Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ A MIRROR FOR WITCHES [Illustration: Demon and woman kissing] A MIRROR FOR WITCHES in which is reflected the Life, Machinations, and Death of Famous DOLL BILBY, who, with a more than _feminine perversity_, preferred a Demon to a Mortal Lover. Here is also told how and why a Righteous and Most Awful JUDGEMENT befell her, destroying both Corporeal Body and Immortal Soul. By ESTHER FORBES With woodcuts by ROBERT GIBBINGS [Illustration: Decoration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY ESTHER FORBES HOSKINS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. TO MARY AND GERHART JENTSCH A MIRROR FOR WITCHES A MIRROR FOR WITCHES CHAPTER I 1 _Certain Examples to Show Doll Bilby not alone among Women in her preference for Evil. The Cases of Ry, Goose, Leda, Danaë, etc., cited._ It has long been known that, on occasions, devils in the shape of humanity or in their own shapes (that is, with horns, hoofs, and tails) may fancy mortal women. By dark arts, sly promises of power, flattery, etc., they may prevail even upon Christian women, always to the destruction of these women’s souls and often to that of their bodies. For in Northumberland, Meslie Ry was burned in 1616 because she had taken a fiend to love. A few years later, Christie Goose, a single woman upwards of forty years, suddenly flew lunatic—and that upon the Lord’s Day. Then she did confess that each night and every night the Devil, wickedly assuming the shape of Mr. Oates, God’s minister at Crumplehorn, Oxon., came to her through her window. This fact amazed Crumplehorn, for Goose was of all women most pious, and had sat for years in humble prayerfulness at the feet of Mr. Oates. Some were astonished that even a devil should find need for this same Goose, who was of hideous aspect. There was a young jade, servant in an alderman’s house in London, who, although she confessed nothing and remained obdurate to the end, was hanged and then burned because she bore a creature with horns on its head and a six-inch tail behind. Such a creature the just magistrates determined no mortal man might beget, although the saucy wench suggested that an alderman might. Moreover, certain children in the neighbourhood testified that they had twice or thrice seen ‘a burly big black man’ sitting on the ridgepole.