Between the living and the dead by Eva Pocs

The most likely original interpretation of turning into an animal was that
the double of those abducted entered the alternative world. Assuming an
animal form signaled this transfer between levels of existence, and it was
one of the most important physical-double variations of the demonic
witches. Certain cases of transformation into animals could be connected to
werewolf-like witches in the forms of dogs or horses. For example,
according to a document from Szeghalom, witches appearing as dogs took
away the witness at the Christmas festival, a werewolf period (Bekes
County, 1724, in Olah 1886-87, 115).22 At other times they would turn into
dogs or cats while tumbling (1731, in Kazinczy 1885, 3:374),23 like the
priku/ics of the twentieth-century eastern Hungarian legends. (Prikulics is
the Transylvanian term for “werewolf’; compare the Romanian priculici.)
Assuming the form of cats also occurred,24 but in Hungary people who were
turned into animals most frequently became horses; the victim would be
bridled or struck with a bridle. We have numerous documents referring to
victims who were turned into horses, 25 and it must have been a popular
legendary motif throughout Central Europe in this era. Riding or galloping
on the animal alter ego of a transformed human was a characteristic attribute
of European witch beliefs, and remained one of the most characteristic
motifs ofwitch legends (Bihari 1980, 78-79. IX. 1/6).

For additional dog-werewolf references, see 1748, H6dmezovasarhely, in Schram,
Magyarorszagi boszorkanyperek, 1 :343; and 1756, Borosjeno, Arad County, in Andor Komaromy,
Magyarorszagi boszorkanyperek okleveltara, 595, 597.
24. For documentation on people who were transformed into dogs or cats, see, for
example, 1731, Megyasz6, Zemplen County, in Kazinczy, “Megyasz6i boszorkanyok 1731-
ben,” 372; and 1728, Szeged, in Reizner, Szeged tortenete, 402. We have about ten references
to turning into a cat.

Wolves and dogs in Russia

I think I remember reading somewhere in Symbolarium that in Russian folklore (and agreed in some of the links I’ve added in another post) that both cats and dogs are rather ambivalent animals. Makes sense that they’re not only good at warding off pests in whatever manner but also become pests themselves. That the dog is interchangeable with the wolf (reasonably so) and the cat with the bear (for some reason).

The book series Folk Demonology of Polesia might be the most comprehensive book on Slavic folklore to date. The third volume mentions dogs being practically interchangeable with wolves and all three of them so far commonly mention cats and dogs being popular guises of witches, vampires, werewolves and mermaids alike. There’s some specific mention of people being turned into dogs against their will.

Somewhere else, however in English (and Hungarian if you believe Eva Pocs) there is mention of people being turned into cats against their will though I suspect it depends on the informants being surveyed. (There could be more waiting to be unearthed, at least maybe.)

Some considerations on Russian Lore

As somebody who’s been to a lot of Russian (and Ukrainian) language websites, there’s a healthy mention of dog witches as well as people being turned into dogs against their will though it could also be a limited sampling on their part as much as certain Anglophone archivists of Russian lore do. (I do recall at least two documents mentioning people being turned into cats against their will.)

The only ones are I know of are Russian Folk Belief and Between the Living* by Eva Pocs which do mention such characters being turned into cats against their will. Though I could be misremembering things. Though the former’s author mentioned a Slavic distrust of cats at times but from my own experience hanging out at Russian language websites a lot, I do recall one source that describes both cats and dogs as equally demonic and ambivalent in relation to sorcery.

(It would also seem parsimonious that these two would’ve been more interchangeable that one expects.)

There could be sources of people being turned into cats against their will as much as you have stories of people turning into dogs by will waiting to be uncovered though these show their close tie to witchcraft in some manner or another.

*For documentation on people who were transformed into dogs or cats, see, for
example, 1731, Megyasz6, Zemplen County, in Kazinczy, “Megyasz6i boszorkanyok 1731-ben,” 372; and 1728, Szeged, in Reizner, Szeged tortenete, 402. We have about ten references to turning into a cat. (Between The Living)

East European witches via Google Books

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica – Volume 37 – Page 316

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=ZB3XAAAAMAAJ
1991 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
The dual figure of the human and demonic werewolf was the main determinant of the living and dead, as well as “two-souled” figures of the Romanian, Serbian (and Ukrainian) witches. The other prominent ingredient was the belief that those who were, … They are mostly shepherds (in the witchcraft trials, mainly cowherds), and as such, are men, who, in the form of a wolf or dog, attack the “hostila” (neighbouring) flock. The Hungarian witch, who, in the form of a wolf, dog, or snake, …

Harvard Ukrainian Studies – Page 313

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=5jkMAQAAMAAJ
1997 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Tereshka elaborated on his evil deeds, confessing that he had bewitched people with spells involving enchanted salt sprinkled over a black dog at crossroads, causing potential clients to fall ill and then to pay him for his healing services. Several more encounters with the torturers led Tereshka to confess that his wife, Olenka, had become his partner in witchcraft (vedovstvo). After extensive torture and fully elaborated 30 confessions, Olenka and Tereshka were both executed on July …

Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the Western tradition – Volume 4 – Page 1140

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=LyoZAQAAIAAJ
Richard M. Golden – 2006 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Such a dog was born only once in three generations and was called iarchuk, but the owner of this valuable dog had to take care when it was a puppy because local witches would try to steal and kill it. Some people, such as the seventh son of a seventh son, could also resist witchcraft. Such plants as poppies, hemp, and nettles were supposed to protect a house from witches. Ukrainian witches regularly gathered for Sabbats. Prior to their journey, they had to come to the house of a …

Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine …, Volume 43

WITCHCRAFT.

By the author of “Astrology, Divination, and Co-Incidence,” “Faith-Healing and Kindred Phenomena,” etc.

The art is old and new, for verily
All ages have been taught the matter.

ISON says that among all the poets who deal with fairies, witches, magicians, demons, and departed spirits, the English are much the best, “and among the English Shakspere has in- comparably excelled all others. There is something so wild and yet so solemn in his speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary persons, tha we cannot forbear thinking them natural, . . and must confess, if there are such beings in th world, it looks highly probable that they would talk and act as he has represented them.”

As Addison saw his fatal day thirty years before Goethe’s natal star arose, he could not compare the prince of German poets with others; but if the ruling sentiment of modern critics may be accepted, Shakspere’s ghosts and witches still maintain their superiority. These are “the secret, black, and midnight hags” that brewed the charm for Duncan’s murder, and the familiar but ever awe-inspiring ghost of Hamlet’s father:

I am thy father’s spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night.

But the fancies of poets can give no help to him who deals with one of the darkest tragedies of humanity, the only stain on the ermine of Sir Matthew Hale,—whose fame without it would rival that of Daniel for wisdom, as it does for integrity,–and the chief stigma upon the early history of New England. Nor is witchcraft of the past only: for by many theologians it is believed to reappear in modern spiritualism, and by a multitude of Christians to be a

GOETHE.

reality, because, as they suppose, it is plainly asserted in the sacred Scriptures; and its baleful spell still holds four fifths of the fifteen hundred millions of the human race “fast in its slavish chains.”

DEFINITION.

FROM the earliest ages religions, true and false, claimed divine aid, and their production of effects by other than natural causes was considered by all except avowed unbelievers to be lawful. The supernatural is occult; but the latter word is used only to apply to the illegitimate, and to the imaginary sciences of the middle ages. As the terms at first employed were descriptive, rather than definitive, they came naturally to be used promiscuously, one word sometimes standing for everything preternatural exclusive of religion, and at others for a single form of such action. In an English book dating from the middle of the sixteenth century most of these ancient terms are included in a single sentence: “Besides the art magyck, sortilege, physnomye, palmestrye, alcumye, necromancye, chiromancy, geomancy, and witchery, that was taught there also.” (Bale, “English Votaries.”)

Magic, applied by the Greeks to the hereditary caste of priests in Persia, still stands in the East for an incongruous collection of superstitious beliefs and rites, having nothing in common except the claim of abnormal origin and effects. Astrology, divination, demonology, soothsaying, sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy, enchantment, and many other systems are sometimes included in magic, but each term is also employed separately to stand for the whole mass of confused beliefs which, outside of the sphere of recognized religion, attempt to surpass the limitations of nature. For this reason the title of a work on this subject seldom indicates its scope.

[graphic]
[graphic]
But witchcraft has been restricted by usage and civil and ecclesiastical law until it signifies a voluntary compact between the devil, the party of the first part, and a human being, male or female, wizard or witch, the party of the second part,-that he, the devil, will perform whatever the person may request. The essential element in witchcraft as an offense against religion and civil law is the voluntary nature of the compact. Possession by the devil against the will, or without the consent of the subject, elongs to a radically distinct idea. The sixth chapter of Lord Coke’s “Third Institute” concisely defines a witch in these words: “A witch is a person which hath conference with the devil, to consult with him to do some act.” English laws in 1655 define witchcraft as “Covenant with a familiar spirit, to be punished with death.”

CURRENT BELIEF.

WITCHCRAFT is at the present time believed in by a majority of the citizens of the United States. The larger number of immigrants from the continent of Europe are more or less in fear of such powers. To these must be added no inconsiderable proportion of persons of English and Scotch descent; for a strong vein of superstition is discernible in many Irish, Scotch, and some English, whose “folk-lore,” diffused in nursery tales and neighborhood gossip, has entwined itself strongly about the fibers of spontaneous, subconscious mental imagery. Among the more ignorant members of the Catholic Church of every nationality the belief produces a mysterious dread, against which men and women cross themselves, and resort to various rites supposed to be efficacious. Where colonies of immigrants have remained isolated, retaining the use of their own language, the influence of witchcraft is more easily traced. The interior of Pennsylvania affords betterillustrations of this, and on a larger scale, than any other State. It has been but two or three years since suit was brought by a man against his mother, in one of the counties of Pennsylvania, to recover damages for a dog which he charged her with having killed by witchcraft; and he not only brought suit, but obtained judgment from a justice of the peace. Various witnesses testified as to their experiences in witchcraft, and only one said that he had never had a friend or relative who was bewitched. In divers villages in Pennsylvania, some of them in the Dunkard settlement, are women who are supposed to be witches. Some are shrewd enough not to apply their arts for Vol. XLIII.–52.

strangers, but to those whom they know, as stated in an article in the New York “Sun” some years ago, they will sell charms to ward off lightning from buildings, dry up the wells of the enemies of applicants, force cows to give bloody milk, cause sickness in the family, destroy beauty, separate man and wife, and reunite estranged lovers. In the interior parts of the Southern States, where a large proportion of the white population cannot read, and there is little admixture of society, there are “witch-doctors,” who, assuming that all disease is caused by witches, secure thriving practice in counteracting their influence. The Philadelphia “Times,” on the authority of a reputable correspondent, who gives many facts to sustain his representations, says: “For generations the poor whites have believed in witches, and the belief is deepseated and incurable.” * The African population brought this belief from the Dark Continent, and it persists among them to this day, though the progress of religion and education is doing something to check it. I have recently noted in various parts of the United States more than fifty suits instituted by persons against those who they claimed had bewitched them; but under existing laws the accused could not be prosecuted except where money had been obtained under false pretenses, or overt acts of crime had been suggested or committed. During pedestrian tours in New England, in various parts of the West, and in every Southern State, I have frequently stayed for the night at the houses of poor farmers, laborers, fishermen, and trappers. In such journeys I have invariably listened to the tales of the neighborhood, stimulating them by suggestion, and have found the belief in witchcraft cropping out in the oldest towns in New England, sometimes within the very shadow of the buildings where a learned ministry has existed from the settlement of the country, and public schools have furnished means of education to all classes. The horseshoes seen in nearly every county, and often in every township, upon the houses of persons, suggested the old horseshoe beneath which Lord Nelson, who had long kept it nailed to the mast of the Victory, received his deathwound at Trafalgar. In Canada the belief is more prevalent than in any part of the United States, except the interior of Pennsylvania and the South. In the French sections, exclusive of the educated,—a relatively small number,-the belief, if not universal, is widely diffused. But it is by no means confined to Canadians of French extraction. Until within a few years the descendants of the English and Scotch in many parts of British America were more widely separated from each other and from the progress of modern civilization than the inhabitants of the United States, or the settlers of the more recently populated continent of Australia, making due allowance for certain sections of New Zealand and Tasmania. In all these regions the educated generally dismiss it as a mystery, or repudiate it as an ancient superstition. Nevertheless it is often found in the more isolated communities, hamlets, and rural districts, liable on slight provocation to manifest itself in superstitious fears, insinuations, and accusations. In the West Indies this belief prevails among the negroes, and is not unknown among the more ignorant whites. Of South America and Mexico travelers, missionaries, and foreign residents bring similar accounts. In Italy those of the people who are not Protestants or free-thinkers generally believe in the possibility of witchcraft, and to the peasants it is a living reality. Nor are all who reject the Catholic Church or avow irreligion free from credulity as regards occult influences. Modern Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, and the neighboring States abound in similar superstitions. The common people of Hungary and Bohemia fear witchcraft, and it still dominates a considerable part of the rural population and the allied classes of Germany, and particularly of Austria. French peasants are afraid of evil eyes, warlocks, ghosts, spells, omens, enchantments, and witches; not in every part of the country, but in the more primitive sections. In France their persistence is promoted by dialects, kinship,and other influences peculiar to the country. It has been but a few years since the world was shocked by the burning of an old woman as a witch in the district of Sologne, cupidity and superstition leading to the crime. Having softening of the brain, she did and said strange things, from which her children concluded that she was a witch and determined to burn her to death. When the time decided upon arrived, they sent for a priest, who confessed her. Soon after his departure her daughter screamed, “It is greatly borne upon me that now is the time to kill the hag; if we delay she may commit a sin in thought or deed, and the confession will go for nothing.” As she burned, two of her three children cried, “Aroint thee, witch !” I do not refer to this to intimate that the French people sympathize with such things, for all France was filled with horror, and the murderers were brought to justice, but as an illustration of the persistence of the belief. In Norway, Sweden, and Denmark witchcraft still throws a spell over many of the sailors, fishermen, and solitary farmers. In Lapland sorcerers and witches abound, the witches

[graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic]
claiming the power of stilling the wind and causing the rain to cease. It has been a comparatively short time since English seamen trading in Archangel were in the habit of landing and buying a fair wind from the witches. But it is in Russia that the popular belief more generally resembles that of the whole world many centuries ago. Ralston, in “Songs of the Russian People,” states: “But a little time ago every Russian village had its wizard, almost as a matter of course, and to this day it is said there is not a hamlet in the Ukraine that is not reported to keep its witch.” When I was traveling in the interior of that country, accompanied by a master of the Russian language, I found that the peasants still believe that witches and wizards can steal the dew and the rain, send whirlwinds, hide the moon and the stars, and fly through the air on brooms and tongs. Their chief meetings take place three times a year, on “bald hills,” and there are thousands of stories of witches going up chimneys and flying through the air; an analogy exists between these and the ancient German legends on the same subject. They chalk crosses on their huts and windows, hang up stove-rakes for protection, tie knots, and wear amulets. Plagues in men and cattle are popularly attributed to witches. Epileptics, and those afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance, are supposed to be bewitched. According to popular belief in Russia, witches assume the form of dogs and cats and owls; but the shape they like best is that of a magpie. The Metropolitan Alexis solemnly cursed that bird, “on account of the bad behavior of the witches who have assumed its plumage.” In Scotland, Ireland, and England the belief in witchcraft lingers, and only those who are at the pains to inquire how far it extends, and how strong the impression is, can form an adequate idea of either.

LOOKING BACKWARD.

IT is important to notice how late in the Christian era individual belief, popular excitements, and judicial proceedings have been sufficiently conspicuous for permanent record.

In “Reports of Trials for Murder by Poisoning,” by Browne, a barrister atlaw, and Stewart, senior assistant in the laboratory of St. Thomas’s Hospital, a standard work for physicians, chemists, and jurists, published in London in 1883. I find the case of Dove; and that in the said trial various references were made to the prevalence of the belief in witchcraft among persons of the prisoner’s class. It appears from the evidence that his interviews with the witch-man on the subjects of lost cattle, removing strange noises from his house, the bewitching of his

Russian Folk Belief – Page 105

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0765630885
Linda J. Ivanits – 1989 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
for example, a certain type of milkweed was collected on May 9 (St. Nicholas) for use against sorcery.12 Throughout Russia peasants believed that one good backhand stroke with a fist or with an axle destroyed a witch or sorcerer; it was usually specified that one must never strike twice (Narrative 8 1).13 In addition … The first-born pup of a dog giving birth for the first time was especially potent medicine, and for this reason witches allegedly made every effort to steal such a pup at birth.

Children’s Literature Review – Volume 40 – Page 6

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=2OtkAAAAMAAJ
1996 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Sent to borrow needle and thread from a neighbor, little Sasha wanders into the home of Bony- Legs (Baba Yaga, the Russian witch whose house stands on chicken legs) and is saved from being the witch’s dinner when the dog, cat, and gate repay Sasha’s kindness and help her escape. Although this is intended (and nicely gauged) for the beginning independent reader, it’s also a good choice for reading aloud to younger children. Q3 AN INSECT’S BODY (1984) Kirkus Reviews …
Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0820467693
Andreas Johns – 2004 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale Andreas Johns. CHAPTER FIVE The Ambiguous … The Dragon Mother Folktales about dragon slayers are widespread in Europe, and AT 300 (The Dragon Slayer) is popular in Russia as well. Baba Yaga appears ambiguously … European tradition area. The tale often begins with the hero’s birth: He and his brothers are born when the tsarina, a servant woman, and an animal (a cow, cat, dog, or bull) eat 1 The East Slavic tale …

The Songs of the Russian People: As Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and …
By William Ralston Shedden Ralston
About this book

Terms of Service

387 – 391

Page images
PDF
EPUB
These are to keep off witches, who fear every symbol of the Thunder-god’s hammer, as, for instance, the sallow, the aspen-stake, and the fern. If any one takes a willow or aspen-twig with him to matins on Easter day, say the peasants in the Poltava Government, and looks at the congregation through it, he will see all the wizards and witches among them turned upside down4. In the Chernigof Government it is believed that if, on the last day of the Mtislyanitsa any one takes a piece of cheese, wraps it up, and cariies it about with him during the whole of Lent, then on Easter eve the witches of his village will appear to him, and ask for cheese.

To a wizard who dealt in natizul, or amulets, [uzui = ties; iizd = a knot; fizW «= to tighten], was given in old times the names of Xifnznil’ or IzoViiil: These amulets generally consisted of various materials, such as herbs, roots, embers, salt, bats’ wings, heads and skins of snakes, etc., which were tied up in small packets, and hung round the neck. Some* times a spell was written on a piece of paper which was attached to the pectoral cross worn by Russians. After the introduction of Christianity, incense [A/Vow] entered so largely into the composition of these amulets that they received from it the general designation of hhhmhi. These amulets ore still in great request among the peasants, especially among those who have to undertake long and hazardous journeys. In olden days it seems to have lieen customary to

• AfunjWf, 1\ V. S. in. vs.

* »

take young children to a-witch, who provided them with suitable amulets.

The efficacy of these tied or knotted amulets depended to a great extent upon the magical force of their knots. To these knots frequent reference is made in the spells. Here is one, for instance, intended to guarantee its employer against all risk of being shot:—

“I attach five knots to each hostile, infidel shooter, over arquebuses, bows, and Jill manner of warlike weapons. Do ye, O knots, bar the shooter from every road and way, lock fast every arquebuse, entangle every bow, involve all warlike weapons, so that the shooters may not reach me with their arquebuses, nor may their arrows attain to me, nor their warlike weapons do me hurt. In my knots lies hid the mighty strength of snakes—from the twelve-headed snake5.” “With such a spell as this it was supposed that the insurgent chief, Stenka llazin, had rendered himself proof against shot and steel.

Sometimes the .amulet is merely a knotted thread. A skein of red wool wound round the anus and legs is supposed to ward off agues and fevers; and nine skeins, fastened round a child’s neck are deemed a preservative against scarlatina. In the Tver Government a bag called ryrizlo is fastened round the neck of the cow which walks before the rest of a herd, in order to keep off wolves. Its force binds the maw of the wild licust [ryuziif = to bind]. In accordance with a similar idea, a padlock is earned three times round a herd of horses, before they are allowed to go afield in the spring, he who carries it locking and unlocking it as he goes, while these magical words are being uttered, “I lock from my herd the mouths of the grey wolves with this steel lock.” After the third round the padlock is finally locked, and then, when the horses have gone off, it is hidden away somewhere till late in the autumn, when the time comes for the herd to return to winter quarters. In this case the “firm word” of the spell is supposed to lock up tho mouths of the wolves. The Bulgarians have a similar method of protecting their cattle against wild beasts. A woman takes a needle and thread after dark, and sews together the skirt of her dress. A child asks her what she is doing, and she tells him she is sewing up the ears, eyes, and jaws of the wolves, so that they may not hear, see, or bite the sheep, goats, pigs, and calves. In the Smolensk. Government, wlien cattle are being driven afield on St. George’s day, the following spell is used :—

* Afannsicf. P. V. S. nr. ttU

“Deaf man, deaf man, dost thou hear us?” “I hear not.”

“God grant that tho wolf may not hear our cattle 1″ Cripple, cripple, canst thou catch us?”

“I cannot catch.”

“God grant that the wolf may not catch our

cattle!” “Blind man, blind man, dost thou see us?”

[ocr errors]
“God grant that the wolf may not see our cattle” V*

Sometimes the amulet locks away hurtful things from a man’s body. A net, from its affluence of knots, was always considered very efficacious against sorcerers; and therefore, in some places, when a bride is being dressed in her wedding attire, a fishingnet is flung oyer her, to keep her out of harm’s way. With a similar intention the bridegroom and his companions arc often girt with pieces of net, or at least with tight-drawn girdles, for before a wizard can begin to injure them he must undo all the knots in the net, or take off the girdles. The girdle, with which the idea of a snake is frequently connected, has some mystic sympathy with its wearer, and therefore the peasants in some parts believe, that if a sick man’s girdle be taken off, and thrown on the highway, whoever pieks it up and puts it on will have its former wearer’s diseases transferred to himself7. The knotted surface of a harrow (made of interwoven branches) gives it great power against witchcraft. The best way to catch a witch is to hide under a harrow, and angle for her with a bridle.

Russian cows have always been as liable as those of other countries to be drained of their milk by witches. During the Christmas Scyatki the peasants object to letting their cattle leave the cow-sheds, for fear of attacks from the powers of darkness. On the 3rd of January the witches return from their Sabbath in a state of ravenous hunger, and are to be debarred from the cow-sheds only by means of a church taper attached to the doors. Crosses chalked upon the eve of the Epiphany, arc also very useful. On St. Vlas’s [Blasius’s] day [Feb. 11] it is necessary to sprinkle the flocks and herds with holy water, for at that time, in Little-Russia at least, werewolves, in the shape of dogs and black cats, suck the cows, mares, and ewes, and slaughter their male companions. On St. George’s day in April, and agaia during “NVhitsun and Trinity weeks, the danger is no less to be dreaded. At Midsummer bonfires are made of nettles, etc., and the horned cattle are driven through the flame, in order to keep off wizards and witches, who are then ravenous after milk. On the 30th of July witches frequently milk cows to death, dying themselves afterwards of a surfeit.

‘A similar ui-liiT i> .-aid to Ll- olill prevalent in England.

A witch can milk a cow from a great distance. In order to do so she sticks a knife into a plough, a post, or a tree: the milk trickles along the edge of the knife, and continues to do so till the cow’s udder is emptied. On the eves of St. George’s day, WhitSunday, and Midsummer day, witches go out at night without clothing, and cut chips from the doors and gates of farmyards. These they boil in a milk-pail, and so charm away the milk from those farms. Careful housewives are in the habit of examining their doors, and of smearing any new gashes they find in them with mud, which frustrates the plans of the milk-stealers. In such cases the witches climb the wooden crosses by the wayside and cut chips from them, or lav their hands on stray wooden wedges. These they stick into a post in the cattle-sh^ds, and

Studies in Russia
By Augustus John Cuthbert Hare
About this book

Terms of Service

156 – 160

Page images
PDF
EPUB
He will not allow the forest-spirit to play pranks in the garden, nor witches to injure the cows. He sympathises with the joys and sorrows of the house to which he is attached. When any member of the family dies, he may be heard (like the Banshee) wailing at night; when the head of the family is about to die, the Domovoy forebodes the sad event by sighing, weeping, or sitting at his work with his cap pulled over his eyes. Before an outbreak of war, fire, or pestilence, the Domovoys go out from a village, and may be heard lamenting in the meadows. When any misfortune is impending over a family, the Domovoy gives warning of it by knocking, by riding at night on the horses till they are completely exhausted, and by making the watchdogs dig holes in the courtyard, and go howling through the village. And he often rouses the head of the family from his sleep at night when the house is threatened with fire or robbery.

‘Each Domovoy has his own favourite colour, and it is important for the family to try and get all their cattle, poultry, dogs, and cats of this hue. In order to find out what it is, the Orel peasants take a piece of cake on Easter Sunday, wrap it in a rag, and hang it up in a stable. At the end of six weeks they look to see of what colour the maggots are which are in it. That is the colour which the Domovoy likes. In the governments of Yaroslaf and Nijegorod the Domovoy takes a fancy to those horses and cows only which are of the colour of his own hide.’ — Ralston, ‘Songs of the Russian People.’

If a family change their residence, there is considerable apprehension lest it should not be agreeable to the Domovoy. So, exactly at noon, after the furniture has been removed, the oldest woman in the family takes a new jar, and rakes into it the embers left in the stove and carries them in state to the new house, covered with a clean cloth. At the door stand the master and mistress of the house, with bread and salt. The old woman smites upon the doorposts and asks if the visitors are welcome. Then the hosts bow and say, ‘Welcome, Grandfather Domovoy, to the new house.’ Upon this, taking the towel from her jar, the old woman shakes it towards the four corners of the room, empties the ashes into the stove, breaks the jar, and buries its fragments under the floor.

A tragic part in Russian history has been played by the island fortress of Schliisselburg, with its low yellow bastion towers; and, as in the case of all the scenes of royal or imperial tragedies, permission to visit it is very rarely accorded, and then only imperfectly. Here, in 1741, the unfortunate young Emperor Ivan VI., grandson of Ivan V., and greatnephew of Peter the Great, was imprisoned in the revolution which placed his cousin Elizabeth upon the throne.

‘The wretched captive, lately the envied emperor of a quarter of the globe, was lodged (for sixteen years) in a casemate of the fortress, the very loophole of which was immediately bricked up. He was never brought out into the open air, and no ray of heaven ever visited his eyes. In this subterranean vault it was necessary to keep a lamp always burning; and as no clock was either to be seen or heard, Ivan knew no difference between day and night. His interior guard, a captain and a lieutenant, were shut up with him ; and there was a time when they did not dare to speak to him, not so much as to answer the simplest question.’— Tooke’s ‘Life of Catherine II.’

In 1762, after the accession of Catherine II., an attempt of one Vassili Mirovitch (second lieutenant of the garrison in the town of Schliisselburg) to get possession of the person of Ivan VI., in the hope of recovering through him some family estates which had been confiscated, resulted in the cruel death of the prince.

‘The inner guard placed over the imperial prisoner consisted of two officers, Captain Vlassief and Lieutenant Tschekin, who slept with him in his cell. These had a discretionary order signed by the empress, by which they were enjoined to put the unhappy prince to death, on any insurrection that might be made in his favour, on the presumption that it could not otherwise be quelled.

‘The door of Ivan’s prison opened under a sort of low arcade, which, together with it, forms the thickness of the castle-wall within the ramparts. In this arcade, or corridor, eight soldiers usually kept guard, as well on his account, as because the several vaults on a line with this contain stores of various kinds for the use of the fortress.

. . . ‘Having wounded and secured the governor, and being arrived at the corridor into which the door of Ivan’s chamber opened, Mirovitch advanced furiously at the head of his troop, and attacked the handful of soldiers who guarded Prince Ivan. He was received with spirit by the guard, who quickly repulsed him. He immediately ordered his men to fire upon them, which they did. The sentinels returned their fire, when the conspirators were obliged to retire, though neither on one side nor the other was there a single man killed, or even wounded in the slightest degree.

‘The soldiers of Mirovitch, surprised at the resistance they met, showed signs of an inclination to retreat. Their chief withheld them; but they insisted on his showing them the order which he said he had received from St. Petersburg. He directly drew from his pocket and read to them a forged decree of the senate, recalling Prince Ivan to the throne, and excluding Catherine from it, because she was gone into Livonia to marry Count Poniatofsky. The ignorant and credulous soldiers implicitly gave credit to the decree, and again put themselves in order to obey him. A piece of artillery was now brought from the ramparts to Mirovitch, who himself pointed it at the door of the dungeon, and was preparing to batter the place; but at that instant the door opened, and he entered, unmolested, with all his suite.

‘The officers, Vlassief and Tschekin, commanders of the guard which was set on the prince, were shut up with him, and had called out to the sentinels to fire. But, on seeing this formidable preparation, and hearing Mirovitch give orders to beat in the door, they thought it expedient to take counsel together. . . . On this consultation, they came to the dreadful resolution of assassinating the unfortunate captive, over whose life they were to watch.

‘At the noise of the firing, Ivan had awoke ; and, hearing the cries and the threats of his guards, he conjured them to spare his miserable life. But, on seeing these barbarians had no regard to his prayers, he found new force in his despair ; and, though naked, defended himself for a considerable time. Having his right hand pierced through and his body covered with wounds, he seized the sword from one of the monsters, and broke it; but while he was struggling to get the piece out of his hand, the other stabbed him from behind, and threw him down. He who had lost his sword now plunged his bayonet into his body, and, several times repeating his blow, under these strokes the unhappy prince expired.

‘They then opened the door, and showed Mirovitch at once the bleeding body of the murdered prince, and the order by which they were authorised to put him to death, if any attempt should be made to convey him away.’1—Tooke’s ‘Life of Catherine II.’

It was at Old Ladoga near Schliisselburg that the Tsarilsa Eudoxia, the discarded first wife of Peter the Great, and mother of his son Alexis, was imprisoned in 1718, being only released from captivity on the accession of her grandson Peter II.

Our longest excursion from S. Petersburg was that to Imatra in Finland, for which at least three days are necessary. It is quite worth while, not so much from any beauty of scenery, but from the glimpse it gives of the Finns, though to the eye of a stranger they have little now to distinguish them from ordinary Russians.

Finland, the Fen-land, Seiomen maa, is a vast land of lakes and granite rocks. It is about as large as the whole of France, and has altogether about half as many inhabitants as London—a proportion of seven to the square mile. In Eastern Finland,.’the Land of a Thousand Lakes,’ more than half the country is occupied by stony basins of clear water, to which the rivers are only connecting links. Northern Finland has little vegetation except moss and lichen, and all over the rest of the country are vast desolate districts. Finland is twelve times less populous in proportion than France, even three times less populous in proportion than Russia itself.

1 Ivan was buried in the monastery of Titschina near S. Petersburg. The rest of the family of Brunswick—Catherine, Elizabeth, Peter, and Alexis, children of the Regent Anne by Anthony Ulric, Duke of Brunswick, released from imprisonment under Catherine II., ail died at Gorsens.

Finland is the only European state, except Hungary, which has preserved the name of a nation not Aryan. Its people, called Chouds in the Slavonic Chronicles, preserve, at least in the north, their traditions and cultivate their language, which is Oriental, and nearly related to Hungarian. In the south they are becoming more amalgamated with the Russians. Of Mongolian race, they are the earliest inhabitants with whose history we are acquainted in the north of Russia, and are the natural inhabitants of the soil of S. Petersburg. Possibly they are the red-haired nation living in wooden cities, mentioned by Herodotus as lying to the north of his Sarmatians. In the days of the English Alfred, the Finns had a great city at Perm, with a gilt female idol, whom they worshipped; and by means of the two rivers Volga and Tetchora, they carried on a great trade with the Caspian, the people of Igur, or Bukhara, and India. The Aurea Venus of Perm was mentioned by Russian chroniclers under the name of Saliotta Baba—the golden old woman. After the Asiatic hordes had overrun Southern Russia, the Finns were driven out of their original settlements by the Bulgarians, and in their turn drove out the Lapps, who were compelled to take refuge in the extreme north. The Finns continued to be idolaters—worshipping Ukko, the god of air and thunder ; Tapio, the god of forests; Akti, the god of lakes and streams; and Tuoni, the god of -fire—till the twelfth century, when Eric IX. of Sweden landed on the west coast with an army and with S. Henry, an Englishman, the first bishop and martyr of Finland, and conquered the country, physically and spiritually. The Swedes governed Finland as Sweden was governed, and gave the Finns a representation in the Swedish Diet. Having been Catholic

Through Russia on a Mustang
By Thomas Stevens
About this book

Terms of Service

288 – 292

Page images
PDF
EPUB
getting matters curiously muddled. Thus the Prophet Elias has succeeded to the office of Perun, the ancient god of thunder. St. Elias is now the Russian peasants’ ” clerk of the weather.” He it is who gives or withholds the rain necessary to the growing of their crops. And when it thunders and lightens, it is St. Elias driving in his chariot across the heavens.

A Russian peasant will not harm a pigeon, nor would he think of eating one, even if suffering from want of food. AH through Russia, and particularly in the lower forest zone south of Moscow, the country is full of pigeons, that enjoy complete immunity from molestation. In the country they are as tame as the semi-, domestic pigeons owned by breeders in American cities.

The pigeon has always been a sacred bird in Russia. In the old pagan times it was consecrated to Perun, the god of thunder, just mentioned. When the missionaries of the Cross invaded the country and prevailed against Perun and his associates, the lucky pigeon lost nothing of its sacred character by the new order of things. The converts, by some occult process of reasoning, came to associate it with their idea of the Third Person of the Trinity. The sacred character of the pigeon, like the office of ” weather clerk,” has been brought over from the old religion to the new and consecrated to the Third Person of the Trinity, which the majority of the peasants think to be St. Nicholas.

Readers will remember stories that have occasionally reached us from Russia of atrocities committed byfanatical peasants in the villages of the interior. On one occasion the burning of a poor old woman startled the Western World and taxed the credulity of the newspaper-reading public. Then a man or woman was buried alive; and we heard of a woman severely mangled by a wolf while rescuing a child from attack, left to perish in an out-house because no moujik would admit her into his house. On this horseback ride, which put me for several weeks in contact with the peasantry, I managed to pick up more or less information concerning their peculiar superstitions.

Although the peasants have certainly advanced a step or two in knowledge and understanding during the thirty years since their emancipation, the powers of darkness still hold well-nigh undisputed sway over the minds of a majority of the rural population of Russia. Ignorance links arms with superstition, and the two revel in the interior villages whenever the normal apathy of the moujik brain is disturbed by fear or suspicion. Though he is sitting on the threshold of the twentieth century, and the humblest tillers of the soil in lands not far from him learned years ago that the world they live in is a planet revolving around the sun, the moujik still thinks that it rests on the backs of three whales, or monster turtles, in the ocean.

No limit exists to the absurdities that find expression in the beliefs and superstitions of such a people. The women and girls, of course, are the most superstitious. Unreasoning faith makes them tenaciously loyal to their old pagan traditions. In Little Russia it was the rather uncomplimentary lot of myself and companion to come daily under the suspicion of being , the Evil One, Antichrist, the “Cattle Plague,” or other malignant spirit in disguise.

In many of the postayali dvors of Little Russia a young peasant woman performs the functions of hostler. One of the small diversions of the day’s ride would be to speculate on the form these manifestations of fear would assume in the next girl hostler. There was nothing fantastic about our appearance; we were simply strange horsemen in a country where strangers are rare, and were dressed differently from anybody they had ever seen.

The consternation of the girl on opening the tall gate in response to our summons, and suddenly finding herself in the presence of a pair of the supernatural beings of the papular witchcraft, often caused us to laugh outright, and always provoked a smile. A wild sort of fear came into her eyes, and she would shrink behind the gate. The first impulse would be to make the sign of the Cross, but fearful lest we, being Antichrists, might take offense at this, she would wait until we had passed in, when, fancying herself unnoticed, the holy symbol would be furtively and rapidly mad’..

This sort of girl would be rooted to the spot with fear. Other girls, of more robust intellects, occasionally took to their heels, scampering away into the house like wild creatures. During our stay these superstitious damsels would be in an exceedingly uncomfortable frame of mind. Fearful of coming near us, they were equally fearful lest their all too evident reluctance to serve us might give offense and cause us maliciously to ” wither their souls,” or bring them other evil fortune. As an occasional phenomenon, we would find a girl who would be neither afraid of us nor of submitting to the camera.

The Russian peasants still believe in the agency of witchcraft and sorcery, and when visited by an epidemic, such as the smallpox, cholera, or cattle plague, a stranger appearing in their midst alone is sure to be regarded with suspicion. And if the stranger happens to be a “tall, shaggy old man” or a “withered old woman with flashing eyes,” or otherwise resembles the creatures of the popular superstition who are associated with these malignant maladies, the fanatical peasants would not hesitate to bury the unfortunate wretch alive.

On the base of a memorial to Czar Nicholas, in St. Petersburg, is portrayed a scene in which the Czar quells a tumult among the peasants by raising his arm in anger. It depicts an actual occurrence of his reign in the streets of St. Petersburg, at the time of the cholera, when the moujiks rose in tumult against the police because they refused to arrest persons who had been seen “carrying cholera powder into a house” for the purpose of spreading the disease.

Certain curious rites are still faithfully practiced in many Russian villages to ward off the “cattle plague,” which the moujiks believe to wander about the country in human form. Among the Malo Russians the cattle plague is an old woman who wears red boots, and can walk on the water. Hence an old hag-like woman who should turn up in a Russian village in red boots would, especially in time of an epidemic, be in danger of her life. Stories are current among the people of moujiks who unwittingly gave a night’s lodging to this weird creature, and in the morning every member of the family was dead.

In some districts remedial measures are periodically taken against a visitation of the murrain. The cattle are all driven into the village, and a big circle is made around it with a plow, which is dragged by the oldest woman in the community. All the female villagers follow in procession behind the plow, carrying ikons, chanting weird incantations, and beating tin pans and cooking vessels. One old woman bestrides a broom a la witch, and a widow, wearing nothing but a horse-collar around her neck, keeps pace with the one who is dragging the plow. If a dog or a cat, frightened by the noise, rushes out, it is immediately seized and killed, on the supposition that it is the cattle plague in disguise, trying to escape.

In other districts casting a black cock alive into a bonfire at the end of certain ceremonies is believed to be efficacious in warding off many contagious diseases. Bonfires are built in the village, and young women in night-dresses drag a plow and carry a holy picture, with much unearthly screeching, after which the unfortunate rooster is cast into the flames. In some villages, when a visit of the cattle plague is to be dreaded, if a stray cow happens to be found among the herd, it is burned alive, as the peasants believe that the “cattle death” has thus assumed the form of a cow to escape detection.

One of the most curious and widespread beliefs of the peasants is that every house contains a domovoi or house-spirit. Russian peasants catch glimpses of the domovoi about as often as Americans see ghosts, but they all believe in his existence. The domovoi is described as a little old man, no bigger than a five

Tudor dogs via Google Books

(Dogs owned by the nobility are an exception)

English Demonology and Renaissance Drama: The Politics of Fear

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=yHvNOFoskFkC
Richard William Grinnell – 1992 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
And though there has been some critical debate regarding the level of responsibility that ought to be given to the devil-Dog in causing the murder, I agree with Corbin and Sedge that the dog’s intervention only “serves to confirm Frank’s hidden impulses” rather than acting as an independent agent of responsibility (240).7 The dog serves only to make explicit the connection to damnation that Thorney himself has invoked throughout the play when discussing the crime of adultery.

Shakespeare’s Demonology: A Dictionary – Page 111

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1780936184
Marion Gibson, ‎Jo Ann Esra – 2014 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Shakespeare’s references to hell are many, so that only some of those with particularly noteworthy demonological aspects are discussed here. Some are amusing, though disturbing: ‘our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil’ says Jessica in MerV (2.03.2), linking her Jewish father as well as her Christian servant and herself with the devil. But most are deeply threatening. Hell-hounds, for example, were supernatural dog apparitions, often presaging death. Possibly related to Cerberus, …

Salem Witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=048614545X
Charles W. Upham – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
In early life, he was very much devoted to the science of magic, and was a strenuous supporter of demonology and witchcraft. In the course of his studies and meditations, … spirit in the similitude of a black dog”; and that, when the time of his death drew near, “he took off the enchanted collar from the dog’s neck, and sent him away with these terms, ‘Get thee hence, thou cursed beast, which hast utterly destroyed me’: neither was the dog ever seen after.” Butler, in his “Hudibras,” has not …

New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology: Witchcraft in …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0815336721
Brian P. Levack – 2001 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Or were the witches discredited in parliamentarian eyes, having heen saved hy the efforts of the king and the Laudian hishops? Whether or not Hopkins knew of Rohinson’s use of the greyhound motif, his own story stars a dog in a rather different role. In Rohinson’s story, the greyhound, too, was a witch; Hopkins sets up a neater, less amhiguous opposition hetween kitten and dog, where the dog is not only viuim, hut silent wimess to the demon’s presence hy her unnatural hehavior (the …

The History of Witchcraft and Demonology – Page 103

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1317832671
Montague Summers – 2014 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Manlius (1590), in the report of his conversation with Melanchthon, quotes the latter as having said: “He [Faust] had a dog with him, which was the devil.” Paolo Jovio relates92 that the famous Cornelius Agrippa always kept a demon attendant upon him in the shape of a black dog. But John Weye, in his well-known work De Prcestigiis Dazmomun,93 informs us that he had lived for years in daily attendance upon Agrippa and that the black dog, Monsieur, respecting which such strange …

Demonology, Religion, and Witchcraft: New Perspectives on …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1136537996
Brian P. Levack – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology Brian P. Levack. somtime she roared like a Bull; somtime barked like a Dog, and sometime blared like a Calf. Overtones of lycanthropy are everywhere apparent in the reports of Quaker meetings, descriptions of bestial behaviour a commonplace. Some accused the Quakers of howling and shrieking like ‘Night owls . . . infernal spirits . . . dogs and wolves’, whilst in another widely reported case, a Wrexham ex-Quaker, William …

An Essay on Demonology, Ghosts and Apparitions, and Popular …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=3732628493
James Thacher – 2018 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
He became much more moderate and rational in his views of witchcraft. … They reported, among other things, as their opinion, ‘That presumptions, whereupon persons may be committed, and much more, convictions, as being guilty of witchcraft, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused person’s being represented by a spectre unto the afflicted; inasmuch as it is an undoubted and notorious … They promised to give her a black dog, but the dog never came to her.
Irish Witchcraft and Demonology – Page 152

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=gQMOAAAAYAAJ
St. John Drelincourt Seymour – 1913 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Then there appear’d a Chariot, drawn with two horses, which turn’d as the Ships had done, northward, and immediately after it came a strange frightful creature, which they concluded to be some kind of serpent, having a head like a snake, and a knotted bunch or bulk at the other end, something resembling a snail’s house. This monster came swiftly behind the chariot and gave it a sudden violent blow, then out of the chariot leaped a Bull and a Dog, which follow’d him [the bull], and …
Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology /: Witchcraft in England

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=T9d9AAAAMAAJ
Brian P. Levack – 1992 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Consider the following quotation in which Sprenger and Kramer explain why they consider that most witches will be female: They arc more credulous . . . more impressionable . . . they have more slippery tongues . . . she is more carnal than a man . . . they are more prone to adjure the faith . . . women also have weak memories . . . and it is a … A man might love his dog and grow to hate his wife without necessarily imagining that his dog is intellectually, or, in any other respect, superior.

English Demonology and Renaissance Drama: The Politics of Fear

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=yHvNOFoskFkC
Richard William Grinnell – 1992 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Unlike formal demonology, however, The Witch of Edmonton challenges both the popular and the elite definitions of witchcraft through the representation of Elizabeth Sawyer herself. … the spreader of disease, the hinderer of butter making, in short, the typical rural witch.3 The play establishes her as both of these types of witches by clearly linking her to the devil in the shape of a Dog (which speaks both to her and to the audience, making its nature clear), and by having her send the …

Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the Western tradition – Volume 2 – Page 383

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1576072436
Richard M. Golden – 2006 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
very ancient and because demonology has exercised a unifying influence. … They suffice for projecting local beliefs onto a member of a given community who is momentarily accused of witchcraft, and they provide an ideological background to the process of incrimination both in the village community and at the court recording the witchcraft … The most important motifs include the formal variants of witches (various animals according to local tradition such as cats, dogs, snakes, etc.).

Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology /: Witchcraft in …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=jMWdzvrfqiEC
Brian P. Levack – 1992 – ‎Snippet view
Also among the victims were two dogs. The affair reached its climax when the afflicted persons began to accuse some of their prominent neighbors. A magistrate in Andover, after signing many warrants for the arrest of others, had to flee for his own life when he was accused of being an accomplice of the witches merely because he had refused to indict an obviously innocent person. The governor’s wife and the wife of a minister who had been active in ferreting out witches were also …

Human Animals

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1465549633
Frank Hamel – 1969 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Whether witches canchange human beings into animals throughsorcery is a question whichhas exercised the minds ofhundredsof writers on demonology and witchcraft, amongst them, to mentiona few at random, Bodin, Boguet, James I, Glanvill, … [63] In the Middle Ages witcheswho were condemned to the stake, confessed to havingtaken the shapesof cats,hares, dogs, horses, and many other animals, being prompted to such changesby the devil, withwhomthey were in league.

Criminological Theory: An Analysis of Its Underlying Assumptions

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0742542912
Werner J. Einstadter, ‎Stuart Henry – 2006 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
In the active version witches had the ability to voluntarily turn themselves into cats or werewolves and were said to be accompanied by various helpers, in the form of “imps,” “goblins,” or “familiars,” typically cats, dogs, or other creatures known to have suckled at the witches’ variously placed nipples. Whatever form it appeared in, the criminal was seen as possessing demonic power. CAUSAL LOGIC The cause of crime and deviance under demonology is held ultimately to be a …

Sadducismus Triumphatus: Or, A Full and Plain Evidence, Concerning …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=AuhhAAAAcAAJ
Joseph Glanvill, ‎Henry More – 1726 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
and impertinent, and falling fo short of the Scope he aims at, which was really to prove, that there was no fuch Thing as a Witch or Wizzard, that is, not any Mention thereof in Scripture, by any Name of one that had to do with the Devil, or the Devil … Witnesses with the Hand and Seal of the Party : Nor any Transformation into Dogs, or Cats, unless it were real and corporeal, or grofly carnal; which none of his Witch-mongers, as he rudely and slovenly calls that learned and ferious Perfon, …
Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=963911619X
?va P¢cs – 1999 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The most likely original interpretation of turning into an animal was that the double of those abducted entered the alternative world. Assuming an animal form signaled this transfer between levels of existence, and it was one of the most important physical-double variations of the demonic witches. Certain cases of transformation into animals could be connected to werewolf-like witches in the forms of dogs or horses. For example, according to a document from Szeghalom, witches …

Early Modern Supernatural: The Dark Side of European Culture, …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0313393443
Jane P. Davidson – 2012 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
different than that of today’s mythology. If a werewolf bit you in 1500, you did not become infected with lycanthropy. On the contrary, you likely became the werewolf’s lunch and died without turning into a werewolf. As we note above, the Early Modern … To make matters more complicated, it was thought that witches could transmute themselves into dogs as well as wolves; and witches could enchant dogs or wolves. Werewolves were a separate and yet related category of supernatural …

Bedeviled by the dog via Google Books

A Brief History of Witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1849018049
Lois Martin – 2010 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The physical descriptions of the Devil that emerge during the Middle Ages and dominate witchcraft trials have very little in common with the Biblical Satan, and largely owe their characteristics to the old European pagan gods and animistic nature spirits who were demonised by the Christian clerics. As well as his classic Panlike incarnation the Devil was also variously described as being a black man, a large black dog, a cat, a toad, a goat or other horned animal. The origin of the …
The Bible in Seventeenth-century Scottish Life and Literature – Page 160

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=7g5AAAAAIAAJ
Duncan Anderson – 1936 – ‎Snippet view
In various other parts of the Old and New Testaments dogs are compared or identified with false apostles, sinners, persecutors and unholy men. Consequently, there could be no good reason why the Devil should not make use of a form at once deceptively familiar and possessing a Biblical connotation so suggestive of all evil.2 At the beginning of the century, according to the confession of the alleged witch Agnes Simpson to King James, the Devil appeared as a ” mickle, black man” …

Dictionary of Witchcraft:

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=K2efAgAAQBAJ
David Pickering – 2014 – ‎Preview
Theauthority of the Bible wasenough to convincethe medieval and postmedievalmind that the Devil wasanactual force to bereckoned with, andthepresence of paintings oftheDevil,a dark figure oftenwith horns andtail, inchurches throughout … The Devil as described by countless witchesintheir confessions over the centuries could manifest either inthe formofa’dark’ man, dressedin black, or would appear in the shape of some animal, typically a goat, a black dog, a wolf or, more rarely, …

Demonology and Devil-lore

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=146554772X
Moncure Daniel Conway – 1880 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
It will be observed here that ancient mythology to Salem is chiefly thatof theBible, modified by local conditions. White manand blackman represent Christand Antichrist, and we havethe same symbols on bothsides,—eucharists, baptisms, and names written in books.Thesurvivals from European folklore metwithin the NewEnglandtrials are— the cat, the horse (rarely), and the dog. In one casea dog suffered from the repute ofbeing a witch, insomuch that some who methim fellinto fits; …

The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=9004106103
Alberto Ferreiro, ‎Jeffrey Burton Russell – 1998 – ‎Preview
Although, Cerberus, according to Dante, “bays in his triple gullet and doglike growls,” not once in the Canto does he utter so much as a syllable.16 In the Old and New Testaments the dog has no small place: references spanning from Exodus to the Revelation of St. John.17 The citations are many and not directly relevant to the question of talking dogs; they do reinforce the fact that canines do not speak as humans do in these biblical texts. The only animals in the Bible fortunate …

The Damned Art (RLE Witchcraft): Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1136732063
Sydney Anglo – 2012 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
them when they need help; and fourthly, the covenant once made, ‘he proceeds to confirm it, which (some say) must be done by blood: therefore, some offer him a Sacrifice; perhaps of a cat, dog, &c.’ The sucking of blood is followed by the bestowal of the devil’s mark and the acquisition of a familiar spirit. The methods of actually proving the demonic pact are the discovery of the devil’s mark; the witches’ own boasting and confessions, ‘as also, their speaking of transportation from …

Witchcraft in the ancient world and the Middle Ages – Page 141

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0815310242
Brian P. Levack – 1992 – ‎Snippet view
Christ said to His disciples, ” Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves ” ; the Devil must, therefore, appear in the likeness of a wolf. The Devil tempted Eve in the form of a serpent, and he is called, ” that old serpent, the Devil,” in the Apocalypse ; he therefore torments the saints in the likeness of snakes. ” Deliver . . . my darling from the power of the dog,” said David, and so in the legend the Devil frequently makes his appearance as a black dog. And thus the same Bible …

The Lutheran Witness – Volumes 6-8 – Page 106

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=EB8sAQAAMAAJ
1887 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
1 destroy the works of the devil.” It was Satan who brought up idolatry and through it he exercised great power. To the Corinthians St. Paul writes: “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God.” The Gentiles … of superstitious things all of heathen origin: the howling of a dog at the door is to forbode the early death of an inmate of the house ; the opening of the Bible at random, to see if the passage first striking the eye promises good or evil fortune; the …

Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology /: Witchcraft in the …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0815310242
Brian P. Levack – 1992 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Christ said to His disciples, ” Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves ” ; the Devil must, therefore, appear in the likeness of a wolf. The Devil tempted Eve in the form of a serpent, and he is called, ” that old serpent, the Devil,” in the Apocalypse ; he therefore torments the saints in the likeness of snakes. ” Deliver . . . my darling from the power of the dog,” said David, and so in the legend the Devil frequently makes his appearance as a black dog. And thus the same Bible …

Antisemitic hate signs in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=fB3rAAAAMAAJ
Ruth Mellinkoff, ‎Universịtah ha-ʻIvrit bi-Yerushalayim. Merkaz le-omanut Yehudit – 1999 – ‎Snippet view
19 The hanging of criminals together with dogs is testified to in German sources from the eleventh to the end of the fourteenth century, and although hanging together with dogs was not a specific punishment for Jews, the general practice … in the form of a cat; the Templars were accused of worshiping a cat as a symbol of Satan;22 and witches were charged with carnal copulation with the Devil in the form of a cat, which perhaps from frequent association, became the witches’ symbol.

Witchcraft in Old and New England – Page 346

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=RwwPAQAAIAAJ
George Lyman Kittredge – 1956 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
So far from denying the existence of witches, Webster is indignant at the imputation that his theories and those of other like-minded scholars should be interpreted in any such sense. “If I deny that a Witch cannot flye in the air, nor be transformed or transsubstantiated into a Cat, a Dog, or an Hare, or that the Witch maketh any visible Covenant with the Devil, or that he sucketh on their bodies, or that the Devil hath carnal Copulation with them; I do not thereby deny either the Being of …

Satan, a portrait: a study of the character of Satan through all the …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=Gu7WAAAAMAAJ
Edward Langton – 1974 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Only they can understand how real was the Devil and his demons, alike to the witches of those days, and to those judges, often the most eminent people of the day, who condemned them to the flames in vast numbers. In the literature of this period Satan is often said to assume the form of a man; but the assumption of an animal form is also said to have been quite common. Many stories relate how he appeared in the shape of a bull, goat, dog, horse, sheep or cat.1 However incredible …

Apuleius and folklore: toward a history of ML3045, AaTh567, 449A

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=XI_YAAAAMAAJ
Alexander Scobie – 1983 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
This episode provides a further example of witchcraft being used to settle sexual conflicts. Within the context of witchcraft there is nothing unusual about Pasiphae’s intercourse with a bull. The belief that witches copulate with animals is 140 widely held in several African societies and was not infrequent in Penaissance Europe: “Satan couples with witches sometimes in the form of a black man, sometimes in that of an animal , as a dog or a cat or a ram . . . Francoise Secretain confessed …

The trials of the Lancashire Witches: a study of seventeenth-century …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=cKl-AAAAMAAJ
Edgar Peel, ‎Pat Southern – 1969 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Notice the confused accusation here, in the same paragraph, of intercourse with both Satan and demons. Boguet explains the lack of pleasure felt by the witch on these intimate occasions by reminding his readers that the Devil was sometimes in the form of a black man but could also assume the shape of some animal like a dog, a ram or a goat. From all these confessions he concludes: ‘I am convinced that there is real and actual copulation between a witch and a demon.’ Incubi and ..

The Devil Within – Page 110

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=fdB-AAAAMAAJ
Marc Cramer – 1979 – ‎Snippet view
Most of these unfortunates were accused of demoniality of one sort or another: an old hag, lonely and time-eroded, could be accused of intercourse with devils since she looked the part of the stereotypical witch, and her pet cat or dog was … the Sabbat often lasted for days in which heterosexual and homosexual copulation were performed along with more unorthodox practices that may have included bestiality, especially with goats, since the animal is a symbol of Satan the Devil.
English witchcraft, 1560-1736: Early English demonological works

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1851967354
J. A. Sharpe, ‎Richard Golden – 2003 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
And under this fpinuul implicit League aie alfo compiehended all thofethat are Witchmori- gers, and believe the verity and performance of rhelc things, and think that the Devil can both hurt and alfo help, and that there is a bad and a good … nor hath carnal copulation with them, nor carries them in the Air , nor for them , nor by them doth deftroy or kill man or bead, raife tempefts, or change them into Cats , Hates, Wolves, Dogs, or the like 5 and this we oppofc with theft following Reafbns.

Bothwell and the Witches – Page 94

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=1cEjAAAAMAAJ
Godfrey Watson – 1975 – ‎Snippet view
a horse or foal, or mingling with cows in the guise of a bull, or even as a dog, cat or raven. He might also have the use of the witch’s own body and, on one occasion, he appeared as a man in grey clothes and a blue bonnet. According to the evidence in the case of Sir George Douglas, the Devil’s voice was thick and hollow, “rough and goustie”.* It was at a Sabbat, of course, that Satan became incarnate in what might be described as his full paraphernalia. There is no doubt that these …

England’s First Demonologist: Reginald Scot and ‘the Discoverie of …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1780769636
Philip C. Almond – 2014 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Were they of the Spirit of God or of the Devil, as Scot was asking above? Thus was relief from the demonic only possible through the most rigorous introspection, self-regulation and examination of the conscience. Scot’s Devil was no longer an exotic ‘other’ in the outer world of compacts with Satan, witches’ Sabbaths, and the possessed. The norms of Satanism were no longer to be found in the Devil hidden in thunderstorms, or appearing in the shape of a black dog, or as an incubus.

The collected poems of Edward Thompson – Page 219

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=3jI4AAAAIAAJ
Edward John Thompson – 1930 – ‎Snippet view
He’d have dragged her ashore, then sifted her out (Those clumsy troopers had wrecked his sport), Searching for Satan’s sign with a pin; Then have chucked her in, Shrewdly trussed, big toe to thumb, To try could she swim. Drowned, she’d be cleared as a witch, no doubt; … was wrong. But the neighbours’ talk was absurd ! The girl was a witch; On her ivory shoulder a black dog huddled, Her incubus, Satan’s flame-eyed whelp, * Matthew Hopkins, self-Slyled ‘ Witch-Finder General,’ …

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in Context: Magic, Madness and Mayhem

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1783085568
Keith Linley – 2016 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Hierarchy of Earth – man > animals > birds > fish > plants > rocks/ minerals Hierarchy of Hell–Devil > First Hierarchy (nobility of hell): named devils like Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Mammon, Belial and so forth > Second Hierarchy: demons > goblins > imps > incubi/succubi19 > familiars Familiars are spirits acting as assistants to witches/wizards. Often they were in animal form. A black cat is commonly thought to be the standard witch’s demon familiar, but records include frogs, dogs …
The Spenser Encyclopedia – Page 729

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0802079237
Albert Charles Hamilton – 1990 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Witches frequently were said to work by means of a ‘familiar’: a toad, cat, or dog believed to be a demon in disguise. Sixteenth-century writers could draw upon numerous references to witchcraft in classical literature. They also inherited a number of literary archetypes of the witch: the black witch such as Lucan’s Erichtho and Euripides’ and Seneca’s Medea, and the beautiful enchantress Circe of Homer’s Odyssey. But these were believed to be more than literary. Bodin and Agrippa …

The Witchcraft World – Page 154

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=qux9AAAAMAAJ
Geoffrey Leslie Simons – 1974 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Some writers portrayed intercourse with a succubus as a cold and painful affair, parelleling the allegations that witches found intercourse with the Devil unpleasant. Guazzo … or dog! James Cleugh describes how witches could be seen having intercourse with an incubus in the fields:8 ‘uncovered up to the navel, wagging and moving their members in every part according to the disposition of one being about that act of concupiscence and yet nothing seen of the beholders upon her.
Medieval Pets – Page 13

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1843837587
Kathleen Walker-Meikle – 2012 – ‎Preview
Not only cats, but dogs, toads and bats (among other creatures) were identified as familiars. In one of the earliest trials, in 1324 Dame Alice Kytler from Kilkenny, Ireland, was accused of practising malificia along with poisoning her husbands, and it was alleged that an incubus visited her in the shape of large furry black cat*. In one of the earliest cases of a cat familiar at an English witch trial, in 1556 one Elizabeth Francis in Chelmsford was accused of keeping company with a large …

*It also appeared as a dog.

The restoration rake-hero: transformations in sexual understanding …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=029910690X
Harold Weber – 1986 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
harmed others, rather than against worship of the devil or those thought to have gained occult powers through a compact with Satan, England avoided the more hysterical religious excesses of the Continental witch-hunts. Finally … But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, Or that he sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats, Dogs, raise Tempests, or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Thomas Ady’s A …
The secret lore of the cat – Page 154

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=WYeBAAAAMAAJ
Fred Gettings – 1989 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Boguet also wrote of the sexually orientated incubus: The ugliness and deformity lies in the fact that Satan couples with witches sometimes in the form of a black man, sometimes in that of some animal, as a dog or a cat or a ram . . . Francoise Secretain confessed that her demon appeared sometimes as a dog sometimes as a cat . . . when he wished to have carnal intercourse with her. The instance that the incubus was cat-like is not supported by many of the illustrations of the fulsome …

The secret lore of the cat – Page 154

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=WYeBAAAAMAAJ
Fred Gettings – 1989 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Boguet also wrote of the sexually orientated incubus: The ugliness and deformity lies in the fact that Satan couples with witches sometimes in the form of a black man, sometimes in that of some animal, as a dog or a cat or a ram . . . Francoise Secretain confessed that her demon appeared sometimes as a dog sometimes as a cat . . . when he wished to have carnal intercourse with her. The instance that the incubus was cat-like is not supported by many of the illustrations of the fulsome …

Page 3 of about 3,890 results (0.14 seconds)
Search Results
Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1136787933
Helene E. Roberts – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
For example, a woman has a toad on her lap (the sin of pride), and dogs (the sin of envy) attack a man. A man being devoured by a monster … Incubus and succubus demons descend on humans in the night to perform perverted sexual acts. These demons were identi- fied by … In the book of Revelation of St. John, hell is described as an eschatological world where Satan (Belphegor) is seated on a stool presiding over the underworld (Moeller). In this version of hell, a large number of …

The Lord’s Truth

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1947825666
Alex Casuccio – 2017 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
To do this, Satan infiltrates the church with his children. • The Bible is “interpreted” by individuals, … By committing hideous sex crimes against children, stealing from the poor, and committing sexual acts befitting a Cinemax movie, Satan’s children (who have infiltrated the ranks of the leadership in some churches) turn good men against the church. All of this is aimed at turning man away … A dog’s mind is a carnal mind, as is an iguana’s mind. When man has a carnal mind, it means …
Seeking Allahs Protection from Satan

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1312528028
Ayatullah Sayyid Abdul Husayn DastghaibShirazi – 2014 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
But he refused to accept the Rahmani thought conveyed by his father Saad b. al-Waqqas through his friend Kamil. The details of this are mentioned in the books of Maqatil. Satan’s Task is to Tempt As a hungry dog doesn’t leave a place where there are bones, Satan doesn’t go away from hearts that have the filth of carnal desires. Satan will not allow that person to perform any act properly. Our Statement proves that the cause of ruination of men is their own carnal desire and their …
Isti’adha: Seeking Allah’s Protection from Satan

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1312616482
Ayatullah Sayyid Abdul Husayn Dastghaib Shirazi – 2014 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The details of this are mentioned in the books of Maqatil. Satan’s Task is to Tempt As a hungry dog doesn’t leave a place where there are bones, Satan doesn’t go away from hearts that have the filth of carnal desires. Satan will not allow that person to perform any act properly. Our Statement proves that the cause of ruination of men is their own carnal desire and their temptations of Satan. He works as a catalyst for these activities in the minds of men. ٌميِل َ أ ٌبا َ ذَع ْمُه َ ل َنيِمِلا. *:::::::::.
The Kingdom of the Occult

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1418589837
Walter Martin, ‎Jill Martin Rische, ‎Kurt Van Gorden – 2008 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Answer: Jesus revealed here that Satan is capable of communicating with our minds. … The dog is trained by pitch. I am convinced that Satan, as a spirit, communicates on the level of the spirit, and that the mind and the spirit are interlocked because man is a unit. He does not audibly whisper in our ear; his communications come on a plain higher … 2 So if you have evil thoughts and desires, they may originate with your carnal nature, or Satan may make the appeal on another level.
A Treatise on Insanity in Its Medical Relations – Page 512

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=Q8rhZS7U8NQC
William Alexander Hammond – 1883 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
The astonishment of the judges when these women described their sensations is thus expressed by Boguet : “‘Ugliness and depravity are shown by Satan in his carnal knowledge of these sorceresses. To some he appeared in the form of a black man ; to others, as some beast or other — dog, cat, he-goat, or ram. He knew Thievenne Paget and Antoinette Tornier as a black man, and when he had relations with Jacques Paget and Antoinette Gaudillon, he took the form of a black ram …

A Treatise on Insanity in Its Medical Relations
By William Alexander Hammond
About this book

Terms of Service

511 – 515

Page images
PDF
EPUB
wind. This woman had a fistulous opening near the umbilicus, and surgeons had often probed it. She declared that it was into this opening that the devil was accustomed to introduce his genital organ, while marital connection was effected by the ordinary way.

This woman had impulsions to suicide, which were thought to be instigations of the devil.

Clauda Jean Prost declared that she had assisted as often as she could at the feasts of the demons. She had assisted at the dances of the sorcerers, and had transformed rain into haiL Often she had been changed into a wolf.

Clauda Jean Guillame possessed, she said, the art of changing herself into a wolf. She boasted that she had in an hour strangled two children in the mountains, and had also strangled a dog that had protected them.

Jacques Bocquet had been to the sabbath. He had resisted the importunities of the devil that he would give him his daughter, for whom he haH conceived a violent passion. He accused himself, however, of having poisoned many persons. He had changed himself into a wolf and gone to the mountains after having rubbed himself with a certain ointment.

The three last named stated that they had more than once united in the work of killing children, and they gave the names of five of these that they had also partially eaten. They and the others avowed that they transformed themselves into wolves, and in this guise had killed many children, whose names they gave. Finally they confessed that, in 1597, they had met two children of Claude Baut; that they had killed the girl, but the boy had saved himself by flight. They generally ate parts of the children they killed, but never touched the right side. The fact of these murders was verified as well by the evidence of the fathers and mothers as by that of the villagers generally, who testified that the children named had been killed by wolves at such and such times. It is needless to say that all these lunatics were burned at the stake.

Calmeil says of these poor wretches:

“The singularity of the hallucinations of Thievenne Paget and Toinette Tornier, who described the shape and size of the sexual organs of the devil, is surpassed by the strangeness of the sensations of Antide Colas, who imagined that the sexual congress between her and the devil was by means of the fistulous opening which she had in the linea alba. The astonishment of the judges when these women described their sensations is thus expressed by Boguet:

“‘Ugliness and depravity are shown by Satan in his carnal knowledge of these sorceresses. To some he appeared in the form of a black man; to others, as some beast or other —dog, cat, he-goat, or ram. He knew Thievenne Paget and Antoinette Tornier as a black man, and when he had relations with Jacques Paget and Antoinette Gaudillon, he took the form of a black ram with horns. Francoise Secretain has confessed that her demon sometimes appeared as a dog, sometimes as a cat, sometimes as a cock, when he wished to know her carnally.

“‘ It is necessary,’ he continues, ‘that I report a strange but well-established circumstance. Antide Colas de Bretoncourt, being a prisoner at Baume, for the crime of sorcery, and having been visited, was found to have a hole in the belly just below the navel, in addition to the natural opening. This was probed on the 11th of July, 1598, by Master Nicholas Milliere, surgeon, and its existence shown beyond doubt. And then the sorceress confessed that her devil, whom she named Lizabet, knew her carnally by this opening, and her husband by the natural one. But what will he thought of the fact that Satan knew these sorceresses in prison? Nevertheless, they have confessed to it, as has also Thievenne Paget, who says that while she was a prisoner the devil approached her three times.'”

These are by no means all. Boguet is a faithful chronicler of the ravings of these lunatics, and of his own assiduity in ridding the world of witches, whom he religiously believed had sold themselves to the devil, and were enemies of the human race. He has, however, furnished the student of psychology with one of the most striking histories to be found in the whole range of the science.

Other places caught the infection, and lycanthropy became well known, engaging the utmost powers of the civil and ecclesiastical law to subdue the devil in the new field of operations he had selected. And it was not confined to France; it had its foci in Spain, Germany, Italy, and even in Scotland, but, as wolves were rare in this latter country, the maniacs believed that they took the forms of crows, hares, foxes, cats, dogs, and other animals. Doubtless, in some cases, the subjects had abnormal sensations in various parts of their bodies, especially of the skin, which originated the delusion of their transformation. Dr. Max Simon’ cites from De Vier a case in which such an origin apparently existed. There was in Padua, in 1541, a man who thought himself a wolf, and who ran about the country, attacking and putting to death all whom he met. After much trouble he was captured. He then said, in confidence to those who had arrested him, “I am truly a wolf, and if my skin does not look like that of a wolf, it is because it is turned, and that, therefore, the hair is inside.” To assure themselves of the fact, they cut him in different parts of his body, and finally amputated his legs and arms; then, not finding the hair, they began to think they were mistaken, and sent the poor wretch to a surgeon, who, however, notwithstanding all his skill, could not save his life.

It would be interesting to consider the various epidemics of tarentism, or dancing mania, and the other forms of convulsive seizures, attended with mental aberration, which have prevailed at different times, both in Europe and in this country. All of these were hysterical in character and existed in times of great emotional excitement, which excitement was almost invariably of a religious character. As I have said, however, no additional light could be thrown upon the subject under consideration, and those interested in it can readily study it from other sources.*

The rationale of the spreading of epidemics of insanity is not difficult to understand. Most of the cases occurred in women, and hence the hysterical element was a notable feature in the affection. In hysteria of all kinds the propensity to imitation is great. A single hysterical woman in a paroxysm will infect a whole ward of other women, as all hospital physicians know. This was one factor in causing the extension of the several manias that became epidemic. A second was the well-known fact, seen in our own day, that when some remarkable event takes place—a great crime, for instance—there are always many persons whose minds, constantly trembling in the balance between reason and insanity, only need some such excitement to turn the scale against them. Hence they are apt, when the perpetrator is being sought for, to come forward and confess themselves guilty of the crime, and to court the punishment awarded to the offence.

‘”Le monde des reves,” Paris, 1882, p. 172.

* Becker’s “Epidemics of the Middle Ages,” Sydenham Society Translation.

Brigham’s “Observations on the Influence of Religion upon the Health,” etc., Boston, 1835.

Figuier’s “Histoire du merveilleux,” etc., Paris, 1860.

Mathieu’s ”Histoire des miracules et desconvulsionnairesde Saint-M6dard,” Paris, 1864.

Hammond’s ” Certain Conditions of Nervous Derangement,” New York, 1881.

A third was the ignorance and superstition which then prevailed in the world, and which induced the belief in the existence of devils and demons, whose business it was to entrap the souls of men and women by giving them worldly power in return for their eternal damnation hereafter. These influences were amply sufficient, as they would be now if they existed in like force, to cause the propagation, from one person to another, of any particular form of insanity.

And even now we see occasional instances of what example and the power of sympathy, much less powerful factors than those I have mentioned, but doubtless contributing somewhat to aid the work, will do in causing the spread of insanity. Upon two occasions within the last year instances of the kind have occurred in New York. In one of these a woman became insane in the street. Her two daughters were with her at the time, and they both became affected with a like form of mental aberration within an hour or two afterward, and all three were sent to an asylum the next day. The other case occurred during the present month—January, 1883. A woman suddenly became affected with what, from the account given in the public press, was probably hysterical mania. One after the other her five daughters, all of adult, or nearly adult, age, were similarly attacked, and it became necessary to send the whole family to .an asylum. We have seen how, in the epidemic of lycanthropy, some of the particulars of which I have given, the victims were, many of them, members of the same family.

The folie d deux, or folie communiquee of the French, are names applied to insanity which is transmitted by one person to another with whom he is thrown in contact. In an interesting paper Dr. Brunet’ gives several instances of this propagation, among them the following:

The woman, M., as a consequence of a great disappointment, showed evidences of mental aberration. She was in a constant state of exaltation, thinking that she was pursued by powerful enemies with all kinds of terrible weapons. Living with her was her daughter, aged thirteen, a very quiet young person, who had never shown any disposition to mental disorders. At first she endeavored to soothe and reassure her mother, but ere long she herself became similarly affected. They uttered horrible cries of terror, and, in order to escape from their invisible enemies, rushed from the house, and went to sleep in the fields. MM. Lasegue and Falret,’ after citing and commenting on seven cases of communicated insanity, arrive at the following among other conclusions:

1 “Contagion de la folie,” Annalet medico-ptyckologiquei, November, 1875, p. 837.

One of the individuals is the active element, is more intelligent than the other. He creates the delusions, and imposes them little by little upon the second person, who is the passive element. Resisting at first, he ends by accepting the ideas submitted to him, but alters them more or less. He thus reacts on the first person, and thus the two eventually come to exhibit the same delusions in the same way.

In order that this end may be accomplished, it is necessary that the two persons should live together a long time, with the same interests, habits, feelings, fears, and hopes.

And, third, the delusion must possess the semblance of probability.

These conclusions will not account for the cases cited, nor for many others that have been reported. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise to find that they are regarded by some alienists as being insufficient to explain facts in regard to the truth of which no doubt exists. Thus, M. Marandon de Montexel’ arrives at conclusions more in consonance with the present state of the question. There are three varieties of transferred insanity.

1. La folie imposee (imposed insanity), in which a lunatic imposes his delirant conceptions on another intellectually and morally weaker than himself.

2. La folie simultanee (simultaneous insanity), in which two (or more) persons hereditarily predisposed contract at the same time the same delirium.

‘”La folie a deox on folie commtiniqnee,” Annales medieo-piyehologiques, November, 1877, p. 321.

‘” Contribution a l’etude de la folie a deux,”Annalet medico-psychofogiquct, Janvier, 1881, p. 28.

The Witchcraft Sourcebook: Second Edition – Page 87

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1317503570
Brian P. Levack – 2015 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
For all these reasons I am convinced that there is real and actual copulation between a witch and a demon; for what is there to prevent the Devil, when he has taken the form of an animal, from coition with a witch? In Toulouse and Paris women have been known to make sexual abuse of a natural dog; and it seems to me quite to the point to refer here to the legends of Pasiphae and other such women. . . . When Satan means to lie with a witch in the form of a man, he takes to himself the …

Odd John and Sirius – Page 277

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0486316939
Olaf Stapledon – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Some of the sexually obsessed, aware of the great affection that held between the man-dog and the scientist’s younger daughter, whispered that it was Thomas, in the first instance, who had sold his soul, in order to gain scientific fame, and that Satan, incarnate in the dog, habitually gratified himself in perverse sexual intercourse with Thomas’s daughter. And she, they said, for all her charm, was little better than a witch. Anyone could see that there was something queer and inhuman …

The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of Satanism – Page 246

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=thHXAAAAMAAJ
James R. Lewis, ‎Jesper Aagaard Petersen – 2008 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Again and again I gagged. I kept wiping my mouth with my forearm. That only made the men laugh as the camera kept clicking. (35) This formulation is of some interest, for the late medieval construction of the witch Sabbat also saw the witches having intercourse with the devil in the form of a goat or a black dog. This motif provides as well a central scene in Denver-based evangelist Bob Larson’s novel Dead Air, a book that Jon Trott suggests constitutes a new genre: Christian porn.30 …

Fairies and witches at the boundary of south-eastern and central Europe

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=9514105974
Éva Pócs – 1988 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Éva Pócs. Perchtas and the Slovene-Croatian Lucia. 90 Bleichsteiner 1953. It was Do- motor (1961) who called attention to the Tadzhik “woman of Tuesday” as the parallel to the Hungarian Luca. 91 The views that trace the beliefs in the witch transforming into an animal back to … (Gonczi 1914, 162); the Transylvanian devil figure also has several features in common with the Rumanian priculi- ci (dog-, horse-, wolf-, cat- or snake- form, birth with a tail; Bosnyak 1977, 136-137; id. 1980 …

Witchcraft and belief in Early Modern Scotland – Page 154

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=023059140X
J. Goodare, ‎L. Martin, ‎J. Miller – 2007 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
There were young dogs, black dogs, brown dogs, big rough dogs, round headed cats, and white and grey stags. These everyday animals are illustrated by the magpie and jackdaw described by Thomas Leys, from Aberdeen, who was executed in 1597; a horse that was recorded in the trial of James Reid, from Inveresk, who was executed in 1603; a black dog described in 1649 by Isobel Murray, from Pencaitland; and the dog and cat which Katherine Walker, from Brechin, claimed to …
A Historical Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland – Page 130

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=Wuc0AAAAMAAJ
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe – 1884 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
ing to one another, and they commanded Margaret Brunton to go from them ; and that after Janet and the dog of the house had been some time together in a close room, the door being open, the dog rushed out, and Janet was found with another woman, and a plate of blood standing beside them : and the dog was found dead within the house, its head amissing, and the child immediately recovered.” The dog’s head had been applied to the child. In that curious book, The Poor Man’s …
Witchcraft in early modern Scotland: James VI’s demonology and the …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=pgx-AAAAMAAJ
Lawrence Normand, ‎Gareth Roberts – 2000 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
[ J prophecy S] She confesses that one is w[ ]er prayer if it sto[ ] is bewitched. If it stop the second time there is no reme[ ]. bona SJ She confesses that ( ) desiring her to [ ] ‘No, no — ye believe not that I can help yow. If ye belie[ ] that she healed her after that. She denies Mr John Kelly’s attestation concerning ( ) [ ]. Main] She confesses that at Patrick Edmiston’s house of Newtown on a s[ ] in a fair moonlight night, being in the garden with his three daughters [ ] saw a black dog which made …
Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia – Page 64

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0313321426
William E. Burns – 2003 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
One unusually prominent evil deed ascribed to witches was the storms that delayed King James of Scotland and his Danish bride Anne on their return to their native land in 1590. These were blamed on witches in … or demons, usually appeared in the testimony of accused witches not as the lordly master of the sabbat, but as a large black dog to whom witches swore loyalty — although they sometimes claimed to have beaten the dog to get it to perform evil acts. The reforming Lutheran …
The Stuart Age: England, 1603–1714 – Page 30

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1351985426
Barry Coward, ‎Peter Gaunt – 2017 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
A. Sneddon, Possessed by the Devil: the real history of the Islandmagee witches and Ireland’s only mass witchcraft trial (2013); A. Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (2015); L. Paterson, ‘The witches’ Sabbath in Scotland’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 142 (2012); M. Brock, ‘Internalising the demonic: Satan and the self in early modern Scottish piety’, Journal of British Studies, 54 (2015). … M. Stoyle, The Black Legend of Prince Rupert’s Dog: witchcraft …
Witch, Warlock, and Magician: Historical Sketches of Magic and …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=gc5CAAAAIAAJ
William Henry Davenport Adams – 1889 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
Historical Sketches of Magic and Witchcraft in England and Scotland William Henry Davenport Adams. Soon after this, he said, a little dog came in — fat, short-legged, and with sandy spots besprinkled on the white ground-colour of its tub-like body. When he prevented it from approaching the woman — who declared it was Jacmara, one of her imps — it straightway vanished. Next came a greyhound, which she called Vinegar Tom ; and next a polecat. Improving in fluent and fertile …
Shaman Pathways – Aubry’s Dog: Power Animals In Traditional Witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=178099723X
Suzanne Ruthven – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Henry VIII wore awhite greyhound courant and ever since it hasbeen the animal of honour of the Houseof York. A greyhound and a griffon supported the shield of James I; while James II’s PrivySeal for theDuchy of Lancaster has “an odd arrangement of two greyhounds sejant addorsed , each holding an ostrichfeather ”. The firstEarlof Panmure adopted two greyhounds for his supporters because he gained recognition from JamesIV(of Scotland)when entertaining theking withsport over …
Northern Memoirs, Calculated for the Meridian of Scotland: To which …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=OActAAAAYAAJ
Richard Franck – 1821 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
… tale of the witches, by whom he was here beset, is one of the few marvellous legends with which he burthens our credulity; and the belief of witchcraft, it must be remembered, was universal at this period. Neither does the Tourist himself seem very positive in believing the existence of these “mortal daemons,” as he calls them. The word whituratch is never, in Scotland, used to signify a foxterrier, as asserted in the text. Perhaps it may have been the proper name of the witch’s lap-dog.

The Loch of Pitloil.-P. 155.

This small lake, with that called the Loch of Lundy, lies at the head of the water of Dighty, which rising on the southern side of the Seedlaw hills, flows to Dundee. The angler’s tale of the witches, by whom he was here beset, is one of the few marvellous legends with which he burthens our credulity; and the belief of witchcraft, it must be remembered, was universal at this period. Neither does the Tourist himself seem very positive in believing the existence of these “mortal daemons,” as he calls them.

The word whituratch is never, in Scotland, used to signify a foxterrier, as asserted in the text. Perhaps it may have been the proper name of the witch’s lap-dog. Whitret signifies weazel—a natural enough name for that sort of dog.

XXI. The flourishing fields of Meghill, wherein lies interr’d the royal corps of King Arthur’s consort.—P. 164.

Some of the very curious sepulchral remains in the Church-yard of Meigle, in Strathmore, have been engraved by Pennant, but not with the most laudable accuracy. The common people are uniform in the tradition which points them out as referring to the history of King Arthur; and shew one of the most distinguished, as the monument of the celebrated Vanora, Guenever, or Ganore, the queen of that renowned sovereign. Arthur-stone, a neighbouring property, takes its name from the same hero. Certainly the number and curious sculpture of these ancient stones, now carefully protected by the proprietor of Meigle, Patrick Murray, Esq. of Symprim, are such as entitle us to refer them to some era of importance. But the renown of King Arthur and his chivalry was spread so universally through all Europe, that their exploits were readily adopted as the solution of every doubt, and many vestiges of antiquity were ascribed them, merely on account of their traditional fame.

A Companion to Tudor Literature – Page 37

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1444317229
Kent Cartwright – 2010 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
Mother Waterhouse, she received her familiar, Sathan, from Elizabeth Frauncis; it first appeared as a cat, but because it had figured in a previous witchcraft trial as a cat, it took the form ofa toad or a black dog when working for Mother Waterhouse. When the familiar worked for … While the first known Scottish witchcraft trial occurred in 1479, the simultaneous increase in witch prosecutions and the institutionalization of the Scottish Kirk was far from a coincidence. Scholars of Scottish …
Witches (RLE Witchcraft): Investigating An Ancient Religion – Page 122

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1136740325
T C Lethbridge – 2012 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
We know also from Sir James Fraser that bulls’ skins were worn at the Hogmanay ceremony in Scotland. These are enough for us to keep the bull on our list. I have already talked about ghost dogs and the relationship between dogs and the ancient gods. Dogs are common on the Pictish stones. I have found one stamped on a pagan Saxon pot and they are common in the Christian art of the whole of the British Isles in the Dark Ages. There seems to be no particular reason why a man …

Witchcraft and Black Magic – Page 50

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0486411257
Montague Summers – 2000 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
In his famous D1rmonologie, 1597, King James VI of Scotland (in 16o3 James I of England) writes: “To some of the baser sort of them [witches] he [the devil] obliges himself to appear at their calling upon him, by such a proper name which he shows unto them, either m likeness of a dog, a cat, an ape, or such-like other beast ; or else to answer by a voice only. The effects are to answer to such demands, as concerns curing of diseases; or such other base things as they require of him.

A Brief History of Witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1849018049
Lois Martin – 2010 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
This incubus made its appearance under various forms, sometimes as a cat, or as a hairy black dog, or in the likeness of a negro (Æthiops), accompanied by two others who were larger and taller than he, and of whom one carried an iron rod. The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, published in 1458, contains a fascinating account of night riding with a witch: At LINTZ I worked with a young woman, who one evening invited me to go with her, assuring me that without any …

Masterplots: 1,801 plot stories and critical evaluations of the …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0893560847
Frank Northen Magill, ‎Dayton Kohler – 1996 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
The father accused the nursemaid of being a witch, and the menfolk took the witch’s body, tied it to a log. and sailed it down to the sea. The father sent his daughter away to a monastery, and she was never heard from again. The important detail in the story concerns the description of a yellow bitch, a dog that started baying outside the window when the men seized the nursemaid’s body. The implicit suggestion is that the witch’s incubus had inhabited the dog and was now unable to …

Never on a Broomstick – Page 144

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=id1-AAAAMAAJ
Frank Robert Donovan – 1971 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
In general, the coven leader was an all-purpose devil to whom sex was a sideline, as was the Master at a sabbat, where there might also be incubi and succubi. In private, a witch might copulate with the Devil, a devil, or an incubus, sometimes in the form of a familiar. Some demonologists favored devils in the guise of animals for sexual purposes and quoted confessions of witches who had lain with such a devil as a goat, dog, and other beasts. The witches of Borrowstones in Scotland …
The Witchcraft World – Page 154

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=qux9AAAAMAAJ
Geoffrey Leslie Simons – 1974 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Such devils were often regarded as the witch’s familiar, and women of the day were ill-advised to show affection to cat or dog! James Cleugh describes how witches could be seen having intercourse with an incubus in the fields:8 ‘uncovered up to the navel, wagging and moving their members in every part according to the disposition of one being about that act of concupiscence and yet nothing seen of the beholders upon her.’ After this a black vapour was supposed to rise from the …

A casebook of witchcraft: reports, depositions, confessions, trials, …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=lk8gAQAAIAAJ
William Howard Woods – 1974 – ‎Snippet view
Obligatory Death of a Child in Africa 39 16. Eating Salt During Pregnancy 39 17. Unbaptized Infants Dug Up in Scotland 40 18. Mme. de Montespan’s Mass 40 19. Killing Children to Cause Dissension 41 20. A Witch Turns into a Dog 42 2 1 . The Torture of Father Dominic Gordel 42 22. A Girl Discovers Her Mother’s Witchcraft 47 23. A Scottish Incubus 48 24. Another Scot’s Succubus Defeated 49 25. A Husband Falls in Love with a Witch 50 26. Reginald Scot Ridicules the Incubus 50 …

The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft – Page 195

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1569800499
Leonard R. N. Ashley – 1986 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
An incubus was a male demon who preyed on women, a succubus a female demon who preyed on men — thought nowadays to be the personifications of nightmares and sexual dreams. CAVE CANEM! The Devil has a black dog, and many demons and familiars are said to appear in canine form, an ironic comment on “man’s best friend. ” In Goethe’s Faust Mephistopheles first appears as a dog. Dogs are common in Christian legends of saints too. Saint Roch, ill of the plague, was …

The amazing world of superstition, prophecy, luck, magic & witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=0517665662
Leonard R. N. Ashley – 1988 – ‎Snippet view
An incubus was a male demon who preyed on women, a succubus a female demon who preyed on men — thought nowadays to be the personifications of nightmares and sexual dreams. CAVE CANEM! The Devil has a black dog, and many demons and familiars are said to appear in canine form, an ironic comment on “man’s best friend.” In Goethe’s Faust Mephistopheles first appears as a dog. Dogs are common in Christian legends of saints too. Saint Roch, ill of the plague, was …

The Social Reformers’ Cabinet Library – Page 23

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=8_zYAAAAMAAJ
James Napier Bailey – 1840 – ‎Read – ‎More editions
Conjurers, Nymphes, Changelings, Incubus, Robin-goodfellow, the Dwarfs, Giants, Spoorn, the Mare, the Man in the Oak, the Hell Wain, the fire Drake, the Puckle, Tom Thombe, Hobgoblin, Tom-Tumbler, Boneless, and such other bugs … London, 1632, p. 271, that the Devil never appears in the shape of a dove or a lamb, but in those of goats, dogs and cats, or such like, and that to the witch of Edmonton he appeared in the shape of a dog and called his name Dom.” Coles, in his …

Lives of the necromancers; or, An account of … persons … who have …
By William Godwin
About this book

Terms of Service

26 – 30

Page images
PDF
EPUB
supposed to be enlisted in the armies of the prince of darkness. We do not read in these ancient memorials of any league of mutual benefit entered into between the merely human party, and his or her supernatural assistant. But modern times have amply supplied this defect. The witch or sorcerer could not secure the assistance of the demon but by a sure and faithful compact, by which the human party obtained the industrious and vigilant service of his familiar for a certain term of years, only on condition that, when the term was expired, the demon of undoubted right was to obtain possession of the indentured party, and to convey him irremissibly and for ever to the regions of the damned. The contract was drawn out in authentic form, signed by the sorcerer, and attested with his blood, and was then carried away by the demon, to be produced again at the appointed time.

IMPS.

These familiar spirits often assumed the form of animals, and a black dog or cat was considered as a figure in which the attendant devil was secretly hidden. These subordinate devils were called Imps. Impure and carnal ideas were mingled with these theories. The witches were said to have preternatural teats from which theirfamiliars sucked their blood. The devil also engaged in sexual in-

tercourse with the witch or wizard, being denominated incubus, if his favourite were a woman, and succubus, if a man. In short, every frightful and loathsome idea was carefully heaped up together, to render the unfortunate beings to whom the crime of witchcraft was imputed the horror and execration of their species.

The Golden Book Magazine – Volume 2 – Page 650

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=sp4XAQAAIAAJ
Henry Wysham Lanier – 1925 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Agnes Simpson was remarkable for her skill in diseases, and frequently, it is said, took the pains and sickness of the afflicted upon herself to relieve them, and afterward translated them to third persons; she made use of long Scriptural rhymes and prayers containing the principal points of Christianity, so that she seemed not so much a white witch as a holy woman. . . . Whenever she required an answer from the devil, on any occasion, he always appeared to her in the shape of a dog.

Some additions via Google Books

Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology – Page 165

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=9637326766
Gábor Klaniczay – 2006 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The appearance of the devil in the shape of a dog was of course part of a more general picture and not necessarily made up by the child witnesses themselves, but the introduction of the incubi/succubi doctrine was followed by a general bestialization of the world of the witches’ sabbath. The children were married at the … one testimony claimed that an adult male performed acts of bestiality on a nightly basis at the sabbath in return for money (sörlin 1997, pp. 135–36). if demons and …
Dante’s Inferno: A Commentary – Page 120

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=vnFIAQAAMAAJ
Denton Jaques Snider – 1892 – ‎Read
but a dog possessing man’s gift of intelligence and using the same to serve the dog and not man, is no longer a dog but a devil. Hence Dante shows such a being not as man nor as animal, but as the … or rather transmutes forms in order to express this human bestiality. And here let it be said that this is the reason why he has no special portion of the Inferno called bestiality, which so many commentators have sought to find, on account of not understanding the allusion in Canto XI, 83.

has the body of an enormous reptile, running out into the sting of a scorpion, yet his face is “the face of a just man.” The Minotaur seems about half and half, so also the Centaur; the Giants by their very size suggest the elephant and whale, the hugest animals of Nature. Again, the pitchy fiends of Malbolge are a fantastic Gothic composite of man and beast. Demons they all are, whether in their outward shape the human or the animal prevails. Now, it is to be noted that these beasts are not physically real, not an object of external vision; they do not exist in Nature, though made up of what exists in Nature. They are imaginary, a product of Spirit; but for what purpose? Surely to express Spirit; they turn away from what is physically possible; they can have no meaning as natural objects, but only as spiritual. Now, what is this meaning? Clearly this it is: Man as an animal, the man-hood in some way subjected to beasthood; hence man as a monster, not truly human, but demonic. Let us understand the matter fully. If the animal is endowed with reason, the god-like faculty, and still remains an animal, not employing the divine gift to subdue but to gratify its bestial propensities, then the animal becomes a demon. A dog as dog is not so very dangerous, though he be as big as an elephant;

but a dog possessing man’s gift of intelligence and using the same to serve the dog and not man, is no longer a dog but a devil. Hence Dante shows such a being not as man nor as animal, but as the two commingled and both diabolized. The dog-man, the snake-man, the bull-man are monstrosities not existing in Nature, but they do exist in Spirit; hence we have here a new Art to

set them forth. Truly this is an original part of

[ocr errors]
Dante’s work. An ethical suggestion may have come from Aristotle, who says somewhere that a bad man does a thousandfold more ill than a bad animal. For the man has reason to help him administer to the beast, and thus he is more than a beast, truly an animalized soul, quite as the poet pictures him — a monster. Dante, the artist, thus creates or rather transmutes forms in order to express this human bestiality. And here let it be said that this is the reason why he has no special portion of the Inferno called bestiality, which so many commentators have sought to find, on account of not understanding the allusion in Canto XI, 83. Bestiality is scattered all through the infernal circles; Hell itself is bestiality, the non-subjection of the natural man to reason. Thus the beasts

have most decidedly an ethical significance which

may now be more fully unfolded. 2. The Monster as an ethical object. In this

connection we notice three weighty characteristics

of the bestial shape: it images the sin, it punishes
the sinner, it punishes, that is, undoes itself. |
Thus the Monster attains the most complete form
of infernal Symbolism. *
In the first place, its purpose clearly is to
semblance and body forth in its animal shape the
moral condition of the man who is found in the
Circle where it appears. It gives the very spir-
itual feature of him; the animal kingdom is’
ransacked in order to obtain types of the bestial
element in man. The correspondence between
the sin and the beast is here the grand insight of
the poet, as previously it was the correspondence
between the sin and its physical environment.
Much closer now is the portrait of the sinner, the
semblance itself having life and movement.
In the second place, the monster is usually
punishing the guilty one, not only portraying him,
but bringing home to him the penalty of his ;
guilt. Many are the forms of punishment,
cursing, rending, Smiting, hooking out of pitch,
transforming into a snake, biting and champing
with the teeth. Monstrous indeed is the requital
of sin, itself being monstrous. Really there is, . .
however, the man punishing himself, his own •
Free-Will returning to him in the form of the
deed. In the passage concerning Minos, this is
directly stated; in his presence, the guilty soul
confesses all, is self-judged; the culprit beholds
in the coils of the tail of the demonic judge how

[ocr errors][ocr errors]
many Circles of Hell he has wrapped about himself in his life, and down he goes. The monster— for Minos too, in his judicial ermine, here a caudal ornament, is a monster — both images and punishes the guilt. Yet a third fact must be noted in regard to the ethical purport of these monsters. Each is punishing its own, at bottom is punishing itself. It assails its own being in assailing what is like J itself. Truly it is seeking to destroy itself, for if it could destroy the evil which it punishes, it | would perish also, having destroyed its own source of existence. The poet everywhere tries to suggest this fact. . The monster not only attacks the sinner, but often attacks itself; even Minos not only condemns the sinful one, but bites himself in the act, self-destroying in his damnation (XXVII. 126.) Nature can furnish a parallel: the rattlesnake is said to bite itself in its rage, and to die of its own poison. Witness too the fiends fighting one another in the pitchy Ditch of Malebolge. Such, then, is the ultimate outcome of the demonic in Dante: it is undoing … itself, being in its very essence self-negative, self-destructive. The demon cannot be a positive self-existent entity, but is always in the process of its own annihilation. Even the demon must come back to itself and serve up its own sin to itself in accord with the great ethical law. Thus it shows the complete cycle of the guilty deed,

which is seen to be self-undone at last, and for the same reason it is the culmination of Dante’s Symbolic System of the Inferno. So it is with the popular view of Satan and with every truly mythical conception of evil: he is the great sinner himself, the type of all sin, yet, on the other hand, he is the great punisher …” of sinners, of those who follow his bidding, and . . . .” the more they are like him, and the more they obey him, the more he punishes them. So his nature is to destroy his own, to punish in them what is really himself, and thus to be forever undoing himself. Still he is also willing and doing the evil; through Free-Will he is always created anew. In a similar manner Goethe has portrayed the mighty modern Devil, Mephisopheles, as “always willing the Bad, yet always working the Good;” his subtlety overreaches itself and he brings forth the opposite of what he intends. Here then we have reached the fundamental thought of the matter: evil in its £ plete sweep must come back to itself, and be undone by itself. Part of the Universe it my. swallow, the mighty fiend! but the whole of the Universe swallows it, nay, it must swallow itself in the presence of the Universe or the spirit thereof. Hence it comes that the man who has the Universe spiritually in himself, is out of the reach of the Devil. Then the problem is,

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage – Page 29

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1317102762
Lisa Hopkins, ‎Helen Ostovich – 2016 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The devil dog is frightening in part because it is visually a domesticated animal, regarded fondly by both Mother Sawyer and the clown, Cuddy Banks. When it viciously turns on Mother Sawyer, its demonism and bestiality combine in frightening ways. Though the title page of the play’s first edition (1658) calls it a tragicomedy, it is closer to domestic tragedy. Even as a tragedy, however, its presentation of demons and magic is a far cry from what Doctor Faustus once brought to the stage.

Dog lore via Google Books

Fairies and witches at the boundary of south-eastern and central Europe

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=9514105974
Éva Pócs – 1988 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
91 The views that trace the beliefs in the witch transforming into an animal back to similar rites were connected with this opinion (Hofler 1934, 22-43; Lawson 1910, 209, 229-232; Kretzen- bacher 1971, 87-102; Duerr 1978, 236- 237, 244). 92 Karakondzuli: Lawson 1910, 223-224; Megas 1963 … new grape blossom and the tasting of new wine.) 95 E.g. the devil in SE Hungarian (Gocsej) folk belief and the werewolf demon of Serbo-Croatia appear in the forms of dogs, horses, hens and …

Self-representation of Medieval Religious Communities: The British …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=382581758X
Anne Müller, ‎Karen Stöber – 2009 – ‎Preview
Similarly in Bulgaria the voice of demons would start ‘circling’ when they were attacked by the dogs. Throughout the whole of … Round traces in the grass are commonly recognised as fairy or witches’ circles in the Balkans, among Croats, in Russia, in Hungary and in Britain. Indicators of … There seems to be a common feature in Slavic folk beliefs about devils, witches, dragons, fairies, forest spirits etc. that they dance in whirlwinds, have weddings in them, spin around etc. Furthermore …

Encyclopedia of witchcraft: the Western tradition – Volume 2 – Page 528

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1576072436
Richard M. Golden – 2006 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Regardless of demonology, the region was full of helping spirits that went along with innumerable variants of learning from the Devil, initiation by the Devil, or general contact between witches and devils. … Witches could assume animal forms in all regions: butterflies or birds in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, or Macedonia; a goose, dog, or wolf in Bulgaria; cats or dogs in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania; a wolf, horse, or cockerel in Romania; a turkey or chicken in Romania and Serbia.

Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=963911619X
va P¢cs – 1999 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
summoned by the devil. This theme appeared in the seventeenth century in Pozsony, Sopron, and Vas counties in western Hungary, from where it slowly spread toward the east. It never reached as far as Transylvania, then the easternmost part of … it was also characteristic that the supernatural lover was not the prescribed “demonological” devil, but rather emerged from the familiar, colorful, and popular devil figures: devils in the shape of dogs or ravens who served witches, or at other …

 

Some Hungarian and British folklore

Via Google Books:

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica – Volume 37 – Page 316

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=ZB3XAAAAMAAJ
1991 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
As far as the Hungarian werewolf and werewolf-witch are concerned, these are, on the one hand, surrounded by werewolf-beliefs that are common to a larger Central and Southeastern European Germanic-Slavic region. They are mostly shepherds (in the witchcraft trials, mainly cowherds), and as such, are men, who, in the form of a wolf or dog, attack the “hostila” (neighbouring) flock. The Hungarian witch, who, in the form of a wolf, dog, or snake, attacks animals and flock, is clearly of …

Cunning folk and familiar spirits: shamanistic visionary traditions …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=rzHXAAAAMAAJ
Emma Wilby – 2005 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
exaggeration’, that ‘”every edifice” was “a Noah’s Ark”, where cows, pigs, chickens and the human family all lay together promiscuously’.28 Even in eighteenth-century Lincolnshire the owners of geese treated their birds ‘with great kindness, lodging them very often in the same room with themselves’.29 Dogs and cats were also commonplace, their numbers not only attributable to their reproductive skills, but also to their invaluable role in keeping down vermin and, in the case of dogs, …

The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England: Essays …

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=023029393X
A. McShane, ‎G. Walker – 2010 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
As the witch’s familiar spirit was widely thought to be the conduit of her maleficia, the importance assigned to evidence that suggested that the suspect had a familiar spirit is hardly a departure from legal form. … Familiars were and continued till the mid-seventeenth century to be widely acknowledged as a means of identifying witches, and sometimes in distinguishing them from cunning folk.38 Imps usually appeared in everyday shapes – dogs, cats, toads, rodents – which enabled …

Google Books on Hungarian beliefs

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica – Volume 37 – Page 316

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=ZB3XAAAAMAAJ
1991 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
As far as the Hungarian werewolf and werewolf-witch are concerned, these are, on the one hand, surrounded by werewolf-beliefs that are common to a larger Central and Southeastern European Germanic-Slavic region. They are mostly shepherds (in the witchcraft trials, mainly cowherds), and as such, are men, who, in the form of a wolf or dog, attack the “hostila” (neighbouring) flock. The Hungarian witch, who, in the form of a wolf, dog, or snake, attacks animals and flock, is clearly of …

Witchcraft and Demonology in Hungary and Transylvania – Page 74

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=3319547569
Gábor Klaniczay, ‎Éva Pócs – 2017 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
160 Mrs. Zuh’s herdsman also accused her of wanting to poison him with pogácsa (traditional Hungarian pastry), and a lodger also raised accusations claiming that, accompanied by two other persons, after their fight she had wanted to slit his child’s throat. The hajdú gentry testifying in favor of Mrs. Zuh also said that her dog had once become rabid and run out of the village. According to the people testifying against her, it was Mrs. Zuh herself who had run that time like a dog. This is ..

Hungarian Folk Beliefs – Page 143

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=8jTaAAAAMAAJ
Tekla Dömötör – 1982 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
Witches The suppression of witch trials in Hungary did not entail the sudden abandonment of beliefs in witchcraft in the countryside. Things may have … But in the typical Hungarian village one or more witches continued to function right … But there was no reason to abandon the belief that certain women, and sometimes men as well, were capable of harming other individuals and animals, that they could, if they wanted to, change into cats, dogs, frogs, horses or some physical object.

The Dark Side of Christian History

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1626756244
Helen Ellerbe – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
In 1928 a family of Hungarian peasants was acquitted of beating an old woman to death whom they claimed was a witch. The court based its decision on the ground that the family had acted out of “irresistible compulsion.”107 In 1976 a poor spinster, Elizabeth Hahn, was suspected of witchcraft and of keeping familiars, or devil’s agents, in the form of dogs. The neighbors in her small German village ostracized her, threw rocks at her, and threatened to beat her to death before burning …

A Deed Without a Name: Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft

https://books.google.com.ph/books?isbn=1780995504
Lee Morgan – 2013 – ‎Preview – ‎More editions
The original idea behind ‘vampire’ was a particular kind of witch possessing ‘two hearts’ a human one and thatof a ‘demonic’ intelligence. … The modern witch with the black dog transformation, for instance, had never heard of the mazzeri . But whatI think is just as important for us to pay attention to is the differences between the older and the modern material. Ecstatic practitioners like the Hungarian táltos and Corsican mazzeri were deeply culturally imbedded in their local context.

Time – Volume 28 – Page 55

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=vOAeAQAAMAAJ
Briton Hadden – 1936 – ‎Snippet view – ‎More editions
PRESS Witch Last week’s weirdest newspaper story was an Associated Press dispatch from the small town of WoodbridEe. N. J., 24 miles from Manhattan. The A. P.’s 1,350 members were informed by wire that one Theresa Czinkota had been publicly accused of witchcraft by five of her neighbors in the town’s Hungarian section. In International Mrs. … “I saw her bend down,” a fourth woman muttered, “and her head changed to a dog’s head and she had big bumps on her back …