. . . However strange it seems, it is quite worthy of observation, that the
actors in that tragedy, the “afflicted children,” if and other witnesses,
in their various statements and operations, embraced about the whole circle
of popular superstition. How those young country girls, some of them mere children,
most of them wholly illiterate, could have become familiar with such fancies,
to such an extent, is truly surprising. They acted out, and brought to bear
with tremendous effect, almost all that can be found in the literature of that
day, and the period preceding it, relating to such subjects. Images and visions
which had been portrayed in tales of romance, and given interest to the pages
of poetry, will be made by them, as we shall see, to throng the woods, flit
through the air, and hover over the heads of a terrified court. The ghosts of
murdered wives and children will play their parts with a vividness of representation
and artistic skill of expression that have hardly been surpassed in scenic representations
on the stage. In the Salem-witchcraft proceedings, the superstition of the middle
ages was embodied in real action. All its extravagant absurdities and monstrosities
appear in their application to human experience. We see what the effect has
been, and must be, when the affairs of life, in courts of law and the relations
of society, or the conduct or feelings of individuals, are suffered to be under
the control of fanciful or mystical notions. When a whole people abandons the
solid ground of common sense, overleaps the boundaries of human knowledge, gives
itself up to wild reveries, and lets loose its passions without restraint, it
presents a spectacle more terrific to behold, and becomes more destructive and
disastrous, than any convulsion of mere material nature,-than tornado, conflagration,
or earthquake."
[Vol. 1, p. 468.]
From Charles W. Upham's Salem Witchcraft, With an Account of Salem Village
and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Spirits (1867). In
two volumes.
