L _a_. "_Hugh Walshmans._"] The wife of Hugh Walshman, of Samlesbury, is mentioned in the list of recusants; Baines, vol. i. p. 544.
L 2 _a_ 1. "_Brought a little child._"] The evidence against the Pendle witches exhibits meagreness and poverty of imagination compared with the accumulated horrors with which the Jesuit, fresh, it may be, from Bodin and Delrio, made his "fire burn and cauldron bubble." With respect to this old story of the magical use made of the corpses of infants, Ben Jonson, in a note on
"I had a dagger: what did I with that? Killed an infant to have his fat;"
Their killing of infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a lust to do murder. _Sprenger in Mal. Malefic._ reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of the three witches in _Rem. Dæmonola lib. cap._ 3, about the end of the chapter. And M. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich _Quæst._ 8. And that it is no new rite, read the practice of Canidia, _Epod. Horat. lib. ode_ 5, and Lucan, _lib._ 6, whose admirable verses I can never be weary to transcribe:--
Nec cessant à cæde manus, si sanguine vivo Est opus, erumpat jugulo qui primus aperto. Nec refugit cædes, vivum si sacra cruorem Extaque funereæ poscunt trepidantia mensæ. Vulnere si ventris, non quâ natura vocabat, Extrahitur partus calidus ponendus in aris; Et quoties sævis opus est, et fortibus umbris Ipsa facit maneis. Hominum mors omnis in usu est.
_Ben Johnson's Works, by Gifford_, vol. vii. p. 130.
L 2 _a_ 2. "_They said they would annoint themselues._"] Ben Jonson informs us:
When they are to be transported from place to place, they use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride on. Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, _Remig. Dæmonolatriæ lib._ 1. _cap._ 14. _Delrio, Disquis. Mag. l._ 2. _quæst._ 16. _Bodin Dæmonoman. lib._ 2 _c._ 14. _Barthol. de Spina. quæst. de Strigib. Phillippo Ludwigus Elich. quæst._ 10. _Paracelsus in magn. et occul. Philosophia_, teacheth the confection. _Unguentum ex carne recens natorum infantium, in pulmenti, forma coctum, et cum herbis somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta_, &c. And _Giov. Bapti. Porta, lib._ 2. _Mag. Natur. cap._ 16.--_Ben Jonson's Works by Gifford_, vol. vii. p. 119.