Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/381

Rh be examined to see if they bore devil's marks. The absence of such marks, however, did not prove innocence.

With the fullest directions as to the ways and means to be adopted for the ensnaring of witches this dreadful book concludes. The effect of the fires kindled by the bull of Pope Innocent was felt far into the eighteenth century. The victims were counted by millions. Says an author of the seventeenth century, "When they had commenced in one place to burn witches, more were found in proportion as they were burned"; and it is also stated that in certain communities in Germany and France all the women were sent to the stake; and in many instances princes and potentates were forced, from fear of seeing their subjects exterminated, to stay by authoritative command the madness of the inquisitors.

No age was exempt. Children were brought to the stake with their mothers. A gloomy presentiment pervaded the community when the proclamation on the church-doors announced the arrival of the inquisitor. Work in the shops and fields ceased; and the person who had an open enemy, or suspected secret envy, knew beforehand that he was lost. And the arch-fiend was the agent and instigator of all this madness. "He was in the castle of the knight, the palaces of the mighty, the libraries of the learned, on every page of the Bible, in the churches, in the halls of justice, in the lawyer's chambers, in the laboratories of physicians and naturalists, in cottages, farm-yards, stalls, everywhere,"

The popular literature of this period consisted of legends of saints and stories about the devil. There were imps, giants, trolls, forest spirits, elves, and hobgoblins on the earth; nicks, river-sprites in the water, fiends in the air, and salamanders in the fire. There were monsters such as dragons, griffins, were-wolves, witch-kind, Thor's-swine, and supernatural beings derived from the human world, but of dimmer outlines than the preceding.

Among these last was the mandragora, which was supposed to reveal to its possessor hidden things and future events, and to secure the friendship of all men. The root of the mandragora, or mandrake, often divides into two parts, and thus presents a rude resemblance to a human figure. It was believed that this plant could not be found except below the gallows where a pure youth had been hanged. When torn from the soil it was said to sigh, shriek, and moan so piteously that it caused whoever heard it to die. To find this plant it must be sought before sunrise Friday morning. The person seeking it should carefully fill his ears with cotton, wax, or pitch, and take with him a black dog, without a single white hair. The sign of the cross was to be made three times over the mandragora, then the soil was to be carefully removed, so that it was attached only by its fine rootlets. It was then tied by a string to the tail of a dog, who was attracted forward by a piece of bread. The dog pulled the plant from