Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1881-06-10
BELIEF IN WlTCHCRAFT.
How the OId-Time Superstition Has
Been Held by Some Great Men. s,u

Frazers Magazine. GNa.f1 MIL n
Ludicrous as the powers appear to
us ut the present day with which witch
craft in former times was credited,
such powers seem never to have been
denied or disputed, by the great minds
of the past. a witch was all that was
abominable, and to be held in the
strongest loathing; yet few had the
wisdom or the courage to contradict
the possibility of her exercising the
arts she pretended to. The Judge, as
he passed sentence upon the condemned
woman, trembled lest her fell gaze
should bring upon hin and his
household sorrow or death. The yell
ing crowd, as it half-stripped her to
undergo the water-ordeal, shuddered as
it saw upon her exposed bosom the
marks which, it was supposed, proved
that she was allowed her familiar"
to draw upon her life's blood. The
villagers who went miles out Of their
way to avoid her haunts never for one
moment believed that the object OF
their fear was powerless to work them
evil, and was either a half-mad wo-
man, the victim of a hideous delusion,
or else the actress of a knavish part to
serve her W vile ends. To all the
old crone, with her tall hat, crutch-
stick, and black cat nesting on her
shoulders, vas n who had dealings
with the devil, and who, through the
m ght of Satanic aid, could scatter the
seeds of misery broadcast wherever
chn iicta1 Ghn hn1 cold 1nrca1f 1nI,
and soul, to hell, and until death claim
ed her, her power to affect evil, it was
alleged, was unlimited. The great man
is he who rises superior to the preju-
dices of his age; but before the end
of the seventeenth century-with the
exception Of Bodin, Erastus, Reginald
Scott, John Wagstaffe, and DR.. Web
ster-there were none who had the
boldness or the knowledge to brand
witchcraft as "a base and palpable su-
perstition. We find Lord Bacon grave
ly prescribing "henbane, hemlock, man
drake, moonshade, tobacco, opium, and
other s%oporiferous medicines" as the
best ingredients for a witch's ointment.
From the pages of his History Of the
World" we see that the gifted and
practical Sir Walter Raleigh was a firm
believer in this childish form of super
stition. The learned Selden, in his
Table Talk" while pleasantly dis
coursing on the subject of witches,
shows that he also held the same faith.
Sir Thomas Browne, the kindliest of
physicians; Sir Matthew Hale, one of
the most acute and spotless of judges;
Hobbies, the skeptic; "the eminent DR..
More, of Cambridge" and the patient
and thoughtful Boyle, all were of opin-
ion that witchcraft was an evil capa-
bic of solid proof, and that its disci-
pies merited sharp and swift punish
ment. 1t was not until the dawn of
the eighteenth century that men came
to the conclusion that the devices of
witches and witchmongers' were on
ly so many tricks and fables. and ut
terly unworthy of credence. The last
judicial execution in England for witch
craft took place in the year 1716, when
a woman and her little daughter were
hanged at Huntingdon "for selling
their souls to Satan" Since that date,
however, various cases have occurred
of women, accused of witches, being
drowned while undergoing the ordeal
by water at the hands of their intimi-
dated yet infatuated neighbors.