Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/154

146 Bartholomew Cokes, the tall young squire of Harrow o' the Hill, "Good faith, he looks me thinks an you mark him, like one that were made to catch flies with his sir Cranion legs." On this Gifford remarks, "i.e., small spider-like legs; but Cranion is the fairy appellation for a fly," and he refers to the Nymphidiean passage at which we have arrived. Tipula oleracea would be rather out of proportion with the box-seat of a fairy's chariot, otherwise I should have thought that Daddy Longlegs, also known as the Crane fly, furnished a simile for Quarlous, and acted as coachman to Queen Mab. The eighth hag in Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens, sets forth, thus, the tale of her labours:

Percy, who included this Witches' Song in his Reliques, explains cranion as meaning skull, and certainly Hag No. 4 had spent much time in choosing out from charnel-houses, private grots, and public pits, a skull fit for incantations. Probably a modicum of this was sufficient for each witch, for it would be a very large frog that possessed a back broad enough to furnish skin for a skull-case, and "a purset" (observe the diminutive) would be a most inadequate receptacle. May not sir Cranion have been a fly, the beldame's familiar? We may remember that Matthew Hopkins, the "Witch-finder General," kept a sharp look out for flies. He would seat a suspected character in the middle of an empty room and cause her to be narrowly watched for twenty-four hours, during which she might neither eat nor drink. "It was supposed that one of her imps would come during that interval and suck her blood. As the imp might come in the shape of a wasp, a moth, a fly, or other insect, a hole was made in the door or window to let it enter. The watchers were ordered to keep a sharp look-out, and endeavour to kill any insect that appeared in the room. If any fly escaped and they could not kill it, the woman was guilty; the fly