"Ancient Sorceries" by Algernon Blackwood

0:00:00 Ch 1
0:29:59 Ch 2
0:40:45 Ch 3
0:55:20 Ch 4
1:24:31 Ch 5
1:48:52 Ch 6

----

Published in 1908. This is part of a series revolving around the character of John Silence, and we will get to all of them eventually.

Surbiton: a surburb in South West London, within the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, 11 miles (18 km) southwest of Charing Cross.

debouch: emerge, issue

en voiture: get back on the train!

a cause du sommeil et a cause des chats: because of sleep and because of cats

2 francs: it is surprisingly difficult, at least in English leanguage sources, to find exchange rates for French francs to British pounds for 1908. I have a site I believe reliable that says 1 USD in 1913 was 5.1840 French francs. If I've done my math right, that means 2 francs from 1913 would be worth about $15 today, or roughly 13.5 euros. That's an extremely cheap room, even for a small rural town!

Dundreary whiskers: Dundreary is a character from Tom Taylor's "Our American Cousin", published in 1858, his whiskers were noted for being exaggeratedly bushy sideburns. Sometimes also called Piccadilly weepers.

Church of St. Martin: There actually aren't all that many of those in France, but of the ones we have to work with in northern France specifically (setting aside Brest as too big a city, we are left with Amilly, Beaune-la-Rolande, Mardié, and Olivetwith), while they do have castle ruins, none of them also have a cathedral, so clearly this is meant to be a fictional locale. Which is expected.

The first floor in the European sense, is, for the Americans in the audience, what we call the second floor. What we call the first floor they call the ground floor.

Table d'hôte: a menu where multi-course meals with only a few choices are charged at a fixed total price

salle à manger: dining room

Ma'mselle est de retour: the young miss has returned

slip of a girl: small and thin, typically due to youth

Enfin! M’sieur s'est donc décidé. C’est bien alors. J’en suis contente: Finally! So the gentleman has made up his mind. That's good then. I'm happy about it.

On pourrait faire un p'tit tour ensemble, n'estce pas? Nous y allons cette nuit et il faut s'exercer un peu d'avance pour cela. Ilse, Ilse, viens donc ici. Viens vite! - We could go for a little walk together, couldn't we? We're going tonight and you have to practice a little in advance for that. Ilse, Ilse, come here. Come quickly!

vervain: a.k.a. Verbena, and most likely specifically Verbena officinalis, being the most common species native to Europe. It is a perennial herb with mauve flowers.

Looks like in northern France, the Parlement of Paris wasn't particularly interested in witch trials and tried to tamp down on them (they still issued a hundred death sentence for witchcraft from mid 16th to mid 17th century, but that's vastly fewer than other parts of France), but it is likely many local trials and executions were done without ever telling Paris what was going on.

The pictures used are

Ch 1: "Village de Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Parc naturel régional des Causses du Quercy." by Jojob.47. CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Ch 2: "Les toits de Gerberoy dans l'Oise (Picardie)" by Sanchalex. CC BY-SA 3.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Ch 3: "A gravure of Le Cafe Procope in XIX quarter in Paris."

Ch 4: The picture used is of King René's Honeymoon Cabinet (1861), designed by John Pollard Seddon & made by Thomas Seddon. Panels by Ford Madox Brown, D.G. Rossetti & William Morris. An ornate cabinet / architect's desk in the the gothic style. The cabinet has 3 cupboards (a double door cupboard at centre flanked by 2 single door cupboards), each door panel is painted with a representational image of the arts. This panel shows the Rossetti designed representation of Music (lovers kissing over a harpsichord). Photo by va_va_val (https://www.flickr.com/groups/wikipedia_loves_art/pool/tags/va_va_val/). CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en)

Ch 5: "Satan sits on his throne at the centre of a witches' sabbath" by Bartholomaeus Spranger, from Wellcome Images (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xy6nsffh?wellcomeImagesUrl=/indexplus/image/V0025816.html). CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Ch 6: a woodcut illustrating an execution by burning at the stake from a 19th century book

To follow along: https://algernonblackwood.org/Z-files/Ancient%20Sorceries.pdf