CHAP. XIII.

Their Superstitions.

BOOK The belief, that some human beings could attain

the power of inflicting evils on their fellow-creatures, and of controlling the operations of nature, existed among the Anglo-Saxons, but did not originate with them. It has appeared in all the regions of the globe; and from its extensive prevalence we may perceive that the human mind, in its state of ignorance and barbarism, is a soil well adapted to its reception and cultivation. It is not true that fear first made a deity ; but it cannot be doubted that fear, vanity, and hope, are the parents of superstition.

LIFE has so many diseases which the uninstructed mind cannot remedy or avert, and encourages so many hopes which every age and condition burn to realise, that it is not surprising to find a large portion of mankind the willing prey of impostors, practising on their credulity by threats of evil and promises of good, greater than the usual course of nature would dispense. In every country where the intelligent religions of Judaism or Christianity were unknown, these delusions obtained a kind of legal sovereignty, and peculiarly in Thrace and Chaldea. But that such frauds and absurdities should be countenanced, where the genuine revelations of the Divine wisdom prevail, may reasonably excite both our astonishment and regret, espe

CHAP.
XIII.

cially as they have been steadily discountenanced by both civil and ecclesiastical laws. Their foundation seems to lie deep in the heart's anxiety about futurity ; in its impatience for good greater than it enjoys; and in its restless curiosity to penetrate the unknown, and to meddle with the forbidden.

But the superstitions of magic and witchcraft began among the civilised nations of the earth, and prevailed even in Greece and Rome, before the Saxons are known to have had an historical existence. The general diffusion of the fond mistake forbids us to derive the later impostures from those which preceded; but as every thing that was popular among the Romans must have scattered some effects on the nations with whom they had intercourse, we will glance at the opinions which the masters of the world, who so long colonised our island, admitted on this delusive subject.

We are familiar in our youth with the incantations alluded to by Virgil and Horace, and described by Lucan: it is still more amusing to read of Apuleius, who flourished under the Antonines, and who, though born in Africa, was educated at Athens, that he was accused of magic arts, and of having obtained a rich wife by his incantations. In his Metamorphoseon we have a curious picture of the witchcraft which was believed to exist in the ancient world. One of his characters is described as a saga, or witch ', who could lower the sky, and raise the manes of the dead. She is stated to have transformed one lover into a beaver, another into a frog, and another into a ram ; to have con

| Apul. Metamorph. lib. i. p. 6.

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demned a rival wife to perpetual gestation; to have closed up impregnably all the houses of a city, whose inhabitants were going to stone her; and to have transported the family of the authors of the commotion to the top of a distant mountain.

ANOTHER lady of similar taste is mentioned to have been a maga, mistress of every sepulchral song, who, by twigs, little stones, and such like petty instruments, could submerge all the light of the world in the lowest Tartarus, and into ancient chaos; who could turn her lovers that displeased her into stones or animals, or entirely destroy them. 2

APULEIUS afterwards gives us a description of one of her achievements. In the dead of the night, as two friends are sleeping in a room, the doors burst open with great fury; the bed of one is overturned upon him; two witches enter, one carrying a light, the other a sponge and a sword. This stabs her sleeping faithless lover, plunges the weapon up to its hilt in his throat, receives all the blood in a vessel, that not a drop might appear, and then takes out his heart. The other applied the sponge to the wounds, saying, "Sponge! seaborn! beware of rivers!" The consequence was, that though he waked, and travelled as well as ever, yet when on his journey he approached a river, and proceeded to drink at it, his wounds opened, the sponge flew out, and the victim fell dead. 3

2 Apul. Metamorph. lib. i. p. 21.

3 Mr. Cumberland in his Observer, No. 31., has noticed the magical powers ascribed in the Clementine recognitions, and Constit. Apos. to Simon Magus, viz. That he created a man out of the air; that he had the power of being invisible; that he could make marble as penetrable as clay; could animate statues; resist the effects of fire; present him

XIII.

APULEIUS himself was a great student of magic. CHAP. The chief seat of all these wonders is declared to have been Thessaly; and so popular was the notion of witchcraft among those nations whom in our youth we are taught almost exclusively to admire, that even philosophers thought that they accounted sufficiently for the miracles of the Christian legis. lator, by referring them to magic.

We will consider the Anglo-Saxon superstitions under the heads of their witchcraft, their charms, and their prognostics.

Their pretenders to witchcraft were called wicca, scin-læca, galdor-cræftig, wiglær, and morthwyrtha. Wiglær is a combination from wig, an idol or a temple, and lær, learning, and may have been one of the characters of the Anglo-Saxon idolatry. He was the wizard, as wicca was the witch. Scinlæca was a species of phantom or apparition, and was also used as the name of the person who had the power of producing such things: it is, literally, a shining dead body. Galdorcræftig implies, one skilled in incantations; and morthwyrtha is, literally, a worshipper of the dead.

Another general appellation for such personages was dry, a magician. The clergy opposed

self with two faces, like Janus; metamorphose himself into a sheep or a goat; fly at pleasure through the air ; create gold in a moment; and at a wish take a scythe in his hand and mow a field of corn almost at a stroke ; and recall the unjustly murdered to life. A woman of pub. lic notoriety looking out of the window of a castle on a great crowd below, he was said to have made her appear, and then fall down from every window of the place at the same time. To these fancies Anastacius Nicenus added, that Simon was frequently preceded by spectres, which he declared to be the spirits of certain persons that were dead. It is extraordinary that the ancients framed no romantic tales on ima. ginations so favourable to interesting fiction.

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these follies in their homilies 4 ; and their exhort-
ations imply that some had the knavery to attempt
to practise them.

The laws notice these practices with penal
severity. The best account that can be given of

.
them will be found in the passages proscribing
them.

“If any wicca, or wiglær, or false swearer, or
morthwyrtha, or any foul, contaminated, manifest
horcwenan, (whore, quean or strumpet,) be any
where in the land, man shall drive them out.” 5

“ WE teach that every priest shall extinguish all heathendom, and forbid wilweorthunga (fountainworship), and licwiglunga (incantations of the dead), and hwata (omens), and galdra (magic), and man-worship, and the abominations that men exercise in various sorts of witchcraft, and in frithsplottum, and with elms and other trees, and with stones, and with many other phantoms.” 6

From subsequent regulations, we find that these practices were made the instruments of the most fatal mischief; for penitentiary penalties are enjoined if any one should destroy another by wiccecræft; or if any should drive sickness on man; or if death should follow from the attempt. ?

They seem to have used philtres ; for it is also made punishable if any should use witchcraft to

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