Some notes on familiar spirits

I read James Serpell’s piece on familiar spirits, ‘Guardian Spirits or demonic Pets: The Concept of the Witch’s Familiar in Early Modern England, 1530-1712, which appeared in Angela Creager and William Jordan’s The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives (2002). It’s a thorough job, with some very good quotations and a jolly chart of the various animal forms the devil was said to have adopted.

The sources of bemusement remain: where such a strange idea came from, and in particular why it was English witchcraft that so featured the diabolic familiar in animal form.

It’s useful first to remind oneself of a widespread psychological phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

The Wikipedia writers paraphrase  from Klausen and Passman, ‘Pretend companions (imaginary playmates): the emergence of a field’ in the Journal of Genetic Psychology (2006): “Adults in early historic times had entities such as household gods and guardian angels, and muses that functioned as imaginary companions to provide comfort, guidance and inspiration for creative work.”

After a non-Christian origin, a conceptual and etymological inevitability operated to produce the familiar spirit in animal form.

In Roman times, Ronald Hutton explains, you had a lares familiares, a guardian angel called your genius (a woman might have referred to hers as her natalis Juno). On your birthday, you made special vows and little sacrifices to your genius or juno on the household shrine, the lararium. Emperors, meanwhile, had a numen, and their re-union with their numen at death was what made a dead emperor into a god. Evil spirits, says Lemprière, were the Larvae or Lemures. They were considered to be the spirits of the dead, and ceremonies, Lemualia, were performed to keep them in their graves or make them depart. These evil spirits are just a general supernatural nuisance; they are not assigned to living individuals as opposites to the genius.

The genius is considered by some lexicographers to link to the word jinn. In Moslem tradition, Jorge Luis Borges explains, Allah created three forms of intelligent beings: angels, from light, the jinn, from fire, and humankind, from earth. The jinn can be evil. They manifest, Borges reports his sources as saying, first of all as clouds or undefined pillars, then can stabilise or condense into a human or animal form, as jackal, wolf, lion, scorpion, or snake – definitely not as domestic animals. Jinn can overhear angelic conversations, and so pass on second hand vatic information to wizards. But the harms attempted by an evil jinnee are easily defeated by invoking the name of Allah, the all Merciful, the Compassionate.

For the European tradition, the OED’s etymologies take the story forwards. In post-classical Latin of the 12^th century, the guardian angel is the angelus familiaris. Because the culture was Christian, and that culture was intensely given, after Prudentius’ hugely popular 5^th century Christian poem, to analysing the psychomachia, the battle happening in and around an individual soul, familiar devils followed, c.1464. You now have both a Good and a Bad Angel, like Faustus, and they form a morally effective pairing, as in this illustration:

A court scene, with the person testifying between his evil and good angels.

From Ulrich Tengler, Der neü Leyenspiegel (Strassburg, 1514)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/yalelawlibrary/11734629074/in/album-72157639358477444/ (See folio CXXXV).

The OED assigns spiritus familiaris to the 15th century, and has the term in its English form from 1545. EEBO can be used to add further quotations. The “familier spirit of a mannes awne minde” is mentioned quite neutrally in the translation of Erasmus’ commentary of Cato’s precepts in 1553, while 1554 provides the more opprobrious “one that had a familier spyrit, and used enchauntry” in a work by Richard Smith.

Of course, the neutral use is in commentary on a Roman writer. In the context of magic, the familiar spirit may have set off like the daemon of Socrates, being the source of your knowledge. But when that knowledge was forbidden, no neutral ‘daemon’ is possible: it is a demon informing you (or, more likely, misinforming you).

Lurking in familiar was a connection to the house: Latin, familiaris, ‘of a house, of a household, belonging to a family, household, domestic, private’. Canis familiaris is the domestic dog.

The Roman lares familiaris or penates were represented in the form of dancing human-shaped figures, who carry a libation cup and dish. But when the familiar spirit is no longer a daemon but a demon, no longer a genius but an evil genius, a witch-hunter can infer that, as it would be instantly incriminating to have a largely human-shaped devil visible in the household, the devil is going to be present either invisibly, or disguised in animal form.

Genesis, as it had been interpreted from the second century, gave ample warrant for Satan assuming animal form. Nobody could imagine Jesus appearing to them in the form of a dog, but part of satanic debasement was non-angelic form. Milton has his Satan suavely passing from cormorant, to tiger, to toad, to serpent, as best serves his advantage. Intelligent writers of Genesis-based poems, like Du Bartas and Milton, were fascinated in just how Satan could get a snake to speak. Du Bartas even seems to imagine that one way round this difficulty is that Satan, invisible, is ‘playing’ the serpent, like a brilliant musician coaxing a good sound from a poor musical instrument (Sylvester, translating Du Bartas, interjects an allusion to John Dowland’s ability to coax harmonious music out of a broken-down old instrument).

Imputed 'devil's door', Warfield Church, Berkshire

I think that the medieval church in general down-played the genius or ‘good angel’. They are mentioned, but really they occupied a role the church wanted for itself: leaving aside special miraculous interventions by the Blessed Virgin Mary, the church is the best protector. Having promoted itself to guardian-angeldom, the church would naturally incline to emphasise what you were being so well protected from. As an instance, on the Heritage Open Day this last weekend, I cycled to Warfield Church in Berkshire, which has one of the reputed ‘devil’s doors’. It is asserted that such small doors, in the North wall of a church, were opened during the medieval Catholic baptismal rite – involving exorcism – of a baby in the font placed near to the devil’s door. Subsequently, ‘devil doors’ tended to be walled up: in the Reformation, it is said. Maybe very early Christian buildings had a North-side door for the not-yet baptised, and the feature was reproduced in later buildings. An exorcised devil flying out of an aperture is such a common motif that such doors probably did at some later time have that different function in a drama of exorcism (absurd though it is for a spirit to require a doorway). This is a separate issue; my point is about the church’s tendency to make the devil familiar. The devil was inside you prior to your baptism, and he is always trying to resume control, he will always be close at hand.

Once the devil had become multiplied into vast numbers of evil spirits, every sinner can have one, and the church can busy itself beating them away. Some irremissible sinners, demonology began to say, struck personal covenants with devils. Invisible devils inevitably had a neither-here-nor-there quality. It became the duty of the person accused of witchcraft, or the person who said they were bewitched, to see devils. Particularly in England, and perhaps because the English always seem to have accommodated an odd range of animals living with them, animals already in the house were co-opted as devils; or in the absence of animals, the assumed attendant devils were assigned animal forms by those who claimed to be witnesses, or by witches who were trying to confess compliantly enough to worm their way back into judicial favour.

The sinister, vice, element from psychomachia had in effect combined with the household suggestions of ‘familiaris’ (“some domestical or familiar devil” in Daneau, A Dialogue of Witches, 1575) to suggest that the spirit prompting to evil adopted disguise as a domestic animal, as when Elizabeth Stile confessed that when she went to gaol, “her Bunne or Familier came to her in the likenesse of a black Catte” (1579). The OED does not include this sense for the noun ‘bun’, but it was in regular early modern use, alongside ‘imp’, as in Great News from the West of England: “In the Town of Beckenton … liveth one William Spicer, a young Man about eighteen Years of Age; as he was wont to pass by the Alms-house (where liveth an Old Woman, about Fourscore) he would call her Witch, and tell her of her Buns; which did so enrage the Old Woman, that she threatened him with a warrant…”

If the church had appropriated the role of good genius, we can then see Milton’s Comus as powerfully re-instating the guardian angel, the daemon, sent direct from heaven to intervene - because Milton was well on the way to his repudiation of organised worship.

I think the most revealing familiar spirits are those whose forms and actions are recounted in Edward Fairfax’s Daemonologia. I say this because Helen Fairfax, the writer’s eldest daughter, was simply making them up, deliberately and in a calculated fashion, to get her father’s attention. Yes, reported familiars were always made up, but in this case there’s no ambiguity about delusions, or hysteria, or deception by a third party. Helen Fairfax simply let rip, unleashed her imagination and expanding on themes she’d heard in other reports.

She witnessed a Protean devil: human formed, then a beast with many horns, then a calf, then “presently he was like a very little dog, and desired her to open her mouth and let him come into her body, and then he would rule the world”

Her father is completely credulous. On the 16^th November, 1621, a black dog, she said, had leapt onto her bed “and I tried if I could feel the dog, but I felt nothing; and the wench said ‘The dog has leaped down and gone’ ”

Then there is Margaret’s Wait’s alleged familiar “At last the woman pulled out of a bag a living thing, the bigness of a cat, rough, black, and with many feet”. This alarmingly non-tetrapodic beast keeps trying to sit on the Bible Helen is conspicuously attempting to read.

More imaginative is the black cat: “when the cat opened her mouth to blow on her, she showed her teeth like the teeth of a man or woman”. This imaginary being mixes together the devil in animal form and the witch who, in her animal form, is incompletely transformed.

The women that Helen Fairfax so heedlessly accused were taken for examination. No supernumerary teats were found on them, and they were acquitted when tried. The relentless Helen, who is making all this up, subsequently sees a witch breast-feeding her familiar, and is indignant at this crafty way of escaping exposure. She has come up with a way the women at the York assizes escaped proper detection. Finding her lies officially disbelieved only caused Helen to rally with more lies.

What moved Helen Fairfax was said to be paternal neglect. She maybe also took some pleasure in deceiving a father who had no regard at all for her intelligence. A desire to be married and away from home is also apparent. Satan appears to her as a gallant gentleman. The God himself appears to her in the hall. This is too much for the family, who can believe in the devil being present, but not God himself, and Helen swiftly adjusts her story, as the God who appeared to her produces evasive answers, and finally shows his horns.

Losing hope on the Hope-well: two more supernatural sea stories

I have a lecture to give during the coming term on ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. After the witch on the ship ‘Recovery’, this inclined me to find more supernatural goings-on at sea. Two more follow: immediately below, I have transcribed a full text of a brief pamphlet from the very end of the 17^th century. Then follows the EEBO transcript (slightly edited) of another. I make brief comment on both.

First, Strange and wonderful news being a true, tho' sad relation of six sea-men (Belonging to the Margaret of Boston,) who sold themselves to the devil, and were invisibly carry’d away. Like the 1691 story of Elizabeth Masters, we are looking at ready-made substance for coffee house chat: the pamphlet is really aimed at getting the curious to go and see the fuller evidence on display in Lloyd’s coffee house.

The pamphlet has a brief preamble:

“Though this following Relation contains matter of very great Wonder and Amazement; nevertheless it comes to our Hands, confirm’d by that sufficient testimony, that we offer it to the Reader as a Narrative of unquestion’d Truth and Reputation.

By a Letter from Barbadoes, of the 23 of July last, written by a Person of Worth and Credit, in that island, we have this relation, viz., That the Margaret from Boston, the [illeg.], of December 95 bound to Berbadoes, in their Passage one of the saylers at the Helm call’d to the Master of the Vessel, and told him, That he could steer no longer. The Master asking the reason, he replyed, That he was not well; and for that cause quitted his Post; the Master taking the Helm, the said sailor further declared, That there stood a Spirit by the Binnacle, that accus’d him of killing a Woman; a fault which the Spirit had falsly charg’d him with; for he had never committed any such unmanly Crime in his Life. The Spirit, he said, further told him, that all the Ships Company had sign’d an Agreement with the Divel, which was us’d as an argument for him to do the same.

The next day the Fellow fell into strange Deleriums, and talk’d of wonderful Accidents that would befall the Ship; which were look’d upon as nothing but the wild Notions of his craz’d senses, the Chimera’s of Frenzy. Particularly he said, That the Spirit had brought a boat to fetch him away; with other ridiculous idle discourse of the same Nature.

Upon the 17^th of January in the Latitude of 19 about 9 at Night, a small white Cloud arose, without any rain, or extraordinary Wind, which presently falling upon the ship pressed her down with that strange and supernatural Weight and force that the hatches flew out, and the whole Ship was under Water, by which unhappy Accident, the Boy was wash’d off and drowned.

But to begin the more miraculous part of my Narrative, the Ship continued under water for eleven Weeks; a thing that struck (as may be well imagin’d) an extraordinary Consternation and Confusion through the Marriners, from several strange Arguments of their Astonishment. First, that the ship should be wholly immerged under water, and yet not sunk downright to the bottom. Secondly, that tho’ they were apparently thus intirely under water, yet the Ship was not wholly filled with Water, but that they had Air enough to breath in, by which means they continued alive; feeding all this while, upon raw meat, and fresh Fish which came swimming over the Vessel, and several of which they Caught and Eat. Their lodging was on Boards placed athwart the Rail near the Taffrel covered with a Sail. The Men were always wet which, in so long a time, made an impression upon them that their flesh on their bodies was galled and raw.

But what was the most dismal part of all, Six of the Ship’s Crew upon the sinking of the Vessel under water, were frighted with Infernal Spirits; and about 12 the first Night were carried away invisibly, leaving no more then 4 persons alive behind them; which indeed gave some little Credit to what the afore mentioned Sailor at the helm had declared in his Deleriums.

After this 11 weeks Immurement these wondrous watry Walls, for so I may justly call it, the Ship recovered itself above the Water again, and the first Land they could discover was the Island Dissiado, which, with so few hands left, they could not fetch up, by reason of a strong Northern Current that bore against’em. The next was Grand-Terra, where they met with the same Disapointment: but on the 5^th of April they run themselves on Shore upon Guardelupo; where the French treated them very kindly, not as prisoners, but as Men in Distress.

The names of the three Seamen left alive are William Davis Master (a Man very well known in London among the Berbadoes Merchants), William Cadner, and William Bywater. Not only the Original Letter, and the whole Relation, at large; is to be seen at Mr Lloyd’s coffee-house in Lumbard-Street, but likewise several Persons are to be heard of, and spoken withal upon the Exchange, in Attestation of the whole Truth herein declared.

The reverend Mr Baxter, in his Treatise of Spirits, says, That tho’ Hurricanes and tempests have natural causes, yet there is great reason to think they are managed by Spirits. In confirmation whereof, he relates some notable instances of his own particular Deliverances from the Fury of most boisterous Whirlewinds; namely, when the Reapers in Evesham Vale were Hurt, Writhen, and One killed, some friendly Power (for so he expresses it) restrain’d the course of Gravelly Sand, rais’d by a whirlwind, as it met him in a narrow lane.”

We will never know what happened on the Margaret (of Boston). That some men might survive for a while below decks on a semi-submerged vessel is not impossible (though the narrative does also seem to say that they were lodged on boards placed across the taffrail, apparently sheltered under a sail). But trapped below decks for eleven weeks? Living off raw meat and fish that swam past? What did they drink? And finally the vessel just pumped itself out and re-surfaced? Some terrible story is concealed under these events, and the supernatural story is just a ruse, to distract attention away from normal likelihoods, and what they did to survive.

Like the case of the witch on the ‘Recovery’, we have a story that starts with a seaman losing his nerve, making wild accusations against both himself and others, and feeling the diabolic temptation of a Satanic delivery from the sea: “Particularly he said, That the Spirit had brought a boat to fetch him away.”

The concluding reference to Richard Baxter is interesting. The agèd Baxter, writing earlier in the same decade, still believed in a spirit-haunted, witch-and-devil-filled world. When the anonymous writer thought of this parallel, he connects the mariners’ yarn of six seamen having made a pact with the devil (and disappearing invisibly, quickly and totally at midnight, rather than disappearing piecemeal) with a mindset in which it can be believed that the devil directs hurricanes and whirlwinds, that these somehow only strike churches, while the just enjoy ‘particular Deliverances’ (though Baxter has to concede that the personal linen of the just doesn’t enjoy quite such protection from that ‘friendly power’).

Baxter had said this: “Though Hurricanes and Whirlwinds have Natural Causes, yet I have great cause to think, that they are managed by some Spirits (as I said before of Storms). Gunpowder worketh in Guns according to its nature; but if some Rational Agent did not invent, make, and manage it, all its Power, would be of little use. I have marvelled to see my own small Linnen spred out by Servants to dry, to be suddenly catcht up, and carried over the Town and Steeple away, and never more heard of. Near the time when some Reapers in the Vale of Evesham were hurt, writhen, and one killed with a Whirlwind, I was walking in a Gravelly Way in a Corn-field, there being a Lane besides me, between two Hedges; suddenly a Whirlwind came up the Cart-way, casting up the Gravelly Sand directly to meet me; when it came within Ten or Twelve Yards of me, I was about stepping out of the way into the Corn, to escape it, but it suddenly turned out of the way to the Right-hand, into the Lane from me, so as perswaded me, that it was a voluntary Motion, directed by a friendly Power; for it went straight on up the Lane, and tore the Hedges and Branches of the Trees on the side of the Lane. But these are small effects to what other see, especially of the great Hurricanes at Sea in the West-Indies. The Spirits that Rule in the Air have great Power of the Airy Motions.

Many and many Churches have been thus torn, proportionably so much beyond all other Buildings, especially of Stone, that I cannot but think there is some knowing Agent that maketh the Choice, though I know not who, nor why. Except a few Hay-Ricks, I remember not that till this Seventy sixth Year of my Age, I have known Lightenings to have had Hurting Power on any Buildings but Churches, save very rarely, and small, as this last Year, at Islington, it entred a House, and kil’'d a Woman and Child:) Nor to have torn any Wood but Oak, (which in Trees and Buildings I have seen torn where I dwelt.) But divers persons have been killed and scorch’d by it. An Eminent Knight, that I knew, is commonly said to have been struck dead by it in his Garden.”

[Extracts from: The certainty of the worlds of spirits … Richard Baxter (1691).]

EEBO also offers this cleverly self-exculpatory supernatural narrative (for such I take it to be) attested to by a ship’s master. Having lost his collier off Spurn Head on its way back from Newcastle, he has concocted a stirring tale of the evil spirit on board that sank the ship. It manifested to him (and only him) frequently, but he shapes his story so that we can see that he reacted with professional skill and courage. But all to no avail: on board his ship, nothing would work properly, candles burned blue, the ship’s boat launched itself, the explosive departure of the spirit as the ship went down burned his face...

A True and Perfect Relation of the Strange and Dreadful Apparition which lately Infested and Sunk a Ship bound for New-castle, called, The Hope-well of London.

The 22. of February, 1672 we sailed from Gravesend; and the 26. by Gods Providence we sailed over the Bar of Newcastle, and there Loaded the 2. of March. About Nine or Ten of the Clock in the Night following, we having made all clear and ready for the furtherance of our Voyage, some time after Supper I went to rest, when about Twelve of the Clock in the Night, to the best of my remembrance, I was awaked out of my sleep by a great noise, (but saw nothing) which to the best of my capacity, bid me Be gone, and that I had nothing to do there. But being so hastily disturbed, and not certain what might be the cause, I gave it over for a Dream, and past that accident as uncertain of the truth. Now after the first Day was past, about Eight or Nine of the Clock at Night I went to rest; and about twelve, my Mate was striking a Light to take a Pipe of Tobacco, (as I suppose) and expecting the Wherry to go up to the Town, being the Tide fell out about Two in the Morning, I desired the Candle might not be put out; and being as well awake as now I am, to the best of my judgement, I was then pulled by the Hair of my Head off from my Pillow, and the same words declared to me as before; and then I saw the perfect face and proportion of a Man, in a black Hat, stuff Coat, and striped Neck-cloth, with hanging down Hair, and a sower-down-looking Countenance, and his Teeth being set in his Head, I had then time to say, Lord have mercy upon me· What art? at which he vanished: Yet the Candle burned very blew, and almost went out: Hereupon being much discontented, I did by the following Post give my Owners a just account of what had befallen me.

The Fifth of that instant, we set sail: about four of the Clock in the day, the Wind at W. S. W. fair Weather, and a brave Gale off the shore, which continued until half an hour after a Eleven on Wednesday Night; at which time the man at the Helm called out that he could not stir the Helm: but after I had pulled off the Whip-staff, the Ship steered as before, being still fair Weather, the Wind then coming to the N. W. and Snowing Weather, but very fair and clear. I was yet doubtful of more Wind, and therefore caused the Men to furl the fore Top-sail, and lower down the main Top-sail upon the back of the main Sail, but could not with all the strength we had hale in; the Weather brake off the fore Top-sail, when this was still in my judgement, that our Ship did hale as much, as when our Sails were out. Then we haled up our main Sail, and still the Ship had the same list as with a large Wind, which to my judgment might be half a streak or thereabout.

By this time it was Two of the Clock, then our Men tried the Pump, and found little or no water in her: the Man at the Helm called out, That the Candle burned so blew in the Lanthorn, That it gave little or no light, and three several times went out, so that I held the Candle to the Look-out, which Candle did burn very well, and showed a good light; but of a sudden our Ship would not feel her Helm so kindly as before, and brought all our Sails aback. Then our Ship heeled as much to Windward as before to Leeward: the Glass being out, we went to the Pump, and found no water in the Ship, but she did not steer well, neither could I find the reason, being still so fair weather: This unkind steerage, made me urgent to try the Pump yet more, but I could not get the upper box to work, nor stir; but having taken that up, and trying with the Pump-hook, we could not come near the lower box by a foot and a half, which to my judgement was hindered by something like a Bull-fish, or Woolsack, that as we forced down, gave up again with the hook: Whereupon Mistrusting that all was not well, I caused our men to keep the Coat of our pump up, and my self loosened the tack; in the mean time I ordered two men to loose the Boat, which they did, being lashed in three places: Yet they do not remember to this hour, that they loosened any of them but the middlemost; and with three men in her, the Boat went over the top of the Fore-sheet, which lay above the stem, without touching it, with such violence, as even amazed us that saw it: And they that were in the Boat gave such loud cries, as frighted him at the Helm who came running out unknown to me. But then finding the ship coming nearer the wind then formerly, I ran to the stair-case, to bid him put the Helm over, but could not: And hearing one jump down at the hatch, which was open at the half Deck, did suppose that the Helms man came down again; and calling him by his name to come and help me, the word was no sooner out of my mouth, but I perceived the same person that I had formerly seen before we came out of the Harbour; who came violently to me, saying, Be gone, you have no more to do here; throwing me in at the Cabin door, clear upon the top of the table; when I crying out, In the name of God what art, he vanished away in a flash of fire: thinking withal, that the ship had split in a thousand pieces, it giving such a crack. The men thereupon calling out, Master if ye be a man come away, did something revive me; and striving to have got to my chest, being I had some money in it, I found that something hindered me, but what it was I could not tell. Then perceiving the main Sea coming in so fast, that I was up to the waste, before I could get out of the Cabin; and finding all our men in the Boat but only one, I desired him to get a compass; which he did, yet could never after know what became of it. We were no sooner in the Boat, but the Ship sank down, and yet having a great Sea Fur Gown, which lay upon the dicker upon the ships going down, the very upset of the water brought it to the Boats side, and one of our men took it in. We reckoned our selves to be ten or twelve Leagues E. S. E. from the Spurn, I perceived the Fane at the Main-top-mast head, when the ship was sunk: We continued in the Boat from three in the morning, till ten or eleven that day, when we were taken up by a Whitby Ketch, who used us very kindly, and towed our Boat at his stern with two ends of a hawser, till she brake away: She being bound for Newcastle, and the wind being contrary, did on the Saturday following, set us a shore at Grimsby in Hull River, where the Mayor gave us a Pass for London.

This is a true and perfect relation to the best of my knowledge in every respect,

John Pye Master. And attested by nine men more, all belonging to my Ship.

Postscript. I had forgot to express, that one side of my face is burnt and blasted sorely, which I felt within half an hour after I was gone out of the Ship; but how it came upon me in the Ship I could not tell, being then in a great horror and amazement. John Pye.

The little pamphlet was published in both Edinburgh and London.

Office marmalade

Here's a diablerie out of William Winstanley, Historical rarities and curious observations domestick & foreign (1684), a rather jolly tale of a demon lover, and of a miller who crosses him and ends up smeared with ‘office marmalade’ for his impudence. It’s supposed to be factual, but note the very vague ‘one of the Northern Islands’ as the location for the tale. The miller is a walk-on part from any fabliau.

The only puzzle here (for ‘office marmalade’ is easily solved) is to wonder when girls called Margharetta started consorting with devils? The girl in this story shares a name with Gretchen-Margarete in Goethe’s Faust (and from there, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita).

Winstanley is writing about

‘Of Spirits or Devils, and that they have had carnal Knowledge of People’:

“We shall conclude this Discourse with a Story of a later date, how that in a small Village, in one of the Northern Islands, there dwelt an ancient Boor and his Wife, who had but one Child, and that a Daughter, whom they looked upon as the staff of their declining Age; she was just entered into her nineteenth Year, and gave great hopes of proving an excellent Woman, being very saving, industrious, and handsome; which good Qualities, had invited most of the young men of her Rank throughout the Country, to take particular notice of her, and list themselves her Servants. But she, like a discreet Maid, still checked her roving Fancy, and was deaf to all their flattering Courtship, resolving to entertain no Addresses which should not be authorized by her Parents Approbation; and well had it been she had never suffered her self to be divorced from that Resolution: for so it chanced, that within a while after, the Devil came in the Likeness of a man, and took up his Lodging within two or three doors of her Father’s House, pretending his Business was to look after some Debts he had owing him not far from thence: he was a Person of a proper Stature, meager Visage, large spar[k]ling Eyes, long Hair, but curling, and exceeding black; he generally went in Boots, (perhaps to conceal his cloven feet) and though his Habit was but ordinary, he appeared very full of Money, which made his Landlord very sweet upon him; and the more to oblige him, there happening a Wedding in that Town within few days after his Arrival, his Host would needs carry this his strange Guest with him to it; though it was observed he could by no means be got into the Church where the Nuptial Rites were solemnized; but as soon as they came home to Dinner, he was as busy and as merry as the joviallest of them.

And here it was that the fatal Acquaintance between him and Margaretta (for so was the Maiden called) unhappily first begun. That time allowing a greater Liberty of Discourse to the younger sort (amongst whom commonly one Wedding is the begetter of another) furnished our black Stranger with the larger opportunity to court this innocent Maid to her destruction. To repeat the particular Complements he used, we purposely omit, lest we should injure the Devil’s Eloquence by our Courser Rhetoric; suffice it to know, his devilish Courtship was so charming as to raise an unknown Passion in her Virgin Breast, who so far doted on his Company, as to be sorry when all the Companies breaking up obliged them to part; so that being come home, and after some time got into her Chamber, she makes her unready, but not without a thousand kind Thoughts on this Stranger she had left, whom at last (just as she was going into her Bed) she saw come into the Chamber; you may easily imagine her not a little surprised at so strange an Adventure, knowing all the Doors fast locked, and no body up but her self: but he soon superseded both her Fears and Wonder, by telling her in submissive Language, that he came out of pure love to have a little free discourse with her, and that he had an Art to open any Lock without Noise or Discovery.

Then beginning to talk amorously, and having wantonized a while, he told her at last in plain Terms, he was resolved to lie with her that Night; Merry Company before, and his Dalliances now, had raised such a spring-Tide in her Veins, that after a few faint formal Denials to gratify her Modesty, she consents: but, no sooner were they in Bed, but her Ears were courted with the most excellent Music in the World, which so captivated the Spirits of this ensnared Damsel, that she suffered him for many Nights together to enjoy his beastly Pleasures with her, without being taken notice of by any: but no Eye-sight so sharp and piercing as that of Jealousy; some of her former Sweethearts observing her kind Looks in the day-time to this Stranger, and finding themselves wholly out of Favour, conclude he was the man that supplanted them in their Affection, for which they vow Revenge; and four of them joined together, armed with trusty Back-Swords, way-lay him one Evening in the Fields, who no sooner comes up to them, but these valiant Heroes fell all four upon him at once with their dead-doing Bilboes; but they do but Duel a Shadow, though they see him plainly they cannot reach him, and their mighty Strokes are lost in insignificant cleaving down the empty Air; on the other side, though they behold him only single, yet they feel more than a hundred Flails, belabouring them so severely, till their Backs seem Brawn, and their Heads Jelly, which obliged them to cry out for Quarter, which he very generously (to show that he was a Devil of Honour) grants, but withal tells them, they must undergo a further small Penance for their Presumption; saying this, he ties their Hands behind them, and letting down their Breeches, whips them with Rods of Holly and Nettles intermixed, till the Crimson Gore in Streams flowed down their Posteriors; then having fast pinned the hinder lap of their Shirts to their Shoulders, with their Hands bound, and Breeches about their Heels, as aforesaid, he dismissed them; who rambling all Night they knew not whither, found themselves in the morning hard by the Village, where they met two Wenches going a milking, amazed and ready to run away seeing them in that ridiculous Posture these, with much Rhetoric, and some Tears, they entreat to loose them, which the hard-hearted Sluts, ready to be-piss themselves with laughing, refusing they are forced to march on into the middle of the Village, and there too they could not get unbound till they had made an ingenious Confession how they came thus pickled.

At another time, a Miller, living in that Village took some occasion to fall out with our Stranger upbraiding him as an idle Fellow, and one that having no Employment, was very fit to serve in the Wars: the Stranger replied little, but told him he should be even with him for his Sauciness before he slept; accordingly, the Miller and his Family were no sooner got to Bed, but he heard his Mill set going very furiously, whereupon, getting up to see what the matter was, he found a whole Cart-load of Office-Marmalade brought to be ground, and thrown into his Hopper and Bins. At this unexpected Sight poor Dusty-Pell began to swear, and wished a thousand Tun of Devils damn the Author of this Roguery; when lo! on a sudden, as a Punishment for his Profaneness, as he went to shut down the Mill, he is taken up, and ducked above forty times over head and Ears in the Stream, and then his Toll-dish, full of the before mentioned Frankincense, clapped so fast on his Head, that it could not be got off for above two days.

For these, and some other extravagant Pranks that he plaid, he was at last carried before a Justice, in whose Presence he was no sooner come, but there was heard all about the House a hideous Noise, as of hissing of Serpents, whilst he fell into such a loud excessive Laughter, that he made the whole House to shake; which fit of Mirth being over, the Magistrate demanded of him what Country-man he was? to which he replied, that he was an Inhabitant of another World, and only a Sojourner in this: as he spake which words, the Room seemed full for almost half an hour of fiery Flashes, accompanied with a most dreadful Clap of Thunder, in which he vanished away, and was never seen after.”

My image is taken from an illustration for Ulrich Tengler’s judicial handbook of 1512, and shows, quite graphically, a witch with her demon-lover. Winstanley tells his tale after all this nonsense had largely lost credibility: there’s no punishment, and no hell-fire.

You make me feel like (not) dancing: early modern Salome

I was spending an idle but contented hour this last Sunday afternoon looking at YouTube clips of Rita Hayworth dancing, and singing (I mean, gosh, chaps), sometimes with Fred Astaire, sometimes solo. I do not think I have ever seen her as Salome in the 1953 film, and maybe this is one of those things that will always be better in one’s imagination, for all that inimitable Hollywood style surely turned cheesy when historical or biblical subjects were attempted.

But I was led back to the early modern versions: mainly, and predictably they disapprove mightily. Salome as a name doesn’t have its later resonance: she is generally referred to as either ‘Herodias’s daughter’, or simply as ‘Herodias’. She crops up with regularity in general dispraises of women, and stars in that most woman-hating of early modern plays, Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam. But for the early modern stage-hating Puritan (John Rainolds, and William Prynne, and to an extent in Thomas Beard) Salome is the great Bible instance of the wickedness of performance. Prynne is apoplectic (and silent about David dancing before the Lord):

“All these, with sundry others, unanimously condemne all mixt, effeminate, lascivious, amorous dancing, (the epidemicall pastime of our dancing, loytring age) as sinfull, hurtfull, unlawfull to all chaste, all sober Christians, as the reasons they alleage against it will more plainely evidence. For first, (say they) as there is no allowance, no approved example of any such dancing in the Scriptures, the Primitive Church, the Fathers, or in the lives and practice of the Saints of God in former ages, (who as appeares by the fore-quoted Councels and Fathers have alwayes censured and exploded Dancing:) (Prynne here supplies dozens of bible citations) doe either absolutely in expresse tearmes, or else by way of necessary consequence, condemne such dancing as Idolatrous, Heathenish, carnall, worldly, sensuall, and misbeseeming Christians.”

Prynne now moves on to the revelation, derived from various fathers of the church, that the girl who danced before the leering Herod was in fact the multi-talented Devil himself:

“Secondly, the very Devill himselfe (write they) who danced in the Daughter of Herodias Math. 14 6. 7. (as Chrysostome, Fulgentius, Theophylact. and others write) was the originall Author of this dancing, the onely instrument who excites men to it; the onely person that is present at it, that is honored, pleased, and delighted with it; (he being ever-more present and president where such dancing is) as Chrysostome, Basil, with the other Marginall Authors have plentifully recorded.”

I wonder in what church father or rabbinical tradition the death of Salome was first invented? Joseph Beaumont had something of a specialism in writing disapproving poems about the bible’s best dancing girl (so we can imagine he was particularly susceptible to these things). So his (for him) short poem about John the Baptist ends with a vehement account of her fate:

One Dance for Thee is still behind
By which Revenge thy Crime will find:
The Ice perfidious to Thee,
But unto Justice true shall be,
When it shall catch
Thy neck, & snatch
Its Head away,
Which there shall play
And dance a tragik Measure on
That fatall Pavement: then shall John
W^th greater glory view Thee from his Sphear,
Then Herod at his Feast beheld Thee heere.

Here we see that her command of a performance space leads to appropriate retribution: the thin moral ice on which she fandangoed was literalised into ice which broke beneath her, and as she went through, visited on her the decollation she’d inveigled out of Herod. All positions having changed, the Baptist is now the gloating spectator. Henry Vaughan has a similar poem, which also alludes to this, and here it is with his marginal note:

‘The Daughter of Herodias’

Vain, sinful Art! who first did fit
Thy lewd loath'd Motions unto sounds,
And made grave Musique like wilde wit
Erre in loose airs beyond her bounds?

What fires hath he heap'd on his head?
Since to his sins (as needs it must,)
His Art adds still (though he be dead,)
New fresh accounts of blood and lust.

Leave then yong Sorceress; the Ice*
Will those coy spirits cast asleep,
Which teach thee now to please his eyes
Who doth thy lothsome mother keep.

But thou hast pleas'd so well, he swears,
And gratifies thy sin with vows:
His shameless lust in publick wears,
And to thy soft arts strongly bows.

Skilful Inchantress and true bred!
Who out of evil can bring forth good?
Thy mothers nets in thee were spred,
She tempts to Incest, thou to blood.

*Her name was Salome; in passing over a frozen river, the ice broke under her, and chopt off her head.

My image is taken from the impressive collection assembled over in Bucharest by the owner of this weblog:

http://brechto.blogspot.com/2007/05/salome.html

It is by Guido Reni, and shows a fabulously demure Salome receiving the Baptist’s head. I chose this from Mihai’s scholarly collection of these things because I thought it was latently self-subverting. Surely, here, there is some kind of contamination from memories of David with the head of Goliath? The boy staggering under the weight of the Baptist’s severed bonce giganticises the prophet: Salome is so modest, that she becomes saintly, a Judith.

But, of course, appearances are deceptive, and I must remember that Mr Prynne has let me know that she is really the devil. All change places now.