CHAPTER VI.

WITCHCRAFT.

The Lancashire witches--Dame Demdike, etc. Witch superstitions of Aryan origin. Dethroned retainers of the elder gods. The Fates or Destinies. Waxen and clay images. The doom of Meleager. Reginald Scot on witchcraft in 1584. Opinions of Wierus, a German physician, in 1563. Singular confessions of presumed witches. Numbers put to death. The belief in witchcraft countenanced by the church, the legislature, and the learned. Sir Kenelm Digby's opinion. Singular medical superstitions. King James I. and Agnes Simpson, the Scotch witch. The Lancashire witches and Charles I. Witchcraft in Hertfordshire in 1761. Ralph Gardiner's Malicious Invective. A Scotch witchfinder. Matthew Hopkins. Laws relating to witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Draci, cloud-gods, or water-spirits, with hands perforated like colanders. Singular tradition of the dun cow at Grimsargh, near Preston. Witches' influence on the butter and milk of cows. Durham, Yorkshire, and Warwick dun cow traditions. Red cow milk. Ushas, the Vedic dawn-goddess. Red heifers set apart for sacrifice. Guy of Warwick and his porridge pot. Black, white, and grey witches. The Teutonic _deæ matres_, or mother goddesses. The three Fates. The weird sisters of Shakspere. The "theatrical properties" of witches of Aryan origin. The sieve, the cauldron, and the broom or besom. Witches spirits of the air. Hecate the Pandemonium Diana. Personifications of elemental strife. The brewing of storms. Aryan root of these superstitions. Hares disguised witches. Boadicea's hare. The goddess Freyja and her attendant hares. Singular hare superstition in Cornwall. "Mad as a March hare." Cats weatherwise animals. Sailors say a frisky cat has got "a gale of wind in her tail." Sailors' prejudice against commencing a voyage on a Friday. Singular charge against the Knights Templars. The broom or besom represents the implement with which the Aryan demi-gods swept the sky. A type of the winds. Curious Lancashire custom: hanging out a besom when the lady of the house is absent, to announce to bachelor friends that bachelor habits may be indulged in. The broom the oldest wine-bush. Dutch broom-girls. Eight classes of witches. Gipsies: their Eastern origin. Modern fortune tellers. The witch's familiar. Singular Somerset, Middlesex, and Lancashire superstitions at the present day. Witchcraft amongst the Maories, and in Equatorial Africa. Deathbed of a Burnley witch, and transference of her familiar spirit with her last breath. Page 96