Identifier: oldfarmerhisalma00kittuoft (find matches)
Title: The old farmer and his almanack : being some observations on life and manners in New England a hundred years ago suggested by reading the earlier numbers of Mr. Robert B. Thomas's Farmer's Almanack, together with extracts curious, instructive and entertaining as well as a variety of miscellaneous matter
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Kittredge, George Lyman, 1860-1941 Thomas, Robert Bailey, 1766-1846
Subjects: Thomas, Robert Bailey, 1766-1846 Almanacs, American -- New England New England -- Social life and customs
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ry, who had been read-ing Mathers Magnalia, wrote to his friend Hazard in termsof humorous good sense: — Were I to preach on the subject of witchcraft, I would havethis for my text: O foolish Galatians ! who hath bewitched you ? I would first endeavour to show that people may be bewitched;secondly, that they are great fools for being bewitched; and,thirdly, that it concerns them to enquire who has bewitched them ;and my inference should be, if there were no fools, there would beno witchcraft; or rather I would transpose the second and thirdheads. The same inference would come out better.1 It should not be forgotten that, even in the eighteenthcentury, few persons were absolutely convinced that witch-craft was an impossible crime. Enlightened opinion hardlywent farther, in general, than to ridicule the absurdity ofmost witchcraft stories, to emphasize the ignorance ofthose who held to the old popular creed in this regard, 1 Belknap Papers, Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, 5th Series, III, 205.
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THE TOAD AND THE SPIDER III and to refuse belief to this or that specific case of diaboli-cal possession. An out-and-out denial of the theoreticalpossibility of witchcraft was quite a different matter. Mostpeople were inclined to think that there had been witches in old times, — at all events, in Bible times ; and no-body felt quite sure when compacts with the devil hadbecome obsolete. Rationalism itself often turned pale atspecific phenomena, as indeed it sometimes does to-day. Reckless denouncers of New England for the witchcraftdelusion of the seventeenth century forget many things — ornever knew them. The wonder is, not that such an out-break should have taken place, but that it should havecome to an end so soon. The attack was as short as itwas sharp; and its sharpness was by no means extraordi-nary when compared with the violence with which thedisorder raged in other parts of the world. Few personshave the time or the inclination to explore the gloomyliterature of demonology

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