If, within a year or two after, anything should happen to you or yours,
why, of course, old Mother Bombie or Goody Blake must be at the bottom of
it. For it was perfectly well known that there were witches, (does not
God's law say expressly, "Suffer not a _witch_ to live?") and that they
could cast a spell by the mere glance of their eyes, could cause you to
pine away by melting a waxen image, could give you a pain wherever they
liked by sticking pins into the same, could bring sickness into your
house or into your barn by hiding a Devil's powder under the threshold;
and who knows what else? Worst of all, they could send a demon into your
body, who would cause you to vomit pins, hair, pebbles, knives,-indeed,
almost anything short of a cathedral,-without any fault of yours, utter
through you the most impertinent things _verbi ministro_, and, in short,
make you the most important personage in the parish for the time being.
Meanwhile, you were an object of condolence and contribution to the whole
neighborhood. What wonder if a lazy apprentice or servant-maid (Bekker
gives several instances of the kind detected by him) should prefer being
possessed, with its attendant perquisites, to drudging from morning till
night? And to any one who has observed how common a thing in certain
states of mind self-connivance is, and how near it is to self-deception,
it will not be surprising that some were, to all intents and purposes,
really possessed.
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