Word: witches
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week an Indian boy walked into the Victoria Times office, left a scrawled-over sheet of brown wrapping paper, then scurried away. Said his unsigned note: "On Congo River-the witch doctors' law -all small boats have rope on keels-for his men to hold on to when boats upset on rapids. White men do not never learn...
...hearing (if we hear anything at all) is something of far less dramatic import-a sort of airborne Agony Column, with a dash of the Court Circular thrown in: 'Will M'Bongo please return from the yampatch. All is forgiven . . .' 'Is there a witch doctor in the kraal?' 'The chief's brother-in-law, a person of the noblest character, will arrive tomorrow...
After the local doctor had tried his few remedies on the girls ("physics" made no difference), he weightily declared that "The evil hand is on them." With these chilling words the witch-hunt began...
...debonair, Freudianized study of the Salem witch trials, Marion L. Starkey analyzes the maidenly affliction as hysteria. She sees the girls as partly possessed and partly calculating, weighed down by the rigors of Calvinism, depressed by the lack of an outlet for their high spirits, and finding in their seizures a way both to draw attention to themselves and to wreak an incredibly malicious revenge on the adult world...
...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...