, made in the likeness of that man or beast
they intend to work mischief upon, and by the subtlety of
the devil made at such hours and times when it shall work
most powerfully upon them, by thorn, pin, or needle, pricked
into that limb or member of the body afflicted."

This is farther illustrated by a passage in one of Daniel's
Sonnets:

"The slie inchanter, when to work his will
And secret wrong on some forspoken wight,
Frames waxe, in forme to represent aright
The poore unwitting wretch he meanes to kill,
And prickes the image, framed by magick's skill,
Whereby to vex the partie day and night."
_Son. 10; from Poems and Sonnets annexed to "Astrophil
and Stella_," 4to, 1591.

Again, in "Diaria, or the Excellent Conceitful Sonnets of
H.C.," (Henry Constable,) 1594:

"Witches, which some murther do intend,
Doe make a picture, and doe shoote at it;
And in that part where they the picture hit,
The parties self doth languish to his end."
_Decad. II., Son. ii._

Coles, in his "Art of Simpling," &c., p. 66, says that
witches "take likewise the roots of mandrake, according to
some, or, as I rather suppose, the _roots of briony_, which
simple folke take for the true mandrake, and make thereof an
ugly image, by which they represent the person on whom they
intend to exercise their witchcraft." He tells us, _ibid._,
p. 26, "Some plants have roots with a number of threads,
like beards, as mandrakes, whereof witches and impostors
make an ugly image, giving it the form of the face at the
top of the root, and leave those strings to make a broad
beard down to the feet."--_Brand's Antiquities_, vol. iii.
p. 9.

Ben Johnson has not forgotten this superstition in his learned and
fanciful _Masque of Queens_, in which so much of the lore of
witchcraft is embodied. There are few finer things in English poetry
than his 3rd Charm:--

The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And the frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,
The spindle is now a turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,
But all the sky is a burning:
The ditch is made, and our nails the spade,
_