Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/94

 Commer, and 4 brought by Andrew Fraser, chamerlan of Ferrintosh. He first polled all their heads and amassed the heap of haire together, hid in the stone dich, and so proceeded to pricking. Severall of these dyed in prison never brought to confession. This villan gaind a great deale off mony, haveing two servants; at last he was discovered to be a woman disguished in mans cloathes. Such cruelty and rigure was sustained by a vile varlet imposture.” No doubt in very many, in the majority of instances, these witch-marks were natural malformations of the skin, thickened tissue, birthmarks—I myself have known a subject who was by prenatal accident stamped upon the upper part of the arm with the complete figure of a rat—moles, callous warts, or spots of some kind. But this explanation will not cover all the cases, and even the sceptical Miss Murray who writes: “Local anæsthesia is vouched for in much of the evidence, which suggests that there is a substratum of truth in the statements,” is bound candidly to confess, “but I can at present offer no solution of this problem.” Moreover, as before noticed, this mark was not infrequently branded upon the novice at admission, often by the Witch-Master, who presided over the rout, sometimes—it must be admitted—by non-human agency.

The “little Teat or Pap,” so often found on the body of the wizard or witch, and said to secrete milk which nourished the familiar, must be carefully distinguished from the insensible devil-mark. This phenomenon, for no explainable reason, seems to occur only in the records of England and New England, where, however, it is of exceedingly frequent occurrence. It is worth remarking that in the last act of Shadwell’s play, The Lancashire Witches (1681), the witches are searched by a woman, who reports “they have all great Biggs and Teats in many Parts, except Mother Madge, and hers are but small ones.” Shadwell, who in his voluminous notes has citations from nearly fifty authors, on this point writes: “The having of Biggs and Teats all modern Witch-mongers in England affirm.” In 1597 at the trial of a beldame, Elizabeth Wright, of Stapenhill, near Burton-on-Trent: “The old woman they stript, and found behind her right sholder a thing much like the vdder of an ewe that giueth sucke with two teates, like vnto two great wartes,