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Our fathers were never so mad, even when they were torturers. They stretched the man out on the rack. They did not stretch the rack out, as we are doing. When men went witch-burning they may have seen witches everywhere because their minds were fixed on witchcraft. But they did not see things to burn everywhere, because their minds were unfixed.
Sometimes, again, there were lascivious orgies. At cock-crow, all disappeared; the sabbath was over." This conception of a witch continued from the twelfth century to the time witch-burning ceased. With this idea of a witch being constantly instilled into the minds of their listeners, the clergy set loose fervidly religious mobs to scourge the countries of innocent women.
And if you investigate this witch-burning, you will find that it is only one aspect of a blot upon civilization, the Christian Mysogyny. You see, there were two Hebrew legends one that woman was made out of a man's rib, and the other that she ate an apple; therefore in modern England a wife must be content with a legal status lower than a domestic servant.
Judged by their records, they must have been dreadfully haunted by witches and sorcerers down to a comparatively recent period; witch-burning having been common in the town until the end of the sixteenth century.
I might instance the Protestant missionary who, while deriding the holy places at Jerusalem, considers the "Cedars of Lebanon" sacred things, and sternly forbids travellers to gather the cones. The stereotyped African answer to Europeans ridiculing these institutions, including wizard-spearing and witch-burning is, "There may be no magic, though I see there is, among you whites.
Calvinism was its characteristic religion, even in the Catholic Church, the insistence on the narrowness of the way and the fewness of the chosen. Suspicion was the note of its politics "put not your trust in princes." It tried to thrash everything out by learned, virulent, and ceaseless controversy; and it weeded its population by witch-burning.
Baldur, let me apologize for the exercise of my art upon your responsive nerves;" she made this witch-burning admission as if she were accounting for the absence of tea. To his relief she offered him nothing. He had a cigarette between his fingers, but he did not care to smoke. She continued: "For some time I have known you never mind how! For some time I have wished to meet you.
I had never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, when reading of these shows, I had entertained no more hope of seeing one than of assisting at an auto-da-fe or a witch-burning. I went to the box-office to buy seats. But they were all sold. The forestallers had swept the board. I was never able to determine whether I most pitied or despised these pests of the theatre.
"The 'Witch-burning' at Clonmell," Folk-lore, vi. pp. 373-384. The account there printed is based on the reports of the judicial proceedings before the magistrates and the judge, which were published in The Irish Times for March 26th, 27th, and 28th, April 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 8th, and July 6th, 1895.
A palpable anachronism, it yet seemed impossible to make men act on their knowledge of its antiquated and barbarous character; legislation was fruitless of good against a practice consecrated by false sentiment and false ideas of honour; but when dislodged from its chief stronghold, the army, it became quickly discredited everywhere, with the happy result noted by a contemporary historian, that now "a duel in England would seem as absurd and barbarous as an ordeal by touch or a witch-burning."
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