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
Elizabeth Stile of Windsor, in 1579, gives a description of Father
Rosimond's changes of form, which points to his being the Chief of the
Windsor witches: 'She confesseth, her self often tymes to haue gon to
Father Rosimond house where she founde hym sittyng in a Wood, not farre
from thence, vnder the bodie of a Tree, sometymes in the shape of an Ape,
and otherwhiles like an Horse.'[132] In the reign of Elizabeth, 1584, there
is a list of eighty-seven suspected persons, among whom occur the names of
'Ould Birtles the great devil, Roger Birtles and his wife and Anne Birtles,
Darnally the sorcerer, the oulde witche of Ramsbury, Maud Twogood
Enchantress, Mother Gillian witch' and several other 'oulde witches'.[133]
The account by John Stearne the pricker, in 1645, indicates that one of the
magistrates of Fenny Drayton was the local Devil: 'Some will say, It is
strange they should know when they should be searched, if it be kept
private. I answer, Let it be kept never so private, it hath been common,
and as common as any other thing, as they themselves have confessed: for so
did they of Fenny-Drayton in Cambridge-shire, who made very large
Confessions, as, that the devil told them of our coming to town.'[134] One
of the clearest cases, however, is that of Marsh of Dunstable in 1649,
'whom Palmer confessed to be head of the whole Colledge of Witches, that
hee knows in the world: This Palmer hath been a witch these sixty years (by
his own confession) long enough to know and give in the totall summe of all
the conjuring conclave, and the Society of Witches in England.'[135]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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