Mary Schweidler, the amber witch: The most interesting trial for witchcraft ever known, printed from an imperfect manuscript by her father, Abraham Schweidler, the pastor of Coserow in the island of Usedom / edited by W. Meinhold ; translated from the German by Lady Duff Gordon.Meinhold, Wilhelm
General
Mary Schweidler, the amber witch: The most interesting trial for witchcraft ever known, printed from an imperfect manuscript by her father, Abraham Schweidler, the pastor of Coserow in the island of Usedom / edited by W. Meinhold ; translated from the German by Lady Duff Gordon.
Meinhold, Wilhelm
Witchcraft -- Pomerania (Poland and Germany)
_R_. She did not know whether that was his hair and brains at all, nor how
it came there. She went to the tree one morning because she heard a
woodpecker cry so dolefully. _Item_, old Paasch, who also had heard the
cries, came up with his axe in his hand.
_Q_. Whether the woodpecker was not the devil himself, who had carried off
old Seden?
_R_. She did not know: but he must have been dead some time, seeing that
the blood and brains which the lad fetched down out of the tree were quite
dried up.
_Q_. How and when, then, had he come by his death?
_R_. That Almighty God only knew. But Zuter his little girl had said, that
one day, while she gathered nettles for the cows under Seden his hedge,
she heard the goodman threaten his squint-eyed wife that he would tell the
parson that he now knew of a certainty that she had a familiar spirit;
whereupon the goodman had presently disappeared. But that this was a
child's tale, and she would fyle no one on the strength of it.
Hereupon _Dom. Consul_ again looked the Sheriff steadily in the face, and
said, "Old Lizzie Kolken must be brought before us this very day": whereto
the Sheriff made no answer; and he went on to ask,
_Q_. Whether, then, she still maintained that she knew nothing of the
devil?
_R_. She maintained it now, and would maintain it until her life's end.
_Q_. And nevertheless, as had been seen by witnesses, she had been
re-baptized by him in the sea in broad daylight.--Here again she blushed,
and for a moment was silent.
_Q_. Why did she blush again? She should for God his sake think on her
salvation, and confess the truth.
_R_. She had bathed herself in the sea, seeing that the day was very hot;
that was the whole truth.
_Q_. What chaste maiden would ever bathe in the sea? Thou liest; or wilt
thou even yet deny that thou didst bewitch old Paasch his little girl with
a white roll?
_R_. Alas! alas! she loved the child as though it were her own little
sister; not only had she taught her as well as all the other children
without reward, but during the heavy famine she had often taken the bit
from her own mouth to put it into the little child's. How, then, could she
have wished to do her such grievous harm?
_Q_. Wilt thou even yet deny?--Reverend Abraham, how stubborn is your
child! See here, is this no witches' salve, which the constable fetched
out of thy coffer last night? Is this no witches' salve, eh?
_R_. It was a salve for the skin, which would make it soft and white, as
the apothecary at Wolgast had told her, of whom she bought it.
_Q_. Hereupon he shook his head, and went on: How! wilt thou then lastly
deny that on this last Saturday the both July, at twelve o'clock at night,
thou didst on the Streckelberg call upon thy paramour the devil in
dreadful words, whereupon he appeared to thee in the shape of a great
hairy giant, and clipped thee and toyed with thee?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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