Familiars: Impish Minions

      According to lore, witches were often served by familiars-imps or minor demons in the form of such small animals as cats, dogs, ferrets, rats and toads-which helped in spell-casting and ran all manner of errands. In one of the earliest English witch trials, Elizabeth Francis, tried at Chelmsford in 1566, confessed that the devil had given her a familiar "in the lykenesse of a whyte sported Catte . . . by the name of Sathan." Every time Sathan did something for Elizabeth, it was said, "he required a drop of bloude, which she gave him by prycking herselfe."

      The idea that a witch nourished her familiar with her own blood or milk was a central element of proof in British witch trials. The point of the witch's body from which the familiar drew sustenance was thought to be marked by some sort of protuberance-a "witch's mark"-that was insensitive. Any accused witch who could be prodded on a witch's mark without registering pain was assumed to be guilty. Matthew Hopkins, England's Witch-Finder General, notorious for detecting witch's marks, kept track of the familiars be discovered and recorded such names as Pynewacket, Vinegar Tom, Sack and Sugar, Greedigut and Peckin the Crow. Since this were names "which no mortal could invent," said Hopkins, they clearly indicated diabolic origin.