extinguished in the light of civilisation. As in England, the progress of
improvement was slow. Up to the year 1665, little or no diminution of the
mania was perceptible. In 1643, the General Assembly recommended that the
privy council should institute a standing commission, composed of any
"understanding gentlemen or magistrates," to try the witches, who were
stated to have increased enormously of late years. In 1649, an act was
passed, confirmatory of the original statute of Queen Mary, explaining
some points of the latter which were doubtful, and enacting severe
penalties, not only against witches themselves, but against all who
covenanted with them, or sought by their means to pry into the secrets of
futurity, or cause any evil to the life, lands, or limbs of their
neighbours. For the next ten years, the popular madness upon this subject
was perhaps more furious than ever; upwards of four thousand persons
suffered for the crime during that interval. This was the consequence of
the act of parliament and the unparalleled severity of the magistrates;
the latter frequently complained that for two witches they burned one day,
there were ten to burn the next: they never thought that they themselves
were the cause of the increase. In a single circuit, held at Glasgow, Ayr,
and Stirling, in 1659, seventeen unhappy creatures were burned by judicial
sentence for trafficking with Satan. In one day (November 7, 1661), the
privy council issued no less than fourteen commissions for trials in the
provinces. Next year, the violence of the persecution seems to have
abated. From 1662 to 1668, although "the understanding gentlemen and
magistrates" already mentioned, continued to try and condemn, the High
Court of Justiciary had but one offender of this class to deal with, and
she was acquitted. James Welsh, a common pricker, was ordered to be
publicly whipped through the streets of Edinburgh for falsely accusing a
woman of witchcraft; a fact which alone proves that the superior court
sifted the evidence in these cases with much more care and severity than
it had done a few years previously. The enlightened Sir George Mackenzie,
styled by Dryden "the noble wit of Scotland," laboured hard to introduce
this rule into court, that the confessions of the witches should be held
of little worth, and that the evidence of the prickers and other
interested persons should be received with distrust and jealousy. This was
reversing the old practice, and saved many innocent lives. Though a firm
believer both in ancient and modern witchcraft, he could not shut his eyes
to the atrocities daily committed under the name of justice. In his work
on the Criminal Law of Scotland, published in 1678, he says, "From the
horridness of this crime, I do conclude that, of all others, it requires
the clearest relevancy and most convincing probature; and I condemn, next
to the witches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges who burn
persons by thousands as guilty of this crime." In the same year, Sir John
Clerk plumply refused to serve as a commissioner on trials for witchcraft,
alleging, by way of excuse, "that he was not himself good conjuror enough
to be duly qualified." The views entertained by Sir George Mackenzie were
so favourably received by the Lords of Session, that he was deputed, in
1680, to report to them on the cases of a number of poor women who were
then in prison awaiting their trial. Sir George stated that there was no
evidence against them whatever but their own confessions, which were
absurd and contradictory, and drawn from them by severe torture. They were
immediately discharged.
For the next sixteen years the Lords of Session were unoccupied with
trials for witchcraft. Not one is entered upon the record. But in 1697 a
case occurred which equalled in absurdity any of those that signalised the
dark reign of King James. A girl named Christiana Shaw, eleven years of
age, the daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, was subject to fits; and
being of a spiteful temper, she accused her maid-servant, with whom she
had frequent quarrels, of bewitching her. Her story unfortunately was
believed. Encouraged to tell all the persecutions of the devil which the
maid had sent to torment her, she in the end concocted a romance that
involved twenty-one persons. There was no other evidence against them but
the fancies of this lying child, and the confessions which pain had
extorted from them; but upon this no less than five women were condemned
before Lord Blantyre and the rest of the commissioners, appointed
specially by the privy council to try this case. They were burned on the
Green at Paisley. The warlock of the party, one John Reed, who was also
condemned, hanged himself in prison. It was the general belief in Paisley
that the devil had strangled him lest he should have revealed in his last
moments too many of the unholy secrets of witchcraft. This trial excited
considerable disgust in Scotland. The Rev. Mr. Bell, a contemporary
writer, observed that, in this business, "persons of more goodness and
esteem than most of their calumniators were defamed for witches." He adds,
that the persons chiefly to blame were "certain ministers of too much
forwardness and absurd credulity, and some topping professors in and about
Glasgow."[34]
[34] Preface to _Law's Memorials_, edited by Sharpe.
After this trial, there again occurs a lapse of seven years, when the
subject was painfully forced upon public attention by the brutal cruelty
of the mob at Pittenween. Two women were accused of having bewitched a
strolling beggar who was subject to fits, or who pretended to be so, for
the purpose of exciting commiseration. They were cast into prison, and
tortured until they confessed. One of them, named Janet Cornfoot,
contrived to escape, but was brought back to Pittenween next day by a
party of soldiers. On her approach to the town she was unfortunately met
by a furious mob, composed principally of fishermen and their wives, who
seized upon her with the intention of swimming her. They forced her away
to the sea-shore, and tying a rope around her body, secured the end of it
to the mast of a fishing-boat lying alongside. In this manner they ducked
her several times. When she was half dead, a sailor in the boat cut away
the rope, and the mob dragged her through the sea to the beach. Here, as
she lay quite insensible, a brawny ruffian took down the door of his hut,
close by, and placed it on her back. The mob gathered large stones from
the beach and piled them upon her till the wretched woman was pressed to
death. No magistrate made the slightest attempt to interfere; and the
soldiers looked on, delighted spectators. A great outcry was raised
against this culpable remissness, but no judicial inquiry was set on foot.
This happened in 1704.
The next case we hear of is that of Elspeth Rule, found guilty of
witchcraft before Lord Anstruther, at the Dumfries circuit, in 1708. She
was sentenced to be marked in the cheek with a red-hot iron, and banished
the realm of Scotland for life.
Again there is a long interval. In 1718, the remote county of Caithness,
where the delusion remained in all its pristine vigour for years after it
had ceased elsewhere, was startled from its propriety by the cry of
witchcraft. A silly fellow, named William Montgomery, a carpenter, had a
mortal antipathy to cats; and somehow or other these animals generally
chose his back-yard as the scene of their catterwaulings. He puzzled his
brains for a long time to know why he, above all his neighbours, should be
so pestered. At last he came to the sage conclusion that his tormentors
were no cats, but witches. In this opinion he was supported by his
maid-servant, who swore a round oath that she had often heard the
aforesaid cats talking together in human voices. The next time the unlucky
tabbies assembled in his back-yard, the valiant carpenter was on the
alert. Arming himself with an axe, a dirk, and a broadsword, he rushed out
among them. One of them he wounded in the back, a second in the hip, and
the leg of a third he maimed with his axe; but he could not capture any of
them. A few days afterwards, two old women of the parish died; and it was
said, that when their bodies were laid out, there appeared upon the back
of one the mark as of a recent wound, and a similar scar upon the hip of
the other. The carpenter and his maid were convinced that they were the
very cats, and the whole county repeated the same story. Every one was
upon the look-out for proofs corroborative; a very remarkable one was soon
discovered. Nanny Gilbert, a wretched old creature of upwards of seventy
years of age, was found in bed with her leg broken. As she was ugly enough
for a witch, it was asserted that she also was one of the cats that had
fared so ill at the hands of the carpenter. The latter, when informed of
the popular suspicion, asserted that he distinctly remembered to have
struck one of the cats a blow with the back of his broadsword, which ought
to have broken her leg. Nanny was immediately dragged from her bed and
thrown into prison. Before she was put to the torture, she explained in a
very natural and intelligible manner how she had broken her limb; but this
account did not give satisfaction. The professional persuasions of the
torturer made her tell a different tale, and she confessed that she was
indeed a witch, and had been wounded by Montgomery on the night stated;
that the two old women recently deceased were witches also, besides about
a score of others whom she named. The poor creature suffered so much by
the removal from her own home, and the tortures inflicted upon her, that
she died the next day in prison. Happily for the persons she had named in
her confession, Dundas of Arniston, at that time the king's
advocate-general, wrote to the sheriff-depute, one Captain Ross of
Littledean, cautioning him not to proceed to trial, the "thing being of
too great difficulty, and beyond the jurisdiction of an inferior court."
Dundas himself examined the precognition with great care, and was so
convinced of the utter folly of the whole case, that he quashed all
further proceedings.
We find this same sheriff-depute of Caithness very active four years
afterwards in another trial for witchcraft. In spite of the warning he had
received that all such cases were to be tried in future by the superior
courts, he condemned to death an old woman at Dornoch, upon the charge of
bewitching the cows and pigs of her neighbours. This poor creature was
insane, and actually laughed and clapped her hands at sight of "the bonnie
fire" that was to consume her. She had a daughter who was lame both of her
hands and feet, and one of the charges brought against her was, that she
had used this daughter as a pony in her excursions to join the devil's
sabbath, and that the devil himself had shod her, and produced lameness.
This was the last execution that took place in Scotland for witchcraft.
The penal statutes were repealed in 1736; and, as in England, whipping,
the pillory, or imprisonment, were declared the future punishments of all
pretenders to magic or witchcraft.
Still for many years after this the superstition lingered both in England
and Scotland, and in some districts is far from being extinct even at this
day. But before we proceed to trace it any further than to its legal
extinction, we have yet to see the frightful havoc it made in continental
Europe from the commencement of the seventeenth to the middle of the
eighteenth century. France, Germany, and Switzerland were the countries
which suffered most from the epidemic. The number of victims in these
countries during the sixteenth century has already been mentioned; but at
the early part of the seventeenth, the numbers are so great, especially in
Germany, that were they not to be found in the official records of the
tribunals, it would be almost impossible to believe that mankind could
ever have been so maddened and deluded. To use the words of the learned
and indefatigable Horst,[35] "the world seemed to be like a large madhouse
for witches and devils to play their antics in." Satan was believed to be
at every body's call to raise the whirlwind, draw down the lightning,
blight the productions of the earth, or destroy the health and paralyse
the limbs of man. This belief, so insulting to the majesty and beneficence
of the Creator, was shared by the most pious ministers of religion. Those
who in their morning and evening prayers acknowledged the one true God,
and praised him for the blessings of the seed-time and the harvest, were
convinced that frail humanity could enter into a compact with the spirits
of hell to subvert his laws and thwart all his merciful intentions.
Successive popes, from Innocent VIII. downwards, promulgated this
degrading doctrine, which spread so rapidly, that society seemed to be
divided into two great factions, the bewitching and the bewitched.
[35] _Zauberbibliothek_, Thiel 5.
The commissioners named by Innocent VIII. to prosecute the witch-trials in
Germany were, Jacob Sprenger, so notorious for his work on demonology,
entitled the _Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer to knock down Witches_; Henry
Institor, a learned jurisconsult; and the Bishop of Strasburgh. Bamberg,
Trèves, Cologne, Paderborn, and Würzburg, were the chief seats of the
commissioners, who, during their lives alone, condemned to the stake, on a
very moderate calculation, upwards of three thousand victims. The number
of witches so increased, that new commissioners were continually appointed
in Germany, France, and Switzerland. In Spain and Portugal the Inquisition
alone took cognisance of the crime. It is impossible to search the records
of those dark, but now happily non-existing tribunals; but the mind
recoils with affright even to form a guess of the multitudes who perished.
The mode of trial in the other countries is more easily ascertained.
Sprenger in Germany, and Bodinus and Delrio in France, have left but too
ample a record of the atrocities committed in the much-abused names of
justice and religion. Bodinus, of great repute and authority in the
seventeenth century, says, "The trial of this offence must not be
conducted like other crimes. Whoever adheres to the ordinary course of
justice perverts the spirit of the law, both divine and human. He who is
accused of sorcery should never be acquitted, unless the malice of the
prosecutor be clearer than the sun; for it is so difficult to bring full
proof of this secret crime, that out of a million of witches not one would
be convicted if the usual course were followed!" Henri Boguet, a
witch-finder, who styled himself "The Grand Judge of Witches for the
Territory of St. Claude," drew up a code for the guidance of all persons
engaged in the witch-trials, consisting of seventy articles, quite as
cruel as the code of Bodinus. In this document he affirms, that a mere
suspicion of witchcraft justifies the immediate arrest and torture of the
suspected person. If the prisoner muttered, looked on the ground, and did
not shed any tears, all these were proofs positive of guilt! In all cases
of witchcraft, the evidence of the child ought to be taken against its
parent; and persons of notoriously bad character, although not to be
believed upon their oaths on the ordinary occasions of dispute that might
arise between man and man, were to be believed, if they swore that any
person had bewitched them! Who, when he hears that this diabolical
doctrine was the universally received opinion of the ecclesiastical and
civil authorities, can wonder that thousands upon thousands of unhappy
persons should be brought to the stake? that Cologne should for many years
burn its three hundred witches annually? the district of Bamberg its four
hundred? Nuremberg, Geneva, Paris, Toulouse, Lyons, and other cities,
their two hundred?
A few of these trials may be cited, taking them in the order of priority,
as they occurred in different parts of the Continent. In 1595, an old
woman residing in a village near Constance, angry at not being invited to
share the sports of the country people on a day of public rejoicing, was
heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards seen to proceed
through the fields towards a hill, where she was lost sight of. A violent
thunder-storm arose about two hours afterwards, which wet the dancers to
the skin, and did considerable damage to the plantations. This woman,
suspected before of witchcraft, was seized and imprisoned, and accused of
having raised the storm, by filling a hole with wine, and stirring it
about with a stick. She was tortured till she confessed, and was burned
alive the next evening.
[Illustration: CITY OF LYONS.]
About the same time two sorcerers in Toulouse were accused of having
dragged a crucifix about the streets at midnight, stopping at times to
spit upon and kick it, and uttering at intervals an exorcism to raise the
devil. The next day a hail-storm did considerable damage to the crops; and
a girl, the daughter of a shoemaker in the town, remembered to have heard
in the night the execrations of the wizards. Her story led to their
arrest. The usual means to produce confession were resorted to. The
wizards owned that they could raise tempests whenever they pleased, and
named several persons who possessed similar powers. They were hanged, and
then burned in the market-place, and seven of the persons they had
mentioned shared the same fate.
Hoppo and Stadlin, two noted wizards of Germany, were executed in 1599.
They implicated twenty or thirty witches, who went about causing women to
miscarry, bringing down the lightning of heaven, and making maidens bring
forth toads. To this latter fact several girls were found to swear most
positively! Stadlin confessed that he had killed seven infants in the womb
of one woman.
Bodinus highly praises the exertions of a witch-finder named Nider, in
France, who prosecuted so many that he could not calculate them. Some of
these witches could, by a single word, cause people to fall down dead;
others made women go with child three years instead of nine months; while
others, by certain invocations and ceremonies, could turn the faces of
their enemies upside down, or twist them round to their backs. Although no
witness was ever procured who saw persons in this horrible state, the
witches confessed that they had the power and exercised it. Nothing more
was wanting to ensure the stake.
At Amsterdam a crazy girl confessed that she could cause sterility in
cattle, and bewitch pigs and poultry by merely repeating the magic words
_Turius und Shurius Inturius_! She was hanged and burned. Another woman in
the same city, named Kornelis van Purmerund, was arrested in consequence
of some disclosures the former had made. A witness came forward and swore
that she one day looked through the window of her hut, and saw Kornelis
sitting before a fire muttering something to the devil. She was sure it
was to the devil, because she heard him answer her. Shortly afterwards
twelve black cats ascended out of the floor, and danced on their hind legs
around the witch for the space of about half an hour. They then vanished
with a horrid noise, and leaving a disagreeable smell behind them. She
also was hanged and burned.
At Bamberg, in Bavaria, the executions from the year 1610 to 1640 were at
the rate of about a hundred annually. One woman, suspected of witchcraft,
was seized because, having immoderately praised the beauty of a child, it
had shortly afterwards fallen ill and died. She confessed upon the rack
that the devil had given her the power to work evil upon those she hated,
by speaking words in their praise. If she said with unwonted fervour,
"What a strong man!" "What a lovely woman!" "What a sweet child!" the
devil understood her, and afflicted them with diseases immediately. It is
quite unnecessary to state the end of this poor creature. Many women were
executed for causing strange substances to lodge in the bodies of those
who offended them. Bits of wood, nails, hair, egg-shells, bits of glass,
shreds of linen and woollen cloth, pebbles, and even hot cinders and
knives, were the articles generally chosen. These were believed to remain
in the body till the witches confessed or were executed, when they were
voided from the bowels, or by the mouth, nostrils, or ears. Modern
physicians have often had cases of a similar description under their care,
where girls have swallowed needles, which have been voided on the arms,
legs, and other parts of the body. But the science of that day could not
account for these phenomena otherwise than by the power of the devil; and
every needle swallowed by a servant-maid cost an old woman her life. Nay,
if no more than one suffered in consequence, the district might think
itself fortunate. The commissioners seldom stopped short at one victim.
The revelations of the rack in most cases implicated half a score.
[Illustration: BAMBERG.]
Of all the records of the witch-trials preserved for the wonder of
succeeding ages, that of Würzburg, from 1627 to 1629, is the most
frightful. Hauber, who has preserved this list in his _Acta et Scripta
Magica_, says, in a note at the end, that it is far from complete, and
that there were a great many other burnings too numerous to specify. This
record, which relates to the city only, and not to the province of
Würzburg, contains the names of one hundred and fifty-seven persons who
were burned in two years in twenty-nine burnings, averaging from five to
six at a time. The list comprises three play-actors, four innkeepers,
three common councilmen of Würzburg, fourteen vicars of the cathedral, the
burgomaster's lady, an apothecary's wife and daughter, two choristers of
the cathedral, Göbel Babelin, the prettiest girl in the town, and the
wife, the two little sons and the daughter of the councillor Stolzenberg.
Rich and poor, young and old, suffered alike. At the seventh of these
recorded burnings, the victims are described as a wandering boy, twelve
years of age, and four strange men and women found sleeping in the
market-place. Thirty-two of the whole number appear to have been vagrants,
of both sexes, who, failing to give a satisfactory account of themselves,
were accused and found guilty of witchcraft. The number of children on the
list is horrible to think upon. The thirteenth and fourteenth burnings
comprised four persons, who are stated to have been a little maiden nine
years of age, a maiden still less, her sister, their mother, and their
aunt, a pretty young woman of twenty-four. At the eighteenth burning the
victims were two boys of twelve, and a girl of fifteen; at the nineteenth,
the young heir of the noble house of Rotenhahn, aged nine, and two other
boys, one aged ten, and the other twelve. Among other entries appear the
names of Baunach, the fattest, and Steinacher, the richest burgher in
Würzburg. What tended to keep up the delusion in this unhappy city, and,
indeed, all over Europe, was the number of hypochondriac and diseased
persons who came voluntarily forward and made confession of witchcraft.
Several of the victims in the foregoing list had only themselves to blame
for their fate. Many again, including the apothecary's wife and daughter
already mentioned, pretended to sorcery, and sold poisons, or attempted by
means of charms and incantations to raise the devil. But throughout all
this fearful period the delusion of the criminals was as great as that of
the judges. Depraved persons who in ordinary times would have been thieves
or murderers, added the desire of sorcery to their depravity, sometimes
with the hope of acquiring power over their fellows, and sometimes with
the hope of securing impunity in this world by the protection of Satan.
One of the persons executed at the first burning, a prostitute, was heard
repeating the exorcism which was supposed to have the power of raising the
arch enemy in the form of a goat. This precious specimen of human folly
has been preserved by Horst in his _Zauberbibliothek_. It ran as follows,
and was to be repeated slowly, with many ceremonies and wavings of the
hand:
"Lalle, Bachera, Magotte, Baphia, Dajam,
Vagoth Heneche Ammi Nagaz, Adomator
Raphael Immanuel Christus, Tetragrammaton
Agra Jod Loi. König! König!"
The two last words were uttered quickly, and with a sort of scream, and
were supposed to be highly agreeable to Satan, who loved to be called a
king. If he did not appear immediately, it was necessary to repeat a
further exorcism. The one in greatest repute was as follows, and was to be
read backwards, with the exception of the last two words:
"Anion, Lalle, Sabolos, Sado, Pater, Aziel
Adonai Sado Vagoth Agra, Jod,
Baphra! Komm! Komm!"
When the witch wanted to get rid of the devil, who was sometimes in the
habit of prolonging his visits to an unconscionable length, she had only
to repeat the following, also backwards, when he generally disappeared,
leaving behind him a suffocating smell:
"Zellianelle Heotti Bonus Vagotha
Plisos sother osech unicus Beelzebub
Dax! Komm! Komm!"
This nonsensical jargon soon became known to all the idle and foolish boys
of Germany. Many an unhappy urchin, who in a youthful frolic had repeated
it, paid for his folly the penalty of his life. Three, whose ages varied
from ten to fifteen, were burned alive at Würzburg for no other offence.
Of course every other boy in the city became still more convinced of the
power of the charm. One boy confessed that he would willingly have sold
himself to the devil, if he could have raised him, for a good dinner and
cakes every day of his life, and a pony to ride upon. This luxurious
youngster, instead of being horsewhipped for his folly, was hanged and
burned.
The small district of Lindheim was, if possible, even more notorious than
Würzburg for the number of its witch-burnings. In the year 1633 a famous
witch, named Pomp Anna, who could cause her foes to fall sick by merely
looking at them, was discovered and burned, along with three of her
companions. Every year in this parish, consisting at most of a thousand
persons, the average number of executions was five. Between the years 1660
and 1664, the number consumed was thirty. If the executions all over
Germany had been in this frightful proportion, hardly a family could have
escaped losing one of its members.