“Another to Bring in the Witch” (A Poem)

In 1647, Robert Herrick composed a two-volume tome of over 2,500 poems which put into verse the faiths and superstitions of rural England. From charms to incite love and protect livestock from malicious spirits to rituals to ensure bountiful crops and the rising of bread, Herrick’s compilation, Frederic Moorman highlights, reveals how, even in the seventeenth century, English folklore was still steeped in pagan practices and the ceremonial customs of ancient Rome.[1] Below is a spell, which involves the baking of a cake made from flour and urine, used to summon a witch.

To house the hag, you must doe this:
Commix with meale a little pisse
Of him bewitch, then forthwith make
A little wafer or a cake;
And this, rawly bak’t, will bring
The old hag in: no surer thing.[2]

Works Referenced

Herrick, Robert. “Another to Bring in the Witch.” Hesperides. Vol. 2. 1647. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875. 116.

Moorman, Frederic. Robert Herrick: A Biographical and Critical Study. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1910.
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[1] Moorman, 205.
[2] Herrick, 116.