Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands | Page 2

cut off; twenty-two women and five men were banished
from the island; while five women and three men had the good fortune
to be acquitted. Most of these accused persons were natives of
Guernsey, but mention is made of one woman from Jersey, of three
men and a woman from Sark, and of a man from Alderney.
With regard to the gatherings at the so-called Witches' Sabbaths, there
can be no doubt that--quite apart from the question of any diabolic
presence at such meetings--very questionable assemblies of people did
take place at intervals among the inhabitants of many countries.
Probably these gatherings first had their rise in the old pagan times, and

were subsequently continued from force of habit, long after their real
origin and significance had been forgotten. Now, it would be very easy
for these orgies to become associated--particularly in the then
superstitious condition of the popular mind--with the actual bodily
presence of the Devil as one of the participants; while it is also not
improbable that, in some cases at least, heartless and evil-minded
persons worked upon the prevailing credulity to further their own
nefarious purposes. Our esteemed Bailiff has offered a suggestion or
two of considerable value on this point with regard to certain Guernsey
phases of the superstition. He thinks it highly probable that some of
these deluded women were actually the dupes of unprincipled and
designing men, who arrayed themselves in various disguises and then
met their unfortunate victims by appointment. This idea is, indeed,
borne out to a great extent by some of the particulars stated in the
following confessions. For instance, some of the women assert that
when they met the Devil he was in the form of a dog, _but rather
larger_; he always stood upon his hind legs--probably the man's feet;
and, when he shook hands with them, his paw _felt like a
hand_--doubtless it was a hand. Another suggestion of the Bailiff's is
also worth notice. It is that the black ointment so often mentioned as
being rubbed on the bodies of the so-called witches, had a real
existence, and may have been so compounded as to act as a narcotic or
intoxicant, and produce a kind of extatic condition, just as the injection
of certain drugs beneath the skin is known to do now. These
suggestions are certainly worth consideration as offering reasonable
solutions of at least two difficulties connected with those strange and
lamentable superstitions. In one way or other there must have been
some physical basis for beliefs so widely extended and so terribly real.
Imagination, of course, possesses a marvellous power of modification
and exaggeration, but still it requires some germs of fact around which
to crystallise. And it is to the discovery of the nature of such germs that
a careful and conscientious observer will naturally turn his attention.
* * * * *
While speaking of the burning of Witches in Guernsey, I may also refer
for a moment to the three women who, in Queen Mary's reign suffered

death by fire, for heresy, because the reason of their condemnation and
punishment has caused some controversy, and is often associated in the
popular mind with a charge of sorcery. Dr. Heylin in his Survey (page
323), says:--
Katherine Gowches, a poor woman of St. Peter-Port, in Guernsey, was
noted to be much absent from church, and her two daughters guilty of
the same neglect. Upon this they were presented before James Amy,
then dean of the island, who, finding in them that they held opinions
contrary to those then allowed about the sacrament of the altar,
pronounced them heretics, and condemned them to the fire. The poor
women, on the other side, pleaded for themselves, that that doctrine had
been taught them in the time of King Edward; but if the queen was
otherwise disposed, they were content to be of her religion. This was
fair but it would not serve; for by the dean they were delivered unto
Helier Gosselin, then bailiff, and by him unto the fire, July 18, 1556.
One of these daughters, Perotine Massey, she was called, was at that
time great with child; her husband, who was a minister, having in those
dangerous times fled the island; in the middle of the flames and anguish
of her torments, her belly broke in sunder, and her child, a goodly boy,
fell down into the fire, but was presently snatched up by one W. House,
one of the by-standers. Upon the noise of this strange incident, the cruel
bailiff returned command that the poor infant must be cast again into
the flames, which was accordingly performed; and so that pretty babe
was born a martyr, and added to the number of the holy innocents.
Parsons, the English Jesuit, has asserted that the