Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/254

242 against witchcraft trials in England, and this doubtless accounts for the mild treatment of this man. Hotham himself, however, held that the man really obtained the powder from an evil spirit as the result of a pact between them.

In France fairies are still sometimes regarded in popular belief as sorceresses, or their revels are and were participated in by these as well as by demons, while many centuries ago the trial of Joan of Arc shows that her judges, if not the folk, were determined to regard the fées as evil spirits, and to connect them with the devil and the Sabbat. In Germany the names given to the witches' devils are sometimes of an elfin kind; the spells of witches concern elfins, dwarfs, and the like, rather than devils; and the goblins sent forth by sorceresses to do mischief were known by fairy names— elbe, holden, holderchen, etc.

As far as Scotland was concerned the mingling of belief occurred in the Lowlands, in Perthshire, in Moray, in Aberdeenshire, in the Western Isles, and in Orkney. Some of the alleged witches were mere healers, their craft gained from the fairies. Others were accused or accused themselves of more sinister aspects of sorcery and devildom as well as of dealings with the fairies. Both came under the same condemnation. Judges and ecclesiastics under the sway of the current demonology shared the terrors of the time, and were ready to regard the most harmless