Saw. The same; first upon him I’d be revenged.

Dog. Thou shalt; do but name how?

Saw. Go, touch his life.

Dog. I cannot.

Saw. Hast thou not vow’d?  Go, kill the slave!

Dog. I will not.

Saw. I’ll cancel then my gift.

Dog. Ha, ha!

Saw. Dost laugh!  Why wilt not kill him?

Dog. Fool, because I cannot. 
Though we have power, know, it is circumscribed,
And tied in limits:  though he be curst to thee,
Yet of himself, he is loving to the world,
And charitable to the poor; now men, that,
As he, love goodness, though in smallest measure,
Live without compass of our reach:  his cattle
And corn I’ll kill and mildew; but his life
(Until I take him, as I late found thee,
Cursing and swearing) I have no power to touch.

Saw. Work on his corn and cattle then.

Dog. I shall.  The WITCH OF EDMONTON shall see his fall.

Ford’s Plays, edit. 1839, p. 190.

B 3 a. “Alizon Device.”] Device is merely the common name Davies spelled as pronounced in the neighbourhood of Pendle.

B 3 b. “Is to make a picture of clay.”]

Hecate. What death is’t you desire for Almachildes?

Duchess. A sudden and a subtle.

Hecate. Then I’ve fitted you. 
Here be the gifts of both; sudden and subtle: 
His picture made in wax and gently molten
By a blue fire kindled with dead men’s eyes
Will waste him by degrees.

Duchess. In what time, prithee?

Hecate. Perhaps in a moon’s progress.

Middleton’s Witch, edit. 1778, p. 100.

None of the offices in the Witches rubric had higher classical warrant than this method, a favourite one, it appears, of Mother Demdike, but in which Anne Redfern had the greatest skill of any of these Pendle witches, of victimizing by moulding and afterwards pricking or burning figures of clay representing the individual whose life was aimed at.  Horace, Lib. i.  Sat. 8, mentions both waxen and woollen images—­

     Lanea et effigies erat altera cerea, &c.

And it appears from Tacitus, that the death of Germanicus was supposed to have been sought by similar practices.  By such a Simulachrum, or image, the person was supposed to be devoted to the infernal deities.  According to the Platonists, the effect produced arose from the operation of the sympathy and synergy of the Spiritus Mundanus, (which Plotinus calls [Greek:  ton megan goeta] [Transcriber’s Note:  typo “t” for “ton” in original Greek], the grand magician,) such as they resolve the effect of the weaponsalve and other magnetic cures into.  The following is the Note in Brand on this part of witchcraft:—­