ABSTRACT
IN case you should think the witches of the North are brought in here merely as dismal spectacles, Vincent comes to my support in Bk XXV, Ch. 26, of The Mirror of History, where he affirms that an English-woman, having been deluded into practising magic, was, after cruel tortures and uttering horrible cries, snatched away into the air by demons. His words are as follows: ‘At Berkeley, an English village, a woman who was a soothsayer and a witch was eating a meal one day when her pet raven, which she doted on, cawed somewhat more noisily than usual. When its owner heard this, her knife fell from her hand and at the same time her face grew pale. She heaved sighs for a very long time and said: “Today my plough has reached its last furrow. Today I shall hear of, and shall suffer, a great misfortune.” While she was still speaking a messenger came to her saying: “Today your son has died and his whole household has met with sudden death.” When she heard this she took to her bed, smitten with incessant grief, and ordered her surviving children, a monk and a nun, to be summoned. To them she said sobbing, “It has been my pitiable destiny always to have devoted myself to devil’s work. I have been a sink of all iniquity and a mistress of enticements. I transgressed the precepts of your religion and have despaired of myself. Now, therefore, as I know that I am to have my punishment superintended by the demons whom I took as counsellors in my sin, 1 beg you, by your mother’s womb, to try to lessen my torments; as for my soul, you will not be able to repeal its sentence of damnation. Sew up my body, then, in a stag’s hide and enclose it in a stone sarcophagus; bind the cover with iron and lead, and surround the stone itself with three great chains. If I lie like this undisturbed for three nights, you shall bury me in the ground on the fourth day, although I fear that the earth may refuse to receive me because of my sorceries. Let singers chant psalms for fifty nights, and for the same number of days have masses sung for me.”
Words of Vincent
Woman soothsayer and witch Pet raven
Wretched woman’s confession
Conductors of punishment
