Stories of Elizabeth's practice of witchcraft and other black arts
followed her, and despite her attendance at church she fell under
suspicion, and was arrested, and held by the magistrates for trial after
hearing various witnesses. Credulity offers no better illustrations than
those which fell from the lips of some of the witnesses in this case.
_Tuning a psalm--A black thing--A double tongued woman--A doleful
noise--Burning the herbs--The sick child--Gardiner's ox--The dead
ram--Burning "the sow's tale"_
Goodwife Howell, during her illness which hastened Elizabeth's arrest,
"tuned a psalm and screked out several times together very grievously,"
and cried "a witch! a witch! now are you come to torter me because I
spoke two or three words against you," and also said, she saw a black
thing at the beds featte, that Garlick was double-tongued, pinched her
with pins, and stood by the bed ready to tear her in pieces. And William
Russell, in a fit of insomnia or indigestion, before daybreak, "heard a
very doleful noyse on ye backside of ye fire, like ye noyse of a great
stone thrown down among a heap of stones."
Goody Birdsall "declared y't she was in the house of Goody Simons when
Goody Bishop came into the house with ye dockweed and between Goody
Davis and Goody Simons they burned the herbs. Farther, she said y't
formerly dressing flax at Goody Davis's house, Goody Davis saith y't she
had dressed her children in clean linen at the island, and Goody Garlick
came in and said, 'How pretty the child doth look,' and so soon as she
had spoken Goody Garlick said, 'the child is not well, for it groaneth,'
and Goody Davis said her heart did rise, and Goody Davis said, when she
took the child from Goody Garlick, she said she saw death in the face of
it, & her child sickened presently upon it, and lay five daies and 5
nights and never opened the eyes nor dried till it died.
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