Witchcraft in Old and New England

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Witchcraft, our inheritance from savagery, is the burden of the human race. Beliefs among modern savages and among the ignorant in civilized communities, show the continuity of the witch superstition and of witch practices. Indeed it is probable that fully nine-tenths of the world still believes more or less consciously in some form of witchcraft. Most readers will therefore make unexpected discoveries in George Lyman Kittredge’s new book, which is a remarkable compendium of little-known facts and strange information. Here he has gathered all sorts of stray notes about witch history in England from Anglo-Saxon times, Elizabethan days, and the height of the delusion in the seventeenth century. Among the special topics he considers are witches and storms, love magic, lulling by roasting an image of wax or clay, the witches’ Sabbath, the use of spells, the witches’ curse, and the compact with Satan.