Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands | Page 5

there and back. When these wretches got to any town--for they tried all the chief market-towns in the district--the crier used to go round with his bell, desiring "all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tried by the person appointed." As many as thirty women were brought at once into the Newcastle town-hall, stripped and pricked, and twenty-seven set aside as guilty. Gardner continues:--
The said witch-finder acquainted Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson that he knew women whether they were witches or no by their looks; and when the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman, the said colonel replied and said, 'Surely this woman is none, and need not be tried;' but the Scotchman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her; and presently, in sight of all the people, laid her body naked to the waist, with her clothes over her head, by which fright and shame all her blood contracted into one part of her body, and then he ran a pin into her thigh, and then suddenly let her coats fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her body, but did not bleed? But she, being amazed, replied little. Then he put his hands up her coats and pulled out the pin, and set her aside as a guilty person and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he made guilty. Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of the aforesaid woman by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that woman to be brought again, and her clothes pulled up to her thigh, and required the Scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil.
If this precious wretch had not been stopped he would have declared half the women in the north country to be witches. But the magistrates and the people got tired of him at last, and his imposture being discovered, he was hanged in Scotland. At the gallows he confessed that he had been the death of 220 men and women in England and Scotland, simply for the sake of the twenty shillings which he generally received as blood-money.
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The belief in Sorcerots, or witches' spells of a peculiar kind, mentioned in the Depositions (pages 22, 23, &c.) receives curious modern confirmation by a kindred superstition still current among the emancipated negroes of the United States. It was described in a letter on "Voudouism in Virginia" which appeared in the New York Tribune, dated Richmond, September 17, 1875. Mr. Moncure D. Conway, in quoting this and commenting on it in his _Demonology and Devil-Lore_ (Vol. I. pages 68-69), says that it belongs to a class of superstitions generally kept close from the whites, as he believes, because of their purely African origin. Mr. Conway is, however, probably mistaken about the origin, seeing that the same belief prevailed in Guernsey three centuries ago. The extract from the letter is as follows:--
If an ignorant negro is smitten with a disease which he cannot comprehend, he often imagines himself the victim of witchcraft, and having no faith in "white folks' physic" for such ailments, must apply to one of these quacks. A physician residing near the city [Richmond] was invited by such a one to witness his mode of procedure with a dropsical patient for whom the physician in question had occasionally charitably prescribed. Curiosity led him to attend the seance, having previously informed the quack that since the case was in such hands he relinquished all connection with it. On the coverlet of the bed on which the sick man lay, was spread a quantity of bones, feathers, and other trash. The charlatan went through with a series of so-called conjurations, burned feathers, hair, and tiny fragments of wood in a charcoal furnace, and mumbled gibberish past the physician's comprehension. He then proceeded to rip open the pillows and bolsters, and took from them some queer conglomerations of feathers. These he said had caused all the trouble. Sprinkling a whitish powder over them, he burnt them in his furnace. A black offensive smoke was produced, and he announced triumphantly that the evil influence was destroyed, and that the patient would surely get well. He died not many days later, believing, in common with his friends and relatives, that the conjurations of the "trick doctor" had failed to save him only because resorted to too late.
From the above it is evident that the natural tendency of wool and feathers to felt and clog together, has been distorted, by widely different peoples, into an outward