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 1556 Joan Waterhouse, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the witch Mother
Waterhouse, of Hatfield Peveril, being angry with another girl, 'shee
goinge home dydde as she had seene her mother doe, callynge Sathan, whiche
came to her (as she sayd) in the lykenes of a great dogge'.[878] At
Aberdeen in 1597 Agnes Wobster said that the Devil appeared 'in the liknes
of a lamb, quhom thow callis thy God, and bletit on the, and thaireftir
spak to the'.[879] James Device, one of the chief of the Lancashire witches
in 1613, confessed 'that vpon Sheare Thursday was two yeares, his
Grand-Mother Elizabeth Sothernes, alias Dembdike, did bid him this
Examinate goe to the Church to receiue the Communion (the next day after
being Good Friday) and then not to eate the Bread the Minister gaue him,
but to bring it and deliuer it to such a thing as should meet him in his
way homewards: Notwithstanding her perswasions, this Examinate did eate the
Bread; and so in his comming homeward some fortie roodes off the said
Church, there met him a thing in the shape of a Hare, who spoke vnto this
Examinate, and asked him whether hee had brought the Bread.'[880] In 1621
Elizabeth Sawyer, the witch of Edmonton, said that 'the first time that the
Diuell came vnto me was, when I was cursing, swearing, and
blaspheming'.[881] The evidence of the Huntingdonshire witches, John
Winnick and Ellen Shepheard, in 1646 (see above, p. 219), and of Dorothy
Ellis of Cambridgeshire in 1647, also show that the animal which appeared
to the witch after an access of emotion was at once acknowledged as God and
accepted as the familiar. Mary Osgood of Andover in 1692 'confesses that
about 11 years ago, when she was in a melancholy state and condition, she
used to walk abroad in her orchard; and upon a certain time, she saw the
appearance of a cat, at the end of the house, which yet she thought was a
real cat. However, at that time, it diverted her from praying to God, and
instead thereof she prayed to the devil.[882]
The familiars in human form were human beings usually of the sex opposite
to that of the witch. As these familiars were generally called 'Devils' it
is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from the Grand-master;[883] but
the evidence, taken as a whole, suggests that at certain parts of the
ritual every individual of the company was known as a Devil. This
suggestion is borne out in the modern survival of an ancient dance in the
Basses-Pyrénées, where the dancers to this day are called Satans.[884]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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