Word: devilment
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Devil in the Flesh. France's latest cinematinee idol, Gérard Philipe, in a story of young love gone wrong (TIME, March...
...DEVIL IN MASSACHUSETTS (310 pp.) -Marion L. Starkey-Knopf...
...girls. In a stern Puritan community that shunned amusement, Tituba's stealthy demonstrations of West Indian voodoo could be wonderfully thrilling. But to children like Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail the shows also brought spasms of guilt, for they were convinced they were trafficking with the devil...
...Torments You?" Once the devil's hand was suspected, a group of ministers-in-conclave queried the girls: "Who torments you?" At first, they did not know. Only after a dish of "witch cake" (a blend of rye meal and the sufferers' urine baked in ashes) was fed to a dog, were their tongues loosened. Betty Parris named Tituba; the others also accused a village tramp and a matron who did not attend church regularly...
...Massachusetts magistrates sent to Salem Village for preliminary examinations faced a difficult problem: what constituted evidence of witchcraft? The Bible mentioned it in the same breath with sodomy and idolatry, but neglected to define it. After due deliberation the magistrates declared that a devil's "teat" or "devil's mark" on the body of the accused was proof of guilt, that mischief following anger between neighbors was ground for suspicion, and, most important of all, that "the devil could not assume the shape of an innocent person." This last meant that hallucinations would be accepted not as evidence...