XVIII
Doth Prove That No Man Can Lay to Simplicissimus’ Charge That He Doth Draw the Long Bow
Now since there be some, and indeed some learned folk among them, that believe not that there be witches and sorcerers, still less that they can fly from place to place in the air, therefore am I sure there will be some to say that here the good Simplicissimus draws the long bow. With such folk I cannot argue; for since brag is become no longer an art, but nowadays well-nigh the commonest trade, I may not deny that I could practise this if I would; for an I could not, I were the veriest fool. But they that deny the witches’ gallop to be true, let them but think of Simon the Magician, which was by the evil spirit raised aloft into the air, and at the prayer of St. Peter fell again to earth. Nicolas Remigius, which was an honest, learned, and understanding man, who in the Duchy of Lorraine caused to be burned a good many more than a half-dozen of witches, tells us of John of Hembach, that his mother (which same was a witch) in the sixteenth year of his age took him with her to their assembly, that he might play to them as they danced—for he had learned to play the fife. That to that end he mounted on a tree, piped to them and earnestly gazed upon the dancers (and that maybe because he marvelled so at it all). But at last, “God help us;” says he, “whence cometh all this mad and foolish folk?” And hardly had he said that word when down he fell from the tree, twisted his shoulder, and called for help. But there was nobody there but himself.
When this was noised abroad, most held it for a fable, till a little after Catherine Prévost was arrested for witchcraft, who had been at the said dance: so she confessed all even as it had happened, save that she knew naught of the cry that Hembach had uttered. Majolus tells us of a servant that had been too common with his mistress, and of an adulterer that took his paramour’s ointment-boxes and smeared himself with the same, and so both came to the witches’ Sabbath. So likewise they tell of a farm-servant that arose early to grease his wagon; but because he had taken the wrong pot of ointment in the dark, that wagon rose into the air and must be dragged down again. Olaus Magnus tells us of Hading, King of Denmark; how he, being driven from his kingdom by rebels, journeyed far over the sea through the air on the Spirit of Odin, which had turned himself to the shape of a horse. So do we know well enough, and too well, how wives and wenches in Bohemia will fetch their paramours to them, on the backs of goats, by night and from a great distance. And what Torquemada in his Hexameron relateth of his schoolfellow may in his own words be read. So, too, Ghirlandus speaketh of a nobleman which, when he marked that his wife anointed herself and thereafter flew out of the house, did once on a time compel her to take him with her to the sorcerers’ assembly. And when they feasted there, and there was no salt, he demanded such, and having with great pains gotten it, did cry, “God be praised, here cometh the salt!” Whereupon the lights went out and all vanished. So when now ’twas day he understood from the shepherds in that place that he was near to the town of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples, and therefore full five hundred miles from his home. And therefore, though he was rich, must he beg his way home, whither when he came he delated his wife for a witch before the magistrate, and she was burned. How Doctor Faust, too, and others, which were no enchanters, could journey through the air from one place to another is from his history sufficiently known. So I myself knew a wife and a maid (both dead at this time of writing, but the maid’s father yet alive), which maid was once greasing of her mistress’s shoes by the fire, and when she had finished one and set it by to grease the other, lo; the greased one flew up the chimney: which story, nevertheless, was hushed up.
All this I have set down for this reason only, that men may believe that witches and wizards do in truth at certain seasons in their proper bodies journey to these their assemblies, and not to make any man to believe that I, as I have told you, went myself to such: for to me ’tis all one whether a man believe me or not; and he that will not believe may devise for himself another way for me to have come from the lands of Fulda or Hirschfeld (for I know not myself whither I had wandered in the woods) into the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, and that in so brief a space of time.