THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

164 CHANGELING AND WITCH
witches was recognized by the laws of England and of
Scotland, and was made a crime punishable by the death
of the fairies' victim^.'^
The likeness between fairies and witches had early been
recognized. In the first dictionaries of the period, it
will be remembered, the same Latin terms were applied
interchangeably to witches and fairies, and the same
function was assigned to both.54
Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses of
1567, in Medea's invocation in Booke the Seventh,
showed the connection believed to exist between them:
Ye Ayres and windes: ye Elves of Hilles, of Brookes, of Woods
alone,
Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approche ye everychone.
Through helpe of whom (the crooked bankes much wondring at
the thing)
I have compelled streames to run cleane backward to their spring.
By charmes I make the calme Seas rough, and make ye rough Seas
plaine
And cover all the Skie with Cloudes, and chase them thence againe.
By charmes I rayse and lay the windes, and burst the Vipers jaw,
And from the bowels of the Earth both stones and trees doe drawe.
Whole woods and Forestes I remove: I make the Mountaines shake,
And even the Earth it selfe to grone and fearfully to quake.
63 Though sorcerers and enchanters were tried in ecclesiastical and
in civil courts during the 14th century, they were not regarded as
witches in the technical sense of the term, as defined by H. C. Lea in
A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 1907, Vol. IV, p. 206: "The
witch has abandoned Christianity, has renounced her baptism, has
worshipped Satan as her God, has surrendered herself to him, body
and soul, and exists only to be his instrument in working the evil to
her fellow-creatures, which he cannot accomplish without a human
agent." The parliamentary statute passed 1563, and enforced, was
the earliest definite legislation by Parliament against witches. Cf.
Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England, 1911, p. 5.
54See Chap. I, pp. 70-71.