Sir John Harington's joke, which he played on James VI

Sir John Harington's joke, which he played on James VI. At least, so it is recorded in the book by the admirable Christina Larner, a historian and one of the first to take up the subject of witchcraft.

The court poet, incidentally an ancestor of our beloved Kit Harington, Jon Snow, left this recollection of a conversation with King James, when they were discussing the power of Satan and the devil's pranks in the witches' craft. I personally was somewhat put on my guard by Harington's answer to the question about the devil's dealings specifically with women, to which he for some reason cited an opinion about the devil of the dry land, somehow connected with women.

Well, firstly, it is obvious that Harington is referring to the works of the eleventh-century Byzantine monk Michael Psellos. Secondly, Psellos wrote that diabolical powers are divided into types according to their place of habitation, and of the type of the "devils of the dry land" he said that they are, in fact, represented more by male than by female creatures.

PS The author, "wittily", points to female physiological peculiarities and hints at devilry wherever everything has dried up