The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von FuchshaimGrimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
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The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
German fiction -- Translations into English; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
When this was noised abroad, most held it for a fable, till a little
after Catherine Prévost was arrested for witchcraft, who had been at
the said dance: so she confessed all even as it had happened, save that
she knew naught of the cry that Hembach had uttered. Majolus tells us
of a servant that had been too common with his mistress, and of an
adulterer that took his paramour's ointment-boxes and smeared himself
with the same, and so both came to the witches' Sabbath. So likewise
they tell of a farm-servant that arose early to grease his waggon; but
because he had taken the wrong pot of ointment in the dark, that waggon
rose into the air and must be dragged down again. Olaus Magnus tells us
of Hading, King of Denmark; how he, being driven from his kingdom by
rebels, journeyed far over the sea through the air on the Spirit of
Odin, which had turned himself to the shape of a horse. So do we know
well enough, and too well, how wives and wenches in Bohemia will fetch
their paramours to them, on the backs of goats, by night and from a
great distance. And what Torquemada in his Hexameron relateth of his
schoolfellow may in his own words be read. So, too, Ghirlandus speaketh
of a nobleman which, when he marked that his wife anointed herself and
thereafter flew out of the house, did once on a time compel her to take
him with her to the sorcerers' assembly. And when they feasted there,
and there was no salt, he demanded such, and having with great pains
gotten it, did cry, "God be praised, here cometh the salt!" Whereupon
the lights went out and all vanished. So when now 'twas day he
understood from the shepherds in that place that he was near to the
town of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples, and therefore full five
hundred miles from his home. And therefore, though he was rich, must he
beg his way home, whither when he came he delated his wife for a witch
before the magistrate, and she was burned. How Doctor Faust, too, and
others, which were no enchanters, could journey through the air from
one place to another is from his history sufficiently known. So I
myself knew a wife and a maid (both dead at this time of writing, but
the maid's father yet alive), which maid was once greasing of her
mistress's shoes by the fire, and when she had finished one and set it
by to grease the other, lo; the greased one flew up the chimney: which
story, nevertheless, was hushed up.
All this I have set down for this reason only, that men may believe
that witches and wizards do in truth at certain seasons in their proper
bodies journey to these their assemblies, and not to make any man to
believe that I, as I have told you, went myself to such: for to me 'tis
all one whether a man believe me or not; and he that will not believe
may devise for himself another way for me to have come from the lands
of Fulda or Hirschfeld (for I know not myself whither I had wandered in
the woods) into the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, and that in so brief a
space of time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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