Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/95

 the one behinde vnder her armehole, the other a hand off towardes the top of her shoulder. Being demanded how long she had those teates, she answered she was borne so.” In the case of the Witch of Edmonton, Elizabeth Sawyer, who was in spite of her resistance searched upon the express order of the Bench, it was found by Margaret Weaver, a widow of an honest reputation, and two other grave matrons, who performed this duty that there was upon her body “a thing like a Teate the bignesse of the little finger, and the length of half a finger, which was branched at the top like a teate, and seemed as though one had suckt it.” John Palmer of St. Albans (1649) confessed that “upon his compact with the Divel, hee received a flesh brand, or mark, upon his side, which gave suck to two familiars.” The Kentish witch, Mary Read of Lenham (1652), “had a visible Teat, under her Tongue, and did show it to many.” At St. Albans about 1660 there was a wizard who “had like a Breast on his side.” In the same year at Kidderminster, a widow, her two daughters, and a man were accused; “the man had five teats, the mother three, and the eldest daughter, one.” In 1692 Bridget Bishop, one of the Salem witches, was brought to trial: “A Jury of Women found a preternatural Teat upon her Body: But upon a second search, within 3 or 4 hours, there was no such thing to be seen.” There is similar evidence adduced in the accounts of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, two Suffolk witches, executed in 1664; Elizabeth Horner, a Devon witch (1696); Widow Coman, an Essex witch, who died in her bed (1699); and, indeed, innumerable other examples might be quoted affording a whole catena of pertinent illustrations. No doubt many of these are explicable by the cases of polymastia (mammæ erraticæ) and polythelia (supernumerary nipples) of which there are continual records in recent medical works. It must be freely admitted that these anatomical divagations are commoner than is generally supposed; frequently they are so slight that they may pass almost unnoticed; doubtless there is exaggeration in many of the inexactly observed seventeenth-century narratives. However, it has to be said, as before, that when every most generous allowance is made, the facts which remain, and the details are very ample, cannot be covered by physical peculiarities and malformations.