The Trial of Lady Alice Kettle.
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THE TRIAL OF LADY ALICE KETTLE. BY J. M. SULLIVAN. THE punishment meted out to heretics in the early days was an extremely severe one, namely, burning at the stake. The earliest known trial for witchcraft, and the only one in the early days of which we have reliable and authentic information, was the trial of Lady Alice Kettle. A detailed account of the prosecution is as follows : "About the year 1325 Lady Alice Kettle, together with her accomplices, Petronilla and Basilia, were summoned before the Bishop of Ossory to answer to charges of witchcraft, sorcery, and magic. They were accused of holding nightly conferences with an imp or evil spirit called Robin Artisson, to whom, in order to make the infernal thing obedient to all their commands, they sacrificed nine red cocks in the middle of the highway, and offered up the eyes of nine peacocks. The Lady Alice, by means of this imp and his associates, caused, every night, the streets of Kilkenny to be swept between the hours of compline prayer and day heats. But it was for the good of her greedy son, one William Utlaw, that she did this. William Utlaw was a great land pirate, an ' avarus agricola,' who monopolized all the town parks, and grasped at great possessions. So the cunning mother had all the filth of the city raked to her son's door, to help him to man ure his meadows, and such of the inhabi tants as ventured to go out at night, heard unearthly brooms plying over the causeway, and fearful-looking scavengers were at their dirty work, and making of night hideous chanting unearthly and weird song. No sooner were the nine peacocks' eyes thrown
into the fire, than up rose Robin the imp, presented his potent mistress with a pot of ointment with which she oiled her broom stick; and then, mounting as gay as Meg Merriles, the Scotch hag, and having along with her Petronilla and Basilia, her dear friends, she performed a night's journey in a minute, and used to hold a ' Sabbab ' with other enchanters on the Devil's Bit in the County of Tipperary." This business made a great noise at the time. The Lady Alice Kettle, together with Basilia, having powerful friends, escaped to foreign parts; her accomplice, Petronilla, was burned at the cross of Kilkenny. Wil liam Utlaw suffered a long imprisonment. On searching Lady Alice's closet (as Holingshed relates) they found a sacramental wafer, having Satan's name stamped there on, and a pipe of ointment with which she greased her staff, when she would amble and gallop through thick and thin, through fair weather and foul, as she listed. The town of Kilkenny appears to have been peculiarly fatal to witches. Sir Rich ard Cox, in his history of Ireland, mentions the visit of Sir William Drury, the Lord Deputy, to it, in October, 1578, who caused thirty-six criminals to be executed there, "one of which was a ' black-a-moor,' and two others were witches, and were con demned by the law of nature, for there was no positive law against witchcraft in these days." From that it would appear that the Statute 33 Henry VIII. against witchcraft had either become a dead letter or had not been enacted in Ireland.
