Among the most obvious means which the imagination would sug gest for indicating to supernatural powers the exact evil effect which they are solicited to produce on mortal beings, would be the symbolical accomplishment or exhibition of its performance on an effigy of the person intended to be injured. The principles of human action which originally suggested this device are so wide spread as to include the deification of idols and the burning of an obnoxious politician iu effigy; but in the practice of witchcraft, the method of symbolically producing death or corporal injury is so far uniform as to predicate a systematic opinion on the subject. An image of the devoted person was made of wax and melted before a fire, stuck through with pins or needles, or perforated with arrows. Sometimes the model was of the heart, or some other vital part ; sometimes a picture was used in its stead. Ben Jenson, whose Masque of Queens' brings together all the pro minent witch superstitions to be found in the classio authors, in the commentators, and in the practice of his own days, says in the third charm:— "With pictures fell of wax and of wool Their livers I stick with needles quick t" nearly a paraphrase of Ovid's " . . . . ehniesersene eerea ash, Et miser= tenues iii nicer erect set's." Iferuides, vi.
Jenson in his notes refers for this practice to go old an example as the epistle of ilypsipyle to Jason, from which the above is taken; probably had the passage in his eye. He refers also to what lie thlis " the well-known story" of King Duffus, one of the imaginary kings of Scotland, the legend of whou sufferings is as old ae the days of Wyn. Won, by whom it. Is mentioned, but would be searched for in vain innuns those still older aunalista who had not the means of ornament ing their writings with some of the wisdom of the ancients. Jenson says he remembers sumo such figures having been dug up in a dung hill in his youth. The story of Bolingbroke and the witch of Eye. In Fahyan's Chronicle; illustrates this practice. In ' IA itch,' Hecate says, " Is the heart of wax stuck full of magic needles!" King James, in his' Demunologie; has a very full examination of the opera tion of this charm ; and atter receiving so high a sanction, it of course cuts a conspicuous figure in the subsequent witch trials both of Eng land and Scotland. In the latter country it became united with a belief in the unearthly origin of the numerous small flint arrowheads of ancient workmanship, conspicuous for the regularity and beauty of their shape. which are frequently dug up in the north of Scotland. The witches of Auldearne, whose feats are recorded in I'itcairn's ` Criminal Trials,' described a cavern in the centre of a hill where the arch tiend and his attendant imps conducted a complete manufactory of these missiles; the inferior spirits hewing thew out of the rough stone and their master giving each as it was presented to him in a rough state the proper edge and finish, to adapt it for service.
Those objects which. from their connection with death and decay, are apt to produce loathing and horror in the minds of persona whom habit has not mado familiar with them, aro favourite instrumentaiu the hands of witches, to whom their use seems to have descended from the necromancers. There are few narratives of witchcraft or sorcery, from Apuleius downwards, which do not present us with some of the spoils of the charnel-house. Animals loathsome to the sight from their structure being associated with notions of deformity, or from the venom with winch their otherwise feeble frames are endowed, are naturally made use of by those who among the ignorant aim at-the possession of supernatural powers. In this respect the medicine-man of the Indians, called on to try his charms when the traditionary usages of the tribe in the application of simples have failed, uses many of the same tools a.s the witch of the ltith and 17th centuries. In warm climates the serpent, the scorpion, and the lizard are among the charms resorted to ; but in colder latitudes the adept must be contented with the toad, the frog, the mole, and the bat.
Cate are animals which hold out many inducements to the imagina tive and superstitious. They bring to a certain extent the habits of a wild beast into the domestic circle. The contrast between their strength and agility. their gentle and fragile appearance, their tenacity of lime, their silent and rapid movements. their mysterious gatherings at night and strange cries, invest their presence whim a fascinating mystery. The tombs of Egypt and the history of the Knights Tem pters show that they have received attention in other quarters; but the very peculiar position whist' they bold in the councils of the powers of darkness, in connection with the ministrations of witches, shows by its uniformity that the opinions regarding them entertained by the authorities on witchcraft lore were widely adopted by the faithfuL In several of the Scottish trials and confessions women aro found to have assumed the shape of cats, and to have betrayed their pranks by exhibiting when restored to human form the wounds in flicted on them in their bestial capacity. At so late a period as the year 1718 a solemn judicial inquiry was made in the shire of Caithness, by the sheriff or local judge, into the pensecutions suffered by William Montgomery, whose life was rendered miserable by the gambols of a legion of cats. The narrative of the circumstance, as given in Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharp's introduction to Law's ' Memorials; is a lively and somewhat exaggerated picture of those general tumultuous gatherings of domestic cats which sometimes so unaccountably disturb the repose of a neighbourhood. Time animals, it was solemnly maintained by the persecuted man's servant. " spoke among themselves ;" and at length Siontgotnery, his patience being entirely exhausted, fell upon the con clave with a brealsword and an axe, and dispersed them with several casualties. The cousempienee was, that two old women in the neigh bourhood died immediately, and a third lost a leg, which having been broken by a stroke of the hatchet, withered and dropped elf. In a curious little book publielled at Leyden in 1656, called Magica de Spectris et Apparitionibue Spirituum, fie., which is a complete repo Awry of diabolical experience, consisting of a series of narratives ex. tracted without comment from historical chronicles and books ol magic. an occurrence is said to have taken place at a town in Calabria, so exactly like the above, that whereas Mr. Montgomery was a ear.
palter by profession, the hero of the foreign adventure was in the act of cutting wood when he was distracted by the presence of a turbulent bevy of cats, whom lie dispersed with his implements. In this case the metamorphosis was made known by a charge being brought against the individual of having assaulted and wounded some women of rank n the neighbourhood, when he disclosed the fashion in which they had appeared, and the affair was bushed up. A belief in the met-tenor shames of human beings into brutes is a superstition so widely exem. ;Allied in ()loaders! literature, and in the sculpture and paintings of ell sucietthe of men sufficiently civilised to provide such testimonies of their customs and belief, that it cannot be assigned as a special feature if the belief in witchcraft. The minuteness, however, of the analogy exhibited in the above, and discoverable in many like cases, seems to those who do not believe in the actual metamorphosis to leave no other slternative but the belief, that the doctrines promulgated in one part sf the world were in all their minute particulars rempted in another. Lyeanthrople, or the conversion of men into wolves, was so prevalent a belief in France and Germany as to be the subject of separate treatises slid of various judicial inquiries. It naturally did not extend to Britain. This superstition may be perhaps more distinctly traced to the influence of a diseased imagination than most of the others con nected with this subject : by the Greek physicians it is understood to have been treated as a disease. Both the English and Scottish trials frequently illustrate the power supposed to be possessed by those iu league with Satan of converting their victims into beasts of burden, which they employ to convey them to the scenes of their unhallowed assemblies. This feat was performed on a large scale by the great army of witches charged with assembling at Blocula in Sweden, in 1669, according to the narrative of Glanvil, in his ' Saducismus Triumphatus.' A power over the elements is one of those gifts with which super stition will be most likely to invest its invisible agents. In its less striking form it his the aspect of a malign interference with the natural fruits of the earth, either by blasting some particular district, or transferring its elements of fruitfulness that they may increase time produce of some other tract in which the sorcerer is interested. This species of incantation is prohibited by the Twelve Tables (Dirkscn, ' Ueberaicht, fie. der Zwolf-Tafel-Finmente'). and the illustrations of it in the witch trials are too numerous to be mentioned. A trading or maritime population living on a stormy coast will endow their malig nant demons with a more awful authority over the winds and waves. Olaus Magnus treats largely of the storm-raising powers of the Scan dinavian witches. It was un his return from these regions with his wife Anne of Denmark, that King James produced ao goodly an array of accusations against witches for aiming against his life ; and coining from a spot where such a particular department of witch superstition was prevalent, it is natural that the aspect assumed by the accusations should be an attempt to create a storm at sea for the purpose of intercepting his voyage. In the accusations against the witches of Aberdeen in 1596 and 1597, the record of which is printed by the Spalding Club, the exercise of a power over the elements is one of the charges. In the curious narrative as to Margaret Barclay and others, preserved by Sir Walter Scott in his 'Demonology; we find the same feature. This specific superstition does not seen) to have taken root in England, and Shakspere, whose witchery in • Macbeth' is essentially Scottish in character, has given it a place there :— "Though you untie the winds and let them fight Against the churches ; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up." It is a remarkable circumstance that nowhere are the identiCes between the opinions promulgated in doctrinal works and the practice of witchcraft more fully developed than in the confessions of the witches as produced in official documents. The horrible tortures, which the alarm produced by the supposed existence of it coalition with Satan seems to have prompted men of ordinary humanity to senctiou, appear to have generally called from the exhausted victims an assent to whatever narrative waa dictated to them, and the inquisitors being learned acquainted with the best authorities on the subject, would know how to connect the received doctrines of sorcery with whatever train of real circumstances may have been brought home to the victim. Knowing, in fact, the outline of natural events, they would be able to fill up the supernatural details. Margaret Barclay. tried in 1618, was, according to the record preserved by Sir Walter Scott, subjected to "gentle torture." Sir Walter calls this a a strange conjunction of words ; " but it is not without precedent, and we can imagine it taken from Biensfeldius, who tolls us of a Lady who, in 1590, at Cologne was sub jected to' moderate torture." The Incubus and the Succubus—the former the visitant of females, the latter of males—are prominent in the confessions, and open up a world of psycho-physiological inquiry. These notabilia aro enlarged upon in several of the Scottish trials. Reference may be made to the appendix to Pitcairn's ' Criminal Trials,' p. 610, and to a pamphlet called 'History of the Witches of Renfrewshire.' Reginald Scot goes over the same subject, and further curious matter will be found in Glauvil, ' Saducismus Triumphatuer Sprenger,' Mal leus Malefic:them ; ' and Delrio, ' Disquisitiones Magicas."There is no doubt that some of the confessions were voluntarily snide; and that, whether dictated by their own imagination or by their reading, the self-accusers did not speak on the suggestion of others. There are thee two mingled elements in these docunicute, the separation of which would be necessary to and would materially aid a philoeophical ex amination of the causes which have produced such singular etiects : the one would bring before us the physical rind psychological causes from the mind voluntarily imagines itself an actor in such super natural occurrences; the other would explain the utterance of fessions of, such acts by persons who, until they were subjected to torture, never imagined their existence. The confessions made under torture were, however, frequently revoked during moments of mental , and physical resuscitation.