(To the Editor.)
As your journal is open to the elucidation of any facts or traditions
connected with history, perhaps you will not consider the following
attempt at the elucidation of a singular subject, unworthy of your
pages. There is something pleasing in every successful attempt at
tracing tradition to a rational and philosophical cause, an origin to
which many of the most absurd and incredible may be referred.
It was well known that to witchcraft was ascribed only the power of
effecting the destruction of certain parts of the human body, and
that some of the members could be protected against the effects of
incantation. The spells of contra-incantation were often successfully
exerted in the destruction of the human body, except in those parts
previously rendered invulnerable. Jezebel was destroyed except her hands
and feet, and the same fate is recorded of many other witches, or of
those who suffered under the influence of malevolent spells.
Might not the vulgar, in search of a cause for so singular a phenomenon,
which has often occurred, as spontaneous combustion of the human body,
find in the powers of witchcraft an easy solution? Grace Pitt who
was burnt in this manner in Suffolk (recorded in the _Philosophical
Transactions,_) was a reputed witch, and her death was assigned by the
country people to the effects of contra-incantation; that her hands and
feet (generally left untouched by this phenomenon) were not consumed,
was attributed to the influence of her spell. Indeed, we may suppose
that these _old ladies,_ who were distinguished by the respectable
appellation of witches, gained that title by their excessive devotion to
spirituous liquors, which, in every case that has occurred, have been
found to predispose to spontaneous combustion, of the human body.
Colchester.