Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestForsyth, J. S.
History
Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predest
Forsyth, J. S.
Demonology; Superstition; Witchcraft
“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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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