Haggert Wee Granum

 The midnight ride, the power of conversion into animal semblance and form, mystic rite and incantation, spells and cantrips, as well as the presence on earth of the Devil himself, who generally appeared in some alluring form—all had a firmly-established place in the superstitious and impressionable minds of the people who dwelt in the land of those darker days.

As long as death could by law be awarded against those who were charged with a commerce with evil spirits, and by their means inflicting mischief on their species, it is a subject not unworthy of grave argument and true philanthropy, to endeavor to detect the fallacy of such pretences, and expose the incalculable evils and the dreadful tragedies that have grown out of accusations and prosecutions for such imaginary crimes. Magic is a disconcerting travelling companion. Treachery however was not destined to be ultimately triumphant. Such is the creed which science has universally prescribed to the judicious and reflecting among us.

It remained to be determined what should be the fate of this admirable woman. Both friends and enemies agreed that her career had been attended with a supernatural power, as she stepped over the threshold into the Greater house of living alone.

“How you do age, Grandmother!” they say. 

The lantern was standing in the middle of the floor, its glass was unshuttered, and out of each of its eight panels streamed great beams six or seven feet in length, like the petals of an enormous flower. The darkness made the walls appear fantastic and the world to be unbalanced.

But, what is still more extraordinary, the human creatures that pretend to these powers have often been found as completely the dupes of this supernatural machinery, as the most timid wretch that stands in terror at its expected operation; and no phenomenon has been more common than the confession of these allies of hell, that they have verily and indeed held commerce and formed plots and conspiracies with Satan.

Omens and portents told these women of some piece of good or ill fortune speedily to befal them. The flight of birds was watched by them, as foretokening somewhat important. Thunder excited in them a feeling of supernatural terror. Eclipses with fear of change perplexed the nations. The phenomena of the heavens, regular and irregular, were anxiously remarked from the same principle. During the hours of darkness women were apt to see a supernatural being in every bush; and they could not cross a receptacle for the dead, without expecting to encounter some one of the departed uneasily wandering among graves, or commissioned to reveal somewhat momentous and deeply affecting to the survivors.

We found her one morning sitting by the little cradle, her head resting on it, and a white rose in her quiet hand. When we raised her face and looked at it, there was no need to ask whither the spirit had gone. But again and again your eyes open on the cold dumb darkness, and there is nothing but the wind and strange sinister emptiness creaking on the stair.

The Saturday feasts were quieter, but still full of light and joy, and the stories—well, they were like no other stories that ever were told. Reputed gatherings or witch-festivals were celebrated periodically, the most important and outstanding taking place at Hallowmass, and such eerie places of meeting as the lonely ruins of Sweetheart Abbey and Caerlaverock Castle, were the appropriate scenes of their midnight rites and revels; but most of all in the south-western district was it to the rising slope of Locharbriggs Hill, not many miles from Dumfries, that the “hellish legion” repaired.

It is certainly a matter of the extremest difficulty, for us in imagination to place ourselves in the situation of those who believed in the ancient polytheistical creed. And yet these believers nearly constituted the whole of the population of the kingdoms of antiquity.

Human passions are always to a certain degree infectious. Perceiving the hatred of their neighbors, they began to think that they were worthy objects of detestation and terror, that their imprecations had a real effect, and their curses killed. The brown horrors of the forest were favorable to visions; and they sometimes almost believed, that they met the foe of mankind in the night. They are merely reported to us as women prone to the producing great signs and wonders, and nothing more.

“Grandmother—suppose there wasn’t any other end! Suppose I couldn’t see—suppose I didn’t believe there was—anything more—when this hateful thing”—she plucked at her poor twisted body as if she would have torn it—“is buried out of sight with the other worms! What then?”

No sooner are we, even in a slight degree, acquainted with the laws of nature, than we frame to ourselves the idea, by the aid of some invisible ally, of suspending their operation, of calling out meteors in the sky, of commanding storms and tempests, of arresting the motion of the heavenly bodies, of producing miraculous cures upon the bodies of our fellow-men, or afflicting them with disease and death, of calling up the deceased from the silence of the grave, and compelling them to disclose "the secrets of the world unknown."

“Father’s dead; poor father! I would not let myself think of it while he was living. He is dead, and there is no one else—except you, Angel, and you would understand, wouldn’t you? If I put this thing to sleep”—she struck her heart fiercely—“and slipped out of prison—Grandmother, what harm would it do? what harm could it do?”

The wildest extravagances of human fancy, the most deplorable perversion of human faculties, and the most horrible distortions of jurisprudence, may occasionally afford us a salutary lesson. I love in the foremost place to contemplate man in all his honors and in all the exaltation of wisdom and virtue; but it will also be occasionally of service to us to look into his obliquities, and distinctly to remark how great and portentous have been his absurdities and his follies.

“Look!” she said. “Look, Grandmother, and tell me! When one is shut up in a prison like that, full of pain and horror—hasn’t one a right to get out if one can?”

I have put down a few of these particulars, as containing in several instances the qualities of what is called magic, and thus furnishing examples of some of the earliest occasions upon which supernatural powers have been alleged to mix with human affairs.

Grandmother looked into the pale drawn face with its strange eyes.

She stared at the cold window. The sky seemed to be nailed carelessly to it by means of a crooked star or two.

“Yours is a high privilege,” she said, “to dwell so near to heaven.”

The idea of fate was most especially bound up in this branch of prophecy. 

Oneirocriticism, or the art of interpreting dreams, seems of all the modes of prediction the most inseparable from the nature of man. Strangers came, from outlying places, and brought their troubles to her; they had heard, no one knows how, that she had power and wisdom beyond that of other women. I met one of these strangers once. I was going in to see Grandmother, and I met a lady coming away; a handsome lady, richly dressed. She had been weeping, but her face was full of light.

Who would dare to doubt such testimony as this? Here was another child of God grievously mishandled. Sometimes, indeed many times, we thought she was gone; she lay so still; and we could not catch even the slightest flutter of breath. I remember those nights so well; one moonlight night in particular. We knew how she loved the moonlight, and opened the shutters wide. It was a cold still night, the snow silver white under the moon. The light poured in full and strong on the bed where she lay like an ivory statue, and turned the ivory to silver. I thought she was dying then, and thought what a beautiful way to die, the heavenly spirit mounting along the moon-path, leaving that perfect image there at rest.

On such a night the very elements themselves seemed in sympathy. The wind slowly rose, gust following gust, in angry and ever-increasing intensity, till it hurled itself in angry blasts that levelled hay-rick and grain-stack, and tore the thatched roof from homestead and cot, where the frightened dwellers huddled and crept together in terror. Over and with higher note than the blast itself, high-pitched eldritch laughter, fleeting and mocking, skirled and shrieked through the air. Then a lull, with a stillness more terrifying than even the wild force of the angry blast, only to be almost immediately broken with a crash of ear-splitting thunder, and the flash and the glare of forked and jagged flame, lighting up the unhallowed pathway of the “witches’ ride.”

Then came the winter night when she fell down senseless by the garden gate and lay there all night, while the women watched and waited within the house.

Man looks through nature, and is able to reduce its parts into a great whole. He classes the beings which are found in it, both animate and inanimate, delineates and describes them, investigates their properties, and records their capacities, their good and evil qualities, their dangers and their uses.

Some latent poison in the blood—who can read these mysteries?—made the drink a fire that consumed him. He wasted away, and hugged his destroyer ever closer to him. He reasons upon and improves by the past; he records the acts of a long series of generations: and he looks into future time, lays down plans which he shall be months and years in bringing to maturity, and contrives machines and delineates systems of education and government, which may gradually add to the accommodations of all, and raise the species generally into a nobler and more honorable character than our ancestors were capable of sustaining.

The aprons hanging from the ceiling near the door flapped in the cold wind, and she thought they were like grey bats in a cave. The breeze blew out the open lantern. Ah, how desolate, how desolate....

Then came the day when Mary rushed wild-eyed into her room, as Grandmother sat sewing by the empty cradle. A magic circle was drawn round the top of the meeting mound, across which none but the initiated and those about to be initiated, dare pass. In the centre of this circle a fire emitting a thick, dense, sulphurous smoke sprang up, round which the assembled company of witches and warlocks danced with joined hands and wild abandon. Into the charmed circle the converts, naked and terror-stricken, were brought and dragged to the fire, which now sent forth even thicker clouds as if in a measure to screen the secrecy of the rites even from those participating, and scream after scream arose as their naked bodies were stamped with the hellish sign-manual of the order. A powerful soothing ointment was, however, immediately poured on the raw wounds, giving instant relief and almost effacement to the ordinary eye, the well-concealed cicatrix becoming the “witch-mark.” The grim nature of the ordeal now gave place to proceedings more in keeping with a festival, and dancing of the “better the worse” order and general hilarity and high revelry followed, the Prince of Darkness joining in the dance, giving expert exhibitions with favored partners.

Next day her hair was quite white, as if it had been snowed on in the night.

As the glory shone upon him, the young man staggered on the threshold and uttered a groan; then he glanced at Grandmother. “Your hair is as white as snow!” he said. Grandmother did not speak for a time; then she said, “Joseph, God’s will must be done in hell as much as anywhere else.”

The witch stopped dancing, and stood in front of the newcomer's chair.

“One place is as good as another,” said Joseph. “Leave me alone in the hell we have made, she and I.”

The spells and cantrips alleged to be cast by these agencies were usually such as brought harmful effect upon human being or farm stock, such supposed incidence of supernatural interference being accepted without question. A natural consequence followed in misdirected measures of protection and retaliation. The whole atmosphere of domestic life became charged with suspicious attitude towards one another, and when illness overtook either human being or four-footed beast, or some such minor happening as a heated stack, or a cow failing to yield milk, took place, the presence of the “Black Art” was proclaimed in their midst, and too often was accidental circumstance followed by unjust cruelty and persecution, sanctioned and practised, as we shall see later, by the powers of the State and Church.

“Go away!” he said hoarsely. “Go away, you white thing! What have you to do with murderers?”

“He let it happen. He sent the little life, and then let it be crushed out like the life of a fly or a worm. Why?”

“You’ve turned her against me!” he shrieked. “You’ve stole her away from me, you wicked, wicked—” here he would break into a passion of furious sobs; and Grandmother would take the baby into her arms and go away without a word, leaving him to storm and rave.

“In the mountains. He came ashore; he thought he would like mining, but he didn’t. He was always longing for the sea.”

As the course of events appears to us at present, there is much, though abstractedly within the compass of human sagacity to foresee, which yet the actors on the scene do not foresee: but the blindness and perplexity of short-sighted mortals must have been wonderfully increased, when ghosts and extraordinary appearances were conceived liable to cross the steps and confound the projects of men at every turn, and a malicious wizard or a powerful enchanter might involve his unfortunate victim in a chain of calamities, which no prudence could disarm, and no virtue could deliver him from.

“If I’m to be made a show of,” growled the cross old man, “I shall charge admission same as any other show. Think it’s worth a quarter to see a man with a broken back? If you do you can stay.”

He was not a pleasant man, most people thought; he had a crabbed, knotty disposition, and who can wonder at it? The first time Grandmother went to see him he snapped at her, like some strong surly old dog.

Yet still we have our wizards and witches lurking round area gates and prowling through the lanes and yards of the remoter country districts; still we have our necromancers, who call up the dead from their graves to talk to us more trivial nonsense than ever they talked while living, and who reconcile us with earth and humanity by showing us how infinitely inferior are heaven and spirituality; still we have the unknown mapped out in clear lines sharp and firm; and still the impossible is asserted as existing, and men are ready to give their lives in attestation of what contravenes every law of reason and of nature; still we are not content to watch and wait and collect and fathom before deciding, but for every new group of facts or appearances must at once draw up a code of laws and reasons, and prove, to a mathematical certainty, the properties of a chimera, and the divine life and beauty—of a lie. 

"Does this century believe in fairies? If the spell came to an end, how is it that we are so magic now?"

“My soul is my own,” Aunt Emily used to say, “and I like to be able to call it so, my dear!”

Many of the matters most currently related among these supernatural phenomena, are tales of transformation. A lady has two sisters of the most profligate and unprincipled character. They have originally the same share of the paternal inheritance as herself. But they waste it in profusion and folly, while she improves her portion by good judgment and frugality. Driven to the extremity of distress, they humble themselves, and apply to her for assistance.

She did not go to “circles” and meetings—one would as soon have expected to see a white birch walk into the vestry—nor did she make what we loved to call “society calls;” but she found out the people who were sick or sad or lonely—seeking the Peace always known—and she went to them, sometimes with Emily to introduce her, oftener alone, making some errand, taking a flower, or a pot of jelly or the like.

It may now be well to dwell for a little on the popular measures resorted to, to counteract witch influence and render it futile. Relief and protection were sought in various ways. Charm and popular antidote had an abiding place in the domestic usage of the day, and faith, if wedded to empirical methods, was at all events all-prevailing.

There was a long silence. The light was growing softer, fainter; the old clock ticked steadily; a coal tinkled from the fire. This appears to have been every where essential to the history of magic. If those who were supposed to possess it in its widest extent and most astonishing degree, had uniformly employed it only in behalf of justice and virtue, they would indeed have been regarded as benefactors, and been entitled to the reverence and love of mankind. But the human mind is always prone to delight in the terrible.

The afternoon light fell clear on his face with its open sightless eyes, and on the angel face turned up to it in faithful love. She went hither and thither, up and down, and whenever she met any one who was in need, she put her hand inside the folds of her gown, and brought out a piece of gold or a shining jewel, and gave it to the poor person. So when this had gone on for some time, people began to talk one to another. One said, “Where does this beggar woman get the gold and the gems that she gives?”

A piteous sight; and still more piteous the shrinking look of her and of the poor gaunt wistful father, watchful for a rebuff, a smile, some one of the devilishly cruel tricks that humanity startles into when it touches the unusual. A conspicuous feature in nearly the whole of these stories was what they named the "spectral sight;" in other words, that the profligate accusers first feigned for the most part the injuries they received, and next saw the figures and action of the persons who inflicted them, when they were invisible to every one else.

The witches mounted their 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.

Under the reign of polytheism, devotion was wholly unrestrained in every direction it might chance to assume. Gods known and unknown, the spirits of departed heroes, the Gods of heaven and hell, abstractions of virtue or vice, might unblamed be made the objects of religious worship. Witchcraft therefore, and the invocation of the spirits of the dead, might be practised with toleration; or at all events were not regarded otherwise than as venial deviations from the religion of the state.

A poor little huddle of humanity; hunchbacked, with the strange steadfast eyes of her kind,—wise with their own knowledge, which is apart from all knowledge revealed to those whose backs are straight,—lame, too, drawn and twisted this way and that, as if Nature had been a naughty child playing with a doll, tormenting it in sheer wantonness. Time wears a strangely different guise out of doors. Under the sun time stands almost still. Only when every minute is a physical effort do you discover that there really are sixty minutes in an hour, and that one hour is very little nearer to the evening than another.

“Whirl about, twirl about, hop, hop, hop! till—hush!" Something happened. Mary did not kill herself, nor go crazy; nor did she even go away, as she threatened to do when she wearied of announcing her imminent death. Two women, who were witnesses against her, interrupted their testimony with exclaiming that they saw the ghosts of the murdered wives present (who had promised them they would come), though no one else in the court saw them; and this was taken in evidence.

Magic, as you know, has limitations. 

Fire is of course a plaything in magic hands. Water has its docile moments, the Earth herself may be tampered with, and an incantation may call man or any of his possessions to attention. But Space is too great a thing, space is the inconceivable Hand, holding aloft this fragile delusion that is our world. 

There is no power that can mock at space, there is no enchantment that is not lost between us and the moon, and all magic people know—and tremble to know—that in a breath, between one second and another, that Hand may close, and the shell of time first crack and then be crushed, and magic be one with nothingness and death and all other delusions. 

When too such things are talked of, when the devil and spirits of hell are made familiar conversation, when stories of this sort are among the daily news, and one person and another, who had a little before nothing extraordinary about them, become subjects of wonder, these topics enter into the thoughts of many, sleeping and waking: their young men see visions, and their old men dream dreams.

This is why magic, which treats the other elements as its servants, bows before space, and has to call such a purely independent contrivance as a broomstick to its help in the matter of air-travel.

Presently persons, specially gifted with the "spectral sight," formed a class by themselves, and were sent about at the public expence from place to place, that they might see what no one else could see. The prisons were filled with the persons accused. The utmost horror was entertained, as of a calamity which in such a degree had never visited that part of the world.

Conjuration or invocation of any evil spirit was felony without benefit of clergy; so also to consult, covenant with, entertain, feed, or reward any evil spirit, or to take up any dead body for charms or spells; to use or practise witchcrafts, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, so that any one was lamed, killed, or pined, was felony without benefit of clergy, to be followed up by burning. Then ‘The Country Justice’ goes on to give the legal signs of a witch, and those on which a magistrate might safely act, as legal “discoveries.” 

She was to be found and proved by insensible marks; by teats; by imps in various shapes, such as toads, mice, flies, spiders, cats, dogs; by pictures of wax or clay; by the accusations of the afflicted; by her apparition seen by the afflicted as coming to torment them; by her own sudden or frequent inquiries at the house of the sick; by common report; by the accusations of the dying; and the bleeding of the corpse at her touch; by the testimony of children; by the afflicted vomiting pins, needles, straw; in short, by all the foolery, gravely formularized, to be found in the lies and deceptions hereafter related.

She began beating the air with her hands and screaming in short breathless gasps. Ms. Peace looked calmly at her over her spectacles. At one dash she reached the gate and paused to flash a furious look back at the house; with a second dash she was across the road, and in another instant she stood in Ms. Peace’s sitting-room, quivering like a bowstring. These are the terrible Nights of living alone, yet no real lover of that house and of that state would ever exchange one of those haunted and desert nights for a night spent watched, in soft warm places.

"Fiends in the sky!" exclaimed the sheeted lady. "Do you mean to say they are abroad even at this solemn moment?"

These are the terrible Nights of living alone, when you have fever and sometimes think that your beloved stands in the doorway to bring you comfort, and sometimes think that you have no beloved, and that there is no one left in all the world, no word, no warmth, nor ever a kindly candle to be lighted in that spotted darkness that walls up your hot sight. Again on those nights you dream that you have already done those genial things your body cries for, or perhaps the other has done them.

The first remark that arises out of this narrative is, that nothing is actually done by the supernatural personages which are exhibited. The magician reports certain answers as given by the demons; but these answers do not appear to have been heard from any lips but those of him who was the creator or cause of the scene. The whole of the demons therefore were merely figures, produced by the magic lantern (which is said to have been invented by Roger Bacon), or by something of that nature.

Roger Bacon was profound in the science of optics. He explained the nature of burning-glasses, and of glasses which magnify and diminish, the microscope and the telescope. He discovered the composition of gunpowder. He ascertained the true length of the solar year; and his theory was afterwards brought into general use, but upon a narrow scale, by Pope Gregory XIII, nearly three hundred years after his death.

The "afflicted," as they were technically termed, recovered their health; the "spectral sight" was universally scouted; and men began to wonder how they could ever have been the victims of so horrible a delusion. When men pretended to invert the known laws of nature, murdering impossibility; to make what cannot be, slight work; I have been willing to consider the whole as an ingenious fiction, and merely serving as an example how far credulity could go in setting aside the deductions of our reason, and the evidence of sense.

An iron instrument so constructed, that by means of a hoop which passed over the head, a piece of iron having four prongs or points, was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing outwards to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring, by which to attach to a staple in the wall of her cell.

The human mind is of so ductile a character that, like what is affirmed of charity by the apostle, it "believeth all things, and endureth all things." We are not at liberty to trifle with the sacredness of truth. While we persuade others, we begin to deceive ourselves. Human life is a drama of that sort, that, while we act our part, and endeavor to do justice to the sentiments which are put down for us, we begin to believe we are the thing we would represent.

It fortuned, as Macbeth and Banquo journeyed towards Fores, where the king as then lay, they went sporting by the way together, without other company save only themselves, passing through the woods and fields, when suddenly, in the midst of a laund, there met them three women in strange and ferly apparel, resembling creatures of an elder world, whom when they attentively beheld, wondering much at the sight, the first of them spake and said, All hail, Macbeth, thane of Glamis (for he had lately entered into that dignity and office by the death of his father Synel). The second of them said, Hail, Macbeth, thane of Cawdor. But the third said, All hail, Macbeth, that hereafter shall be king of Scotland. Then Banquo, What sort of women, said he, are you, that seem so little favorable unto me, whereas to my fellow here, besides high offices, ye assign also the kingdom, appointing forth nothing for me at all? Yes, saith the first of them, we promise greater benefits unto thee than unto him, for he shall reign indeed, but with an unlucky end, neither shall he leave any issue behind him to succeed in his place; where contrarily thou indeed shall not reign at all, but of thee those shall be born, which shall govern the Scottish kingdom by long order of continual descent. Herewith the foresaid women vanished immediately out of their sight.

From this simple beginning the history of man in all its complex varieties may be regarded as proceeding. It would be a vulgar and absurd mistake however, to suppose that all this was merely the affair of craft, the multitude only being the dupes, while the priests in cold blood carried on the deception, and secretly laughed at the juggle they were palming on the world. They felt their own importance; and they cherished it.

But, if a recollection of the examples of the credulity of the human mind may in one view supply nourishment to our pride, it still more obviously tends to teach us sobriety and humiliation. Man in his genuine and direct sphere is the disciple of reason; it is by this faculty that he draws inferences, exerts his prudence, and displays the ingenuity of machinery, and the subtlety of system both in natural and moral philosophy. Yet what so irrational as man?

The formulas of the faith were as gloomy as the persons. The power of the evil eye; the faculty of second sight, which always saw the hearse plumes, and never the bridal roses; the supremacy of the devil in this God-governed world of ours, and the actual and practical covenant into which men and women daily entered with him; the unlimited influence of the curse, and the sin and mischief to be wrought by charm and spell; the power of casting sickness on whomsoever one would, and the ease with which a blight could be sent on the corn, and a murrain to the beasts, by those who had not wherewithal to stay their hunger for a day, these were the chief signs of that fatal power with which Satan endowed his chosen ones—those silly, luckless chapmen who bartered away their immortal souls for no mess of pottage even, and no earthly good to breath or body, but only that they might harm their neighbors and revenge themselves on those who crossed them.

It has been said by a thoughtful writer that the subject of witchcraft has hardly received that place which it deserves in the history of opinions. There has been, of course, a reason for this neglect—the fact that the belief in witchcraft is no longer existent among intelligent people and that its history, in consequence, seems to possess rather an antiquarian than a living interest. No one can tell the story of the witch trials of sixteenth and seventeenth century England without digging up a buried past, and the process of exhumation is not always pleasant.

As a general rule, I think we may apply all the four conditions to every case reported; in what proportion, each reader must judge for himself. Those who believe in direct and personal intercourse between the spirit-world and man, will probably accept every account with the unquestioning belief of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; those who have faith in the calm and uniform operations of nature, will hold chiefly to the doctrine of fraud; those who have seen much of disease and that strange condition called “mesmerism,” or “sensitiveness,” will allow the presence of absolute nervous derangement, mixed up with a vast amount of conscious deception, which the insane credulity and marvellous ignorance of the time rendered easy to practise; and those who have been accustomed to sift evidence and examine witnesses, will be utterly dissatisfied with the loose statements and wild distortion of every instance on record.

No sooner do we imagine human beings invested with these wonderful powers, and conceive them as called into action for the most malignant purposes, than we become the passive and terrified slaves of the creatures of our own imaginations, and fear to be assailed at every moment by beings to whose power we can set no limit, and whose modes of hostility no human sagacity can anticipate and provide against.

The looking-glass in the death-chamber was covered with a white cloth. The clock was stopped, or at least the striking-weight removed. The daily routine of work was discontinued, such days of enforced idleness being known as the “dead days.” On the farm, for example, no matter the season, the appropriate labor of ploughing, seed sowing, or even harvest, at once ceased. The household companions of dog and cat were rigidly excluded from the stricken house; indeed, it was not uncommon for the cat to be imprisoned beneath an inverted tub, for it was believed that if either of these animals should jump or cross over the dead body, the welfare of the spirit of the deceased would certainly be affected. The disturbances are chiefly connected with the old part of the house, the bedroom and dressing-room previously mentioned, which seem to be the chief haunts of his yet unlaid ghost. 

It is his hope later in a series of articles to deal with some of the more general phases of the subject, with such topics as the use of torture, the part of the physicians, the contagious nature of the witch alarms, the relation of Puritanism to persecution, the supposed influence of the Royal Society, the general causes for the gradual decline of the belief, and other like questions.

The word witchcraft itself belonged to Anglo-Saxon days. As early as the seventh century Theodore of Tarsus imposed penances upon magicians and enchanters, and the laws, from Alfred on, abound with mentions of witchcraft. The truth seems to be that the idea of witchcraft was not very clearly defined and differentiated in the minds of ordinary Englishmen until after the beginning of legislation upon the subject. It is not impossible that there were English theologians who could have set forth the complete philosophy of the belief, but to the average mind sorcery, conjuration, enchantment, and witchcraft were but evil ways of mastering nature. All that was changed when laws were passed. With legislation came greatly increased numbers of accusations; with accusations and executions came treatises and theory. Continental writers were consulted, and the whole system and science of the subject were soon elaborated for all who read.

Some dreams, especially those of an ordinary character, appear to consist of the mere revival of old memories and associations regarding persons and events which have long passed out of the mind, and seem to have been forgotten. It is often quite impossible to trace the manner in which, or the method by which, dreams arise; and certainly many of the facts connected with them do not appear referable to any coherent principle with which it may truly be said that man is perfectly acquainted. They are mysterious; they are strange; they are supernatural.

One would like to know what these practicers thought of their own arts. Certainly some of them accomplished cures. Mental troubles that baffled the ordinary physician would offer the "good witch" a rare field for successful endeavor. Such would be able not only to persuade a community of their good offices, but to deceive themselves. Not all of them, however, by any means, were self-deceived. Conscious fraud played a part in a large percentage of cases.

This brings us back to the point: What had the conjurers to do with witchcraft? By this time the answer is fairly obvious. The practisers of the magic arts, the charmers and enchanters, were responsible for developing the notions of witchcraft. The good witch brought in her company the black witch. This in itself might never have meant more than an increased activity in the church courts. But when Protestant England grew suddenly nervous for the life of the queen, when the conjurers became a source of danger to the sovereign, and the council commenced its campaign against them, the conditions had been created in which witchcraft became at once the most dangerous and detested of crimes. While the government was busy putting down the conjurers, the aroused popular sentiment was compelling the justices of the peace and then the assize judges to hang the witches.

In some sense of the Supernatural, in some faith in the Unseen, in some feeling that man is not of this World, in some grasp on the Eternal God, and on an eternal supernatural and supersensuous life, lies the basis of all pity and mercy, all help, and comfort, and patience, and sympathy among men. Set these aside, commit us only to the Natural, to what our eyes see and our hands handle, and, while we may organize Society scientifically, and live according to ‘the laws of Nature,’ and be very philosophical and very liberal, we are standing on the ground on which every savage tribe stands, or indeed on which every pack of wolves gallops.

Belief in witchcraft is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view. In the modern era, some may use "witchcraft" to refer to benign, positive, or neutral metaphysical practices, such as divination, meditation, or self-help techniques found in the modern Pagan and New Age movements. To deny the possibility, nay actual existence of Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits. Either and both, as you find it. The future remains unguided, awaiting the apocalypse.

The word witch derives from the Old English nouns ƿiċċa [ˈwittʃɑ] ('sorcerer, male witch, warlock') and ƿiċċe [ˈwittʃe] ('sorceress, female witch'). The sensation of the reader, as she turns page after page, is expressed in such an inquiry as this: Since the writer himself believes in nothing whatsoever, how can he invite my conversion?

SOURCES: Wikipedia, J. Maxwell Wood, Wallace Notestein, Frederick George Lee, E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton, Stella Benson, Laura E. Richards