92 Nightmare Cf. Scot 4.11. ‘The mare’ is explained as a spirit ‘oppressing many in their sleep so sore, as they are not able to call for help, or stir themselves under the burden of that heavy humour’.

95 cat presumably Malkin

102 s.d. Enter SEBASTIAN Most editors read this as an early entrance and relocate it to the end of Hecate’s charm. However the MS positioning allows her performance to be played to impress her prospective client.

103–6 Urchins … the Puckle Cf. Scot 7.15: ‘they have so fraid us with bull beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns, Silens, Kit-with-the-candlestick, tritons, centaurs, dwarves, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphs, changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the Spoorn, the Mare, the Man in the oak, the Hellwain, the Fire-drake, the Puckle, Tom Thumb’.

103 Urchins goblins or elves, supposed to take the shape of a hedgehog

satyrs mythical creatures, half-human, half-beast, fabled for their roughness and their appetite

pans mythical creatures, above the waist like men, below like goats (the goat is proverbial for lust). Pan is the name of a Nature god.

fauns wood-gods

Silens ed. (Silence MS) Sileni, wood gods, satyrs

103–4 Kit-with-the-candlestick will-o’-the’-wisp

104 tritons sea monsters of semi-human form

centaurs monsters with the body and legs of a horse but a man’s upper body and head

105 Spoorn This has not yet been certainly explained by scholars, but it is presumably some kind of spectre or phantom.

Mare nightmare

the Man i’th’oak so far unexplained, but presumably a spirit (with suggestions of Druid culture?)

106 the Fire-drake See I.i.93.

106 A ab hur hus Scot 12.14 quotes this as a charm ‘Against the toothache’. This comic phrase suggests an exaggerated performance by Hecate.

123 firk jerk, beat, whip

124 ointments for flying as in 11. 19–21

125 as ed. (and MS)

127 takes pleases

bravely a great deal

sworn in compact with the devil

134 barks boats

135 Anno Domini the year that the house was built, marked on a stone tablet and placed in the chimney

136 sweet meant ironically, as a chimney smells of soot

137 years his age

138–9 chambered … on’t They must be recorded in a portrait costing five pounds (which noted the sitter’s age) with a green silk curtain drawn over it.

143–5 destroy … stacks Cf. Scot 12.5: witches can ‘when they list invisibly transfer the third part of their neighbours’ dung, hay, corn, &c: into their own ground’.

150 starve … generation The reference to inability to generate children may be an allusion to the Essex divorce. Scot 4.4 contains several comical reports of such bewitchings. Scot 4.8 looks at cures and comments that if ‘the witchcraft be perpetual … the wife may have a divorce of course’.

152 I knew … grief typical charlatan’s trick, claiming prescience after several wrong guesses

157–9 Cf. Scot 12.6: ‘men cannot beget, nor women bring forth any children, nor yet accomplish the duty of wedlock’.