Witchcraft in the British Isles and New England by Brian P. Levack

Author:Brian P. Levack [Levack, Brian P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780815336723
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2001-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

Not only did the system as a whole work together, and by the appearance—empirically verified time and again—of apparitions and evil spirits, witches and their familiars, provide evidence for the higher order Beings, but it appears that it worked as an organized instrument of social control.

Keith Thomas8 and others9 argue most effectively that witch persecutions fluctuated as social order and provisions for the poor declined or improved, the witch acting not only as a barometer of the stability of social mores, but as means of social control. In his treatment of ghosts, Thomas is equally persuasive in his argument that ‘ghosts [too] were a sanction for general standards.’10 In his work on threatening figures, John Widdowson has demonstrated that the use of ghosts, witches, bogeys, elementais and other supernatural entities as means of child-control is not a modern phenomenon but ‘has long been part of oral tradition in many cultures’11 The same system is demonstrated in Gomme's Handbook of Folklore which, under the heading of ‘Goblindom’ lists a wide range of creatures from goblin proper to will-o'-the-wisps and apparitions pertaining to set locations.12 Again, Wirt Sikes's British Goblins discusses a wider variety of creatures than his title implies, approaching witch traditions very closely in his instances of spectral flight.13 In Teutonic Mythology Jacob Grimm forges links between the witch and the wild hunt, between older elvish traditions of the Frau Holda type and witch beliefs, and between witches, household spirits and ghosts (in particular the poltergeist).14

These figures of threat were partially assimilated in the early modern period and the distinction between classes of supernatural creature seems to have been particularly hard to maintain, the relationship between elemental and familiar, elemental and ghost, apparition and witch being especially close. In many cases the effects of a supernatural visitation were the same whatever the class of visitor. Witches, imps and ghosts were all responsible for twitching bedclothes off the insomniac, buffeting the sceptical, and causing madness. Both imps and witches could turn the heads of cattle awry, and the witch could cause poltergeist-like effects, as could household spirits, and devils unaided by witches. Poltergeists, though often accompanied by spectres and attributed variously to possession, demons, or spirits, were a frequent accompaniment of witchcraft. For example, what is now considered the classic account of poltergeist infestation—the case of the Drummer of Tedworth—was regarded by contemporaries as a case of witchcraft, and the drummer was found guilty of and transported for that offence. Ghost beliefs were always thus closely linked with witchcraft, for ‘a person who was troubled by a poltergeist or spectre might well blame a malevolent neighbour for the intrusion.’15 Not only that, but the appearance of the spectre of the ‘malevolent neighbour’ was often evidence enough for an indictment on a charge of witchcraft. This ‘spectral evidence’ doubts about which were among the chief reasons for the recantation of the Salem jurors, had been widely accepted previously both in old and New England.16

Again, traditions of both witch and ghost depended on a fascination with death and the horrors of the dead body.

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