Samuel B. Emmons

Theocritus and Virgil both introduce women into their pastorals, using charms and incantations to recover the affections of their sweethearts. Shakspeare represents Othello as accused of winning Desdemona "by conjuration and mighty magic."

"Thou hast practised on her with foul charms;

Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals

That waken motion.

She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted,

By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks."

In Gay's Shepherd's Week, these are represented as country practices:—

In Love Melancholy, by Dr. Ferrand, it is said, "We have sometimes among us our silly wenches, some that, out of a foolish curiosity they have, must needs be putting in practice some of those feats that they have received by tradition from their mother perhaps, or nurse; and so, not thinking forsooth to do any harm, as they hope to paganize it to their own damnation. For it is most certain that botanomancy, which is done by the noise, or crackling, that box or bay leaves make when they are crushed between one's hands, or cast into the fire, was of old in use among the pagans, who were wont to bruise poppy flowers betwixt their hands, by this means thinking to know their loves." Speaking of the ancient love charms, characters, amulets, or such like periapses, Dr. F. says, "They are such as no Christian physician ought to use, notwithstanding that the common people do to this day too superstitiously believe and put in practice many of these paganish devices."

Miss Blandy, who was executed many years ago for poisoning her father, persisted in affirming that she thought the powder given her by her villanous lover, Cranston, to administer to him, was a "love powder," which was to conciliate her father's affection to her lover. She met her death with this asseveration; and her dying request, to be buried close to her father, seems a corroborating proof, that though she was certainly the cause of his premature death, yet she was not, in the blackest sense of the word, his wilful murderer.

We quote the following lines from Herrick's Hesperides:—