The story of witchcraft, as it is reported to have passed in Sweden
in the year 1670, and has many times been reprinted in this country,
is on several accounts one of the most interesting and deplorable
that has ever been recorded. The scene lies in Dalecarlia, a country
for ever memorable as having witnessed some of the earliest adventures
of Gustavus Vasa, his deepest humiliation, and the first commencement
of his prosperous fortune. The Dalecarlians are represented to us
as the simplest, the most faithful, and the bravest of the sons of
men, men undebauched and unsuspicious, but who devoted themselves
in the most disinterested manner for a cause that appeared to them
worthy of support, the cause of liberty and independence against the
cruelest of tyrants. At least such they were in 1520, one hundred
and fifty years before the date of the story we are going to
recount.--The site of these events was at Mohra and Elfdale in the
province that has just been mentioned.
The Dalecarlians, simple and ignorant, but of exemplary integrity
and honesty, who dwelt amidst impracticable mountains and spacious
mines of copper and iron, were distinguished for superstition among
the countries of the north, where all were superstitious. They were
probably subject at intervals to the periodical visitation of alarms
of witches, when whole races of men became wild with the infection
without any one's being well able to account for it.
In the year 1670, and one or two preceding years, there was a great
alarm of witches in the town of Mohra. There were always two or three
witches existing in some of the obscure quarters of this place. But
now they increased in number, and shewed their faces with the utmost
audacity. Their mode on the present occasion was to make a journey
through the air to Blockula, an imaginary scene of retirement, which
none but the witches and their dupes had ever seen. Here they met
with feasts and various entertainments, which it seems had particular
charms for the persons who partook of them. The witches used to go
into a field in the environs of Mohra, and cry aloud to the devil
in a peculiar sort of recitation, "Antecessor, come and carry us to
Blockula!" Then appeared a multitude of strange beasts, men, spits,
posts, and goats with spits run through their entrails and projecting
behind that all might have room. The witches mounted these beasts
of burthen or vehicles, and were conveyed through the air over high
walls and mountains, and through churches and chimneys, without
perceptible impediment, till they arrived at the place of their
destination. Here the devil feasted them with various compounds and
confections, and, having eaten to their hearts' content, they danced,
and then fought. The devil made them ride on spits, from which they
were thrown; and the devil beat them with the spits, and laughed at
them. He then caused them to build a house to protect them against
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