The Importance of Companionship

The imp or familiar is a malignant, though otherwise commonplace animal with supernatural powers that dependent on the witch for care and nourishment. The comparison with a child seems particularly apt since the familiar as it came to be understood in the 17th century was also a sort of demonic infant. So we have here companionship, a practice that was likely to have been more common among the older, less popular and more anti social members of rural English society at the time.

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