Spires, the Wailing City

Now it happened in the city of Spires, in the same year that this book was begun, that a certain

devout woman held conversation with a suspected witch, and, after the manner of women, they used

abusive words to each other. But in the night she wished to put her little suckling child in its cradle,

and remembered her encounter that day with the suspected witch. So, fearing some danger to the

child, she placed consecrated herbs under it, sprinkled it with holy water, put a little blessed salt to

its lips, signed it with the sign of the cross, and diligently secured the cradle. About the middle of

the night she heard the child scream...

Is it a goatish gorge I smell there on thy pale maiden flesh?

Art thou willing to deny the Anomalous Woman – the deamon lendeth a hand

Hast thou murdered unchristened children, and anointed their limbs?

Hast thou received burning semen inside the womb

O young gentle witch of mine...?

He seemeth not disposed to lose his potency

And deformed hands ruin her progeny

His sinful phallus treacherously disenchanted

Ecce veritatem dico sciens quod dum auditores sint verbi

et non factores amplius deus offendit et lucrum meum augmentatur.

And it came to pass at a night in Rome

That I dined with a Bohemian Priest.

Who so woebegone moaned about a nameless tree, a female and a Daemon

Who so afflicted screamed when tied to the columns of our saviour

Who so calumnious mocked our Virgin in obsessive abuse of his limbs

Perennially suffering... howling... crushing his teeth into the marble

„Here he stood, here he stood!“