Salem Witch

I swear before this court of reverend fathers, everything I say be true and as clean as Eve’s netherparts before she fell from grace, as free from varnish as raw silver ore, before it be melted in the fire that is as hot as the Devil’s crucible and turned into ornaments for vain and wicked people.

I swear that I be a witch, the Devil’s own, that I have made a contract with the beast of the underworld to my own damnation, that I do freely repent of this, and throw myself on the mercy and justice of those who know better than I.

Among my many exploits, I have made an aquarium of Hugh Clough’s fireplace, and cause a multitude of sparking gold and blue jellyfish to hover there, before the astonished eyes of his household, as proof of my powers.

I also swear that I did maliciously affright Pettifor Able as she was playing in front of her house. Though she be but of mean and small years, speaking with a lisping tongue, yet she did rightly testify, in the innocence of her years, that I did transform myself into a bright blue hog and chase her about the garden patch, and, whilst she escaped and ran to tell her mother, yet I did change myself back into the form of a woman in my usual form, so that as the two of them ran back out to their front door, all they did spy was me walking along the stone bridge just to the east of their home, and yet I did pretend ignorance and amazement when they told me the story, each interrupting the other.

Yet, according to my whims, and too various in time to recount, did I inflict upon various people, at various times, illnesses such as smallpox. Some of them did sicken and die from my curses. Sometimes I cursed with my eyes, sometimes with chants and spells, and, supposing the person to be absent from my sight and the power of my voice, did I use dolls dressed in the manner of the person, and to these dolls did I subject any manner of abuses.

Indeed, you say truly, reverend fathers of this court,court, did indeed have a familiar. This was my black cat, Harvey, and he did me any number of useful services. However, this was only under the powers of my enchantment, and so, having been removed from my power, he will now return to being a common household cat, of harm to nobody, and I ask this one thing, that the court view him as such, spare him any trouble, and possibly from time to time leave out a bowl of milk near my former home, which I despair of seeing again, yet which I know he will sit and wait for my return.

I admit to brewing beer for sale in the public market, placing myself in commercial competition with men and women of low repute who offered similar wares, and I confess that this interest in wealth and advancement I now understand, after instruction from these reverend fathers, to be the product of malicious supernatural meddling, and a diseased imagination.

I admit that I did perch myself upon my broom with my arthritic animal familiar Harvey, and we did fly to the very moon and stars. I was lost in the dizzying heights and blasted with the night air, yet lost in a rush of febrile excitement. And yet then, I did fall, and with a start,from the very front lawn of the heavens, where I had climbed on my bewitched household branch, yet I did tumble, and through the air I did fall, I did fall.