Whose eyes do never sleep; let her knit hands
With quick Credulity, that next her stands,
Who hath but one ear, and that always ope;
Two-faced Falsehood follow in the rope;
And lead on Murmur, with the cheeks deep hung;
She, Malice, whetting of her forked tongue;
And Malice, Impudence, whose forehead's lost;
Let Impudence lead Slander on, to boast
Her oblique look; and to her subtle side,
Thou, black-mouth'd Execration, stand applied;
Draw to thee Bitterness, whose pores sweat gall;
She, flame-ey'd Rage; Rage, Mischief.
Hags. Here we are all.

Dame. Join now our hearts, we faithful opposites "
To Fame and Glory. Let not these bright nights
Of honour blaze, thus to offend our eyes;
Shew ourselves truly envious, and let rise
Our wonted rages: do what may beseem
Such names, and natures; Virtue else will deem
Our powers decreas'd, and think us banish'd earth,
No less than heaven: All her antique birth,
As Justice, Faith, she will restore; and, bold
Upon our sloth, retrieve her Age of gold.
We must not let our native manners, thus,
Corrupt with ease. Ill lives not, but in us.
I hate to see these fruits of a soft peace,
And curse the piety gives it such increase.
Let us disturb it then, and blast the light;
Mix hell with heaven, and make nature fight

Here again by way of irritation, I make the dame pursue the purpose of their coming, and discover their natures more largely : which had been nothing, if not done as doing another thing, but moratio circa vilem patulumque orbem, than which, the poet cannot know a greater vice; he being that kind of artificer, to whose work is required so much exactness, as indifferency is not tolerable.

These powers of troubling nature, frequently ascribed to witches, and challenged by themselves wherever they are induced, by Homer, Ovid, Tibullus, Pet. Arbiter, Seneca, Lucan, Claudian, to whose

Within herself; loose the whole hinge of things;
And cause the ends run back into their springs.
Hags. What our Dame bids us do,

We are ready for.

Dame. Then fall to.

But first relate me,' what you have sought,
Where you have been, and what you have brought.
1 Hag. I have been all day, looking after "
A raven, feeding upon a quarter;

authorities I shall refer more anon. For the present, hear Socrat. in Apul. de Asin. aureo, lib. i. describing Meroe the witch. Saga et divinipotens cœlum deponere, terram suspendere, fontes durare, monteis diluere, manes sublimare, deos infimare, sidera extinguere, tartarum ipsum illuminare: and lib. ii. Byrrhena to Lucius, of Pamphile. Maga primi nominis, et omnis carminis sepulcralis magistra creditur, quæ surculis et lapillis, et id genus frivolis inhalatis, omnem istam lucem mundi sideralis, imis tartari et in vetustum chaos mergit: as also this latter of Remigius, in his most elegant arguments before his Dæmonolatria. Quà possit evertere funditus orbem, Et maneis superis miscere, hæc unica cura est. And Lucan. Quarum quicquid non creditur, ars est.

This is also solemn in their witchcraft, to be examined, either by the devil or their dame, at their meetings, of what mischief they have done and what they can confer to a future hurt. See M. Philippo Ludwigus Elich. Dæmonomagia lib. quæst. 10. But Remigius, in the very form, lib. i. Dæmonolat. cap. 22. Quemadmodum solent heri in villicis procuratoribus, cum eorum rationes expendunt, segnitiem negligentiamque durius castigare; ita Damon, in suis comitiis, quod tempus examinandis cujusque rebus atque actionibus ipse constituit, eos pessimè habere consuevit, qui nihil afferunt quo se nequiores ac flagitiis cumulatiores doceant. Nec cuiquam adeo impune est, si à superiore conventu nullo se scelere novo obstrinxerit; sed semper oportet, qui gratus esse volet in alium, novum aliquod facinus fecisse: And this doth exceedingly solicit them all, at such times, lest they should come unprepared. But we apply this examination of ours to the particular use; whereby, also, we take occasion, not only to express the things (as vapours, liquors, herbs, bones, flesh, blood, fat, and such like, which are called Media magica) but the rites of gathering them, and from what places, reconciling as near as we can, the practice of antiquity to the neoteric, and making it familiar with our popular witchcraft.

"For the gathering pieces of dead flesh, Cornel. Agrip. de occult. Philosoph. lib. iii. cap. 42, and lib. iv. cap. ult. observes, that the

And, soon, as she turn'd her beak to the south,
I snatch'd this morsel out of her mouth.

2 Hag. I have been gathering wolves hairs,
The mad dog's foam, and the adder's ears;
The spurging of a dead-man's eyes,
And all since the evening star did rise.

3 Hag. I last night lay all alone

On the ground, to hear the mandrake groan;
And pluck'd him up, though he grew full low;
And, as I had done, the cock did crow.

use was to call up ghosts and spirits, with a fumigation made of that (and bones of carcasses) which I make my witch here, not to cut herself, but to watch the raven, as Lucan's Erichtho, lib. vi.:

Et quodcunque jacet nuda tellure cadaver

Ante feras volucresque sedet: nec carpere membra
Vult ferro manibusque suis, morsusque luporum
Expectat siccis raptura à faucibus artus.

As if that piece were sweeter which the wolf had bitten, or the raven had pick'd, and more effectuous: and to do it, at her turning to the south, as with the prediction of a storm. Which, though they be but minutes in ceremony, being observed, make the act more dark and full of horror.

2. Spuma canum, lupi crines, nodus hyena, oculi draconum, serpentis membrana, aspidis aures, are all mentioned by the ancients in witchcraft. And Lucan particularly, lib. vi.

Huc quicquid fætu genuit natura sinistro

Miscetur, non spuma canum, quibus unda timori est,
Viscera non lyncis, non duræ nodus hyenæ

Defuit, &c.

And Ovid. Metamorph. lib. vii. reckons up others. But for the spurging of the eyes, let us return to Lucan, in the same book, which piece (as all the rest) is written with an admirable height.

Ast ubi servantur saxis, quibus intimus humor

Ducitur, et tracta durescunt tabe medulla
Corpora, tunc omneis avidè desævit in artus,
Immersitque manus oculis, gaudetque gelatos
Effodisse orbeis, et sicca pallida rodit
Excrementa manus.

3. Pliny writing of the mandrake, Nat. Hist. lib. xxv. cap. 13, and

4 Hag. And I have been choosing out this scull, From charnel houses, that were full;

From private grots, and public pits;
And frighted a sexton out of his wits.

5 Hag. Under a cradle I did creep,
By day; and when the child was asleep,
At night, I suck'd the breath; and rose,
And pluck'd the nodding nurse by the nose.

of the digging it up, hath this ceremony, Cavent effossuri contrarium ventum, et tribus circulis ante gladio circumscribunt, postea fodiunt ad occasum spectantes. But we have later tradition, that the forcing of it up is so fatally dangerous, as the groan kills, and therefore they do it with dogs, which I think but borrowed from Josephus's report of the root Baæras, lib. vii. de Bel. Judaic. Howsoever, it being so principal an ingredient in their magic, it was fit she should boast, to be the plucker up of it herself. And, that the cock did crow, alludes to a prime circumstance in their work: for they all confess, that nothing is so cross, or baleful to them in their nights, as that the cock should crow before they have done. Which makes that their little masters or martinets, whom I have mentioned before, use this form in dismissing their conventions. Eja, facessite properè hinc omnes, nam jam galli canere incipiunt. Which I interpret to be, because that bird is the messenger of light, and so, contrary to their acts of darkness. See Remig. Dæmonolat. lib. i. cap. 4, where he quotes that of Apollonius de umbra Achillis, Philostr. lib. iv. cap. 5. And Euseb. Cæsariens. in confutat. contra Hieroc. 4. de

gallicinio.

4. I have touched at this before, in my note upon the first, of the use of gathering flesh, bones, and sculls: to which I now bring that piece of Apuleius, lib. iii. de Asino aureo, of Pamphile. Priusque apparatu solito instruxit feralem officinam, omne genus aromatis, et ignorabiliter laminis literatis, et infælicium navium durantibus clavis defletorum, sepultorum etiam cadaverum expositis multis admodum membris, hic nares et digiti, illic carnosi clavi pendentium, alibi trucidatorum servatus cruor, et extorta dentibus ferarum trunca calvaria: And, for such places, Lucan makes his witch to inhabit them, lib. vi. Desertaque busta Incolit, et tumulos expulsis obtinet umbris.

5. For this rite, see Barthol. de Spina, quæst. de Strigibus, cap. 8. Mal. Malefic. tom. ii. where he disputes at large the transformation of witches to cats, and their sucking both their spirits and the blood, calling them Striges, which Godelman, lib. de Lamiis, would have à stridore, et avibus fœdissimis ejusdem nominis, which I the

6 Hag. I had a dagger: what did I with that? Kill'd an infant to have his fat.

A piper it got, at a church-ale,

I bade him again blow wind in the tail.

7 Hag. A murderer, yonder, was hung in chains, The sun and the wind had shrunk his veins;

I bit off a sinew; I clipp'd his hair,

I brought off his rags that danced in the air.

rather incline to, out of Ovid's authority. Fast. lib. vi. where the poet ascribes to those birds, the same almost that these do to the witches,

Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egenteis,

Et vitiant cunis corpora rapta suis:
Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris,

Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent.

6. Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a lust to do murder. Sprenger in Mal. Malefic. reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of the three witches in Rem. Dæmonola. cap. 3, about the end of the chapter. And M. Philippo Ludwigus Elich. Quæst. 8. And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia, Epod. Horat. lib. ode 5, and Lucan, lib. vi. whose admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:

Nec cessant à cæde manus, si sanguine vivo
Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto.
Nec refugit cædes, vivum si sacra cruorem
Extaque funereæ poscunt trepidantia mensæ.
Vulnere si ventris, non quâ natura vocabat,
Extrahitur partus calidis ponendus in aris;
Et quoties savis opus est, et fortibus umbris

Ipsa facit maneis. Hominum mors omnis in usu est.

7. The abuse of dead bodies in their witchcraft, both Porphyrio and Psellus are grave authors of. The one lib. de sacrif. de vero cultu. The other lib. de Dæmo. which Apuleius toucheth too, lib. ii. de Asin. aureo. But Remigius, who deals with later persons, and out of their own mouths, Dæmonol. lib. ii. cap. 3, affirms, Hæc et nostræ ætatis maleficis hominibus moris est facere, præsertim si cujus