The poor old crones, badgered by inquisitors into
confessing they had been where they never were, were involved in the
further necessity of explaining how the devil they got there. The only
steed their parents had ever been rich enough to keep had been of this
domestic sort, and they no doubt had ridden in this inexpensive fashion,
imagining themselves the grand dames they saw sometimes flash by, in the
happy days of childhood, now so far away. Forced to give a _how_, and
unable to conceive of mounting in the air without something to sustain
them, their bewildered wits naturally took refuge in some such simple
subterfuge, and the broomstave, which might make part of the poorest
house's furniture, was the nearest at hand. If youth and good spirits
could put such life into a dead stick once, why not age and evil spirits
now? Moreover, what so likely as an _emeritus_ implement of this sort to
become the staff of a withered beldame, and thus to be naturally
associated with her image? I remember very well a poor half-crazed
creature, who always wore a scarlet cloak and leaned on such a stay,
cursing and banning after a fashion that would infallibly have burned her
two hundred years ago. But apart from any adventitious associations of
later growth, it is certain that a very ancient belief gave to magic the
power of imparting life, or the semblance of it, to inanimate things, and
thus sometimes making servants of them.
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