Burning at the stake

“ O our Lord, protector of all, most valiant and most kind, what is this? Thine anger and thine indignation, does it glory or delight in hurling the stone and arrow and spear? The fire of the pestilence, made exceeding hot, is upon thy nation, as a fire in a hut, burning and smoking, leaving nothing upright or sound. The grinders of thy teeth are employed, and thy bitter whips upon the miserable of thy people, who have become lean and of little substance, even as a hollow green cane. ”

“ Views of incendiarism, burning, wrecking, and the destruction of property, which may put like action into the minds of those of evil instincts, or may degrade the morals of the young, will be disapproved. ”

“ The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. Now, in the fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually burning them. ”

“ He was not burned at the stake, as is done to poor wretched criminals nowadays when they are burnt alive, and who are smothered by the smoke and flames, and reduced to ashes before they have time to feel the sharpness of the fire. ”

“ How will your delicate frame bear the agony when thrown alive into the burning pile? Then, when the hot fire slowly seizes on each writhing limb, and every scorched nerve overwhelms your soul with agonising torments, then—when too late, you will repent your refusal of my proffered mercy. ”

“ No, Frank, I don't mean this material fire burning before us, but the fire that makes him see obstacles little, and advantages big, the fire that makes him rush over everything to get at the enemy and destroy him. ”

“ Our bodies you may remove from place to place, our souls you cannot compel to do what they do not will, no more than wood or stone to utter sounds. A great fire burns pain into living bodies and begets corruption; on this fire we are, for we are burning alive. There is neither king nor prince who can compel us to do what we have not determined to do. ”

“ As the heated air rises more and more, rushing along with a sound like that of a thousand foaming mountain torrents, burning brands are carried along, whirling on across the firmament like evil spirits of destruction, bearing the fire miles away from its origin, then falling among the dry brush heaps of windfall or slashing, and starting another fire to burn as fiercely as the first. * * *
There is something horrible in the slow, steady approach of a top fire. It comes on with the pitiless determination of unavoidable destiny, not faster than a man can walk. ”

“ To burn or smite them with thy wrath: behold,
I have nought on earth save thee for hope or hold,
Fail me not thou: I have nought but this to crave,
Make me thy mean to give them to the grave,
Thy sign that all men seeing may speak thee just,
Thy word which turns the strengths of sin to dust,
Thy blast which burns up towers and thrones with fire. ”

“ Not in the hour of infamy and death
Forsake the virtuous! they draw near the stake—
And lo! the torch! hold hold your erring hands!
Yet quench the rising flames!—they rise! they spread!
They reach the suffering Maid! ”

“ And yet this appeal to treason, this premium on a people’s disloyalty, is the regular precursor of wars, wherein destruction for its own sake, the burning of grain and villages for the [Pg 164] mere pleasure of the flames, forms almost invariably the most prominent feature. ”

“ There was a certain amount of awe in the faces of all as they thought of the tortures a person would endure if he were trapped in that furnace. And for all they knew, men might be burning to death in front of them! ”

“ God of my fathers! if there be yet a spark of manhood left amongst thy people, let thy servant fan it to a flame, that shall burn as the fire burns the stubble, so that the earth may bare before the blaze! ”

“ All the evil and the punishment that came from the curse of the ring is done."
[Illustration: "THEIR TREASURE IS THEIR OWN AGAIN."]
A big stick that had been burning brightly and steadily for a long time suddenly fell in two and the quick flames and the sparks sprang high up into the chimney. "See, it is the castle of the gods itself that is burning and lighting up all the sky. The wrong that they have done and the sorrow that they have suffered are past, and their end has come. But the fire burns fiercer still. It seizes upon everything, in the sky and on the earth. ”

“ The flames rage on, and with them rage a troop of desperadoes, before concealed, or set at large by the event. The wretched survivors are exposed to pillage, massacre, and every outrage: and thus, on all sides, Nature asserts her boundless capriciousness. ”

“ With the prize in his hands, fires burst from every roof in every quarter. Three hundred thousand of the inhabitants have fled; a wind arises and fans the devouring flame; churches and [149] houses, temples and palaces, are wrapped in its relentless embraces; the convicts and the rabble run like demons through the streets, drunk with wine and reveling in excesses; soldiers, slaves, and prostitutes pillage the burning ruins, all wild and mad with the unholy lust of gain. ”

“ Occasionally a little boy would snatch up a burning brand and hurl it among the night prowlers. There would be a chorus of angry screams and low toned, rumbling growls as the menacers retreated for an instant, then the ring of shadowy forms, and the glowing spots of burning flame that were their eyes, would reform out of the stygian blackness of the night. ”

“ By this time the flames had reached his arms and legs, which, being stuffed with squibs and crackers, exploded with much noise, and the luckless conspirator disappeared with a crash into the midst of the burning barrels, to the accompaniment of a storm of clapping and a lusty cheer. ”

“ The custom of book-burning, never formally abolished, died out at last from a gradual decline of public belief in its efficacy; just as tortures died out, and judicial ordeals died out, and, as we may hope, even war will die out, before the silent, disintegrating forces of increasing intelligence. ”

“ Burn the niggers black as coal!
Burn all Boz’s imitators!
Burn all tales without a head!
Burn a candle near the curtain!
Burn your Burns, and burn your bed!
Burn all wrongs that won’t be righted,
Poor poor Soup, and Spanish claims—
Burn that Bell, and burn his Vixen!
Burn all sorts of burning shames!
Burn the Whigs! and burn the Tories!
Burn all parties, great and small!
Burn that everlasting Poynder—
Burn his Suttees once for all!
Burn the fop that burns tobacco.
Burn a Critic that condemns.—
Burn Lucifer and all his matches!
Burn the fool that burns the Thames! ”

“ By the wild torch of rashness, sprung to life.
Eternal Justice saw, and was incens'd;
And suffer'd them to rage; and lo! the flame
Has caught our fairest domes; it burns—it spreads,
And who shall quench it? ”

“ I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. ”

“ The while his face grew dark with rage and fury, so defied;
"Yea, heat the furnace seven fold, and in the fiercest flame
Blot out forever from the day each impious scorner's name!
"Ay, bind them well, ye mighty men, ye warriors stern and bold,
And let your cords be very strong, your fetters manifold!
For neither they nor He they trust shall foil my kingly ire,
Or save them from the wrathful flame of this devouring fire!
"Now cast them in!—but, oh!—my men!—they fade like morning mist!
Slain by the fierce, out-leaping flame no mortal may resist! ”

“ They are more or less fire-proof, slow-burning, or briskly combustible, like the dwellings they have devastated. But the modern tendency is to a type where flames do not destroy, nor moth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. ”

“ Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us without hope of end The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour, Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus, We should be quite abolished, and expire. ”

“ We will transform ourselves into flames, and the flame which burns up the other shall be the victor. I will transform myself into a crimson flame, thou into a whitish one.” ‘Ah! not so,” broke in the seer; “thou into the whitish one and I into the crimson one.” The king consented even to this. They ran out on to the road to the bridge, and, changing themselves into flames, began to burn one another without mercy. For a long time they burnt one another and nothing came of it. ”

“ And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.—The savage application in the world-wide war of the rod of the Divine authority of rulers will cause revolt, revolution and anarchy to spring up, like a fire, which will bring to an utter end the denominational clusters, the fruit of the vine of the earth. ”

“ Crafty, dishonest arts, oppression, extortion, and, above all, fire and sword. They dared to ape the thunder and lightning of Heaven, and, assisted by the machinations of the grand adversary of man, rendered their imitative contrivances for destruction more terrible and deadly than the original. ”

“ Being arrived at the fatal place, they thrust in the stake at the fundament of the person who is the miserable subject of this doom, and then taking him by the legs, draw on his body upon it, till the point of the stake appears at his shoulders. ”

“ For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
19 Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. ”

“ Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed The spark intense within it, all without Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard For ruin on the naked small redoubt. Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally; To have the mystery, but not go forth; To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from the north. The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder the heart That saves the blue grain of eternal fire Within its quick, committed to hold and wait And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire. ”

“ Let us then bring ruin on the rest of men who adore our Destroyer. Well do I recollect the time when ye caused them, their armies and their cities, to be consumed in horrible combustion, yea and caused nigh all the dwellers on the earth to fall through the whelming waters into this fire. ”

“ In the fury and fire of partisan strife, and amid the familiar scenes of blood and death, men trampled upon right, crucified truth, murdered innocence, loved vengeance, despised virtue, abandoned principle, forgot their loves, left their dead unburied and their buried uncoffined, and hung upon the bloody war path like avenging furies. ”

“ But, in all of them put together, I doubt whether there is as much to offend a scrupulous taste as in many a latter-day novel, the claim of which to the distinction of burning is often as indisputable as the certainty of its regrettable immunity from that fiery but fitting fate.
The custom I write about suggests some obvious reflections on the mutability of our national manners. Was the wisdom of our ancestors really so [ix] much greater than our own, as many profess to believe? ”

“ The fierce insatiate fire-fiend raging flew
In wild demoniac rage the structure through,
Tearing down rafters, hurling to the ground,
Props, pillars roof-beams with appalling sound.
Oh! what a scene of strife raged wildly there,
'Mid cries for help and struggles of despair;
All human efforts powerless to assuage,
The greedy fire-fiend's devastating rage.
The fiery monster dashed away all trace,
Of that late mimic world of beauteous grace,
Swallowing in a fleet, wrathful breath of rage,
All the vain baubles of the tinseled stage. ”

“ But then, in turn, as though by a law of Fate, evil accompanies the good: fire destroys with greater rapidity than it produces by forging those formidable engines, those implements of death, by which in the twinkling of an eye the flower of nations is cut down on the battle-field.—Revue Scientifique. ”

“ And the people shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire. Hear ye that are afar off, what I have done; and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? ”

“ Some thirteen unarmed men and women cut down—the number of the slain and maimed is very countable; but the treasury of rage, burning, hidden or visible, in all hearts ever since, more or less perverting the effort and aim of all hearts ever since, is of unknown extent. ”

“ The duplicate stake and faggots are employed alone for arranging among them gas pipes, and in suitable metal dishes, either spirits, or thin paper, or both, to produce varieties of fiery effect. On the acting stage the martyr would appear surrounded by the terrors of the reality of such a frightful doom. ”

“ The storm of conflict raged from dawn to late in the afternoon, with unabating fury. Men on both sides seemed immune to fatigue or fear, and for fourteen hours, as if endued with supernatural energy and power, struggled amidst dust, smoke, starvation and wounds and death with unflagging fury, in the maddening work of ruin and destruction. ”

“ The flames mounted to the roof, and she now heard the destructive element over her head, while the excessive heat caused her frequently to change her position, and shrink into the smallest possible space. How horrible must be the emotions of that person, who hemmed in by the flames upon all sides, with no hope of escape, awaits her doom—a death of exquisite torture. ”