Writers and tourists visiting West Kerry and reading this book, might be inclined to go away under the impression that the people of Corkaguiny are exceptionally superstitious and peculiar, as compared with those of other portions of the United Kingdom and the world. If we will but calmly examine the records and customs of the world, we will at the first glance see that even in our darkest hour we were far in advance of many of them in that respect. About the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Century, superstitions began to creep in amongst Christians. They increased in many forms immediately. In Ireland slight traces of the old Pagan superstitions lingered amongst the people, but between 1580 and 1736 in England, _no less than thirty thousand persons were publicly hanged for being witches_, and most of the poor innocent creatures were burned at the stake. The most learned judges of the English courts declared from their benches that witchcraft existed, and that persons in one league with the devil could raise storms, destroy life and property, by no further act than taking off their stockings and steeping them in soap and water. They even went so far as to force their victims to believe and confess that they were witches. Only that England was so much engaged in hounding to death the Catholic priests, Heaven knows how many more would have fallen. In 1716 it appears one Mrs. Hicks and her little daughter were hanged for selling their souls to the devil, and their accusers charged them with raising a storm by soaking stockings in a lather of soap. Scotland was buried in superstition. Calvin and Luther, both the great heads of the Protestant Reformation, believed in witchcraft, and the King of Scotland, when he ascended the throne of England, by tongue, pen and fire, advocated the rack for the witches. I believe Italy, Spain and France, three Catholic countries, were the first to reject witchcraft. Germany, although at first very slow to believe in witchcraft, burned them by the thousands, and that in a most barbarous manner. The Puritan fathers of New England had the hangman's rope pretty busy in Boston Common with the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, and the Quakers of other parts of the State. If a man did not believe in witches, he was classed worse than a heretic.