetrate his true character. Such as he was, he played an important part in the annals of modern witchcraft, which was supposed to rest entirely on the direct and personal agency of himself and the imps commissioned by him. Nor was this supposition confined to the illiterate, or to persons of peculiarly credulous temperament. Authors, distinguished for sense and talent, record with great seriousness that the devil once delivered a course of lectures on magic at Salamanca, habited in a professor's gown and wig; and that at another time he took up house in Milan, lived there in great style, and assumed, rather imprudently one would say, the suspicious, yet appropriate title of the Duke of Mammon.' Even Luther entertained similar notions about the fiend; and in fact thought so meanly of him, as to believe that he could come by night and steal nuts, and that he cracked them against the bedposts, for the solacement of his monkey-like appetite.

The powers ascribed to this debased demon were exceedingly great. The general belief was, that through his agency storms at sea and land could at all seasons be raised; that crops could be blighted, and cattle inA belief that certain individuals possessed magical jured; that bodily illnesses could be inflicted on any powers, and could exercise a supernatural influence person who was the object of secret malice; that the over their fellow-creatures, existed in ancient Rome, and dead could be raised to life; that witches could ride those who practised, or rather pretended to exercise, through the air on broomsticks, and transform themsuch arts, were punishable by the civil magistrate. It selves into the shapes of cats, hares, or other animals, is to be observed that neither among the Romans nor at pleasure. An old writer, speaking of the powers of the Pagan nations of northern Europe, was witchcraft witches, says-1. Some work their bewitchings only deemed an offence against religion; in some instances, by way of invocation or imprecation. They wish it, or indeed, the witch was supposed to derive her powers will it; and so it falls out. 2. Some, by way of emisfrom spirits friendly to mankind, and her profession, sary, sending out their imps, or familiars, to crosse the though feared, was held in honour by her infatuated way, justle, affront, flash in the face, barke, howle, bite, dupes. Upon the introduction of Christianity, witch-scratch, or otherwise infest. 3. Some by inspecting, or craft assumed a new form, though retaining all its looking on, or to glare, or peep at with an envious and old attributes. Instead of ascribing the supernatural evil eye. 4. Some by a hollow muttering or mumbling. powers of the practitioner to the gods, to Odin, to spirits 5. Some by breathing and blowing on. 6. Some by of good or evil qualities, or to supposed mysteries in cursing and banning. 7. Some by blessing and praising. nature, the people imputed them to the great fallen 8. Some revengefully, by occasion of ill turnes. 9. Some spirit mentioned in Scripture. This potent being, from ingratefully, and by occasion of good turnes. a wicked desire to destroy all that was good and hope- by leaving something of theirs in your house. 11. Some ful in man's destiny, was believed to enter into a com- by getting something of yours into their house. 12. Some pact with the aspirant witch, in which, for an irrevoc- have a more speciall way of working by severall eleable assignment of her soul at death, he was to grant ments-earth, water, ayre, or fire. But who can tell all her wishes, and assist in all her malevolent projects. all the manner of wayes of a witch's working; that These new features in witchcraft, as we shall speedily works not only darkly and closely, but variously and perceive, thoroughly changed and prodigiously extended versatilly, as God will permit, the devil can suggest, or the superstition throughout Europe. From being rather the malicious hag devise to put in practice?' a sportive kind of jugglery, or trick in practical magic, and at most only a civil offence, it was now recognised as a crime of the deepest dye, meriting the most severe chastisement which the ecclesiastical and civil power could inflict.

We must here notice, however, that the demon or master-fiend of the witchcraft legends was a very different being from that great fallen spirit, held, in a graver view of things, so deeply to influence the best

10. Some

In the present age of comparative intelligence, it is difficult to understand how human beings could be so deplorably ignorant as to entertain such a gross superstition. We must, however, recollect that the belief was greatly fostered by religious impressions, and that it was long considered a mark of impiety to doubt the existence of witches. Various other circumstances helped to cherish and magnify the error. The true causes of the majority of natural phenomena were

she had made an end of it. This matter being taken into consideration, Scultetus, with the chief magistrate of the city, opened the grave, and found that she had indeed swallowed and devoured one-half of her wind

unknown. The nature of the atmosphere, and of certain meteoric appearances of the laws which regulate storms at sea, and tides-of human maladies and their remedies were enveloped in obscurity. Natural causes being unknown, and the very doctrine of them unac-ing-sheet. Scultetus, moved with horror at the thing, knowledged, the weak and easily-terrified mind flew to the conclusion that all evil proceeded from a power malignant to man, and that, by certain impious dealings, it was possible for man himself to direct that power against his neighbour.

drew out his sword and cut off her head, and threw it into a ditch, and immediately the plague ceased! and the inquisition sitting upon the case, it was found that she had long been a reputed witch.

A. D. 1524.-About this time a thousand were burned in one year, in the diocese of Como, and a hundred per annum for several years together.'

From other authorities it is learned that the devas

The superstition seems to have approached its height about the end of the fifteenth century. In his bull of 1484, Pope Innocent charged inquisitors and others to discover and destroy all such as were guilty of witch-tation was as great in Spain, France, and northern Gercraft. This commission was put into the hands of a many, as it was in the Italian states. About the year wretch called Sprenger, with directions that it should 1515, five hundred witches were burned in Geneva in be put in force to its fullest extent. Immediately there three months, and in France many thousands. An able followed a regular form of process and trial for sus-writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review (No. XI. 1830), pected witches, entitled Malleus Maleficarum, or a sums up the following particulars respecting the execuHammer for Witches, upon which all judges were tions for witchcraft in some of the German states:called scrupulously to act. The edict of 1484 was subsequently enforced by a bull of Alexander VI. in 1494, of Leo X. in 1521, and of Adrian VI. in 1522-each adding strength to its predecessor, and the whole serving to increase the agitation of the public mind upon the subject. The results were dreadful. A panic fear of witchcraft took possession of society. Every one was at the mercy of his neighbour. If any one felt an unaccountable illness, or a peculiar pain in any part of his body, or suffered any misfortune in his family or affairs, or if a storm arose, and committed any damage by sea or land, or if any cattle died suddenly, or, in short, if any event, circumstance, or thing occurred out of the ordinary routine of daily experience, the cause of it was witchcraft. To be accused was to be doomed; for it rarely happened that proof was wanting, or that condemnation was not followed by execution. Armed with the Malleus Maleficarum, the judge had no difficulty in finding reasons for sending the most innocent to the stake. If the accused did not at once confess, they were ordered to be shaved and closely examined for the discovery of devil's marks; it being a tenet in the delusion that the devil, on inaugurating any witch, impressed certain marks on her person; and if any strange mark was discovered, there remained no longer any doubt of the party's guilt. Failing this kind of evidence, torture was applied, and this seldom failed to extort the desired confession from the unhappy victim. A large proportion of the accused witches, in order to avoid these preliminary horrors, confessed the crime in any terms which were dictated to them, and were forthwith led to execution. Other witches, as has been said, seemed to confess voluntarily, being probably either insane persons, or feeble-minded beings, whose reason had been distorted by brooding over the popular witchcraft code. A few extracts from the work of Dr Hutchinson will show the extent of these miserable proceedings:

A. D. 1485.-Cumanas, an inquisitor, burnt fortyone poor women for witches, in the county of Burlia, in one year. He caused them to be shaven first, that they may be searched for marks. He continued the prosecutions in the year following, and many fled out of the country.

About this time, Alciat, a famous lawyer, in his Parergu, says, "One inquisitor burnt a hundred in Piedmont, and proceeded daily to burn more, till the people rose against the inquisitor, and chased him out of the country."

A. D. 1488.—A violent tempest of thunder and lightning in Constance destroyed the corn for four leagues round. The people accused one Anne Mindelin, and one Agnes, for being the cause of it. They confessed, and were burnt.

About this time H. Institor says, one of the inquisitors came to a certain town that was almost desolate with plague and famine. The report went that a certain woman, buried not long before, was eating up her winding-sheet, and that the plague would not cease till

In Germany, to which indeed the bull of Innocent bore particular reference, this plague raged to a degree almost inconceivable. Bainberg, Paderborn, Wurtzburg, and Treves were its chief seats, though for a century and a-half after the introduction of the trials under the commission, no quarter of that great empire was free from its baneful influence. A catalogue of the executions at Wurtzburg for the period from 1627 to February 1629, about two years and two months, is printed by Hauber in the conclusion of his third volume of the Acta et Scripta Magica. It is regularly divided into twenty-nine burnings, and contains the names of 157 persons, Hauber stating at the same time that the catalogue is not complete. It is impossible to peruse this list without shuddering with horror. The greater part of this catalogue consists of old women or foreign travellers, seized, as it would appear, as foreigners were at Paris during the days of Marat and Robespierre: it contains children of twelve, eleven, ten, and nine years of age; fourteen vicars of the cathedral; two boys of noble families, the two little sons of the senator Stolzenburg; a stranger boy; a blind girl; Gobel Babelin, the handsomest girl in Wurtzburg, &c. frightful as this list of 157 persons executed in the short space of two years appears, the number is not (taking the population of Wurtzburg into account) so great as the Lindheim process from 1660 to 1664; for in that small district, consisting at the very utmost of 600 inhabitants, thirty persons were condemned and put to death, making a twentieth part of the whole population consumed in four years.

And yet,

How dreadful are the results to which these data lead! If we take 157 as a fair average of the executions at Wurtzburg (and the catalogue itself states that the list was by no means complete), the amount of executions there in the course of the century preceding 1628 would be 15,700. We know that from 1610 to 1660 was the great epoch of the witch trials, and that so late as 1749 Maria Renata was executed at Wurtzburg for witchcraft; and though in the interval between 1660 and that date, it is to be hoped that the number of these horrors had diminished, there can be little doubt that several thousands fall to be added to the amount already stated. If Bainberg, Paderborn, Treves, and the other Catholic bishoprics, whose zeal was not less ardent, furnished an equal contingent, and if the Protestants, as we know, actually vied with them in the extent to which these cruelties were carried, the number of victims from the date of Innocent's bull to the final extinction of these prosecutions, must considerably exceed 100,000 in Germany.'

Witchcraft in Scotland.

The mania respecting witchcraft, which sprang up into vigour throughout southern Europe in consequence of the edicts of Innocent and Leo, spread in time to Scotland, and acquired strong possession of the public mind during the reign of Queen Mary. At that period an act was passed by the Scottish Parliament for the

suppression and punishment of witchcraft; but this | Item, The devil, in the shape of a dog, gave her re

indignation, ordered the unfortunate man to be sub- | compliment to the king, to whom it was a source of jected to the following most horrible tortures:- His nailes upon all his fingers were riven and pulled off with an instrument called in Scottish a turkas, which in England are called a payre of pincers, and under everie nayle there was thrust in two needles over, even up to the heades; at all which tormentes, notwithstand-class, a writer (already quoted) in the Foreign Quarterly ing, the doctor never shrunk a whit, neither would he then confesse it the sooner for all the tortures inflicted on him. Then was hee, with all convenient speed, by commandement, convaied again to the tor-off and laying on diseases either on men or cattle; ment of the bootes, wherein he continued a long time, and did abide so many blowes in them, that his legges were crusht and beaten together as small as might bee, whereby they were make unserviceable for ever.' Notwithstanding all this, such was the strength of mind of the victim, or, as King James termed it, so deeply had the devil entered into his heart,' that he still denied all, and resolutely declared that all he had done and said before was only done and said for fear of the paynes which he had endured.' As, according to this fashion of justice, to confess or not to confess was quite the same thing, the poor schoolmaster of Saltpans was soon afterwards strangled, and then burned on the Castlehill of Edinburgh (January 1591).

Mercer, Whitelocke, and other chroniclers, prove this nature had been ungentle in her outward gifts, or whom but too satisfactorily. years and infirmities had doomed to poverty and wretchThe clergy continued, after the Restoration, to pur-edness; exactly that class of miserable beings, in short, sue these imaginary criminals with a zeal altogether for whom more enlightened times provide houses of deplorable. The Justiciary Court condemned twenty refuge, and endow charitable institutions, aiming, in persons in the first year of Charles II.'s reign (1661); the spirit of true benevolence, to supply to them that and in one day of the same year the council issued attention and support which nature or circumstances fourteen new provincial commissions, the aggregate have denied them the power of procuring for themdoings of which one shudders to guess at. To compute selves. Often, too, was the victim a person distintheir condemnations would be impossible, for victim guished by particular gifts and endowments; gifts after victim perished at the stake, unnamed and un- bestowed by the Creator in kindness, but rendered fatal heard of. Morayshire became at this particular period to the possessor by man. These were the victims of the scene of a violent fit of the great moral frenzy, and witchcraft. The executioners were the wisest and some of the most remarkable examinations signalising greatest of their time. Men distinguished above their the whole course of Scottish witchcraft took place in fellows for knowledge and intelligence, ministers of that county. The details, though occasionally ludicrous religion and of the laws, kings, princes, and noblesfrom their absurdity, are too horrible for narration in these, and such as these, judged of the crime, prothe present pages. nounced the doom, and sent the poor victims of delusion to the torture, the stake, and the scaffold.

The popular frenzy seems to have exhausted itself by its own virulence in 1661-62; for an interval of six years subsequently elapsed without a single justiciary trial for the crime of witchcraft, and one fellow was actually whipped for charging some person with it. After this period, the dying embers of the delusion only burst out on occasions, here and there, into a momentary flame. In 1678, several women were condemned, on their own confession,' says the Register; but we suspect this only means in reality that one malicious being made voluntary admissions involving others, as must often have been the case, we fear, in these proceedings. Scattered cases took place near the beginning of the eighteenth century; such as those at Paisley in 1697, at Pittenweem in 1704, and at Spott about the same time. It is curious that as something like direct evidence became necessary for condemnation, that evidence presented itself, and in the shape of possessed or enchanted young persons, who were brought into court to play off their tricks. The most striking case of this nature was that of Christian Shaw, a girl about eleven years old, and the daughter of Mr Shaw of Bargarran in Renfrewshire. This wretched girl, who seems to have been an accomplished hypocrite, young as she was, quarrelled with a maid-servant, and to be revenged, fell into convulsions, saw spirits, and, in short, feigned herself bewitched. To sustain her story, she accused one person after another, till not less than twenty were implicated, some of them children of the ages of twelve and fourteen! They were tried on the evidence of the girl, and five human beings perished through her malicious impostures. It is remarkable that this very girl afterwards founded the thread manufacture in Renfrewshire. From a friend who had been in Holland, she learned some secrets in spinning, and putting them skilfully in practice, she led the way to the extensive operations carried on in that department of late years. She became the wife of the minister of Kilmaurs, and it is to be hoped, had leisure and grace to repent of the wicked misapplication, in her youth, of those talents which she undoubtedly possessed.

The last justiciary trial for witchcraft in Scotland was in the case of Elspeth Rule, who was convicted in 1708, and-banished. The last regular execution for the crime is said to have taken place at Dornoch in 1722, when an old woman was condemned by David Ross, sheriff of Caithness. But we fear the provincial records of the north, if inquired into, would show later deaths on this score. However, here may be held to end the tragical part of the annals of Scottish witchcraft. The number of its victims, for reasons previously stated, it would be difficult accurately to compute; but the black scroll would include, according to those who have most attentively inquired into the subject, upwards of FOUR THOUSAND persons! And by what a fate they perished! Cruelly tortured while living, and dismissed from life by a living death amid the flames! And for what? For an impossible crime! And who were the victims, and who the executioners? The victims, in by far the majority of cases, were the aged, the weak, the deformed, the lame, and the blind; those to whom

Witchcraft in England.

Witchcraft was first denounced in England, by formal and explicit statutes, in the year 1541, in the reign of Henry VIII. Previously to that time many witchtrials had taken place, and severe punishments had even been inflicted on the parties concerned; but this was occasioned by the direction of the arts of sorcery, in these particular instances, against the lives and wellbeing of others, and not from the legal criminality of such arts themselves. Shakspeare has made some early cases of this nature familiar to us, and in particular that of the Duchess of Gloucester, who, for conspiring with witches against the life of the reigning sovereign, Henry VI., was compelled to do public penance, and imprisoned for life. But, as has been said, the mode of prosecuting the guilty purpose was here altogether a subsidiary matter. If a person waved his hat three times in the air, and three times cried Buzz!' under the impression that by that formula the life of another might be taken away, the old law and law-makers (as, for example, Selden, who states this very case) considered the formulist worthy of death as a murderer in intent; and upon this principle the trafficking with witches was punished in early times.

Witchcraft, however, by and by assumed greater statutory importance in England as elsewhere. Henry VIII.'s two acts were levelled against conjuration, witchcraft, false prophecies, and pulling down of crosses. Here the charge was still something beyond mere sorcery, and it was left for Elizabeth, in 1562, to direct a statute exclusively against that imaginary crime. At the same time, that princess extenuated her conduct in part, by limiting the penalty of the crime, when stripped of its customary accessories, to the pillory. The first transgression at least received no heavier punishment. The cases of Elizabeth's reign were chiefly cases of pretended possession, sometimes, however, involving capital charges against those said to have caused the possession. In one famous case, of which the main features were as ludicrous as the issue was deplorable, three poor persons-an old man named Samuel, with his wife and daughter-were tried at Huntingdon for having bewitched the children of a Mr Throgmorton. Joan Throgmorton, a girl of fifteen, and the eldest of the children, was the main witness for the prosecution. She related many scenes, in which the actors were herself and a number of spirits sent by Dame Samuel to torment her, and to throw her into fits. These spirits, she said, were on familiar terms with her, and were named Pluck, Hardname, Catch, Blue, and three Smacks, who were cousins. Among other things, she said that one of the Smacks professed himself an admirer of hers, and beat the rest for her sake, as in the following instance related by her. One day Smack appeared before her. 'Whence come you, Mr Smack?' she said to him. From fighting Pluck and the rest, with cowl-staves, in Dame Samuel's back-yard,' replied Smack; and soon thereafter, accordingly, Pluck and Blue walked in, the one with his head broken, and the