Part 31

The foregoing record shows the fearful ordeal to which any one might be subjected upon whom an accusation of witchcraft fell, and the hopelessness of escape where spectral evidence was admitted and held to be reliable. Here was a woman who, it seems, had been conscious of spirit presence with her for "forty years," and her constitutional properties which permitted this were so luminous in the spiritual atmosphere, or medium of vision by inner eyes, that the clairvoyant girls readily caught sight of her, readily felt influences from her, and therefore accused her of tormenting them.

The general character and deportment of this woman prior to her arrest may not have won public approbation. When in presence of the magistrates she was self-possessed and not lacking in boldness; for otherwise she would not have told the judge that his own presence was the only black man she had seen there. She told her examiners that it was shameful for them to mind "these folks, who are out of their wits." She said to the girls, "You lie; I am wronged." Her presence permitted extraordinary visions, contortions, sufferings, and outcries, and probably emanations from her were special helps to the unwonted outflow.

In trance, one saw thirteen dead bodies, and charged the accused with having murdered them. It was in trance that this was seen and said. If entranced, was the girl, then, a voluntary seer and speaker? No. Supermundane force was in action there. Entrancements and obsessions came upon all those youthful accusers fitfully--and the forms of the girls generally were tools operated by wills entering from outside. The tongue of that entranced accuser, like Ann Cole's, probably was "improved to utter thoughts that never were in her own mind."

Four of Mrs. Carrier's children were brought into court in company with herself, either as accused ones or as witnesses against some members of the family. "Before the trial," says Drake, "several of her own children had frankly and fully confessed not only that they were witches themselves, but that their mother had made them so." The artlessness and simplicity of their confessions render them not simply entertaining, but more instructive than almost any other statements made at the examinations and trials. Little Sarah was asked,--

"How long have you been a witch? A. Ever since I was six years old. How old are you now? A. Near eight years old; brother Richard says I shall be eight years old in November next.

"Who made you a witch? A. My mother; she made me set my hand to a book. How did you set your hand to it? A. I touched it with my fingers; and the book was red; the paper of it was white. She said she never had seen the black man ... that her mother had baptized her, and the devil or black man was not there, as she saw. Her mother said, when she baptized her, 'Thou art mine for ever and ever. Amen.'

"How did you afflict folks? A. I pinched them. She said she went to those whom she afflicted--went, not in body, but in her spirit. She would not own that she had ever been at the witch-meeting at the Village."

The confessions (?) are beautiful and precious; they are robed in all the appropriate naivete of any school-girl's confession that herself was a--pupil. Not a tinge of shame, sorrow, or humiliation is visible anywhere about them. Not a sign appears, that, in little Sarah's comprehension, there was anything more censurable, as in fact there was not, in her being a witch, than there is in the child of to-day being a Sunday school scholar. Disclosure of common occurrences at her home, which inborn faculties there as naturally brought into view, as other faculties there and elsewhere cause the limbs of childhood to expand and its intellect to unfold, constituted her confession of the witchcraft that pertained to her mother and herself.

The common mind, if not cautioned, will almost perforce attach meanings to the testimonies of Martha Carrier's children which never belonged to them. The detailings of facts and experiences not rare in that mediumistic family, were no confession of anything like what the public in any age has been accustomed to designate by the term witchcraft. In biblical times the occurrences might have been called prophecies--true or false--and to-day they would be regarded as spirit manifestations, or near kindred to such.

The little girl's confessions are precious as well as beautiful; they are instructive comments upon the creed held by the adults of her day; they give some support to the position that compact with some spirit was an element in preparation for working marvels. Her mother baptized her, and made her virtually sign a book, and then claimed her own child as hers "for ever and ever, Amen." The little child herself seems to have regarded this ratification of her mother's spirit claims upon her spirit as having made herself a witch; but such a witch as she was not ashamed to be, and saw no harm in being. Indeed, how can any other than perverted vision see harm in the girl's filial compact? Her clairvoyant and other mediumistic faculties had become so unfolded when she was about six years old, that she and her mother, as freed spirits, could, in conscious companionship, roam in spirit realms; and she, no doubt, felt that forces emanating from the mother aided in her unfoldment, and continued to have much sway over her in her mental journeyings and operations. She might with much propriety say that her mother made her a witch. And her case shows that the process for producing a witch might be much simpler and much less horrifying than the public in her day had any conception of. Indeed, witchification was then, and now is, a growth or unfoldment from God's plantings much more than a manufacture by the devil's or any mother's hands. She saw no devil, no black man--but only her own mother was concerned in making her a witch; and the mother probably made her a witch by processes as natural and legitimate as those by which she had previously made her a child.

The girl's power for afflicting was mental; her journeyings and pinchings were mental; and yet, no doubt, her grip was as sensibly felt by the nerves of those whom she pinched as would have been firm graspings of their flesh by her fingers of bones and muscles. It is the spirit only which feels hurts of the body, and a pinched spirit imprints the hurt on the flesh it is animating. This little girl's statements confirm Tituba's, and give credibility to the many declarations of the accusing girls that they were pinched, bitten, and tortured by persons whose outer forms were remote from them at the time. We live amid mysteries which one by one are getting revealed as time rolls on.

An instructive instance of the warping force of these prevalent beliefs in shaping the diction of the most erudite describers of witchcraft facts, is found in Lawson's summary of events, where, when commenting upon testimony like that given by little Sarah, he says, "Several have confessed against their own mother, that they were instruments to bring them into the devil's covenant." But the girl's testimony mentioned a covenant with her mother alone, saying that the devil was not there, as she saw. It was Lawson, and not the girl, who brought the devil into this case.

The same writer further says, "Some girls of eight or nine years of age did declare that after they were so betrayed by their mothers to the power of Satan, they saw the devil go in their own shapes to afflict others." But the statement of Sarah is, that she herself went forth and afflicted in her spirit-form, and not that the devil went in her shape. The cultured of that generation had devil on the brain so severely, that they persistently brought him in even where the facts as presented by the witnesses plainly excluded him.

Richard Carrier, eighteen years old, son of Thomas and Martha, was examined.

"Have you been in the devil's snare?--Yes.

"Is your brother Andrew insnared by the devil's snare?--Yes.

"How long has your brother been a witch?--Near a month.

"How long have you been a witch?--Not long.

"Have you joined in afflicting the afflicted persons?--Yes.

"You helped to hurt Timothy Swan, did you?--Yes.

"How long have you been a witch?--About five weeks.

"Who was in company when you covenanted with the devil?--Mrs. Bradbury.

"Did she help you afflict?--Yes.

"Who was at the Village Meeting when you were there?--Goodwife How, Goodwife Nurse, Goodwife Wildes, Proctor and his wife, Mrs. Bradbury, and Corey's wife.

"What did they do there?--Eat, and drank wine.

"Was there a minister there?--No, not as I know of.

"From whence had you your wine?--From Salem, I think it was.

"Goodwife Oliver there?--Yes; I knew her."