theus Lucas Johannes mihi succurrite et defendite, Amen. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, hunc N. famulum tuum hoc breve scriptum super se portantem prospere salvet dormiendo, vigilando, potando, et precipue sompniando ab omni maligno demonio, eciam ab omni maligno spiritu."

In Scot's Discovery, p. 160, we have "A Special Charm to preserve all Cattel from Witchcraft.-At Easter, you must take certain drops that lie uppermost of the holy paschal candle, and make a little wax candle thereof; and upon some Sunday morning rathe, light it, and hold it so as it may drop upon and between the horns and ears of the beast, saying, 'In nomine Patris et Filii,' &c., and burn the beast a little between the horns on the ears with the same wax; and that which is left thereof, stick it cross-wise about the stable or stall, or upon the threshold, or over the door, where the cattle use to go in and out: and for all that year your cattle shall never be bewitched."

Pennant tells us, in his Tour in Scotland, that the farmers carefully preserve their cattle against witchcraft by placing boughs of mountain-ash and honeysuckle in their cowhouses on the 2d of May. They hope to preserve the milk of their cows, and their wives from miscarriage, by tying threads about them they bleed the supposed witch to preserve themselves from her charms.

Gaule, as before cited, p. 142, speaking of the preservatives against witchcraft, mentions, as in use among the Papists, "the tolling of a baptized bell, signing with the signe of the crosse, sprinkling with holy water, blessing of oyle, waxe, candles, salt, bread, cheese, garments, weapons, &c., carrying about saints' reliques, with a thousand superstitious fopperies;' and then enumerates those which are used by men of all religions: "1. In seeking to a witch to be holpen against a witch. 2. In using a certain or supposed charme, against an uncertaine or suspected witchcraft. 3. In searching anxiously for the witches signe or token left behinde her in the house under the threshold, in the bed-straw; and to be sure to light upon it, burning every odd ragge, or bone, or feather, that is to be found. 4. In swearing, rayling, threatning, cursing, and banning the witch; as if this were a right way to bewitch the witch from bewitching. 5. In banging and basting, scratching and clawing, to draw blood of the witch. 6. In daring

and defying the witch out of a carnal security and presumptuous temerity."

The following passage is taken from Stephens's Characters, p. 375: “The torments therefore of hot iron and mercilesse scratching nayles be long thought uppon and much threatned (by the females) before attempted. Meanetime she tolerates defiance thorough the wrathfull spittle of matrons, in stead of fuell, or maintenance to her damnable intentions." He goes on- -“Children cannot smile upon her without the hazard of a perpetual wry mouth: a very nobleman's request may be denied more safely than her petitions for butter, milke, and small beere; and a great ladies or queenes name may be lesse doubtfully derided. Her prayers and amen be a charm and a curse: her contemplations and soules delight bee other men's mischiefe: her portion and sutors be her soule and a succubus: her highest adorations beyew-trees, dampish churchyards, and a fayre moonlight: her best preservatives be odde numbers and mightie Tetragramaton."

THE SORCERER, OR MAGICIAN.

A SORCERER or magician, says Grose, differs from a witch in this a witch derives all her power from a compact with the devil: a sorcerer commands him, and the infernal spirits, by his skill in powerful charms and invocations: and also soothes and entices them by fumigations. For the devils are observed to have delicate nostrils, abominating and flying some kinds of stinks: witness the flight of the evil spirit into the remote parts of Egypt, driven by the smell of a fish's liver burned by Tobit. They are also found to be peculiarly fond of certain perfumes: insomuch that Lilly informs us that, one Evans having raised a spirit at the request of Lord Bothwell and Sir Kenelm Digby, and forgotten a suffumiga

It was an article in the creed of popular superstition concerning witches to believe "that, when they are in hold, they must leave their DEVIL." See Holiday's old play of the Marriage of the Arts, 4to. 1630, signat. N. 4. 'Empescher qu'un sorcier," says M. Thiers, "ne sorte du logis où il est, en mettant des balais à la porte de ce logis." Traité des Superstitions, p. 331.

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tion, the spirit, vexed at the disappointment, snatched him out of his circle, and carried him from his house in the Minories into a field near Battersea Causeway.

King James, in his Dæmonologia, says: "The art of sorcery consists in divers forms of circles and conjurations rightly joined together, few or more in number according to the number of persons conjurors (always passing the singular number), according to the qualitie of the circle and form of the apparition. Two principal things cannot well in that errand be wanted: holy water (whereby the devil mocks the Papists), and some present of a living thing unto him. There are likewise certain daies and houres that they observe in this purpose. These things being all ready and prepared, circles are made, triangular, quadrangular, round, double, or single, according to the form of the apparition they crave. But to speake of the diverse formes of the circles, of the innumerable characters and crosses that are within and without, and out-through the same; of the diverse formes of apparitions that the craftie spirit illudes them with, and of all such particulars in that action, I remit it over to many that have busied their heads in describing of the same, as being but curious and altogether unprofitable. And this farre only I touch, that, when the conjured spirit appeares, which will not be while after many circumstances, long prayers and much muttering and murmurings of the conjurers, like a papist prieste despatching a huntting masse-how soone, I say, he appeares, if they have missed one jote of all their rites; or if any of their feete once slyd over the circle, through terror of this fearful apparition, he paies himself at that time, in his owne hand, of that due debt which they ought him and otherwise would have delaied longer to have paied him; I meane, he carries them with him, body and soul.

"If this be not now a just cause to make them weary of these formes of conjuration, I leave it to you to judge upon; considering the longsomeness of the labour, the precise keeping of daies and houres (as I have said), the terribleness of the apparition, and the present peril that they stand in in missing the least circumstance or freite that they ought to observe: and, on the other part, the devill is glad to moove them to a plaine and square dealing with them, as I said before."

"This," Grose observes, "is a pretty accurate description of this mode of conjuration, styled the circular method; but, with all due respect to his Majesty's learning, square and triangular circles are figures not to be found in Euclid or any of the common writers on geometry. But perhaps King James learnt his mathematics from the same system as Doctor Sacheverell, who, in one of his speeches or sermons, made use of the following simile: They concur like parallel lines, meeting in one common centre.'

The difference between a conjuror, a witch, and an enchanter, according to Minshew, in his Dictionary, is as follows: "The conjurer seemeth by praiers and invocations of God's powerful names, to compel the divell to say or doe what he commandeth him. The witch dealeth rather by a friendly and voluntarie conference or agreement between him and her and the divell or familiar, to have his or her turn served, in lieu or stead of blood or other gift offered unto him, especially of his or her soule. And both these differ from inchanters or sorcerers, because the former two have personal conference with the divell, and the other meddles but with medicines and ceremonial formes of words called charmes, without apparition."

Reginald Scot, in his Discourse on Devils and Spirits, p. 72, tells us that, with regard to conjurors, "The circles by which they defend themselves are commonly nine foot in breadth, but the eastern magicians must give seven."

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Melton, in his Astrologaster, p. 16, speaking of conjurors, says: They always observe the time of the moone before they set their figure, and when they have set their figure and spread their circle, first exorcise the wine and water which they sprinkle on their circle, then mumble in an unknown language. Doe they not crosse and exorcise their surplus, their silver wand, gowne, cap, and every instrument they use about their blacke and damnable art? Nay, they crosse the place whereon they stand, because they thinke the devill hath no power to come to it when they have blest it."

The following passage occurs in A Strange Horse-Race, by Thomas Dekker, 1613, signat. D. 3: "He darting an eye upon them, able to confound a thousand conjurers in their own circles (though with a wet finger they could fetch up a little divell)."

In Osborne's Advice to his Son, 8vo. Oxf. 1656, p. 100, speaking of the soldiery, that author says: "They, like the spirits of conjurors, do oftentimes teare their masters and raisers in pieces, for want of other imployment."

I find Lubrican to have been the name of one of these spirits thus raised; in the second part of Dekker's Honest Whore, 1630, is the following:

As for your Irish Lubrican, that spirit

Whom by preposterous charmes thy lust hath raised

In a wrong circle, him Ile damne more blacke

Then any tyrant's soule."

A jealous husband is threatening an Irish servant, with whom he suspects his wife to have played false. In the Witch of Edmonton, 1658, p. 32, Winnifride, as a boy, says:

:

"I'll be no pander to him; and if I finde

Any loose Lubrick 'scapes in him, I'll watch him,
And, at my return, protest I'll shew you all."

The old vulgar ceremonies used in raising the devil, such as making a circle with chalk, setting an old hat in the centre of it, repeating the Lord's Prayer backward, &c. &c., are now altogether obsolete, and seem to be forgotten even amongst our boys.

Mason, in his Anatomie of Sorcerie, 1612, p. 86, ridicules "Inchanters and charmers-they, which by using of certaine conceited words, characters, circles, amulets, and such-like vaine and wicked trumpery (by God's permission) doe worke great marvailes: as namely in causing of sicknesse, as also in curing diseases in men's bodies. And likewise binding some, that they cannot use their naturall powers and faculties, as we see in night-spells; insomuch as some of them doe take in hand to bind the divell himselfe by their inchantments." The following spell is from Herrick's Hesperides, p. 304:

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'Holy water come and bring;

Cast in salt for seasoning;

Set the brush for sprinkling:

1 [“D—n that old firelock, what a clatter he makes; curse him, he 'll never be a conjurer for he wa'nt born dumb."-History of Jack Connor, 1752, i. 233.]