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And he described his own natural character and amiability in such moving terms, that he wept maudlin tears of sensibility over his theme; and when Dobbs was gone, drank some more grog, and took to railing and cursing again by himself; and then mounted the stairs unsteadily, to see "what the devil Doyle and the other old witches were about in poor Peg's room."
A more melancholy tale does not occur in the annals of necromancy than that of the Lancashire witches in 1612. The scene of this story is in Pendlebury Forest, four or five miles from Manchester, remarkable for its picturesque and gloomy situation. Such places were not sought then as now, that they might afford food for the imagination, and gratify the refined taste of the traveller.
In the evening he strolled out and made his way to the cliffs. It was twilight when he reached the place of rocks to which the fancy-loving Cornish folk had given the name of the Witches' Cauldron. It was from this spot that he had first watched Mivanway coming to him from the sea.
The country-folk of those days were more superstitious than they are now, and it did not take much to turn the black-fishers back. There was not a barn or byre in the district that had not its horseshoe over the door. Another popular device for frightening away witches and fairies was to hang bunches of garlic about the farms.
There, once more, was John Willard, to whom the duty of arresting accused witches had been assigned; he, as a person of common sense and honesty, had intimated his disbelief in the reality of witchcraft by refusing to arrest; and for this, and no other crime, had he been hanged.
In Indian Gap, near Wernersville, Pennsylvania, the Doane band of Tories and terrorists hid a chest of gold, the proceeds of many robberies. It is guarded by witches, and, although it has been seen, no one has been able to lay hands on it. The seekers are always blinded by blue flame, and frightened away by roaring noises.
Yet, after all, are there not express directions in Scripture to exterminate witches from the land? Certainly; but that does not argue any scriptural recognition of witchcraft as a possible offence.
The first trial for sorcery in England was in King John's reign; the last within the past two hundred years. In England, America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia every country without exception witches have lived, flourished, and been burned at the stake. Laws were enacted against witches, and they were condemned on the most trivial and even ridiculous evidence imaginable.
He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him, with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighbourhood.
His once golden face was sinister with that blood-red hue which it so often assumes on winter afternoons, and which seems to set it in a place more than usually remote, more than usually distant from our world, and in a clime that is sad and strange. Winds danced over the heath like young witches.
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