Witchcraft -- England; Witchcraft -- Great Britain; Witchcraft -- Scotland
Barnes, her mother, gave them to her, she said, when she died; and she
gave her sister, Margerie Sammon, two also. When Margerie was confronted
with Alice and heard what she had deposed, she got very angry and denied
the whole tale, saying: "I defie thee, though thou art my sister," saying
that she had never any imps given to her on her mother's death-bed, or at
any other time. But Alice took her aside and whispered something in her
ear; after which Margerie, "with great submission" and many tears,
confessed that she had in truth these two imps, given to her by her mother
as her sister had said, and that she had carried them away that same
evening in a wicker basket filled with black and white wool. Her mother
had said that if she did not like to keep them old Joan Pechey would be
glad of them; but she did not part with them just then; and that she was
to feed them on bread and milk, otherwise they would suck her blood. Their
names were Tom and Robbin, and last evening she took them away--being
perhaps afraid to keep them longer, now that the scent was warm--and went
into Read's ground, where she bade them "go." Immediately they skipped out
of the wicker basket toward a barred gate going into Howe Lane, to Mother
Peachey's house, whereat she, Margerie, said, "All evill goe with you, and
the Lorde in heaven blesse mee from yee."
All of which Mother Peachy, who seems to have been an upright,
high-spirited old dame, stoutly denied. She was threescore year and
upwards, she said, and had lived forty years in S. Osees in honour and
good repute. She knew Mother Barnes, yet knew her for no witch, nor ever
heard her to be so accompted, or to have skill in any witchery; nor was
she at her death-bed; nor knew she of her imps. For her own part she
denied that she had any "puppettes, spyrites, or maumettes;" or had had
any spirits conveyed to her by Margery Sammon, or since Mother Barnes's
death. She denied all that Ales Hunt had said, as, "Yea, art thou so
bolde," &c., she denied that she had had any hand in Johnson's death, as
she had been accused of, but when he died said only he was a very honest
man: she also denied some very shocking passages with her son, which he,
however, had been brought to confess; and when questioned more closely
concerning her imps, said that she had only a kitten and a dog at home.
When asked of what colour were they? she answered tartly, "Ye may goe and
see."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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