Witchcraft -- England; Witchcraft -- Great Britain; Witchcraft -- Scotland
Johan Cooper, widow, had three imps, two like mouses and one like a frog;
their names were "Prickeare, Robyn, and Frog," and they killed men and
beasts. Wherefore she too was hanged like the rest.
Anne Cate had four, given her by her mother twenty years ago, "James,
Prickeare, Robyn, and Sparrow:" the first three like mouses, and the
fourth like a sparrow; and they did evil and mischief and killed all whom
she would. She was hanged too.
At the end of the tract is a very curious bit of evidence, given by an
honest man of Manningtree, one Goff, a glover, concerning old Anne West,
then on her trial. He said that one moonlight morning, about four o'clock,
as he was passing Anne West's house, the door being open, he looked in and
saw three or four little things like black rabbits which came skipping
towards him. He struck at them, but missed; when, by better luck, he
caught one in his hand and tried to wring its head off; but "as he wrung
and stretched the neck of it, it came out betweene his hands like a lock
of wooll," so he went to drown it at a spring not far off. But still as he
went he could not hinder himself from falling down, so that at last he
was obliged to creep on his hands and knees, till he came to the water,
when he held the imp for a long space underneath, till he conceived it was
drowned, but, "letting goe his hand, it sprang out of the water up into
the aire, and so vanished away." Coming back to Anne West's, he found her
standing at her door in terrible undress, and to his complaint of why did
she send her imps to molest him? she answered "that they were not sent out
to trouble him, but as Scouts upon another designe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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