tes:

[539] Theocrit Idyl. ii.

[540]
"Lanea et effigies erat, altera cerea major
Lanea, que poenis compesceret inferiorem.
Cerea suppliciter stabat, servilibus ut quae
Jam peritura modis....
Et imagine cerea
Largior arserit ignis."

[541]
"An quae movere cereas imagines,
Ut ipse curiosus, et polo
Deripere lunam."

[542]
"Limus ut hic durescit, et haec ut cera liquescit.
Uno eodemque igni; sic nostro Daphnis amore."--_Virgil, Eclog._

[543] Lucian in Philops.

[544] Numb. xxi. 3.

[545] Deut. vii. 2, 3; xii. 1-3, &c.

[546] Numb. xxii. 5, &c.

[547] Peir. lib. iii. c. 5; xxviii. c. 2.

[548] Macrobius, lib. iii. c. 9.

[549] Tacit. Ann. lib. ii. art. 69.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

INSTANCES OF DEVOTING OR DOOMING AMONGST CHRISTIANS.

Hector Boethius,[550] in his History of Scotland, relates that Duffus,
king of that country, falling ill of a disorder unknown to the
physicians, was consumed by a slow fever, passed his nights without
sleep, and insensibly wasted away; his body melted in perspiration
every night; he became weak, languid, and in a dying state, without,
however, his pulse undergoing any alteration. Everything was done to
relieve him, but uselessly. His life was despaired of, and those about
him began to suspect some evil spell. In the mean time, the people of
Moray, a county of Scotland, mutinied, supposing that the king must
soon sink under his malady.

It was whispered abroad that the king had been bewitched by some
witches who lived at Forres, a little town in the north of Scotland.
People were sent there to arrest them, and they were surprised in
their dwellings, where one of them was basting an image of King
Duffus, made of wax, turning on a wooden spit before a large fire,
before which she was reciting certain magical prayers; and she
affirmed that as the figure melted the king would lose his strength,
and at last he would die when the figure should be entirely melted.
These women declared that they had been hired to perform these evil
spells by the principal men of the county of Moray, who only awaited
the king's decease to burst into open revolt.

These witches were immediately arrested and burnt at the stake. The
king was much better, and in a few days he perfectly recovered his
health. This account is found also in the History of Scotland by
Buchanan, who says he heard it from his elders.

He makes the King Duffus live in 960, and he who has added