The Devil Is In The Details
My good old Cassell Dictionary of Witchcraft* seems to have missed just about all the prettier word-pictures from the Mora trials in Sweden.
There's the eerie beginning:
'In the autumn of 1667, a little shepherd boy in Älvdalen in Dalarna, Mats Nilsson, claimed to have seen a girl lead goats over Eastern Dalälven by walking on the water at Hemmansäng by Åsen. This little boy had tended the herd of sheep with this same girl, they had had a fight, and the girl had beaten the boy up. The girl's name was Gertrud Svendsdotter. She was twelve years old.' †
...And the childrens' testimony about 'The White Angels of Blockula':
'An interesting phenomenon was that the children, except from Satan and his demons, also claimed to have seen angels in Blockula [the folkloric place in which they claimed to have attended their sabbats]. Next door to Satan's dining room was the angels' chamber, decorated with benches as if in a church, and completely white from floor to ceiling, from where God himself, dressed in a grey cloak and with a grey beard ("Just a Mr Olof in Mo", as the children said) cried to them: "Come here, you are my children". The angels had the claws of birds instead of hands and feet, and they were dressed in surplices of white linen and tight pants, and they pulled the Devil's food away from the children's hands, cried tears as big as peas, and asked them to confess so the witches could be exterminated and send the message that one should not have to work on Thursdays, nor use shirts with frilled sleeves, and not have to sell tobacco above its fairest price.' †
...And my two favourite absurdities:
'Once the devil pretended to be dead, that he might see whether his people regretted him. They instantly set up a loud wail, and wept three tears each for him, at which he was so pleased, that he jumped up among them, and hugged in his arms those who had been most obstreperous in their sorrow.
'Such were the principal details given by the children, and corroborated by the confessions of the full-grown witches. Anything more absurd was never before stated in a court of justice. Many of the accused contradicted themselves most palpably; but the commissioners gave no heed to discrepancies. One of them, the parson of the district, stated, in the course of the inquiry, that on a particular night, which he mentioned, he had been afflicted with a headach so agonizing, that he could not account for it otherwise than by supposing he was bewitched. In fact, he thought a score of witches must have been dancing on the crown of his head. This announcement excited great horror among the pious dames of the auditory, who loudly expressed their wonder that the devil should have power to hurt so good a man. One poor witch, who lay in the very jaws of death, confessed that she knew too well the cause of the minister's headach. The devil had sent her with a sledge hammer and a large nail, to drive into the good man's skull. She had hammered at it for some time, but the skull was so enormously thick, that she made no impression upon it. Every hand was held up in astonishment. The pious minister blessed God that his skull was so solid, and he became renowned for his thick head all the days of his life. Whether the witch intended a joke does not appear, but she was looked upon as a criminal more than usually atrocious.' ‡
Even knowing how it all ended: heh. (Does that make me a bad person?)
* By David Pickering (1996). It's a great resource for the witch mania.
† Wikipedia: what did we do without it? (Oh, that's right - Encarta. Well, still.)
‡ Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Vol. II) by Charles Mackay (1841); another great resource.
There's the eerie beginning:
'In the autumn of 1667, a little shepherd boy in Älvdalen in Dalarna, Mats Nilsson, claimed to have seen a girl lead goats over Eastern Dalälven by walking on the water at Hemmansäng by Åsen. This little boy had tended the herd of sheep with this same girl, they had had a fight, and the girl had beaten the boy up. The girl's name was Gertrud Svendsdotter. She was twelve years old.' †
...And the childrens' testimony about 'The White Angels of Blockula':
'An interesting phenomenon was that the children, except from Satan and his demons, also claimed to have seen angels in Blockula [the folkloric place in which they claimed to have attended their sabbats]. Next door to Satan's dining room was the angels' chamber, decorated with benches as if in a church, and completely white from floor to ceiling, from where God himself, dressed in a grey cloak and with a grey beard ("Just a Mr Olof in Mo", as the children said) cried to them: "Come here, you are my children". The angels had the claws of birds instead of hands and feet, and they were dressed in surplices of white linen and tight pants, and they pulled the Devil's food away from the children's hands, cried tears as big as peas, and asked them to confess so the witches could be exterminated and send the message that one should not have to work on Thursdays, nor use shirts with frilled sleeves, and not have to sell tobacco above its fairest price.' †
...And my two favourite absurdities:
'Once the devil pretended to be dead, that he might see whether his people regretted him. They instantly set up a loud wail, and wept three tears each for him, at which he was so pleased, that he jumped up among them, and hugged in his arms those who had been most obstreperous in their sorrow.
'Such were the principal details given by the children, and corroborated by the confessions of the full-grown witches. Anything more absurd was never before stated in a court of justice. Many of the accused contradicted themselves most palpably; but the commissioners gave no heed to discrepancies. One of them, the parson of the district, stated, in the course of the inquiry, that on a particular night, which he mentioned, he had been afflicted with a headach so agonizing, that he could not account for it otherwise than by supposing he was bewitched. In fact, he thought a score of witches must have been dancing on the crown of his head. This announcement excited great horror among the pious dames of the auditory, who loudly expressed their wonder that the devil should have power to hurt so good a man. One poor witch, who lay in the very jaws of death, confessed that she knew too well the cause of the minister's headach. The devil had sent her with a sledge hammer and a large nail, to drive into the good man's skull. She had hammered at it for some time, but the skull was so enormously thick, that she made no impression upon it. Every hand was held up in astonishment. The pious minister blessed God that his skull was so solid, and he became renowned for his thick head all the days of his life. Whether the witch intended a joke does not appear, but she was looked upon as a criminal more than usually atrocious.' ‡
Even knowing how it all ended: heh. (Does that make me a bad person?)
* By David Pickering (1996). It's a great resource for the witch mania.
† Wikipedia: what did we do without it? (Oh, that's right - Encarta. Well, still.)
‡ Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Vol. II) by Charles Mackay (1841); another great resource.