"Published according to the Scottish copie.
"Printed for William Wright."]
[Footnote 2: These events are referred to in an existing letter by the
notorious Thos. Phelippes to Thos. Barnes, Cal. State Papers (May 21,
1591), 1591-4, p. 38.]
[Footnote 3: Such as Paddock, Graymalkin, and Harpier.]
[Footnote 4: "Liver of blaspheming Jew," etc.--Macbeth, IV. i. 26.]
[Footnote 5:
"I will drain him dry as hay;
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se'nnights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine."
Macbeth, I. iii. 18-23.]
[Footnote 6: The excitement about the details of the witch trials would
culminate in 1592. Harsnet's book would be read by Shakspere in 1603.]
106. There is one other mode of temptation which was adopted by the evil
spirits, implicated to a great extent with the traditions of witchcraft,
but nevertheless more suitably handled as a separate subject, which is
of so gross and revolting a nature that it should willingly be passed
over in silence, were it not for the fact that the belief in it was, as
Scot says, "so stronglie and universallie received" in the times of
Elizabeth and James.
From the very earliest period of the Christian era the affection of one
sex for the other was considered to be under the special control of the
devil.
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