THE FOURTH CHAPTER

How Meroe the Witch turned divers persons into miserable beasts.

In faith Aristomenus to tell you the truth, this woman had a certaine
Lover, whom by the utterance of one only word she turned into a Bever,
because he loved another woman beside her: and the reason why she
transformed him into such a beast is, for that it is his nature, when
hee perceiveth the hunters and hounds to draw after him, to bite off his
members, and lay them in the way, that the hounds may be at a stop when
they find them, and to the intent it might so happen unto him (for that
he fancied another woman) she turned him into that kind of shape.

Semblably she changed one of her neighbours, being an old man and one
that sold wine, into a Frog, in that he was one of her occupation, and
therefore she bare him a grudge, and now the poore miser swimming in one
of his pipes of wine, and well nigh drowned in the dregs, doth cry and
call with an hoarse voice, for his old guests and acquaintance that pass
by. Like wise she turned one of the Advocates of the Court (because he
pleaded and spake against her in a rightful cause) into a horned Ram,
and now the poore Ram is become an Advocate. Moreover she caused, that
the wife of a certain lover that she had should never be delivered of
her childe, but according to the computation of all men, it is eight
yeares past since the poore woman first began to swell, and now shee is
encreased so big, that shee seemeth as though she would bring forth
some great Elephant: which when it was knowne abroad, and published
throughout all the towne, they tooke indignation against her, and
ordayned that the next day shee should most cruelly be stoned to death.
Which purpose of theirs she prevented by the vertue of her inchantments,
and as Medea (who obtained of King Creon but one days respit before her
departure) did burn all his house, him, and his daughter: so she, by her
conjurations and invocations of spirits, (which she useth in a certaine
hole in her house, as shee her selfe declared unto me the next day
following) closed all the persons in the towne so sure in their houses,
and with such violence of power, that for the space of two dayes they
could not get forth, nor open their gates nor doore, nor break downe
their walls, whereby they were inforced by mutuall consent to cry unto
her, and to bind themselves strictly by oaths, that they would never
afterwards molest or hurt her: and moreover, if