190

3. Duties 194

4. Discipline 197

VIII. THE FAMILIARS AND TRANSFORMATIONS 205

1. The Divining Familiar 205

2. The Domestic Familiar 208

3. Methods of obtaining Familiars 222

4. Transformations into Animals 230

APPENDIX I.

Fairies and Witches 238

APPENDIX II.

Trial of Silvain Nevillon. Taken from De
Lancre's _L'Incredulite et
Mescreance_ 246

APPENDIX III.

A. Covens and Names of Members 249

B. Index of Witches' Names, with Notes 255

APPENDIX IV.

Notes on the Trials of Joan
of Arc and Gilles de Rais 270

APPENDIX V.

Some Notes on 'Flying' Ointments.
By Prof. A. J. Clark 279

BIBLIOGRAPHY 281

GENERAL INDEX 286

INTRODUCTION

The subject of Witches and Witchcraft has always suffered from the biassed
opinions of the commentators, both contemporary and of later date. On the
one hand are the writers who, having heard the evidence at first hand,
believe implicitly in the facts and place upon them the unwarranted
construction that those facts were due to supernatural power; on the other
hand are the writers who, taking the evidence on hearsay and disbelieving
the conclusions drawn by their opponents, deny the facts _in toto_. Both
parties believed with equal firmness in a personal Devil, and both
supported their arguments with quotations from the Bible. But as the
believers were able to bring forward more texts than the unbelievers and
had in their hands an unanswerable argument in the Witch of Endor, the
unbelievers, who dared not contradict the Word of God, were forced to fall
back on the theory that the witches suffered from hallucination, hysteria,
and, to use the modern word, 'auto-suggestion'. These two classes still
persist, the sceptic predominating. Between the believer who believed
everything and the unbeliever who disbelieved everything there has been no
critical examination of the evidence, which presents a new and untouched
field of research to the student of comparative religion.

Among the believers in witchcraft everything which could not be explained
by the knowledge at their disposal was laid to the credit of supernatural
powers; and as