Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/18

8 witch of Askantee or Congo or the Australian bush. It exhibits the primitive and universal creed of the whole human race, preserved without the contamination of culture or education, and surviving every religious vicissitude, to the beginning of the seventeenth century, in one of the most enlightened countries in the world. Incidentally, it was quite enough to send Michael Trevisard to the scaffold if he came to trial and the jury believed Alice's story. Finally, nobody was to blame. The responsibility lay not upon the jurists or the theologians or the neighborhood: it was the burden of the human race as a whole.

An equally distressing case was that of Joan Baddaford. Alice Trevisard, it appears, had fallen out with John Baddaford, Joan's husband, and had "said unto him that he should go to Pursever Wood and gather up his wits". The precise meaning of this railing speech escapes me, but I fancy it was equivalent to calling John a scatter-brained fool. The phrase reminds one, though perhaps whimsically, of Pandar's contemptuous "Yea, hazelwood!" in Chaucer's Troilus. We may also adduce, tentatively, the common saying " Your wits are gone wool-gathering ". It was manifestly possible, if the sequel should warrant, to interpret Alice's jeering words as a threat that John should lose his mind. The sequel did so warrant.

In like manner, as we learn from Potts's Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, John Bulcock and his mother Joan were indicted, in 1612,

But we must return to the testimony of Joan Baddaford.

On the occasion of the same quarrel, Joan averred, Alice Trevisard had "further threatened this examinate that within seven years after she should not be worth a groat, nor have- a house to dwell in, nor a coat to her back". And these threats came true, for "whereas she had at that time the fee simple of an house worth one hundreth pounds, now is she worth nothing".