y
childe--God blesse it.' After which speeches, Selles his wife saide,
'shee hath neuer the more children for that, but a little babe to play
withall for a time.' And she saith within a short time after her said
childe sickened and died. 'But,' she saith"--her womanly heart carrying it
over her superstition--"'that her conscience will not serve her to charge
the said Cysley or her husband to be the causers of any suche matter, but
prayeth God to forgive if they haue dealt in any such sorte.'" Then Thomas
Death accused Cicely Selles and one Barker's wife of bewitching George
Battell's wife and his own daughter Mary, who got such good of the witches
by a wise man's ministering that she saw her tormentor standing in bodily
shape before her; and Ales Baxter was pricked to the heart by a white imp
like a cat which then vanished into the bushes close by, and so badly
holden that she could neither go nor stand nor speak, and did not know her
own master when he came by, but was forced to be taken home in a chair by
two men. All of which Henry Selles and his wife Cicely denied; specially
the story of the imp and the children, who, if there were imps at all in
the matter, were the only imps afloat. But denial did them no good, for
Cicely had witch marks, so was condemned, and the two little lying varlets
made themselves orphans and homeless.

A very crowd of witnesses came to testify against Annis Herd. Of some she
had bewitched the cream, of others the milk; of some the cows or pigs or
wives; but all this was mere floating accusation until the Commissioners
got hold of her little "base" daughter of seven, who gave them plenty of
information. Asked if her mother had imps, she said "Yes;" in one box she
had six "auices," or blackbirds, and in another box six like cows as big
as rats, with short horns, lying in the boxes on white or black wool. And
she said that her mother gave her one of the cow imps, a black and white
one, called Crowe; and to her little brother one, red and white, called
Donne; and that she fed the avices or blackbirds with wheat and barley and
oats and bread and cheese; giving to the cows wheat straw, bean straw, oat
straw, or hay, with water or beer to drink. When her brother sees these
blackbird imps come a "tuitting and tetling" about him, added the little
base daughter, he takes and puts them in the boxes. Some of them sucked on
her mother's hands, and some on her brother's legs, and when they showed
her the