_How my poor child was taken up for a witch, and carried to
Pudgla._
The next day, Monday, the 12th July, at about eight in the
morning, while we sat in our grief, wondering who could have
prepared such great sorrow for us, and speedily agreed that it
could be none other than the accursed witch Lizzie Kolken, a coach
with four horses drove quickly up to the door, wherein sat six
fellows, who straightway all jumped out. Two went and stood at the
front, two at the back door, and two more, one of whom was the
constable Jacob Knake, came into the room, and handed me a warrant
from the sheriff for the arrest of my daughter, as in common
repute of being a wicked witch, and for her examination before the
criminal court. Any one may guess how my heart sunk within me when
I read this. I dropped to the earth like a felled tree, and when I
came to myself my child had thrown herself upon me with loud
cries, and her hot tears ran down over my face. When she saw that
I came to myself, she began to praise God therefore with a loud
voice, and essayed to comfort me, saying that she was innocent,
and should appear with a clean conscience before her judges.
_Item_, she repeated to me the beautiful text from Matthew,
chap. v.: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for My
sake."
And she begged me to rise and to throw my cassock over my doublet,
and go with her, for that without me she would not suffer herself
to be carried before the sheriff. Meanwhile, however, all the
village--men, women, and children--had thronged together before my
door; but they remained quiet, and only peeped in at the windows
as though they would have looked right through the house. When we
had both made us ready, and the constable, who at first would not
take me with them, had thought better of it, by reason of a good
fee which my daughter gave him, we walked to the coach; but I was
so helpless that I could not get up into it.
Old Paasch, when he saw this, came and helped me up into the
coach, saying, "God comfort ye! Alas, that you should ever see
your child come to this!" and he kissed my hand to take leave.
A few others came up to the coach, and would have done likewise;
but I besought them not to make my heart still heavier, and to
take Christian charge of my house and my affairs until I should
return. Also to pray diligently for me and my daughter, so that
the evil one, who had long gone about our village like a roaring
lion, and who now threatened to devour me, might not prevail
against us, but might be forced to depart from me and from my
child as from our guileless Saviour in the wilderness. But to this
none answered a word; and I heard right well, as we drove away,
that many spat out after us, and one said (my child thought it was
Berow her voice), "We would far sooner lay fire under thy coats
than pray for thee." We were still sighing over such words as
these, when we came near to the churchyard, and there sat the
accursed witch Lizzie Kolken at the door of her house with her
hymn-book in her lap, screeching out at the top of her voice, "God
the Father, dwell with us," as we drove past her: the which vexed
my poor child so sore that she swooned, and fell like one dead
upon me. I begged the driver to stop, and called to old Lizzie to
bring us a pitcher of water; but she did as though she had not
heard me, and went on to sing so that it rang again. Whereupon the
constable jumped down, and at my request ran back to my house to
fetch a pitcher of water; and he presently came back with it, and
the people after him, who began to say aloud that my child's bad
conscience had stricken her, and that she had now betrayed
herself. Wherefore I thanked God when she came to life again, and
we could leave the village. But at Uekeritze it was just the same,
for all the people had flocked together, and were standing on the
green before Labahn his house when we went by.
Nevertheless, they were quiet enough as we drove past, albeit some
few cried, "How can it be, how can it be?" I heard nothing else.
But in the forest near the watermill the miller and all his men
ran out and shouted, laughing, "Look at the witch, look at the
witch!" Whereupon one of the men struck at my poor child with the
sack which he held in his hand, so that she turned quite white,
and the flour flew all about the coach like a cloud. When I
rebuked him, the wicked rogue laughed and said, That if no other
smoke than that ever came under her nose, so much the better for
her. _Item_, it was worse in Pudgla than even at the mill.
The people stood so thick on the hill, before the castle, that we
could scarce force our way through, and the sheriff caused the
death-bell in the castle tower to toll as an _avisum_.
Whereupon more and more people came running out of the ale-houses
and cottages. Some cried out, "Is that the witch?" Others, again,
"Look at the parson's witch! the parson's witch!" and much more,
which for very shame I may not write. They scraped up the mud out
of the gutter which ran from the castle kitchen and threw it upon
us; _item_, a great stone, the which struck one of the horses
so that it shied, and belike would have upset the coach had not a
man sprung forward and held it in. All this happened before the
castle gates, where the sheriff stood smiling and looking on, with
a heron's feather stuck in his grey hat. But so soon as the horse
was quiet again he came to the coach and mocked at my child,
saying, "See, young maid, thou wouldest not come to me, and here
thou art nevertheless!" Whereupon she answered, "Yea, I come; and
may you one day come before your Judge as I come before you;"
whereunto I said, Amen, and asked him how his lordship could
answer before God and man for what he had done to a wretched man
like myself and to my child? But he answered, saying, Why had I
come with her? And when I told him of the rude people here,
_item_, of the churlish miller's man, he said that it was not
his fault, and threatened the people all around with his fist, for
they were making a great noise. Thereupon he commanded my child to
get down and to follow him, and went before her into the castle;
motioned the constable, who would have gone with them, to stay at
the foot of the steps, and began to mount the winding staircase to
the upper rooms alone with my child.
But she whispered me privately, "Do not leave me, father;" and I
presently followed softly after them. Hearing by their voices in
which chamber they were, I laid my ear against the door to listen.
And the villain offered to her that if she would love him naught
should harm her, saying he had power to save her from the people;
but that if she would not, she should go before the court next
day, and she might guess herself how it would fare with her,
seeing that he had many witnesses to prove that she had played the
wanton with Satan, and had suffered him to kiss her. Hereupon she
was silent, and only sobbed, which the arch rogue took as a good
sign, and went on, "If you have had Satan himself for a
sweetheart, you surely may love me." And he went to her and would
have taken her in his arms, as I perceived; for she gave a loud
scream, and flew to the door; but he held her fast, and begged and
threatened as the devil prompted him. I was about to go in when I
heard her strike him in the face, saying, "Get thee behind me,
Satan," so that he let her go. Whereupon she ran out at the door
so suddenly that she threw me on the ground, and fell upon me with
a loud cry. Hereat the sheriff, who had followed her, started, but
presently cried out, "Wait, thou prying parson, I will teach thee
to listen!" and ran out and beckoned to the constable who stood on
the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon,
seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my
child into another. But he thought better of it when he had come
half way down the winding-stair, and said he would excuse me this
time, and that the constable might let me go, and only lock up my
child very fast, and bring the key to him, seeing she was a
stubborn person, as he had seen at the very first hearing which he
had given her.
Hereupon my poor child was torn from me, and I fell in a swound
upon the steps. I know not how I got down them; but when I came to
myself, I was in the constable his room, and his wife was throwing
water in my face. There I passed the night sitting in a chair, and
sorrowed more than I prayed, seeing that my faith was greatly
shaken, and the Lord came not to strengthen it.