Page:Of Six Mediaeval Women (1913).djvu/88

 falcon, which forthwith changes into a knight. As soon as the lady has recovered from her surprise, the knight tells her that he has long loved her, but could not come until she wished for him. Here we have an incident, borrowed direct from Oriental magic, in which a modern believer in psychical phenomena might find an element of telepathy. The will, as in all magic, is the motive power which acts sympathetically on the object of desire, that object being in a receptive condition. Quickly we turn from magic, and the story goes on to tell that the lady, before accepting the knight as her lover, makes it a condition that he believes in God, and the knight offers to prove his belief by taking the Sacrament. This demand is evidently in the nature of a protective test. It was very usual to try some means of discovering whether a person was in league with the powers of evil or not; for if any one unworthy touched holy things, retribution came at once, either by death or some dire visitation. But how is the priest to administer the Sacrament without seeing the knight? The latter tells her that he will make himself like her in appearance; in other words, that he will hypnotise the priest, and make him see what he, the knight, wishes him to. The ruse succeeds, and for a time all goes well; then comes discovery, despair, and death. The whole story is a most extraordinary medley of fairy-lore, religion, and magic, and most characteristic of the mediæval mind.