M. Henri Gelin tells a good story of a witch who transformed herself into a dog.[68]
- Date of account
- Published 1915
- Source
- Human Animals
- Reference
- Human Animals · selected passage 131
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
With the witch Anne West was implicated her daughter Rebecca West, who, however, was acquitted, and the notorious Matthew Hopkins deposed that she had told him of visiting the house of Clarke with her mother, and that they had found Leech, Gooding, and Helen Clark, and that the devil had appeared in the shape of a dog,…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWith the witch Anne West was implicated her daughter Rebecca West, who, however, was acquitted, and the notorious Matthew Hopkins deposed that she had told him of visiting the house of Clarke with her mother, and that they had found Leech, Gooding, and Helen Clark, and that the devil had appeared in the shape of a dog, afterwards in the shape of two kittens, then in the shape of two dogs, and that the said familiars did homage in the first place to the said Elizabeth Clarke and slipped up into her lap and kissed her, and then went and kissed all that were in the room except the said Rebecca, who was then made to swear on a book that she would not reveal what she saw or heard--on pain of the torments of hell, and that afterwards the devil came and kissed her and promised to marry her, and she sent him to kill a neighbour's child, of the name of Hart, who died within a fortnight.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.