immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress, and evoked by her on certain nights.
9th and 10th cent. Laws of Alfred and Guthrun. Laws of Edward and Guthrun.
11. If witches or diviners, perjurers or morth-workers, or foul defiled notorious adulteresses, be found anywhere within the land; let them then be driven from the country and the people cleansed, or let them totally perish within the country, unless they desist, and the more deeply make bot.
2. If any one violate Christianity, or reverence heathenism., by word or by work, let him pay as well wcr, as wite or lah-slit, according as the deed may be.
10th cent. Laws of Athelstan.[1]
6. We have ordained respecting witchcrafts, and lyblacs, and morth-daeds: if any one should be thereby killed, and he could not deny it, that he be liable in his life. But if he will deny it, and at the threefold ordeal shall be guilty; that he be cxx days in prison; and after that let his kindred take him out, and give to the king cxx shillings, and pay the wer to his kindred, and enter into borh for him, that he evermore desist from the like.
10th cent. King Edgar. Ecclesiastical Canons.
16. We enjoin, that every priest zealously promote Christianity, and totally extinguish every heathenism; and forbid well-worshipings, and necromancies, and divinations, and enchantments, and man-worshipings, and the vain practices which are carried on with various spells, and with frith-splots and with elders, and also with various other trees, and with stones, and with many various delusions, with which men do much of what they should not.
17. And we enjoin, that every Christian man zealously
- ↑ It is in the laws of Athelstan that the method of ordeal by water is fully described. The "swimming" of witches was the survival of this ordeal.
