Do we know any Irish who are not "in love" with old Irish traditions; Slav with Slavish; Norse with Norse; Latin with Latin? You can answer this from your own observations. The Anglo-Saxon is proud of notions and ideals he can recall; so is the Jew; and so is the Negro. Traditions are hard to change, or forget.

Today we are reaping, as each generation does, that portion of knowledge which was sown early in the dawn of history, and as it ripens and falls into the minds of young and old everywhere, we shall accordingly stand or fall by our decisions to be rational, or irrational--"orthodox," or "unorthodox."

Salem Witches Were Hanged.--The witches of our own New England were largely the development of too-serious interpretations of Biblical law and injunction; actually, by law, authorities (under pressure of the church leaders) took numerous lives of innocent people.

Religion Cause of the Troubles.--One can hardly picture witchcraft conditions in those early days as being so serious that nearly every man, woman and child, and everything in the catalog of human knowledge was suspected of being a witch, or in aiding one.

To avoid being accused as a witch, one had to get "the jump on the other fellow" and accuse him first!

Montague Summers, in "The Geography of Witchcraft," at p. 256 says: "There can be no doubt that the settlers in New England were not only firm believers in every kind of witchcraft, but well primed in every malevolent superstition that could commend itself to their prejudiced and tortured minds. They looked for the Devil round every corner, and saw Satan's hand in every mishap, in every accident. The Devil, in fact, played a larger part in their theology than God. They were obsessed with hell and damnation; their sky was cloudy and overset; their horizon girded with predestination and the awful consciousness of sin."

John Wesley was a firm believer in witchcraft, and in 1768 he writes in his journal: "It is true . . . that the English in general . . . have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it . . . With my latest breath will I bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world: I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages."

In New England one person claimed that the Devil frequently had carnal knowledge of her body!

Today houses are still secured, as well as barns, day and night, against witches. Window blinds, or shutters keep out all light, and some occupants have been known to go out very seldom, after dark--the darkness that harbors all sorts of things, only through imagination.

Today some people can hear witches in chains, or shutters rattling at night; chairs or floors creaking; noises in the walls, attics or cellars; lowing of cattle; howling of dogs; earth lights in the fields or woods, or in the cemetery; shadows in the moonlight; strange odors; the noise of expansion or contraction of pottery, or steam pipes; the noise caused by mice, rats, and slight vibrations caused by draughts.

Likewise, Pennsylvania has been singled out for years as a stamping ground for these same kind of "devils." Research, however, fails to discover any witches, looking any different from the people the reader and the writer know most intimately; now and then an old man, or woman, may be identified as "one of those 'witch doctors,' or 'pow-wow' doctors." But, in New England, well-known citizens were pointed out as "witches."

Sydney George Fisher, in "Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times," (2 vols. Phila. 1898) says:

"In former times no sect of religion and no class of life had been free from it (witchcraft), more than four thousand books had been written about it, it had assailed the highest intellectuals as well as the lowest, and Sprenger estimates that in the fifteenth century one hundred thousand persons were executed for it in Germany alone, and that during the Christian epoch nine million men and women had been put to death for this supposed crime. Those who doubted were reminded of the witch of Endor in the Old Testament and of the laws of Moses against witchcraft. In the books of the Middle Ages it is asserted over and over again that to doubt the existence of witchcraft is to deny the Holy Scriptures and to refuse confidence in the general belief of all mankind."

". . . No one was safe; the slightest peculiarity in manner, or an obscure chance remark that could be given a double meaning, was enough to secure a conviction. Many who had lost some household article or cattle, or who had suffered a misfortune or sickness, were allowed to relate their trouble before the court as evidence that one of their neighbors had bewitched them . . . When a person was accused, his only hope of escape was in confession, and this process manufactured witches very fast. . ."

"Even in this awful delusion the Puritan mind still worked by its close reasoning processes. The few who were opposed to punishing for witchcraft argued that it might be possible for a devil to get into a person and make a witch of him against his will . . . "

"If an ordinary man, they said, does anything supernatural, it must be by aid of the devil . . ."

In Pennsylvania the authorities always gave, and today give, the accused the great benefit of doubt--either as to the commission of a crime (of witchcraft), or the mental state of the person involved. Is witchcraft in this Commonwealth, then, so very terrible?

Mary Baker Eddy--and Witchcraft.--Howard W. Haggard, M. D., in "Devils, Drugs and Doctors," (at pp. 312-3; Blue Ribbon Books, Inc.) tells how Mary Baker Eddy, in her own day, put a lot of faith in the powers of "malicious animal magnetism"--just another term for witchcraft. Mrs. Eddy, according to a newspaper account, declared that her husband's death was caused by this "magnetism"--the opposite of faith healing. Dr. Haggard further states:

Thus when Mary Eddy assigned hysterical ailments to malicious animal magnetism and asked the courts of Salem, in 1878, to punish alleged persecutors, she was attempting to revive witchcraft and the punishment of witches. But along with this black magic she introduced white magic . . .

Chasing Witches a Religious Rite.--Witches can make themselves "at home" in many ways. According to a "ritual" of Jewish behavior, it appears witches can get into clothes and into man over night; lying-in women should be apprehensive of "evil spirits," hence magic words are prepared for such as lie-in. Christians use Bibles under their pillows, and Catholics use medals, beads, or prayer-books for a similar purpose.

Orthodox Jews believe that witches abound in heaps of rubbish, or in bunches of tops of vegetables, if thrown away together; egg shells must be broken; witches can harm a person, alone, in darkness, but not if there are two or three persons together; a burning light is proof against evil spirits.

Have we not heard of many of these same "notions" among people not of Jewish extraction?

What makes a man or woman superstitious? His religion, or lack of it?

Several particularly impressive evidences of a belief in witches, or witchcraft, may be cited.

The custom of the Orthodox Jews, Catholics and Protestant layman are compared, as excerpted from a book on the Jews:

The next Holy-day is call'd "Sookoth," i. e. Tabernacle or Booth, see Leviticus, Chap. xxiii. 34. This Holy-day they celebrate eight Days, tho' but seven are commanded in Levit. xxiii. because of the Uncertainty from which of the two Days of their New Year they are to begin their Reckoning; during which eight Days they eat and drink, and some even sleep, every Night in their Tabernacles, see Levit. xxiii. 42, and in their Synagogues they have a Citron in their left Hand, and a Branch of a Palm-tree in their right Hand; to which Branch they tye a Bunch of thick Boughs of Myrtle, see Levit. xxiii, 40, and with these Weapons in Hand, they hold both their Hands close together, and whilst the Reader sings the "Howdoo" in the "Hollel," and the "Hoseana," they exercise with the Palm-branch, shaking the Point of it first three times towards the East, then three times towards the South, then three times towards the West, then three times towards the North; then three times towards the Heavens, and last of all, three times towards the Earth; whereby they suppose to chace away all the evil Spirits hovering about the Synagogue to intercept their Prayers, and hinder them from going up to Heaven.

(Chasing evil spirits away has been the business of man since "witches" were invented in the Old Testament. In addition to the Jews, Catholic clergymen "shake" a ritualistic object to "bless" the individual, the automobile, the firemen and police force, or whatever is to be "blessed." The motion of the "magic wand" and use of magical words in Latin create a ring of angels about the object of blessing--a ring so great and strong that "evil spirits" cannot get close (so long as the angels are not caught unawares--which blessings last no longer than one year.) The result is that blessings, like oil, will float constantly "on top," while they last. We have seen exactly the same method of procedure caught by a news-reel movie man in a back-woods settlement in north central Pennsylvania a few years ago, when a man of little or no religious conviction "chased the witches" away from his home (with a wave of his hands and in unintelligable words just like the priest's)--without the benefit of clergy! From whence came his ideas, his methods, and his "power?" The menace which he sought to dissolve, has not returned to his ramshackle mountain hut; for if it had we would have seen it in the papers!--Editor. From "Little Known Facts About the Ritual of the Jews and the Esoteric Folklore of the Pennsylvania-Germans;" published by The Aurand Press, Harrisburg, Pa., 1939).

From these brief evidences of Jewish and Catholic service, whether to bless or chase away, we have every reason to suppose that the backwoodsman (who probably was a "poor Protestant"), had hope in his mind when be deliberately charged in four directions with a distinct "E-yah; E-yah," for each motion, and, to most readers of this account, his "ritual" would have had as much meaning as if they had attended services in a Catholic church or a synagogue.

Are we to suppose, and conclude, that the layman's "prayers" would go unanswered, while the ordained and official servants could actually obtain intercessions? What do you conclude? If this backwoodsman's prayers are of no likely success, what impels you to think that you, or any other person speaking for you, can gain a favorable ear, where prayers are "heard?"

Beliefs of Early Penna. Germans.--Julius Friedrich Sachse, in "The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania," gives an interesting word picture of the early days. In part he says:

Another custom then in vogue among the Germans in Pennsylvania was the wearing of an "anhangsel," a kind of astrological amulet or talisman . . . In rare cases a thin stone or sheet of metal was used in place of parchment. These "anhangsel," or "zauber-zettel" as they were called, were prepared by the Mystics of the Community with certain occult ceremonies at such times as the culmination of a particular star or the conjunction of certain planets . . . (and) supposed to exercise an extraordinary influence over the destiny of the bearer, particularly in averting disease, checking the power of evil spirits, and defending the wearer from malice and all harm . . . hardly an adult or child was to be found without one . . . Frequently a charm of this kind would be placed upon an infant immediately upon its birth, as well as upon a corpse prior to interment . . .