_ and _witch_, means a poisoner and divineress, a
dabbler in spells, or fortune-teller. The modern witch was a very
different character, and joined to her pretended power of foretelling
future events that of working evil upon the life, limbs, and possessions
of mankind. This power was only to be acquired by an express compact,
signed in blood, with the devil himself, by which the wizard or witch
renounced baptism, and sold his or her immortal soul to the evil one,
without any saving clause of redemption.

There are so many wondrous appearances in nature for which science and
philosophy cannot even now account, that it is not surprising that, when
natural laws were still less understood, men should have attributed to
supernatural agency every appearance which they could not otherwise
explain. The merest tyro now understands various phenomena which the
wisest of old could not fathom. The schoolboy knows why, upon high
mountains, there should on certain occasions appear three or four suns in
the firmament at once, and why the figure of a traveller upon one eminence
should be reproduced, inverted and of a gigantic stature, upon another. We
all know the strange pranks which imagination can play in certain
diseases; that the hypochondriac can see visions and spectres; and that
there have been cases in which men were perfectly persuaded that they were
teapots. Science has lifted up the veil, and rolled away all the fantastic
horrors in which our forefathers shrouded these and similar cases. The man
who now imagines himself a wolf is sent to the hospital instead of to the
stake, as in the days of the witch mania; and earth, air, and sea are
unpeopled of the grotesque spirits that were once believed to haunt them.

Before entering further into the history of Witchcraft, it may be as well
if we consider the absurd impersonation of the evil principle formed by
the monks in their legends. We must make acquaintance with the _primum
mobile_, and understand what sort of a personage it was who gave the
witches, in exchange for their souls, the power to torment their
fellow-creatures. The popular notion of the devil was, that he was a
large, ill-formed, hairy sprite, with horns, a long tail, cloven feet, and
dragon's wings. In this shape he was constantly brought on the stage by
the monks in their early "miracles" and "mysteries." In these
representations he was an important personage, and answered the purpose of
the clown in the modern