She then quotes a record of the Scotch General Assembly of 1649, which has nothing at all to do with the matter under consideration; and this is followed up by a remark passed when certain witches were hanged at Maidstone in 1652 to the effect that such offenders ought to be burned, which is nothing more than an impertinent expression of the continental opinion. The third case next adduced, that of Ann Foster, who was hanged at Northampton in 1674, is very arguable, since, although the charge of witchcraft was certainly brought, the fact upon which she was condemned was that she had not only maimed and killed above thirty sheep belonging to her neighbour, a well-to-do farmer, but had also set on fire several of his barns and even his house. Miss Murray has attempted too sweeping a generalization, which so far as England was concerned is inaccurate.[1] In Scotland and upon the continent the punishment of witchcraft was almost universally the stake, but in England it was the gallows tree. It is, of course, wholly irrelevant to quote Scottish or French trials as bearing upon English practice, but this is continually done, and the idea that witches were burned (even in England) has so impressed itself upon the popular imagination that it will be a matter of extreme difficulty to gain acceptance for the correct view. Indeed it is a question whether it be worth while to press the point, that is for popular instruction. The stake is much more horrible, much more mediæval and picturesque than hanging, and so let romanticist and story-book burn their
- ↑ The theory (The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 161) that the burning of a witch was “the sacrifice of the incarnate deity … consummated at the hands of the public executioner” is so fantastic and entirely preposterous as to elude all serious consideration.
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