st century.

H 2 _a_ 3. "_Master Nowel humbly prayed Master Towneley might be
called._"] It is to be regretted we have no copy of the _viva voce_
examination of Mr. Townley, the husband of the lady whose life was
said to have been taken away by witchcraft. The examinations given in
this tract are altogether those of persons in a humble rank of life.
The contrast between their evidence and that of an individual
occupying the position of the descendant of one of the oldest families
in the neighbourhood, with considerable landed possessions, might have
been amusing and instructive.

H 2 _a_ 4. "_Master Nowell humbly prayed, that the particular
examinations taken before him and others might be openly published and
read in court._"] This kind of evidence, the witnesses being in court,
and capable of being examined, would not be received at the present
day. At that time a greater laxity prevailed.

H 3 _a_. "_Sheare Thursday._"] The Thursday before Easter, and so
called, for that, in the old Fathers' days, the people would that day,
"shave their hedes, and clypp their berdes, and pool their heedes, and
so make them honest against Easter Day."--_Brand's Popular
Antiquities_, vol. i., p. 83, edition 1841.

K _b_ 1. "_A Charme._"] Sinclair, in his _Satan's Invisible World
Discovered_, informs us, that "At night, in the time of popery, when
folks went to bed, they believed the repetition of this following
prayer was effectual to preserve them from danger, and the house too.

"Who sains the house the night,
They that sains it ilka night.
Saint Bryde and her brate,
Saint Colme and his hat,
Saint Michael and his spear,
Keep this house from the weir;
From running thief,
And burning thief;
And from and ill Rea,
That be the gate can gae;
And from an ill weight,
That be the gate can light
Nine reeds about the house;
Keep it all the night,
What is that, what I see
So red, so bright, beyond the sea?
'Tis he was pierc'd through the hands,
Through the feet, through the throat,
Through the tongue;
Through the liver and the lung.
Well is them that well may
Fast on Good-friday."

which lines are not unlike some of those in the present "charme,"
which, evidently much corrupted by recitation, is a very singular and
interesting string of fragments handed down from times long anterior
to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour o