much as in the evil eye. When, with the dawn of
enlightenment in the twelfth century, superstition became cruel, and
burned witch and heretic, the charges against witches do not, as a
rule, include the phenomena which we are studying. Witches are
accused of raising storms, destroying crops, causing deaths and
blighting marriages, by sympathetic magic; of assuming the shapes of
beasts, of having intercourse with Satan, of attending the Sabbat.
All these fables, except the last, are survivals from savage
beliefs, but none of these occurrences are attested by modern
witnesses of all sorts, like the 'knockings,' 'movements,' 'ghosts,'
'wraiths,' 'second sight,' and clairvoyance.

The more part of mediaeval witchcraft, therefore, is not quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. The facts were facts: people
really died or were sterile, flocks suffered, ships were wrecked,
fields were ruined; the mistake lay in attributing these things to
witchcraft. On the other hand, the facts of rappings, ghosts,
clairvoyance, in spite of the universally consentient evidence, are
very doubtful facts after all. Their existence has to be
established before we look about for their cause. Now, of records
about _these_ phenomena the Middle Ages produce but a very scanty
supply. The miracles which were so common were seldom of this kind;
they were imposing visions of devils, or of angels, or of saints;
processions of happy or unhappy souls; views of heaven, hell, or
purgatory. The reason is not far to seek: ecclesiastical
chroniclers, like classical men of letters, recorded events which
interested themselves; a wraith, or common ghost ('matter of daily
experience,' says Lavaterus, and, later, contradicts himself), or
knocking sprite, was beneath their notice. In mediaeval sermons we
meet a few edifying wraiths and ghosts, returning in obedience to a
compact made while in the body. Here and there a chronicle, as of
Rudolf of Fulda (858), vouches for communication with a rapping
bogle. Grimm has collected several cases under the head of 'House-
sprites,' including this ancient one at Capmunti, near Bingen. {30}
Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, John Major, Froissart, mention
an occasional follet, brownie, or knocking sprite. The prayers of
the Church contain a petition against the spiritus percutiens, or
spirit who produces 'percussive noises'. The Norsemen of the Viking
age were given to second sight, and Glam 'riding the roof