Nothing further on the subject is recorded until the year 1544, under which date we find the following entry in the table of the red council book of Ireland:
"A letter to Charles FitzArthur for sendinge a witch to the Lord Deputie to be examined."
This note is a most tantalising one. The red council book has been lost, but a succinct "table" of its contents, from which the above has been extracted, and which was apparently compiled by Sir William Usher, has been preserved in Add. MSS. 1792, and published in Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Report, appendix, part 3, but an examination of the original MS. reveals nothing in addition to the above passage; so, until the lost book is discovered, we must remain in ignorance with respect to the doings of this particular witch.
The next notice of witchcraft in Ireland occurs in the year 1578, when a witch-trial took place at Kilkenny, though here again, unfortunately, no details have been preserved. In the November of that year sessions were held there by the Lord Justice Drury and Sir Henry Fitton, who, in their letter to the Privy Council on the 20th of the same month, inform that Body that upon arriving at the town "the jail being full we caused sessions immediately to be held. Thirty-six persons were executed, amongst whom were some good ones, _a blackamoor and two witches_ by natural law, for that we find no law to try them by in this realm."[16] It is easy to see why the witches were put to death, but the reason for the negro's execution is not so obvious. It can hardly have been for the colour of his skin, although no doubt a black man was as much a _rara avis_ in the town of Kilkenny as a black swan. Had the words been written at the time the unfortunate negro might well have exclaimed, though in vain, to his judges:
"Mislike me not for my complexion-- The shadowed livery of the burning sun."
Or could it have been that he was the unhappy victim of a false etymology! For in old writers the word "necromancy" is spelt "nigromancy," as if divination was practised through the medium of _negroes_ instead of _dead persons_; indeed in an old vocabulary of 1475 "Nigromantia" is defined as "divinatio facta _per nigros_." He may therefore have been suspected of complicity with the two witches.