The Saxons, in the fifth century, imported into Britain the pagan
forms of the Fatherland; and the Anglo-Saxon (Christian) laws are
usually directed against practices connected with heathen
worship, of which many reminiscences were long preserved. Their
Hexe, or witch,[49] appears to be half-divine, half-diabolic, a
witch-priestess who derived her inspiration as much from heavenly
as from hellish sources; from some divinity or genius presiding
at a sacred grove or fountain. King Athelstan is said to have
made a law against witchcraft and similar acts which inflict
death; that if one by them be made away, and the thing cannot be
denied, such practicers shall be put to death; but if they
endeavour to purge themselves, and be cast by the threefold
ordeal, they shall be in prison 120 days; which ended, their
kindred may redeem them by the payment [in the universal style of
the English penalties] of 120 shillings to the king, and further
pay to the kindred of the slain the full valuation of the party's
head; and then the criminals shall also procure sureties for good
behaviour for the time to come; and the Danish prince Knut
denounces by an express doom the noxious acts of sorcery.[50]
Some of the witches who appear under Saxon domination are almost
as ferocious as those of the time of Bodin or of James; cutting
up the bodies of the dead, especially of children, devouring
their heart and liver in midnight revels. Fearful are the deeds
of Saxon sorcery as related by the old Norman or Anglo-Norman
writers. Roger of Wendover ('Flowers of History') records the
terrible fate of a hag who lived in the village of Berkely, in
the ninth century. The devil at the appointed hour (as in the
case of Faust) punctually carries off the soul of his slave, in
spite of the utmost watch and ward. These scenes are, perhaps,
rather Norman than Saxon. It was a favourite belief of the
ancients and mediaevalists that the inhospitable regions of the
remoter North were the abode of demons who held in those suitable
localities their infernal revels, exciting storms and tempests:
and the monk-chronicler Bede relates the northern parts of
Britain were thus infested.[51]

[49] The Saxon 'witch' is derived, apparently, from the verb
'to weet,' to know, _be wise_. The Latin 'saga' is similarly
derived--'Sagire, sentire acute est: ex quo _sagae_ anus,
quia malta _scire_ volunt.'--Cicero, _de Divinatione_.

[50] A curious collection of old E