Book III, chap. iv.
The Fairies do principally inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth,
whose nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or on
mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children
and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal
hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses,
as the story goes.... Such jocund and facetious spirits are said to sport
themselves in the night by tumbling and fooling with servants and shepherds
in country houses, pinching them black and blue, and leaving bread, butter,
and cheese sometimes with them, which, if they refuse to eat, some mischief
shall undoubtedly befall them by the means of these Fairies; and many such
have been taken away by the said spirits for a fortnight or a month
together, being carried with them in chariots through the air, over hills
and dales, rocks and precipices, till at last they have been found lying in
some meadow or mountain, bereaved of their senses and commonly one of their
members to boot.
Book III, chap. xvi.
It may not be omitted that certain wicked women ... being seduced by the
illusion of devils, believe and profess that in the night-times they ride
abroad with Diana, the goddess of the Pagans, or else with Herodias, with
an innumerable multitude, upon certain beasts, and pass over many countries
and nations in the silence of the night, and do whatsoever those fairies or
ladies command.
Book IV, chap. x.
Indeed your grandam's maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before him and
his cousin, Robin Goodfellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping
the house at midnight; and you have also heard that he would chafe
exceedingly, if the maid or goodwife of the house, having compassion of his
nakedness, laid any clothes for him, besides his mess of white bread and
milk which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith: What have we
here? Hemton hamton[1], here will I never more tread nor stampen.
Book V, chap. iii. "Of a man turned into an ass, and returned again into a
man, by one of Bodin's witches: S. Augustine's opinion thereof." (See p.
30.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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