The story of witchcraft, as it is reported to have passed in Sweden
in the year 1670, and has many times been reprinted in this country,
is on several accounts one of the most interesting and deplorable
that has ever been recorded. The scene lies in Dalecarlia, a country
for ever memorable as having witnessed some of the earliest adventures
of Gustavus Vasa, his deepest humiliation, and the first commencement
of his prosperous fortune. The Dalecarlians are represented to us
as the simplest, the most faithful, and the bravest of the sons of
men, men undebauched and unsuspicious, but who devoted themselves
in the most disinterested manner for a cause that appeared to them
worthy of support, the cause of liberty and independence against the
cruelest of tyrants. At least such they were in 1520, one hundred
and fifty years before the date of the story we are going to
recount.--The site of these events was at Mohra and Elfdale in the
province that has just been mentioned.
The Dalecarlians, simple and ignorant, but of exemplary integrity
and honesty, who dwelt amidst impracticable mountains and spacious
mines of copper and iron, were distinguished for superstition among
the countries of the north, where all were superstitious. They were
probably subject at intervals to the periodical visitation of alarms
of witches, when whole races of men became wild with the infection
without any one's being well able to account for it.
In the year 1670, and one or two preceding years, there was a great
alarm of witches in the town of Mohra. There were always two or three
witches existing in some of the obscure quarters of this place. But
now they increased in number, and shewed their faces with the utmost
audacity. Their mode on the present occasion was to make a journey
through the air to Blockula, an imaginary scene of retirement, which
none but the witches and their dupes had ever seen. Here they met
with feasts and various entertainments, which it seems had particular
charms for the persons who partook of them. The witches used to go
into a field in the environs of Mohra, and cry aloud to the devil
in a peculiar sort of recitation, "Antecessor, come and carry us to
Blockula!" Then appeared a multitude of strange beasts, men, spits,
posts, and goats with spits run through their entrails and projecting
behind that all might have room. The witches mounted these beasts
of burthen or vehicles, and were conveyed through the air over high
walls and mountains, and through churches and chimneys, without
perceptible impediment, till they arrived at the place of their
destination. Here the devil feasted them with various compounds and
confections, and, having eaten to their hearts' content, they danced,
and then fought. The devil made them ride on spits, from which they
were thrown; and the devil beat them with the spits, and laughed at
them. He then caused them to build a house to protect them against
the day of judgment, and presently overturned the walls of the house,
and derided them again. All sorts of obscenities were reported to
follow upon these scenes. The devil begot on the witches sons and
daughters: this new generation intermarried again, and the issue of
this further conjunction appears to have been toads and serpents.
How all this pedigree proceeded in the two or three years in which
Blockula had ever been heard of, I know not that the witches were
ever called on to explain.
But what was most of all to be deplored, the devil was not content
with seducing the witches to go and celebrate this infernal sabbath;
he further insisted that they should bring the children of Mohra along
with them. At first he was satisfied, if each witch brought one; but
now he demanded that each witch should bring six or seven for her
quota. How the witches managed with the minds of the children we are
at a loss to guess. These poor, harmless innocents, steeped to the
very lips in ignorance and superstition, were by some means kept in
continual alarm by the wicked, or, to speak more truly, the insane
old women, and said as their prompters said. It does not appear that
the children ever left their beds, at the time they reported they
had been to Blockula. Their parents watched them with fearful anxiety.
At a certain time of the night the children were seized with a strange
shuddering, their limbs were agitated, and their skins covered with
a profuse perspiration. When they came to themselves, they related
that they had been to Blockula, and the strange things they had seen,
similar to what had already been described by the women. Three hundred
children of various ages are said to have been seized with this
epidemic.
The whole town of Mohra became subject to the infection, and were
overcome with the deepest affliction. They consulted together, and
drew up a petition to the royal council at Stockholm, intreating that
they would discover some remedy, and that the government would
interpose its authority to put an end to a calamity to which otherwise
they could find no limit. The king of Sweden was at that time Charles
the Eleventh, father of Charles the Twelfth, and was only fourteen
years of age. His council in their wisdom deputed two commissioners
to Mohra, and furnished them with powers to examine witnesses, and
to take whatever proceedings they might judge necessary to put an
end to so unspeakable a calamity.
They entered on the business of their commission on the thirteenth
of August, the ceremony having been begun with two sermons in the
great church of Mohra, in which we may be sure the damnable sin of
witchcraft was fully dilated on, and concluding with prayers to
Almighty God that in his mercy he would speedily bring to an end the
tremendous misfortune, with which for their sins he had seen fit to
afflict the poor people of Mohra. The next day they opened their
commission. Seventy witches were brought before them. They were all
at first stedfast in their denial, alleging that the charges were
wantonly brought against them, solely from malice and ill will. But
the judges were earnest in pressing them, till at length first one,
and then another; burst into tears, and confessed all. Twenty-three
were prevailed on thus to disburthen their consciences; but nearly
the whole, as well those who owned the justice of their sentence,
as those who protested their innocence to the last, were executed.
Fifteen children confessed their guilt, and were also executed.
Thirty-six other children (who we may infer did not confess), between
the ages of nine and sixteen, were condemned to run the gauntlet,
and to be whipped on their hands at the church-door every Sunday for
a year together. Twenty others were whipped on their hands for three
Sundays. [226]
This is certainly a very deplorable scene, and is made the more so
by the previous character which history has impressed on us, of the
simplicity, integrity, and generous love of liberty of the
Dalecarlians. For the children and their parents we can feel nothing
but unmingled pity. The case of the witches is different. That three
hundred children should have been made the victims of this imaginary
witchcraft is doubtless a grievous calamity. And that a number of
women should have been found so depraved and so barbarous, as by their
incessant suggestions to have practised on the minds of these
children, so as to have robbed them of sober sense, to have frightened
them into fits and disease, and made them believe the most odious
impossibilities, argued a most degenerate character, and well merited
severe reprobation, but not death. Add to which, many of these women
may be believed innocent, otherwise a great majority of those who
were executed, would not have died protesting their entire freedom
from what was imputed to them. Some of the parents no doubt, from
folly and ill judgment, aided the alienation of mind in their children
which they afterwards so deeply deplored, and gratified their
senseless aversion to the old women, when they were themselves in
many cases more the real authors of the evil than those who suffered.