Scotchmen and Englishmen in America--Superstition in
the Back Settlements--Witchcraft in New England--Rev.
Cotton Mather's View of Witchcraft--Judges and
Witnesses overawed by Witches--Men and Beasts
bewitched--Bewitched Persons prayed for--Preternatural
Diseases beyond Physicians' Skill--Trial of Susan
Martin--Absurd Evidence--Belief in the Existence of
Witchcraft--Witchcraft in Sweden--Commission of
Inquiry appointed--The Devil's Tyranny--Deluded
Children--Day of Humiliation appointed on account of
Witchcraft--Threescore and Ten Witches in a
Village--Children engaged in Witchery put to
Death--How Witches were conveyed from place to
place--Girl healed by the Devil--The Devil bound with
an Iron Chain--An Angel's Warning Voice--Angel keeping
Children from Wickedness--Witches on a Minister's
Head--Witch assaulting another Minister--Witches'
Imps--Butter of Witches--The Devil described--How
Witches are punished--Horse burned on account of being
supposed to be an Agent of Satan.
When Scotchmen and Englishmen went out first to inhabit America, they
did not forget the superstitions of their native land. A belief in
charms, incantations, and all kinds of witchcraft prevailed among the
earlier settlers of the United States and Canada. From sire to son,
and from mother to daughter, a belief in mysterious agencies has come
down to the existing inhabitants of the transatlantic States. It may
be that the inhabitants of large cities in the West have forgotten the
traditions of their ancestors respecting things supernatural, but
every observant American traveller knows that the burning embers of
superstition have not expired in the back settlements of that vast
country. Trials of persons accused of witchcraft were not unfrequent
in New England in the seventeenth century. The Rev. Cotton Mather has
written an account of proceedings connected with such cases, but want
of space prevents us following him at great length. He says:
"We have now, with horror, seen the discovery of a
great witchcraft. An army of devils has broken in upon
this place, which is the centre, and, after a sort,
the first-born of our English settlements; and the
houses of the good people there are filled with the
doleful shrieks of their children and servants
tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether
preternatural. After the mischiefs there endeavoured,
and since in part conquered, the terrible plague of
evil angels hath made its progress into some other
places, where other persons have in like manner been
diabolically handled.
"These, our poor afflicted neighbours, quickly, after
they become infected and infested with these demons,
arrive to a capacity of discerning those which they
conceive the shapes of their troubles; and
notwithstanding the great and just suspicion that the
demons might impose the shape of innocent persons in
their spectral exhibitions of the sufferers, (which
may perhaps prove no small part of the witch-plot in
the issue), yet many of the persons thus represented
being examined, several of them have been convicted of
a very damnable witchcraft: yea, more than one, twenty
have confessed that they have signed unto a book which
the devil showed them, and engaged in his hellish
design, of bewitching and ruining our lands.
"We know not, at least I know not, how far the
delusions of Satan may be interwoven into some
circumstances of the confessions; but one would think
all the rules of understanding human affairs are at an
end, if after so many most voluntary, harmonious
confessions, made by intelligent persons of all ages,
in sundry towns, at several times, we must not believe
the main strokes wherein those confessions agree;
especially when we have a thousand preternatural
things every day before our eyes, wherein the
confessors do acknowledge their concernment, and give
demonstration of their being so concerned. If the
devils now can strike the minds of men with any
poisons of so fine a composition and operation that
scores of innocent people shall unite in the
confessions of a crime which we see actually
committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the
wonders of the former ages, and it threatens not less
than a sort of dissolution upon the world.
"Now, by these confessions 'tis agreed that the devil
has made a dreadful knot of witches in the country,
and by the help of witches has dreadfully increased
the knot; that these witches have driven a trade of
commissioning their confederate spirits to do all
sorts of mischiefs to their neighbours. Whereupon
there have ensued such mischievous consequences upon
the bodies and estates of the neighbourhood as could
not otherwise be accounted for."
Human beings were not always the only victims of superstition in olden
times, for we have information of dumb animals suffering on account of
it being thought they were active agents of Satan. The Inquisition in
Portugal in 1601, in its sanguinary infatuation, condemned to the
flames, for being possessed of the devil, a horse belonging to an
Englishman, who had taught it to perform uncommonly clever tricks. And
the poor animal was publicly burned at Lisbon. Instances are also on
record of swine being burned, under the suspicion that they, too, were
helpers of the devil.
Through sorcery, Mr. Mather thought witnesses were occasionally
prevented from giving evidence in courts of justice against witches,
and even judges were sometimes so overawed by the culprits' looks that
they could not discharge their duties with firmness. A witch could, by
a cast of her evil eye, strike people to the ground, and by the same
visual organ kill cattle. Men and beasts were also bewitched into
madness. To such an extent, we are told, were people tormented by
witches in New England, that the Church appointed days of prayer on
behalf of afflicted persons. And so peculiar were diseases, that the
physicians declared their patients' troubles were preternatural. That
being so, a little ingenuity, strengthened with spite, enabled the
afflicted or the afflicted's friends to trace the disorder to the
malevolence of a certain witch or witches.
In the trial of Susan Martin, in 1692, among other absurdities of
circumstantial evidence relied on, was that her skirts were not
draggled when out on a wet day, while the clothes of other women
travelling with her were bespattered and clotted with mud.
Writers of no mean order, including clergymen, believed in the
existence of witches, ghosts, and goblins, and boldly defended the
proceedings in New England against the victims put to death for their
alleged diabolical deeds through the agency of Satan.
Witchcraft spread alarm over Sweden in the seventeenth century. The
news of particular acts of witchcraft coming to the king's ear, his
Majesty appointed commissioners to inquire into the matter. From a
public register of 1669 and 1670, we ascertain that the commission,
consisting of clergymen and laymen, were instructed to visit Mobra and
inquire into frightful proceedings there. The commissioners met at the
parson's house to hear complaints. Both the minister and people of
fashion complained, with tears in their eyes, of the miserable
condition they were in, from the calamity of witchcraft. They gave the
commissioners strange instances of the devil's tyranny among
them--how, by the help of witches, he had drawn hundreds of children
to him; how he had been seen going in visible shape through the
country; how he had wrought upon the poorer people, by presenting them
with meat and drink. The inhabitants begged earnestly, yet in the most
respectful manner,
"The Lords Commissioners to root out this hellish
crew, that rest and quietness might be regained; and
the rather, because the children who used to be
carried away in the district of Elfdale, since some
witches had been burnt there, remained unmolested."
An elaborate report of the peculiar proceedings says:--
"That day," _i.e._ the 13th of August, "the last
humiliation-day instituted by authority for removing
of this judgment, the commissioners went to church,
where there appeared a considerable assembly.... Two
sermons were preached, in which the miserable case of
those people, that suffered themselves to be deluded
by the devil, was laid open....
"Public worship being over, all the people of the town
were called together to the parson's house; nearly
three thousand of them attended.
"Next day the commissioners met again, consulting how
they might withstand this dangerous flood. After long
deliberation, they resolved to execute such as the
matter of fact could be proved upon. Examination being
made, there were discovered no less than threescore
and ten witches in the village. Three and twenty of
whom, freely confessing their crimes, were condemned
to die. The rest pleading not guilty, were sent to
Fabluna, where most of them were afterwards executed.
"Fifteen children, who likewise confessed they were
engaged in the witchery, died as the rest; six and
thirty youths, between nine and sixteen years of age,
who had been less guilty, were forced to run the
gauntlet; twenty more, who had no great inclination,
yet had been seduced to those hellish enterprises,
because they were very young, were condemned to be
lashed with rods upon their hands for three Sundays
together at the church door; and the aforesaid six and
thirty were also doomed to be lashed this way once a
week for a whole year together. The number of the
seduced children was about three hundred.
"Several of the witches were asked how they were able
to carry so many children with them; and they
answered, that they came into the chamber where the
children lay, laid hold of them, and asked them
whether they would go to a feast with them? to which
some answered yes, others no; yet they were all forced
to go. They only gave the children a shirt, a coat,
and a doublet, which was either red or blue, and so
they did set them upon a beast of the devil's
providing, and then they rid away.
"The children confessed the same thing; and some
added, that because they had very fine clothes put
upon them, they were very willing to go.
"A little girl of Elfdale confessed that, on naming
the name of Jesus as she was carried away, she fell
suddenly upon the ground, and got a great hole in her
side, which the devil presently healed up again, and
away he carried her; and to this day the girl
confessed she had exceeding great pain in her side.
"The children said they had seen sometimes a very
great devil like a dragon, with fire round about him,
and bound with an iron chain....
"Some of the children talked much of a white angel,
which used to forbid them to do what the devil bade
them do, and told them that those doings would not
last long: what had been done was permitted because
of the wickedness of the people, and the carrying away
of the children should be made manifest. And they
added, that this white angel would place himself
sometimes at the door betwixt the witches and the
children; and when they came to Blockula, their
meeting-place, he pulled the children back, but the
witches went in.
"The minister of Elfdale declared that one night the
witches were, to his thinking, upon the crown of his
head, and that from thence he had a long continued
pain of the head.
"One of the witches confessed that the devil had sent
her to torment the minister, and that she was ordered
to use a nail and strike it into his head, but it
would not enter very deep and hence came the headache.
"The minister said also that one night he felt a pain
as if he were torn with an instrument, and when he
wakened he heard somebody scratching and scraping at
the window, but could see nobody. And one of the
witches confessed that she was the person that did it,
being sent by the devil.
"The minister of Mobra declared also that one night
one of the witches came into his house, and did so
violently take him by the throat that he thought he
should have been choked; and waking, he saw the person
that did it, but could not know her; and that for some
weeks he was not able to speak, or perform divine
service.
"They confessed also that the devil gave them a beast
about the bigness and shape of a young cat, which they
called a carrier; and that he gave them a bird too, as
big as a raven, but white. And these two creatures
they could send anywhere; and wherever they came, they
took away all sorts of victuals they could
get--butter, cheese, milk, bacon, and all sorts of
seeds, whatever they found, and carried it to the
witch. What the bird brought, they kept for
themselves; but what the carrier brought, they
reserved for the devil....
"They added, likewise, that these carriers filled
themselves so full sometimes that they were forced to
spue by the way, which spueing was found in gardens
where colworts grew, and not far from the houses of
witches. It was of a yellow colour like gold, and was
called butter of witches.
"The Lords Commissioners were very earnest, and took
great pains to persuade the witches to show some of
their tricks, but to no purpose; for they unanimously
said that, since they had confessed, they found that
all their witchcraft was gone, and that the devil
appeared to them very terrible, with claws on his
hands and feet, and with horns on his head, and a long
tail behind, and showed them a pit burning with a hand
put out; but the devil did thrust the person down
again with an iron fork, and suggested to the witches,
that if they continued in their confession, he would
deal with them in the same manner."