s: one being "the
trial by the stool," to which an allusion is made in "Troilus and
Cressida" (ii. 1), where Ajax says to Thersites,

"Thou stool for a witch!"

--a practice which is thus explained in Grey's "Notes" (ii. 236): "In one
way of trying a witch, they used to place her upon a chair or a stool,
with her legs tied cross, that all the weight of her body might rest
upon her seat, and by that means, after some time, the circulation of
the blood would be much stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as
the wooden horse; and she must continue in this pain twenty-four hours,
without either sleep or meat; and it was no wonder that, when they were
tired out with such an ungodly trial, they would confess themselves many
times guilty to free themselves from such torture."

[59] Graymalkin--a gray cat.

Again, it was a part of the system of witchcraft that drawing blood
from a witch rendered her enchantments ineffectual. Thus, in "1 Henry
VI." (i. 5), Talbot says to the Maid of Orleans:

"I'll have a bout with thee;
Devil or devil's dam, I'll conjure thee:
Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch."

An instance of this superstition occurred some years ago in a Cornish
village, when a man was summoned before the bench of magistrates and
fined, for having assaulted the plaintiff and scratched her with a pin.
Indeed, this notion has by no means died out. As recently as the year
1870, a man eighty years of age was fined at Barnstaple, in Devonshire,
for scratching with a needle the arm of a young girl. He pleaded that he
had "suffered affliction" through her for five years, had had four
complaints on him at once, had lost fourteen canaries, and about fifty
goldfinches, and that his neighbors told him this was the only way to
break the spell and get out of her power.[60]

[60] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 181.

It was, also, a popular belief that a great share of faith was a
protection from witchcraft. Hence, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iii. 2),
Dromio of Syracuse says of Nell:

"if my breast had not been made of faith and my heart of steel,
She had transform'd me to a curtail-dog, and made me turn i' the
wheel."

In order, moreover, to check the power of witches, it was supposed to be
necessary to propitiate them, a ceremony which was often performed. It
is alluded to further on in the same play (iv. 3), where Dromio of
Syracuse says-