Robin: I can do all these things easily with it; first, I can make thee drunk with ippocras at any tavern in Europe for nothing; that’s one of my conjuring works. Rafe: Our Master Parson says that’s nothing. Robin: True, Rafe; and more, Rafe, if thou hast any mind to Nan Spit, our kitchenmaid, then turn her and wind her to thy own use as often as thou wilt, and at midnight. Rafe: O brave Robin, shall I have Nan Spit, and to mine own use? * * * * * Frequently consulted on erotic difficulties were the ubiquitous witches who flourished in the Middle Ages throughout the European continent. In the literature of these middle centuries their amatory brews are used in a variety of passionate situations, to inspire love, to divert it into strange channels, and, sometimes, to crush it. On occasion the repulsive and abhorrent ingredients, both animal and human, are noted with a land of macabre relish. But the urgent suppliant, bent on his lustful self-appointed mission, rarely hesitated on that account. On the contrary, the rare or obscene nature of the brew was like an added spurt to his frantic libido: and the more distasteful the composition, the more intense the lustfulness that was so inspired. It was not unusual for the philtres and preparations to contain animal testes, genitalia, human excremental matter, even fragments and shreds of human corpses, torn from graveyards and charnel-houses. An extreme type of potion, administered in febrile cases, was actual blood, drunk by both man and woman. * * * * * The Middle Ages, particularly the eleventh century, was noted for its loose morality, its amorous diversions, its disregard of the old rigid domestic or social prohibitions and restraints. Achievement followed on desire, and sensuous and sensual whims met with ready acquiescence. Returning warriors, home from the Crusades in Palestine, or the campaigns in Spain, had, during the course of their embattled activities, come in contact with disturbing exotic women, so different, in both physical appearance and temperament, from the wives and women they had left in the châteaux and manors. These exotic women were brought back by the returning victors as captives. Once returned, the warriors looked back with something of nostalgia to their colorful days in foreign regions and in novel circumstances. Hence the captive women became a kind of live substitute for such meditations. The women consoled the warriors with murmurous love songs of their own country, sorrowful and prideful and exotic. And often the wives of these lords of the manor were unpleasantly surprised when these strange women were invited to domesticity as concubines. So that the medieval nobility became, in the course of time, a complicated series of relationships, tainted with harlotries and illegitimacies.