Witch hunter

“ Now the old witch who had worked all these evils lived near the well in a cottage. She had first learned witchcraft from a book called The Black Art, which a gentleman farmer had lent her when a girl. She progressed rapidly with her studies, and being eager to learn more, sold herself to the devil, who made compact with her that she should have full power for seven years, after which she was to become his. He gave her a wand that had the magic power of drawing people to her, and she had a ring on the grass by her house just like the fairy’s ring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every town and county had its witch-finder, whose duty it was to detect and bring to trial all those tainted with witchcraft or sorcery. Considering that almost every accident which happened was attributed to sorcery, the duties of the witch-finder were most important. According to his diligence so was the safety of persons and property. Hail-storms, destructive floods, dangerous fires, disease among cattle, and domestic afflictions were all ascribed to witchcraft. A mole or wart discovered on any part of an old woman's body was thought to be a witch-mark. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Scarce a day goes by that some poor woman or man is not accused of being in league with the devil, or banded with witches to work evil spells. The Colony groans under the terrors, for nearly half a score of people have been put to death after being convicted of witchcraft.
“Neighbors have denounced and testified against neighbors; 135fathers against sons, and daughters against their mothers.”
“Why, ’tis worse than I dreamed,” I said.
“Aye, it is bad enough,” responded Willis, glancing behind his chair, as if he expected to see a witch perched on the bed post. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In April following, the rev. Isaac Nicholson, curate of the parish, inquiring after her health, was astonished by her brother informing him that her fits and debility were the effect of witchcraft. “She is under an evil tongue,” said the youth. “As sure as you are alive, sir,” continued a stander-by, “she is bewitched, and so are two other young girls that live near her.” The boor related, that at the town he came from in Bedfordshire, a man had been exactly in the same way; but, by a charm, he discovered the witch to be an old woman in the same parish, and that her reign would soon be over ”

“ Then she would be a friend to him; did he forget her power? He questioned her on the uses she would make of a blood-stained linen rag. She told him she had her purposes, and he remembered her witch practices, the stories of the ghastly ingredients of her magic potions. He alluded to witchcraft, and she defied him again, then he called the guard; but when the soldiers' tread echoed in the corridor, she drew [318] the cloth from a hidden panel in her bureau and flung it at him, with bitter words cursing him. And he departed trembling, the fear of the Grävenitz upon him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her powers are varied, and by no means always common to every individual. Or, again, she has the power to turn herself corporeally into a wolf or a cat—which brings her into line with the were-wolf, just as the cat or wolf may under certain circumstances transform themselves, permanently or otherwise, into a human witch. She may acquire the mind of a wolf without its body; on the other hand, many a beautiful princess has been transformed into a white doe by witchcraft. So with her male colleagues—sorcerer, magician, wizard, warlock, male-witch, diviner, and the rest of the great family. ”

“ Toads, having the rank of witches' familiars, appeared at the meetings, dressed in gay attire, and wearing small silver bells round their necks, or attached to their feet. At cock-crow Satan disappeared under the earth, and the witches flew through the air to their respective homes. That witches could transform themselves into hares, wolves, and other animals, nearly all the accused women readily admitted.
In the year 1728 a witch-finder discovered that a stout tall woman, suspected of sorcery, did not weigh more than four ounces. ”

“ At last they all declared that the old man was a most potent wizard, that he had killed many people by sorcery, and that he must be killed.
You would like to know, I dare say, what these Africans mean by a wizard, or a witch? They believe that people have, within themselves, the power of killing anyone who displeases them. They believe that no one dies unless some one has bewitched him. Have you ever heard of such a horrible superstition? Hence those who are condemned for witchcraft are sometimes subjected to a very painful death ”

“ A lingering belief in witchcraft still remains among the most ignorant of our population, both rural and urban. Some particulars relative to the existence of this superstition in this county in the seventeenth century will be found among the county records in the early part of this volume. The law against witchcraft, passed in the time of James I, being very stringent, the driving out evil spirits, allaying of ghosts, and abjuring witches, became, for nearly a century, a profitable employment. Witch-finders existed as public officers ”

“ The Devil, her master, knows—none better—that no such potency is in any ointment, but that his own hellish magic supports his minions in the air and comes, and he so will, to their aid in time of trial. But this he hides from them, so that in their folly they may be led to murder babes—the sacrifice he loves above all other.
The witch takes a broken eggshell and smears it also with the ointment. She goes to the bed and picks up the child, the broomstick hopping after her across the floor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the West Riding of Yorkshire, also, a belief in witchcraft is still current. Mr. Stott who used to reside in that district wrote to me respecting two old men, whom he calls A and B. A maintains B to be a witch, keeps a hedging-bill at the end of his table to kill him should he dare to enter his house, and if he meets him, crosses himself, places the first finger of his right hand under his lower lip, and spits over it as a protection against witchery. One day a small farmer in the neighbourhood was showing off a fine calf to his friends and all were praising it as a great beauty. ”

“ They were considered to be able not only to heal sickness, but to cause it; and the presence in one's clothing of a pin whose irritant end was pointed in the wrong direction was sufficient to make the person believe that he was under a spell of witchcraft. If a cow or a horse fell lame, it was the village witch who did it; if a child developed as an imbecile, or anyone became bereft of reason, it was laid at the door of the witch; the failure of crops, a drought,—anything that interfered with the comfort or convenience of a person or a community,—was due to some such representative of Satan. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But the elves are the Devil’s cousins, and he’s always on hand, and some night he comes smirking up, dressed now this way and now that. So the woman drops a curtsy, and he puts out his hand and gives her something, just as he did in Eden Garden. She takes it, and that seals her both sides of the Judgement Day! Pay for pay! Blood gives him strength, and so he sucks from a little place he makes upon her body—that’s the witch mark that can’t be made to feel pain, and that’s why we strip and prick witches to find their mark, which is better proof even than their confessing! ”

“ But when every allowance has been made, as we examine in detail the long and bloody history of Witchcraft, as we recognize the fearful fanaticism and atrocious extravagances of the witch mania, as we are enabled to account for in the light of ampler knowledge, both psychological and physical, details and accidents which would have inevitably led to the stake without respite or mercy, as we can elucidate case after case—one an hysterical subject, a cataleptic, an epileptic, a sufferer from some obscure nervous disorder even to-day not exactly diagnosed ”

“ In France and England the witches were supposed to ride uniformly upon broom-sticks; but in Italy and Spain, the devil himself, in the shape of a goat, used to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened according to the number of witches he was desirous of accommodating. No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath, could get out by a door or window were she to try ever so much. Their general mode of ingress was by the key-hole, and of egress by the chimney, up which they flew, broom and all, with the greatest ease. ”

“ But for witchcraft no one would die, and the earnest longing of all right-minded men and women is to clear it out of the country by killing every discovered witch. It is an act of self-preservation.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then with thy arm, with power and might, You shall strike and smite The devil of a witch called Jezabel light, And you shall see an awful sight.”
The lad did as he was bidden, and presently he heard the huntsman’s horn and the hue and cry, and saw the hare running down the opposite hill-side, where the hounds seemed to gain on her, but as she breasted the hill on which he stood she gained on them. As she came towards the mill he threw his stone, and it lodged in her skull, and when he ran up he found he had killed the old witch. As the huntsmen came up they crowded round him, and praised him ”

“ In all the villages round about an old beggar woman was much dreaded as a witch, and this woman came very often to the farm begging. The good people of the farm used to give her directly all she desired, just to rid themselves of her importunities. But one day the farm-labourers made up their minds to discover whether the old hag was really a witch or not, and after she had entered the room, they set a broom on end before the door. It was on a Saturday evening. When a broom is put upside down before a door—such is the superstition of the people—the witch cannot get out again. ”