Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	book_n	year_n	young_a	57	3	5.8123	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66695	Historical rarities and curious observations domestick & foreign containing fifty three several remarks ... with thirty seven more several histories, very pleasant and delightful / collected out of approved authors, by William Winstanley ...	Winstanley, William, 1628?-1698.	1684 (1684)	Wing W3062; ESTC R11630	186,957	324

bear affection to a young Maid upon the breaking thereof to her Friends the fashion is that a day is appointed for their Friends to meet to behold the two young Parties to run a Race together The Maid is allowed in starting the advantage of a third part of the Race so that it is impossible except willing of her self that she should ever be overtaken If the Maid over-run her Suiter the matter is ended he must never have her it being penal for the man again to renew the motion of Marriage But if the Virgin hath an Affection for him tho' at the first running hard to try the Truth of his Love she will without Atalanta's golden Balls to retard her speed pretend some Casualty and make a voluntary hault before she cometh to the Mark or end of the Race Thus none are compelled to marry against their own Wills and this is the cause that in this poor Country the married People are richer in their own Contentment than in other Lands where so many forced Matches make feigned Love and cause real Unhappiness Of Spirits or Devils and that they have had carnal Knowledge of People PHilostratus in his fourth Book de vita Apollonii relateth of one Menippus Lycius a young Man 25 years of Age that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth met a Phantasm in the Habit of a fair Gentlewoman which taking him by the Hand carried him home to her House in the Suburbs of Corinth and told him she was a Phoenician by Birth and if he would tarry with her he should hear her sing and play and drink such Wine as never any drank and no man should molest him but she being fair and lovely would live and die with him that was fair and lovely to behold The young man a Philosopher otherwise stay'd and discreet able to moderate his Passions though not this of Love tarried with her a while to his great Content and at last married her to whose Wedding among other Guests came Apollonius who by some probable Conjectures found her out to be a Serpent a Lamia and that all her Furniture was like Tantalus's Gold described by Homer no Substance but mere Illusions When she saw her self descried she wept and desired Apollonius to be silent but he would not be moved and thereupon she Plate House and all that was in it vanished in an instant Multi factum cognovere quod in media Gracia gestum fit Many thousands took notice of this Fast for it was done in the midst of Greece Sabine in his Comment on the tenth of Ovid's Metamorphosis at the Tale of Orphaeus telleth us of a Gentleman of Bavaria that for many Months together bewailed the loss of his dear Wife at length the Devil in her Habit came and comforted him and told him because he was so importunate for her that she would come and live with him again on that condition he would be new married never swear and blaspheme as he used formerly to do for if he did she should be gone He vowed it married and lived with her she brought him Children and governed his House but was still pale and sad and so continued till one day falling out with him he fell a swearing she vanished thereupon and was never after seen This Story saith he I have heard from Persons of good Credit which told him that the Duke of Bavaria did tell it for a certainty to the Duke of Saxony Florilegus an honest Historian of our own Nation telleth us that in Anno 1058. a young Gentleman of Rome the same day that he was married after Dinner with the Bride and his Friends went a walking into the Fields and towards Evening to the Tennis Gourt to recreate themselves whilst he played he put his Ring upon the Finger of the Statue of Venus which was there by made in Brass After he had sufficiently played and now made an end of his Sport he came to fetch his Ring but Venus had bowed her Finger in and he could not get it off whereupon loth to make his Company tarry at present there left it intending to fetch it the next day or at some more convenient time went thence to Supper and so to Bed In the night when he should come to perform those Nuptial Rites Venus steps between him and his Wife unseen or felt of her and told him that she was his Wife that he had betrothed himself unto her by that Ring which he put upon her Finger she troubled him for some following Nights He not knowing how to help himself made his moan to one Palumbus a learned Magician in those days who gave him a Letter and bid him at such a time of the Night in such a cross-way at the Towns-end where old Saturn would pass by with his Associates in Procession as commonly he did deliver that Script with his own hands to Saturn himself the young man of a bold Spirit accordingly did it and when the old Fiend had read it he called Venus to him who rode before him and commanded her to deliver his Ring which forthwith she did and so the Gentleman was freed Hector Boetius the Scottish Historian writes that in the Year 1480. it chanced as a Scottish Ship departed out of the Forth towards Flanders there rose a wonderful great Tempest of Wind and Weather so out-ragious that the Master of the Ship with other the Mariners wondered not a little what the matter meant to see such Weather that time of the Year for it was about the midst of Summer At length when the furious rage of the Winds still increased in such wise that all those within the Ship looked for present Death there was a Woman underneath the Hatches called unto them above and willed them to throw her into the Sea that all the residue by God's Grace might yet be saved and thereupon told them how she had been haunted a long time with a Spirit daily coming unto her in man's Likeness and that even as then he was with her using his filthy Pleasure after the manner of carnal Copulation In the Ship there chanced also to be a Priest who by the Master's appointment going down to this Woman and finding her like a most wretched and desperate Person lamenting her great Misfortune and miserable Estate used such wholsome Admonitions and comfortable Advertisements willing her to repent and hope for Mercy at the hands of Almighty God that at length she seeming right penitent for her grievous Offences committed and fetching sundry Sighs even from the bottom of her Heart being witness as should appear of the same there issued forth of the Pump of the Ship a foul and evil favour'd black Cloud with a mighty terrible Noise Flame Smoak and Stink which presently fell into the Sea and suddenly thereupon the Tempest ceased and the Ship passing in quiet the residue of her Journey arrived in safety at the place whither she was bound Not long before the hap hereof there was in like

manner a young man dwelling in Gareoth within a Village there not passing fourteen miles from Aberdeen right fair and comely of Shape who declared by way of Complaint unto the Bishop of that Diocese how there was a Spirit which haunted him in the shape of a Woman so fair and beautiful a thing that he never saw the like the which would come into his Chamber a Nights and with pleasant Enticements allure him to have to do with her and that by no manner of means he could be rid of her The Bishop like a wise Man advised him to remove into some other Country and to give himself to Fasting and Prayer so to avoid his hands of that wicked Spirit The Young man following the Bishop's Counsel within few days was delivered from further Temptation About the same time also there vvas in the Country of Mar a young Gentlewoman of excellent Beauty and Daughter unto a Noble-man there refusing sundry wealthy Marriages offered to her by her Father and other Friends At length she proved with Child and being rigorously compelled by her Patents to tell who was the Father she confessed that a certain young man used nightly to come unto her and keep her Company and sometimes in the day also but how or from whence he came or by what means he went away she was not able to declare Her Parents not greatly crediting her Words laid diligent Watch to understand what he was that had defiled their House and within three days after upon signification given by one of the Maidens that the Fornicator was at that very Instant with their Daughter incontinently thereupon making fast the doors they enter the Chamber with a great many of Torches and Lights vvhere they find in their Daughter's Arms a foul monstrous thing right horrible to behold Here a number coming hastily in to behold this evil favour'd sight amongst other there was a Priest of right honest Life who seeing some of them running their ways for fear began to recite the beginning of St. John's Gospel and coming to these Words Verbum caro factum est suddenly the wicked Spirit making a terrible roaring Noise flevv his vvays taking the Roof of the Chamber with him the Hangings and Coverings of the Bed being also burn'd therewith The Gentlewoman was yet preserved and within three or four days after was delivered of such a mishapen thing as the like before had not been seen which the Midwives and Women present at her Labour to avoid the dishonour of her House immediately burn'd in a great Fire made in the Chamber for the same intent John Major in the Life of John the Monk that lived in the days of Theodosius commends this Monk to have been a Man of singular Continency and of a most austere Life but one Night by chance the Devil came to his Cell in the habit of a young Market-Wench that had lost her way and desired for God's sake some Lodging with him The old man let her in and after some common Conference of her mishap she began to inveigle him with lascivious Talk and Jests to play with his Beard to kiss him and do worse till at last she overcame him As he went to address himself to that business she vanished on a sudden and the Devils in the Air laughed him to Scorn We shall conclude this Discourse with a Story of a later date how that in a small Village in one of the Northern Islands there dwelt an ancient Boor and his Wife who had but one Child and that a Daughter whom they looked upon as the staff of their declining Age she was just entered into her nineteenth Year and gave great hopes of proving an excellent Woman being very saving industrious and handsom which good Qualities had invited most of the young-men of her Rank throughout the Country to take particular notice of her and list themselves her Servants But she like a discreet Maid still check'd her roving Fancy and was deaf to all their flattering Courtship resolving to entertain no Addresses which should not be authorized by her Parents Approbation and well had it been she had never suffer'd her self to be divorced from that Resolution for so it chanced that within a while after the Devil came in the Likeness of a man and took up his Lodging within two or three doors of her Father's House pretending his Business was to look after some Debts he had owing him not far from thence he was a Person of a proper Stature meagre Visage large sparling Eyes long Hair but curling and exceeding black he generally went in Boots perhaps to conceal his cloven feet and though his Habit was but ordinary he appeared very full of Money which made his Landlord very sweet upon him and the more to oblige him there happening a Wedding in that Town within few days after his Arrival his Host would needs carry this his strange Guest with him to it though it was observed he could by no means be got into the Church where the Nuptial Rites were solemnized but as soon as they came home to Dinner he was as busie and as merry as the joviallest of them And here it was that the fatal Acquaintance between him and Margaretta for so was the Maiden called unhappily first begun That time allowing a greater Liberty of Discourse to the younger sort amongst whom commonly one Wedding is the begetter of another furnish'd our black Stranger with the larger opportunity to court this innocent Maid to her destruction To repeat the particular Complements he used we purposely omit lest we should injure the Devils Eloquence by our Courser Rhetorick suffice it to know his devillish Courtship was so charming as to raise an unknown Passion in her Virgin Breast who so far doated on his Company as to be sorry when all the Companies breaking up obliged them to part so that being come home and after some time got into her Chamber she makes her unready but not without a thousand kind Thoughts on this Stranger she had left whom at last just as she was going into her Bed she saw come into the Chamber you may easily imagine her not a little surprized at so strange an Adventure knowing all the Doors fast lock'd and no body up but her self but he soon superseded both her Fears and Wonder by telling her in submissive Language that he came out of pure love ●o have a little free discourse with her and that he had an Art to open any Lock without Noise or Discovery Then beginning to talk amorously and having wantonized a while he told her at last in plain Terms he was resolved to lye with her that Night Merry Company before and his Dalliances now had raised such a spring-Tide in her Veins that after a few faint formal Denials to gratifie her Modesty she consents but no sooner were they in Bed but her Ears were courted with the most excellent Musick in the World which so captivated the Spirits of this