"History of Mummies," 1834; also Gannal,
"Traite d'Embaumement," 1838.

[618] Rees's "Encyclopaedia," 1829, vol. xxiv.

And, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), the "witches' mummy" forms one of the
ingredients of the boiling caldron. Webster, in "The White Devil" (1857,
p. 5), speaks of it:

"Your followers
Have swallow'd you like mummia, and, being sick,
With such unnatural and horrid physic,
Vomit you up i' the kennel."

Sir Thomas Browne, in his interesting "Fragment on Mummies," tells us
that Francis I. always carried mummy[619] with him as a panacea against
all disorders. Some used it for epilepsy, some for gout, some used it as
a styptic. He further adds: "The common opinion of the virtues of mummy
bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for
this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies
from dead carcasses, and giving them the names of kings, while specifics
were compounded from crosses and gibbets leavings."

[619] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his "Handbook Index to
Shakespeare," 1866, p. 332, calls it a balsamic liquid.

_Nightmare._ There are various charms practised, in this and other
countries, for the prevention of nightmare, many of which are
exceedingly quaint. In days gone by it appears that St. Vitalis, whose
name has been corrupted into St. Withold, was invoked; and, by way of
illustration, Theobald quotes from the old play of "King John"[620] the
following:

"Sweet S. Withold, of thy lenitie, defend us from extremitie."

[620] "Six Old Plays," ed. Nichols, p. 256, quoted by Mr. Aldis
Wright, in his "Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 170.

Shakespeare, alluding to the nightmare, in his "King Lear" (iii. 4),
refers to the same saint, and gives us a curious old charm:

"Saint Withold footed thrice the old [wold];
He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold;
Bid her alight
And her troth plight,
And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!"

For what purpose, as Mr. Singer[621] has pointed out, the incubus is
enjoined to "plight her troth," will appear from a charm against the
nightmare, in Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," which occurs,
with slight variation, in Fletcher's "Monsieur Thomas" (iv. 6):

"St. George, St. George, our lady's knight,
He walks by day, so does he by night,
And when he had her found,
He her beat and her bound,