Witch-burning

“ However horrible the rite appears to us, it is a bright picture compared to the burning of the Christian witch who, considered a guilty thing from the first, was thrown in a stifling dungeon, tortured cruelly to extort confession, subjected to an infamous trial, dragged amid jeering to the stake and consoled amid her sufferings by the bystander's comfort that the burning of her body was but the symbol for hell's everlasting fires, in which her soul would suffer even greater torment. ”

“ In burning the bewitched animal you burn the witch herself. This last anecdote is instructive, if perhaps not strictly authentic. It shews that in burning alive one of a bewitched flock or herd what you really do is to burn the witch, who is either actually incarnate in the animal or perhaps more probably stands in a relation of sympathy with it so close as almost to amount to identity. Hence if you burn the creature to ashes, you utterly destroy the witch and thereby save the whole of the rest of the flock or herd from her abominable machinations ”

“ We may conjecture that other sympathetic means of destruction are employed against witchcraft. The following is expressly reported: the heart of a calf that has died is stuck all over with needles, enclosed in a bag, and thrown into flowing water before sunset.”786
There is the same reason for burning bewitched things. And the same thing holds good also of inanimate objects on which a witch has cast her spell. In Wales they say that “if a thing is bewitched, burn it, and immediately afterwards the witch will come to borrow something of you. If you give what she asks, she will go free ”

“ Limerick, where a woman believed that another desired to steal her butter by pishogues, flew in a passion, assaulted her and threw her down, breaking her arm in the fall. [61] That appalling tragedy, the “witch-burning” [Pg 237] case that occurred near Clonmel in 1895, is altogether misnamed. The woman was burnt, not because she was a witch, but in the belief that the real wife had been taken away and a fairy changeling substituted in her place; when the latter was subjected to the fire it would disappear, and the wife would be restored. ”

“ This e-text was produced from Weird Tales October 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Witch-Burning By MARY ELIZABETH COUNSELMAN
They burned a witch in Bingham Square
Last Friday afternoon.
The faggot-smoke was blacker than
The shadows on the moon;
The licking flames were strangely green
Like fox-fire on the fen ...
And she who cursed the godly folk
Will never curse again. ”

“ Mode in which the burning of a bewitched animal is supposed to break the spell. But how, we must still ask, can burning an animal alive break the spell that has been cast upon its fellows by a witch or a warlock? Some light is thrown on the question by the following account of measures which rustic wiseacres in Suffolk are said to have adopted as a remedy for witchcraft. ”

“ In Scotland, as a rule, the witch was strangled at the stake and the body burned, but there are several records of the culprit being sentenced to burning alive. In France burning alive was the invariable punishment. ”

“ The analogy appears to confirm the view that the reason for burning a bewitched animal alive is a belief that the witch herself is in the animal, and that by burning it you either destroy the witch completely or at least unmask her and compel her to reassume her proper human shape, in which she is naturally far less potent for mischief than when she is careering about the country in the likeness of a cat, a hare, a horse, or what not. ”

“ Soon after this, however, a party of farmers went through a process known by the name of "burning the witch out," or "killing the witch," as some express it; the person suspected soon died, and the neighbourhood became free from his evil doings.
8. A horse-shoe is still nailed behind many doors to counteract the effects of witchcraft: a hagstone with a hole through, tied to the key of the stable-door, protects the horses, and, if hung up at the bed's head, the farmer also. ”

“ The potency of evil lies within her to the end; and when, by a few muttered words, she can raise a hell storm on the ocean; when her eye's dim fire can wither the strength of her enemy; or when, with a lock of hair and a bit of wax, she can consume him with torturing pain, who will welcome her neighborly advances? The proper and artistic end of a witch is at the stake—blue flames curling up to heaven, and a handful of gray ashes scattered to the wind ”

“ THE culmination of sorcery was witchcraft and yet it was not the same. In it there is no longer talk of pact with the demon, express or tacit, to obtain certain results, with the expectation of washing out the sin in the confessional and thus cheating the devil. The witch has abandoned Christianity, has renounced her baptism, has worshipped Satan as her God, has surrendered herself to him, body and soul, and exists only to be his instrument in working the evil to her fellow-creatures, which he cannot accomplish without a human agent. ”

“ If we are right in interpreting the modern European fire-festivals as attempts to break the power of witchcraft by burning or banning the witches and warlocks, it seems to follow that we must explain the human sacrifices of the Celts in the same manner; that is, we must suppose that the men whom the Druids burnt in wicker-work images were condemned to death on the ground that they were witches or wizards, and that the mode of execution by fire was chosen because burning alive is deemed the surest mode of getting rid of these noxious and dangerous beings. ”

“ Four hundred women—guilty of no crime, save that which exists in the diseased imaginations of their accusers—four hundred mothers, wives, and daughters, taken out upon the public square, chained to posts, the fagots piled around them, and burned to [373] death! See them writhing in the flames—listen to their piteous shrieks—four hundred voices raised in one wild chorus of agony! And all because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Only a few years ago, in the province of Novgorod, Russia, a woman was burnt for witchcraft. ”

“ On the same principle we are solemnly assured that three scruples of the ashes of a witch, after she has been well and carefully burnt at the stake, is a sure protection against the evil effects of witchcraft. ”

“ It is often said that the burning should take place at a cross-road, and in several places cross-roads are shewn where the burning used to be performed.... As a rule, while the things are burning, the guilty witches appear, though not always in their own shape. At the burning of bewitched butter they often appear as cockchafers and can be killed with impunity. Victuals received from witches may be safely consumed if only you [pg 323] first burn a portion of them.”788 For example, a young man in Oldenburg was wooing a girl, and she gave him two fine apples as a gift. ”

“ I alluded to the boiling of the herbs according to the charmer’s orders, with the result, among other things, of bringing the witch to the spot. This is, however, not the only instance of the importance and strange efficacy of fire. For when a beast dies on a farm, of course it dies, according to the old-fashioned view of [305] things as I understand it, from the influence of the evil eye or the interposition of a witch. ”

“ He, the wretch, however instead of obtaining an audience from the Prince and saying, 'the child is innocent, I am the traitor, I enticed her thither, not the devil, I only am Satan, torture me, burn me'--instead of doing what conscience and honor required, goes about with uplifted head, and merely asks the first-comer, with an indifferent look: is the witch to be burnt to-day? ”

“ The younger girls and children dropped in the dust, but some of the older were less willing to give up.
"She is a witch, father; she is killing a woman," cried one; "it is right a devil be put in the fire!" ”

“ A small hole was left in the door for the imps to enter, and persons were directed to be constantly sweeping the floor, and to keep a strict watch for spiders, flies, or other insects, and if they could not kill them, they certainly were the witch’s imps. Suspected witches were sometimes put to cruel torture to force confession, and were afterwards executed. From such kinds of proof, together with the most absurd and foolish evidence of old women and children, thousands of innocent persons were condemned for witchcraft, and burnt at the stake. ”

“ The neck and the rest of the body deformed, and in the shape [88] of a man and a goat; the hands and the feet of a human being.”
The word witch is thought by some authorities to be derived from chausaph, which means a user of pharmaceutic enchantments, or an applier of drugs to magical purposes.
Witches sent storms and barrenness, drowned children, brought on ague, could kill with evil eye, slay with lightning, pass through key-holes, ride through the air on broom-sticks, and perform many other weird and wondrous things. ”

“ A French judge named Boguet devoted himself especially to this branch of witchcraft, wrote a book upon it, and burned multitudes of these lycanthropes, his rule being to strangle other witches first, but to burn these without strangling.
So it came to pass that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the skies of continental Europe were lurid with the flames of burning women, and every market place had its fagot and its stake. ”

“ In one province of Protestant Sweden 2,500 witches were burnt in 1670. Stories of the horrid tortures which accompanied witch-finding, stories that will fill the eyes with tears and the heart with raging fire against the brutal superstition which provoked such \ barbarities, may be found in Dalyell, Lecky, Michelet, and the voluminous literature of the subject. And all these tortures and executions were sanctioned and defended from the Bible. The more pious the people the more firm their conviction of the reality of witchcraft. ”

“ In the reeking and yet panting heart, the spirit of the witch is kept captive, and the retreat of it prevented by the arrow transfixed. Similarly hath not many a murdered carcase at the coroner's inquest suffered a fresh hæmorrhage or cruentation at the presence of the assassin?—the blood being, as in a furious fit of anger, enraged and agitated by the impress of revenge conceived against the murderer, at the instant of the soul's compulsive exile from the body. ”

“ He brought many poor harmless creatures to a violent end. Every suspected witch was stripped and closely examined for a mole, a wart, for any blemish,—and such blemishes were at once declared to be the devil's seals, stamping the poor wretches as his own. ”

“ And it is wonderful how long this delusion lasted after judicial punishment in most countries had ceased. In Spain a witch was burned in 1780; in 1807 a beggar was tortured and burned in France; in 1850, in France, a man and wife tortured and killed a woman suspected of witchcraft, and it was with some difficulty that they were punished at all, on account of the lingering belief in sorcery; in 1860 a woman was burned in Mexico, as was the case with several persons in 1874; in 1879 and 1880 witches were burned in Russia ”

“ As the drink evaporates and the food wastes they say the spirit is consuming it. Fire-wood is left on the grave that the body may be kept warm. In the case of those accused of witchcraft they often seek to disable the spirit by burning the body. ”

“ The mysterious crime of witchcraft was so difficult of proof that judicial ingenuity was taxed to its utmost to secure conviction, and the Devil was always ready to aid his followers and baffle the ends of justice. The Inquisitor Sprenger, writing in 1487, therefore recommends that, when a witch cannot be forced to confess her guilt by either prayers or torture, she shall be asked whether she will undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron ”

“ Even the belief in witchcraft, one of the blackest superstitions which has ever defaced the human mind, has been affected by these peculiarities; and it has been well observed, that while, according to the old English [37] creed, the witch was a miserable and decrepit hag, the slave rather than the mistress of the demons which haunted her, she, in Scotland, rose to the dignity of a potent sorcerer, who mastered the evil spirit, and, forcing it to do her will, spread among the people a far deeper and more lasting terror. ”

“ The Man doth therefore impress his free motive Blas into the body made invisible, but the Devil doth carry it unto the Man, into whom it is to be injected. And as a knife by the desire and consent of the person wounding is fixed into the flesh of him that is wounded: So this body made invisible by the Devil, is injected into the body of the person to be inchanted, by the Idea of the motive power of the Witch: Satan conspiring to this because of the purposed direction of hurting the person. ”

“ But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be regarded primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards, it becomes probable that the same explanation applies not only to the flaming discs which are hurled into the air, but also to the burning wheels which are rolled down hill on these occasions; discs and wheels, we may suppose, are alike intended to burn the witches who hover invisible in the air or haunt unseen the fields, the orchards, and the vineyards on the hillside. ”

“ The female witch can convert herself into a ball of fire; she has the power of flight, and at night will enter the windows and suck the blood of little children. These sorcerers will make little images of rags or of clay, then stick into them the thorn of the maguey and place them in some secret place; you can [11] be sure that the person against whom the conjuration is practiced will feel pain in the part where the thorn is inserted. ”