Part 14

“In great towns the hurry and dissipation that attend the opulent, and the little leisure that the poor have, from following the avocations which necessity drives them to, prevent them from taking any notice of similar instances to the foregoing, which may happen to themselves. But the case is quite different in the Highlands of Scotland, where they live solitary, and have little to do, or see done, and consequently, comparatively have but few ideas. When any thing of the above nature occurs, they have leisure to brood over it, and cannot get it banished from their minds, by which means it gains a deep and lasting impression, and often various circumstances may happen by which it may be interpreted, just like the ancient oracles by the priests of the heathen deities. This solitary situation of our neighbours is also productive of an opinion of a worse tendency—I mean the belief in spirits and apparitions, to which no people on earth are more addicted than the Scotch Highlanders: this opinion they suck in with their mother’s milk, and it increases with their years and stature. Not a glen or strath, but is haunted by its particular _goblins_ and _fairies_. And, indeed, the face of the country is in some places such, that it wears a very solemn appearance, even to a philosophic eye. The fall of cataracts of water down steep declivities, the whistling of the wind among heath, rocks and caverns, a loose fragment of a rock falling from its top, and in its course downward bringing a hundred more with it, so that it appears like the wreck of nature; the hooting of the night-owl, the chattering of the heath-cock, the pale light of the moon on the dreary prospect, with here and there a solitary tree on an eminence, which fear magnifies to an unusual size; all these considered, it is not to be wondered at, that even an enlightened mind should be struck with awe: what then must be the emotion of a person prejudiced from his infancy, when left alone in such a situation?”

Until the last century the spirit Brownie, in the Highlands of Scotland, was another subject of second sight, as the following story will shew.— “Sir Normand Macleod, and some others, playing at tables, at a game called by the Irish Falmer-more, wherein there are three of a side and each of them threw dice by turns; there happened to be one difficult point in the disposing of the table-men; this obliged the gamester, before he changed his man, since upon the disposing of it the winning or losing of the game depended. At last the butler, who stood behind, advised the player where to place his man; with which he complied, and won the game. This being thought extraordinary, and Sir Normand hearing one whisper him in the ear, asked who advised him so skilfully? He answered, it was the butler; but this seemed more strange, for he could not play at tables. Upon this, Sir Normand asked him how long it was since he had learned to play? and the fellow owned that he never played in his life; but that he saw the spirit Brownie reaching his arm over the player’s head, and touching the part with his finger on the point where the table-man was to be placed[44].”

The circumstance, however, deserving most notice, is the reference which the objects of second-sight are supposed to bear to the seer’s assumed gift of prophecy. It is said, in one of the numerous illustrations which have been given of this faculty, that “Sir Normand Mac Leod, who has his residence in the isle of _Bernera_, which lies between the Isle of North-Uist and Harries, went to the Isle of Skye about business, without appointing any time for his return: his servants, in his absence, being altogether in the large hall at night, one of them, who had been accustomed to see the second-sight, told the rest they must remove, for they would have abundance of company that night. One of his fellow-servants answered that there was very little appearance of that, and if he had any vision of company, it was not like to be accomplished this night; but the seer insisted upon it that it was. They continued to argue the improbability of it, because of the darkness of the night, and the danger of coming through the rocks that lie round the isle; but within an hour after, one, of Sir Normand’s men came to the house, bidding them to provide lights, &c. for his master had newly landed.

The following illustrations of the second-sight are given by Dr. Ferriar, in his “Theory of Apparitions.”

“A gentleman connected with my family, an officer in the army, and certainly addicted to no superstition, was quartered early in life, in the middle of the last century, near the castle of a gentleman in the north of Scotland, who was supposed to possess the second-sight. Strange rumours were afloat respecting the old chieftain. He had spoken to an apparition, which ran along the battlements of the house, and had never been cheerful afterwards. His prophetic visions surprise even in the region of credulity; and his retired habits favoured the popular opinions. My friend assured me, that one day, while he was reading a play to the ladies of the family, the chief, who had been walking across the room, stopped suddenly, and assumed the look of a seer. He rang the bell, and ordered a groom to saddle a horse; to proceed immediately to a seat in the neighbourhood, and enquire after the health of Lady ——. If the account was favourable, he then directed him to call at another castle, to ask after another lady whom he named.

“The reader immediately closed his book, and declared he would not proceed till those abrupt orders were explained, as he was confident they were produced by the second-sight. The chief was very unwilling to explain himself; but at length the door had appeared to open, and that a little woman without a head, had entered the room; that the apparition indicated the death of some person of his acquaintance; and the only two persons who resembled the figure, were those ladies after whose health he had sent to enquire.

“A few hours afterwards, the servant returned with an account that one of the ladies had died of an apoplectic fit, about the time when the vision appeared.

“At another time the chief was confined to his bed by indisposition, and my friend was reading to him, in a stormy winter-night, while the fishing-boat belonging to the castle was at sea.” The old gentleman repeatedly expressed much anxiety respecting his people; and at last exclaimed, “my boat is lost!” The Colonel replied, “how do you know it, sir?” He was answered, “I see two of the boatmen bringing in the third drowned, all dripping wet, and laying him down close beside your chair. The chair was shifted with great precipitation; in the course of the night the fishermen returned with the corpse of one of the boatmen!”

It is perhaps to be lamented, that such narratives as these should be quoted in Dr. Ferriar’s philosophic work on Apparitions. We have lately seen them advanced, on the doctor’s authority, as favouring the vulgar belief in Apparitions, and introduced in the same volume with the story of Mrs. Veal.

WITCHES, WITCHCRAFT, WIZARDS, &c.

“What are these, So withered and so wild in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o’ the Earth, And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught That men may question? * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.”—_Macbeth._

Witchcraft implies a kind of sorcery, more especially prevalent, and, as supposed, among old women, who, by entering into a social compact with the devil, if such an august personage there be as commonly represented, were enabled, in many instances, to alter the course of nature’s immutable laws;—to raise winds and storms,—to perform actions that require more than human strength,—to ride through the air upon broomsticks,—to transform themselves into various shapes,—to afflict and torment those who might have rendered themselves obnoxious to them, with acute pains and lingering diseases,—in fact, to do whatsoever they wished, through the agency of the devil, who was always supposed to be at their beck and call.

All countries can boast of their witches, sorcerers, &c. they have been genial with every soil, and peculiar with every age. We have the earliest account of them in holy writ, which contains irrefutable proofs, that whether they existed or not, the same superstitious ideas prevailed, and continued to prevail until within the last century. The age of reason has now, however, penetrated the recesses of ignorance, and diffused the lights of the Gospel with good effect among the credulous and uninformed, to the great discomfit of witches and evil spirits.

During the height of this kind of ignorance and superstition, many cruel laws were framed against witchcraft; in consequence of which, numbers of innocent persons, male and female[45], many of them no doubt friendless, and oppressed with age and penury, and disease, were condemned and burnt for powers they never possessed, for crimes they neither premeditated nor committed. Happily for humanity these terrific laws have long since been repealed. An enlightened age viewed with horror the fanaticism of Pagans, and gave proof of its emancipation from the dark and murderous trammels of ignorance and barbarity, by a recantation of creeds that had no other object in view than to stain the dignity of the creation by binding down the human mind to the most abject state of degeneracy and servility.

The deceptions of jugglers, founded on optical illusions, electrical force, and magnetical attraction, have fortunately, in a great measure, gone a great way to remove the veil of pretended supernatural agency. The oracles of old have been detected as mere machinery; the popish miracles, slights of hand; every other supernatural farce has shared the same fate. We hear no more of witches, ghosts, &c. little children go to bed without alarm, and people traverse unfrequented paths at all hours and seasons, without dread of spells or incantations.

In support, however, of the existence of witches, magicians, &c. many advocates have been found; and it is but justice to say, that all who have argued for, have used stronger and more forcible and appropriate reasoning than those who have argued against them. If the bible be the standard of our holy religion, and few there are who doubt it; it must also be the basis of our belief; for whatever is therein written is the WORD OF GOD, and not a parcel of _jeux d’esprits_, _conundrums_, or _quidproquos_, to puzzle and defeat those who consult that sacred volume for information or instruction. Nor do we believe all the jargon and orthodox canting of priests, who lay constructions on certain passages beyond the comprehension of men more enlightened than themselves, especially when they presume to tell us that such and such a word or sentence must be construed such and such a way, and not another. This party purpose will never effect any good for the cause of religion and truth.

In the course of this article we shall quote the texts of Scripture where witches are mentioned in the same manner as we have done those that allude to apparitions, &c. without offering any very decided comment one way or the other, farther than we shall also in this case give precedence to the standard of the Christian religion, which forms a part of the law of the land; still maintaining our former opinion, that, doubtless, there have at one time been negotiations carried on between human beings and spirits; and for this assertion we refer to the Bible itself, for proof that there have been witches, sorcerers, magicians, who had the power of doing many wonderful things by means of demoniac agency, but what has become of, or at what precise time, this power or communication became extinct, we may not able to inform our readers, although we can venture to assure them that no such diabolical ascendancy prevails at the present period among the inhabitants of the earth.

That this superstitious dread led to the persecution of many innocent beings, who were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, there can be no question; our own statute books are loaded with penalties against sorcery; and, as already cited, at no very distant period, our courts of law have been disgraced by criminal trials of that nature, and judges, who are still quoted as models of legal knowledge and discernment, not only permitted such cases to go to a jury, but allowed sentences to be recorded which consigned reputed wizards to capital punishment. In Poland, even so late as the year 1739, a juggler was exposed to the torture, until a confession was extracted from him that he was a sorcerer; upon which, without further proof, he was hanged; and instances in other countries might be multiplied without end. But this, although it exceeds in atrocity, does not equal in absurdity the sanguinary and bigoted infatuation of the Inquisition in Portugal, which actually condemned to the flames, as being possessed of the devil, a horse belonging to an Englishman who had taught it perform some uncommon tricks; and the poor animal is confidently said to have been publicly burned at Lisbon, in conformity with his sentence, in the year 1601.

The only part of Europe in which the acts of sorcery obtain any great credit, where, in fact, supposed wizards will practice incantations, by which they pretend to obtain the knowledge of future events, and in which the credulity of the people induced them to place the most implicit confidence. On such occasions a magical drum is usually employed. This instrument is formed of a piece of wood of a semi-oval form, hollow on the flat side, and there covered with a skin, on which various uncouth figures are depicted; among which, since the introduction of Christianity into that country, an attempt is usually made to represent the acts of our Saviour and the apostles. On this covering several brass rings of different sizes are laid, while the attendants dispose themselves in many antic postures, in order to facilitate the charm; the drum is then beat with the horn of a rein-deer, which occasioning the skin to vibrate, puts the rings in motion round the figures, and, according to the position which they occupy, the officiating seer pronounces his prediction[46].

“The remedy,” says a late writer[47], “specifically appropriated for these maladies of the mind, is the cultivation of natural knowledge; and it is equally curious and gratifying to observe, that though the lights of science are attained by only a small proportion of the community, the benefits of it diffuse themselves universally; for the belief of ghosts and witches, and judicial astrology, hardly exists, in these days, even amongst the lowest vulgar. This effect of knowledge, in banishing the vain fears of superstition, is finely alluded to in the last words of the following admirable lines quoted from Virgil, _e. g._—

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorable fatum, Subjicit pedibus, _Strepitumque Acherontes avari_.

But in order to shew with what fervour the belief in witches and apparitions was maintained about a century and a half ago, we lay before our readers, as it is scarce, “Doctor Henry More, his letter, with the postscript to Mr. J. Glanvil[48], minding him of the great expedience and usefulness of his new intended edition of the Dæmon of Tedworth, and briefly representing to him the marvellous weakness and gullerie of Mr. Webster’s[49] display of Witchcraft.”

“Sir,

“When I was at London, I called on your bookseller, to know in what forwardness this new intended impression of the story of the Dæmon of Tedworth (see p. 223) was, which will undeceive the world touching that fame spread abroad, as if Mr. _Mompesson_ and yourself had acknowledged the business to have been a meer trick or imposture. But the story, with your ingenious considerations about witchcraft, being so often printed already, he said it behoved him to take care how he ventured on a new impression, unless he had some new matter of that kind to add, which might make this edition the more certainly saleable; and therefore he expected the issue of that noised story of the spectre at _Exeter_, seen so oft for the discovery of a murther committed some thirty years ago. But the event of this business, as to juridical process, not answering expectation, he was discouraged from making use of it, many things being reported to him from thence in favour of the party most concerned. But I am told of one Mrs. _Britton_, her appearing to her maid after her death, very well attested, though not of such a tragical event as that of _Exeter_, which he thought considerable. But of discoveries of murther I never met with any story more plain and unexceptionable than that in Mr. John Webster his display of supposed Witchcraft: the book indeed itself, I confess, is but a weak and impertinent piece; but that story weighty and convincing, and such as himself, (though otherwise an affected caviller against almost all stories of witchcraft and apparitions,) is constrained to assent to, as you shall see from his own confession. I shall, for your better ease, or because you may not haply have the book, transcribe it out of the writer himself, though it be something, chap. 16, page 298, about the year of our Lord 1632, (as near as I can remember, having lost my notes and the copy of the letters to Serjeant _Hutton_, but I am sure that I do most perfectly remember the substance of the story.)

“Near unto Chester-le-Street, there lived one _Walker_, a yeoman of good estate, and a widower, who had a young woman to his kinswoman, that kept his house, who was by the neighbours suspected to be with child, and was towards the dark of the evening one night sent away with one Mark Sharp, who was a collier, or one that digged coals underground, and one that had been born in _Blakeburn_ hundred, in _Lancashire_; and so she was not heard of a long time, and no noise or tittle was made about it. In the winter time after, one _James Graham_, or _Grime_, (for so in that country they call them) being a miller, and living about 2 miles from the place where _Walker_ lived, was one night alone in the mill very late grinding corn, and about 12 or 1 a clock at night, he came down stairs from having been putting corn in the hopper: the mill doors being shut, there stood a woman upon the midst of the floor with her hair about her head hanging down and all bloody, with five large wounds on her head. He being much affrighted and amazed, began to bless himself, and at last asked her who she was and what she wanted? To which she said, _I am the spirit of such a woman who lived with Walker, and being got with child by him, he promised to send me to a private place, where I should be well lookt too till I was brought in bed and well again, and then I should come again and keep his house. And accordingly_, said the apparition, _I was one night late sent away with one Mark Sharp, who upon a moor_, naming a place that the miller knew, _slew me with a pick, such as men dig coals withal, and gave me these five wounds, and after threw my body into a coal pit hard by, and hid the pick under a bank; and his shoes and stockings being bloody, he endeavoured to wash ’em; but seeing the blood would not forth, he hid them there_. And the apparition further told the miller, that he must be the man to reveal it, or else that she must still appear and haunt him. The miller returned home very sad and heavy, but spoke not one word of what he had seen, but eschewed as much as he could to stay in the mill within night without company, thinking thereby to escape the seeing again of that frightful apparition. But notwithstanding, one night when it began to be dark, the apparition met him again, and seemed very fierce and cruel, and threatened him, that if he did not reveal the murder she would continually pursue and haunt him; yet for all this, he still concealed it until _St. Thomas’s Eve_, before _Christmas_, when being soon after sun-set in his garden, she appeared again, and then so threatened him, and affrighted him, that he faithfully promised to reveal it next morning. In the morning he went to a magistrate and made the whole matter known with all the circumstances; and diligent search being made, the body was found in a coal pit, with five wounds in the head, and the pick, and shoes and stockings yet bloody, in every circumstance as the apparition had related to the miller; whereupon Walker and Mark Sharp were both apprehended, but would confess nothing. At the assizes following, I think it was at Durham, they were arraigned, found guilty, condemned, and executed; but I could never hear they confest the fact. There were some that reported the apparition did appear to the judge or the foreman of the jury, who was alive in Chester-le-Street about ten years ago, as I have been credibly informed, but of that I know no certainty: there are many persons yet alive that can remember this strange murder and the discovery of it; for it was, and sometimes yet is, as much discoursed of in the North Country as any that almost has ever been heard of, and the relation printed, though now not to be gotten. I relate this with great confidence, (though I may fail in some of the circumstances) because I saw and read the letter that was sent to sergeant _Hutton_, who then lived at _Goldsbrugh_, in _Yorkshire_, from the judge before whom _Walker_ and _Mark Sharp_ were tried, and by whom they were condemned, and had a copy of it until about the year 1658, when I had it, and many other books and papers taken from me; and this I confess to be one of the most convincing stories, being of undoubted verity, that ever I read, heard, or knew of, and carrieth with it the most evident force to make the most incredulous to be satisfied that there are really sometimes such things as apparitions.” Thus far he.