In going back to an earlier period than that which is here assigned as the time when the superstition of witchcraft was full grown, it will be found that the accusations most nearly resembling the more modern offence of witchcraft are of two distinct kinds— attempts to accomplish mischief through the operation of poison or other natural agents, and lapses from Christianity into heathen practices. The Anglo-Saxon laws against sorcery or witchcraft are simply levelled against the prac tices connected with the heathen worship from which the people had not been lung converted. The corresponding accusations in the south of Europe are levelled against intercourse with demons who represent Diana and her nymphs, or Pan and his satyrs ; and down to the ancient period of the belief in witchcraft we find the same personages officiating with changed names, and with natures adjusted to the religious opinions of the age. The secrecy with which the %% aldenses and other early seceders from the Church of Rome were compelled to hold their religious assemblages, brought upon them charges of indulging in such unhallowed rites as were traditionally considered the characteristics of ancient heathenism. One remarkable practice of which the Waldenses were accused will be recognised by every schoolboy who has heard a witch legend in the nursery : they were called " scobaces," because they rode to their meetings on a scoba, or broom. The ' Narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kytcler, prosecuted for Sorcery in 1324,' edited by Mr. Wright for the Camden Society, and which is perhaps still more curious from the light it throws on the early con flicts between the ecclesiastical and the civil power than in its reference to this subject, exhibits both the classes of offence hero alluded to. She was charged with having prepared noxious compounds, productive of debilitation which ended in death, and also with abjuring her belief in the Holy Church. with having deserted the mass and the eucharist, with having sacrificed to demons, and with having attempted to usurp the keys of the Church by impiously imitating the ceremony of excommunication.
During its earlier stages, the art of witchcraft was in far higher hands than those to which it afterwards descended, and was used for greater purposes. Witchcraft or sorcery was the means by which Joan of Arc was charged with having obtained her power as a warrior. The Duchess of Gloucester was banished to the Isle of Man for sorcery against Henry VI. Richard III. made repeated accusations of this offence, the most noted of which is the charge against Jane Shore. The earlier witch trials in Scotland generally implicate persons of rank. Sometimes the women who are accused are young, and they do not always use their power for mischievous and malicious purposes. Bessie Dunlop. who was tried in 1576, appears to have used her art for no other purpose than the cure of diseases and the performance of other benevolent acts, accomplishing them through the instrumentality, not of Satan or any of his einanations, as they are spoken of in the later canons of witchcraft', but through the aid of an amiable old gentleman, who had the misfortune to be a prisoner among the fairies in Elfland. Alesoun Pearson, tried in 1588, had a long intercourse with Elfland, which appears to have commenced when she was but twelve years old. She had many personal friends among the fairies there, one of whom was her cousin William Symaoun, a doctor of medicine and "one great scholar." She was in the practice of appealing to her friends in fairy land for the means of curing earthly diseases, and Archbishop Adamson did not disdain to fellow a prescription which she obtained for him, his reliance on It being probably not weakened by his acquaintance with the virtues of the principal ingredient. which was claret. These two trials so far exhibit the darker characteristics of the witchcraft of later times, that Bessie Dunlop's adviser from Elfland wished her to put her soul in his possession; and Alesoun Pearson was told that of the fairy host the tithe is taken every year to hell. The method in which the same occurrences are mentioned by writers of different ages shows the progress towards the accepted doctrines of the authorities of witch craft; and, as may be afterwards more particularly mentioned, both in England and Scotland the investigations of King James did much to establish a settled creed in relation to this dark subject. Wyntoun,
who wrote early in the 15th century, in describing the prophecies made to Macbeth, brings the three weird or fatal sisters to him in a dream, and makes him inquire after the auguries of his fate, as Crccsus is made to consult the Pythia. By the time the history had descended to Shak.spere's days, it had acquired from the state of opinion on the subject which it passed through such adjuncts as enabled the poet, by selecting the grander and more terrific features, and adding some ele ments from the current superstitions of his day, to create those bags " so withered and so wild in their attire, that look not like the inha bitants o'th' earth, and yet are on't." Perhaps the latest conspicuous occasion in which rank and beauty have been allied with charges of the nature of witchcraft, is that of the Countess of Essex and Mrs. Turner, in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury and the practices against the Earl of Essex ; but the direct and palpable crimes exhibited in this horrible history throw the attempts at evil through supernatural influences into the shade. When in later ages it ceased to be encou raged by the great and the learned, witchcraft degenerated, till, in the end of the i 7th and the beginning of the 18th centuries, it was entirely confined to such persons as Harsnet, so early as the year 1599, describes in this passage :—" An old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a staff, hollow eyed, untoothed, furrowed in her face, having her lips trembling with the palsy, going mumbling in the streets,—one that bath forgotten her Paternoster, and yet bath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab. if she bath learned of an old wife in a chimney end Pax Max Fax for a spell ; or can say Sir John Grantham's curse on the miller's eels—All ye that have stolen the miller's eels, laudat,e Domiutsin de ecclis ; and all they that have consented thereto, benedicamus Domino : why then beware, look about you, my neighbours. if any of you have a sheep sick of the giddies, or a bog of the mumps. or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens. and bath not fat enough for her porridge. or butter enough for her bread, and she bath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp, teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, &c., and then, if au old Mother Nobs bath by chance called her idle young housewife, or bid the devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young girl is owl-blasted." There are two causes which account for the similarity often found to exist in the superstitions of different and distant nations :-1. Phy sical and mental phenomena common to all mankind and to all parts of the globe, producing like effects when brought into the same com binations; 2. A reference to a common origin anterior to the com mencement of the superstition, by which the same opinions adopted by families of mankind separated far apart may be traced by ascent to a common parentage. A great portion of the witchcraft superstition of Europe may be traced to both these causes ; but at the same time the identity of the phenomena of this mental disease, as exhibited in different nations, is so remarkable, as well as the rapidity with which the opinions adopted in one part of the world travelled to others, that it is evident some other causes have contributed to produce the effect. The similarity of the incidents narrated, not only in the books which convey the knowledge of these mysteries, but in the reports of criminal trials, and even in the confessions of the wretched victims of the creed, is so remarkable, down to the most minute particulars, as to justify the supposition that a large proportion of the witchcraft superstition was propagated by means of books or through the tuition of men of letters ; and that thus, in that age of imperfect science, literature became for a time the means of propagating and concentrating the influence of one of the most baneful superstitions which has ever visited the human mind.