[63] They are given in full in _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic from the most Authentic Sources_, by Thomas Wright. In the _Annals of Ireland_, affixed to Camden's _Britannia_, ed. 1695, sub anno 1325 A.D., the case of Dame Alice Ketyll is briefly chronicled. Being cited and examined by the Bishop of Ossory, it was discovered, among other things, 'That a certain spirit called Robin Artysson lay with her; and that she offered him nine red cocks on a stone bridge where the highway branches out into four several parts. _Item_: That she swept the streets of Kilkenny with besoms between Compline and Courefeu, and in sweeping the filth towards the house of William Utlaw, her son, by way of conjuring, wished that all the wealth of Kilkenny might flow thither. The accomplices of this Alice in these devilish practices were Pernil of Meth, and Basilia the daughter of this Pernil. Alice, being found guilty, was fined by the bishop, and forced to abjure her sorcery and witchcraft. But being again convicted of the same practice, she made her escape with Basilia, and was never found. But Pernil was burnt at Kilkenny, and before her death declared that William above-said deserved punishment as well as she--that for a year and a day he wore the devil's girdle about his bare body,' &c. CHAPTER III. Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the Church--Mediaeval Science closely connected with Magic and Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras. What can hardly fail to be discerned in these prosecutions is the confusion of heresy and sorcery industriously created by the orthodox Church to secure the punishment of her offending dissentients. There are few proceedings against the pretended criminals in which it is not discoverable; the one crime being, as a matter of course, the necessary consequence of the other. In the interest of the Church as much as in the credulity of the people must be sought the main cause of so violent an epidemic, of so fearful a phenomenon in its continuance and atrocities, a fact demonstrated by the whole course of the superstition in the old times of Catholicism. Materials for exciting animosity and indignation against suspected heretics were near at hand. In the assurance of the pre-scientific world everything remote from ordinary knowledge or experience was inseparable from supernaturalism. What surpassed the limits of a very feeble understanding, what was beyond the commonest experience of every-day life, was with one accord relegated to the domain of the supernatural, or rather to that of the devil. For what was not done or taught by Holy Church must be of 'that wicked One'--the cunning imitator.