The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in AnthropologyMurray, Margaret Alice
Religion
The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology
Murray, Margaret Alice
Ethnology; Witchcraft -- Great Britain
In Lancashire in 1613 old mother Demdike confessed that 'vpon a Sabbath day
in the morning, this Examinate hauing a litle Child vpon her knee, and she
being in a slumber, the sayd Spirit appeared vnto her in the likenes of a
browne Dogg, forcing himselfe to her knee, to get blood vnder her left
Arme: and she being without any apparrell sauing her Smocke, the said
Deuill did get blood vnder her left arme'.[848] Of the witches who plagued
the Fairfax family at Fewstone in 1621, five had domestic familiars:
Margaret Waite's was 'a deformed thing with many feet, black of colour,
rough with hair, the bigness of a cat'; her daughter, Margaret Waite, had
as 'her spirit, a white cat spotted with black, and named Inges'; Jennet
Dibble had 'her spirit in the shape of a great black cat called Gibbe,
which hath attended her now above 40 years'; Dibble's daughter, Margaret
Thorpe, had a 'familiar in the shape of a bird, yellow of colour, about the
bigness of a crow—the name of it is Tewhit'; Elizabeth Dickenson's spirit
was 'in the likeness of a white cat, which she calleth Fillie, she hath
kept it twenty years'.[849] The witch of Edmonton, Elizabeth Sawyer, in
1621, said: 'It is eight yeares since our first acquaintance, and three
times in the weeke, the Diuell would come and see mee; he would come
sometimes in the morning, and sometimes in the evening. Alwayes in the
shape of a dogge, and of two collars, sometimes of blacke and sometimes of
white. I gaue him leaue to sucke of my bloud, the which hee asked of me.
When he came barking to mee he then had done the mischiefe that I did bid
him to doe for me. I did call the Diuell by the name of Tom. I did stroake
him on the backe, and then he would becke vnto me, and wagge his tayle as
being therewith contented.'[850] Margaret Johnson, another Lancashire witch
in 1633, 'alsoe saith, yt when her devill did come to sucke her pappe, hee
usually came to her in ye liknes of a cat, sometymes of one colour, and
sometymes on (_sic_) an other. And yt since this trouble befell her, her
spirit hath left her, and shee never sawe him since.'[851]
From 1645 to 1647 are the chief records of the witch trials of Essex and
the eastern counties, celebrated as the scene of Matthew Hopkins's work.
The Essex trials took place in 1645: John Sterne, Hopkins's assistant,
deposed that when watching Elizabeth Clarke,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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