gh was doing now for the philosopher to deplore
and the humanitarian to lament. In 1575 many were hanged at Barking; in
1579 three were executed at Chelmsford, four at Abingdon, and two at
Cambridge. In 1582 thirteen at St. Osith's, the evidence against one being
that she had been heard to talk to something when alone in her house;
while of the other, a woman swore that she looked through her window one
day, when she was out, and there "espied a spirite to looke out of a
potcharde from under a clothe, the nose thereof being browne like unto a
ferret." In 1585 one was hanged at Tyburn and one at Stanmore; 1589 saw
three sent into eternity at Chelmsford; in 1593 we have the witches of
Warbois; and two years later (1595) three at Barnet and Brainford; in 1597
several at Derby and Stafford; so that by degrees the thing came to be a
notorious matter of social life; and the poor and the aged and the
disliked lived in fear and peril, daily increasing. At this time, too,
possessions were many and ghosts walked abroad without let or hindrance.
Richard Lee saw one at Canterbury (1575), and Master Gaymore and others
saw another at Rye two years after. "But," says Reginald Scot, "certainely
some one knave in a white sheet hath cosened and abused many thousands
that way, specially when Robin Goodfellow kept such a coile in the
Country. For you shall understand that these bugs specially are spied and
feared of sicke folke, children, women, and cowards, which, through
weaknesse of minde and body, are shaken with vain dreames and continuall
fear. The Scythians, being a stout and a warlike nation, as divers writers
report, never see any vaine sights, or spirits. It is a common saying, a
Lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our mothers' maids have so
terrified us with an ugly devil having hornes on his head, fire in his
mouth, and a taile at his back, eyes like a bason, fanges like a dog,
clawes like a beare, a skinne like a Niger, and a voice roring like a
Lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough; they
have so fraied us with bullbeggars, spirits, urchens, elves, hags,
fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns, sylens (syrens?), kit with the cansticke,
tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcats, conjurors, nymphes,
changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the mare, the man in
the oke, the hell-waine, the firedrake, the puckle, Tom thombe,
hob-gobbin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are