Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. Walter Scott

They are treading fast and thick. For weeks you could have heard a footfall. Oh, my God!”

      A few years yet of his own battle, while the shadows of night and death were gathering about him, and they were re-united. In these “Letters upon Demonology and Witchcraft,” addressed to his son-in-law, written under the first grasp of death, the old kindliness and good sense, joined to the old charm in story-telling, stand firm yet against every assault; and even in the decay that followed, when the powers were broken of the mind that had breathed, and is still breathing, its own health into the minds of tens of thousands of his countrymen, nothing could break the fine spirit of love and honour that was in him. When the end was very near, and the son-in-law to whom these Letters were addressed found him one morning entirely himself, though in the last extreme of feebleness: his eye was clear and calm—every trace of the wild fire of delirium was extinguished: “Lockhart,” he said, “I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man—be virtuous, be religious—be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.”

      Another volume of this Library may give occasion to recall Scott in the noontide of his strength, companion of

      “The blameless Muse who trains her sons

       For hope and calm enjoyment.”

      Here we remember only how from among dark clouds the last light of his

      genius shone on the path of those who were endeavouring to make the

      daily bread of intellectual life—good books—common to all.

       H.M.

      February, 1884.

LETTERS

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ON

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DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT

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To J.G. LOCKHART, ESQ.

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LETTER I.

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      Origin of the general Opinions respecting Demonology among

       Mankind—The Belief in the Immortality of the Soul is the main

       inducement to credit its occasional re-appearance—The Philosophical

       Objections to the Apparition of an Abstract Spirit little understood

       by the Vulgar and Ignorant—The situations of excited Passion

       incident to Humanity, which teach Men to wish or apprehend

       Supernatural Apparitions—They are often presented by the Sleeping

       Sense—Story of Somnambulism—The Influence of Credulity contagious,

       so that Individuals will trust the Evidence of others in despite of

       their own Senses—Examples from the “Historia Verdadera” of Bernal

       Dias del Castillo, and from the Works of Patrick Walker—The

       apparent Evidence of Intercourse with the Supernatural World is

       sometimes owing to a depraved State of the bodily Organs—Difference

       between this Disorder and Insanity, in which the Organs retain their

       tone, though that of the Mind is lost—Rebellion of the Senses of a

       Lunatic against the current of his Reveries—Narratives of a

       contrary Nature, in which the Evidence of the Eyes overbore the

       Conviction of the Understanding—Example of a London Man of

       Pleasure—Of Nicolai, the German Bookseller and Philosopher—Of a

       Patient of Dr. Gregory—Of an Eminent Scottish Lawyer, deceased—Of

       this same fallacious Disorder are other instances, which have but

       sudden and momentary endurance—Apparition of Maupertuis—Of a late

       illustrious modern Poet—The Cases quoted chiefly relating to false

       Impressions on the Visual Nerve, those upon the Ear next

       considered—Delusions of the Touch chiefly experienced in

       Sleep—Delusions of the Taste—And of the Smelling—Sum of the

       Argument.

      You have asked of me, my dear friend, that I should assist the “Family Library” with the history of a dark chapter in human nature, which the increasing civilization of all well-instructed countries has now almost blotted out, though the subject attracted no ordinary degree of consideration in the older times of their history.

      Among much reading of my earlier days, it is no doubt true that I travelled a good deal in the twilight regions of superstitious disquisitions. Many hours have I lost—“I would their debt were less!”—in examining old as well as more recent narratives of this character, and even in looking into some of the criminal trials so frequent in early days, upon a subject which our fathers considered as a matter of the last importance. And, of late years, the very curious extracts published by Mr. Pitcairn, from the Criminal Records of Scotland, are, besides their historical value, of a nature so much calculated to illustrate the credulity of our ancestors on such subjects, that, by perusing them, I have been induced more recently to recall what I had read and thought upon the subject at a former period.

      As, however, my information is only miscellaneous, and I make no pretensions, either to combat the systems of those by whom I am anticipated in consideration of the subject, or to erect any new one of my own, my purpose is, after a general account of Demonology and Witchcraft, to confine myself to narratives of remarkable cases, and to the observations which naturally and easily arise out of them;—in the confidence that such a plan is, at the present time of day, more likely to suit the pages of a popular miscellany, than an attempt to reduce the contents of many hundred tomes, from the largest to the smallest size, into an abridgement, which, however compressed, must remain greatly too large for the reader’s powers of patience.

      A few general remarks on the nature of Demonology, and the original cause of the almost universal belief in communication betwixt mortals and beings of a power superior to themselves, and of a nature not to be comprehended by human organs, are a necessary introduction to the subject.

      The general, or, it may be termed, the universal belief of the inhabitants of the earth, in the existence of spirits separated from the encumbrance and incapacities of the body, is grounded on the consciousness of the divinity that speaks in our bosoms, and demonstrates to all men, except the few who are hardened to the celestial voice, that there is within us a portion of the divine substance, which is not subject to the law of death and dissolution, but which, when the body is no longer fit for its abode, shall seek its own place, as a sentinel dismissed from his post. Unaided by revelation, it cannot be hoped that mere earthly reason should be able to form any rational or precise conjecture concerning the destination of the soul when parted from the body; but the conviction that such an indestructible essence exists, the belief expressed by the poet in a different sense, Non omnis moriar must infer the existence of many millions of spirits who have