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WITCH STORIES
COLLECTED BY
E. LYNN LINTON,
AUTHOR OF “AZETH THE EGYPTIAN,” “AMYMONE,” ETC.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”—Exodus xxii. 18.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.
1861.
[The right of Translation reserved.]
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
PREFACE.
In offering the following collection of witch stories to the public, I donot profess to have exhausted the subject, or to have made so complete asummary as I might have done, had I been admitted into certain privatelibraries, which contain, I believe, many concealed riches. But I had nomeans of introduction to them, and was obliged to be content with suchauthorities as I found in the British Museum, and the other publiclibraries to which I had access. I do not think that I have left muchuntold; but there must be, scattered about England, old MSS. and uniquecopies of records concerning which I can find only meagre allusions, orthe mere names of the victims, without a distinctive fact to mark theirspecial history. Should this book come to a second edition, any help fromthe possessors of these hitherto unpublished documents would be a gain tothe public, and a privilege which I trust may be afforded me.
Neither have I attempted to enter into the philosophy of the subject. Itis far too wide and deep to be discussed in a few hasty words; and to siftsuch evidence as is left us—to determine what was fraud, whatself-deception, what actual disease, and what the exaggeration of the[Pg iv]narrator—would have swelled my book into a far more important and bulkywork than I intended or wished. As a general rule, I think we may applyall the four conditions to every case reported; in what proportion, eachreader must judge for himself. Those who believe in direct and personalintercourse between the spirit-world and man, will probably accept everyaccount with the unquestioning belief of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies; those who have faith in the calm and uniform operations ofnature, will hold chiefly to the doctrine of fraud; those who have seenmuch 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 insanecredulity 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 distortionof every instance on record.
E. LYNN LINTON.