WITCHCRAFT

The most famous witch-hunt of course took place in Salem Village in the winter of 1692. A few young Puritan girls were trying out a method of peering into the future, looking for signs of romance, of fortune, who would they marry, would they be rich. They used a form of lekanomancy, where hot wax or molten lead or even the white of an egg was dropped into a glass of water. Instead, one of them, not named, but probably 9 year old Elizabeth Parris, daughter of Salem Village preacher- saw a coffin in the glass. An unmistakable, spectrally slimy omen of death.

But the girls had a taste for the occult, and Reverend Parris had a Caribbean slave; Tituba. And in dark winter evenings, she told them stories of witchcraft, black, exciting tales of Barbados magic. Then the excitement got out of hand. Elizabeth and her 11 year old cousin, Abigail Williams, who lived in the Parris' home, began to have convulsions and fits of sobbing. Their behavior got worse : Abigail began running to the fire place and throwing flaming sticks about the house. Then it began to spread to their companions : to Anne Putnam ,12; Mary Walcott,16; Elizabeth Hubbard,17; Susan Sheldon and Elizabeth Booth, both 18; to Mercy Lewis, 19; Mary Warren,20. On February 25, Mary Sibley, Mary Walcott's aunt, asked Tituba and her husband, Indian John, to bake a witch's cake. It was compounded of meal mixed with the urine of the affected children, and was fed to the Parris family dog, a supposed familiar of the demons. It worked. The children were able to name those responsible for their distress, and on Feb 29, warrants were issued for the arrest of Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn and the slave Tituba.

Today, the behaviour of the young women- dramatic and alarming abnormal as it was- would almost certainly be diagnosed as clinical hysteria. However through the diagnosis of that time, the girls were thought to be possessed by the demon. By summer's end, nineteen of the 'oppressors' had been hung on Witch's Hill, and one man had been pressed to death. Thereafter, the name of Salem Village would be forever infamous. The omen of the coffin had been right. ( For those who find it hard to picture Salem at that time, the movie 'Crucible' will give you an idea of how the residence of the town were unjustly accused by the wretched girls.)