Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/136

94 there being already published to our hands such Narrations as will store us with Examples enough of this kind.

8. Amongst which that Relation of M$r$ Francis Perreand, concerning an unclean Spirit that haunted his house at Mascon in Burgundy, both for the variety of matter and the Authentickness of the Story, is of prime use. For though this Dæmon never appeared visible to the eye, yet his presence was palpably deprehensible by many freaks and pranks that he play'd. As in drawing the Curtains at Midnight, and plucking off the blankets; In his holding of the doors, and in rolling of billets; In his knocking and slinging things against the Wainscot; In his whistling such tunes as they teach Birds, and in his singing prophane and baudy Songs; In his repeating aloud the Lords Prayer and the Creed; In his imitating the voices and dialers of several persons, as also the crying of Huntsmen, the croaking of Frogs, and the speeches of Jugglers and Mountebanks; His scoffing and jearing and uttering merry conceits, as that of Pays de Vaux, where he said they made goodly Carbonado's of Witches, and thereupon laughed very loud; His bringing commendations from remote friends, and his telling stories of sightings and murders; His discovering of things done in private to the Actors of them; His exprobrating to a grave Divine the singing of a baudy song in a Tavern;

His tossing of a roll of cloth of fifty ells; His disordering of skeans of yarn, and pulling men at their work by their coats backward; His flinging the hat of one at his face while he was asleep in his house, and snatching a candlestick out of a maid's hand; His entangling and tying things in such knots as it was impossible for any one to untye them, and yet himself untying them in a moment; His tumbling the bed as soon as it has been made into the midst of the floor, and taking down books from their shelves in the study; His making a noise like a volly of shot, and imitating the sound of Hemp-dressers four beating together; His making musick of two little bells he found amongst rusty iron in the house, which he used not onely there but in several other places, whose sound they could hear pass by them in the Aire, though they could see nothing; His hiding of a Goldsmiths Jewels and tools for a while, and then dropping them out of the Aire on the table; His flinging of stones about the house, but without hurt, as in the former Narration, His often beating a new Maid in her bed, and powring water on her head till he had forced her away; And lastly, his pulling a certain Lawyer by the arm into the midst of the room, and there whirling him about on the tiptoe, and then flinging him on the ground.

This is a short Epitome of the most remarkable exploits of that invisible Devil of Mascon. For, as I remember, he was not so much as once seen in any shape all this time; unless it was he that Lullier and Repay met at a corner of the street in the habit of a Countrey-woman spinning by Moon-shine, who upon their nearer approach vanished from their sight.

9. I have given my self the trouble of transcribing these particulars, partly because they conduce so much to the discovery of the nature of these kind of Spirits (these Effects making it suspicable that he did not much miss the mark that ventur'd to style them Homines Aereos) and Rh