31 October: Witches

Witches. Associated with Halloween, generally believed to be evil, ugly old women who are usually burned at the stake. These 10 facts will show you much of it isn't actually true.

1. We don't actually know the origins of the word, “witch”. A likely candidate is the Old English word wicce, which means “female sorceress,” the same root whch gives us the name of the modern day belief system of Wicca. Or it could come from the Old English wigle, meaning “divination” ord wih, meaning “idol,” or the Proto-Germanic word wikkjaz, meaning “necromancer,” or “one who wakes the dead.”
2. A person need not be a woman, old, or ugly to be a witch. Men practiced witchcraft too, although they may be referred to as wizards, warlocks or sorcerers. People put to death for witchcraft in the olden days included both men and women and even children. During the Trier Witch Trials in Germany, from 1581 to 1593, the 368 people executed included leading men such as judges, priests, and deans of colleges.
3. Burning at the stake was actually a very rare punishment for witchcraft and not even legal in Britain or the American colonies. Most of them were hanged, which as well as being a legal means of execution was a lot less hassle than building a big bonfire. Hangings were much more cost-effective and efficient if you had a lot of witches to get rid of.
4. People got quite hysterical about witchcraft in the 15^th century, thanks in part to theological books about it, such as the Malleus Maleficarum written by two clergyman of the Dominican Order—Jakob Sprenger, the dean of the University of Cologne, and Heinrich Kramer, a theology professor at the University of Salzburg. James I of England got in on the act too by writing his own book on the subject and presiding personally over witch trials.
5. Exodus 22:18, “You shall not permit a sorceress to live,” and Leviticus 20:27, “a man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” was all the excuse people needed to persecute hundreds of people, most of whom were guilty of no more than using herbal remedies or disagreeing with local politicians. Since very little evidence was needed to convict someone as a witch, it would have been easy to get anyone you didn't like, for whatever reason, put to death. You could say they appeared in your Dreams, for example, used magic to steal your partner or put a curse on someone who was ill. A “witches mark” was a common piece of evidence which meant people with extra nipples or even moles or scars could be convicted for no other reason. Another incentive was that the Witchfinder General and his assistants in the 17^th century would be paid £5 (a lot of money in them days!) for every witch they caught.
6. Technically, England’s Witchcraft Act of 1735 was in effect until 1951. As recently as 1944, a woman named Jane Rebecca Yorke was found guilty under the law. However, what Yorke was actually doing was fraud – holding bogus séances. In fact, when the witchcraft law went, it was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. However, laws against witchcraft are very much alive in other countries, like Saudi Arabia, where witchcraft is still punishable by death.
7. A common image of a witch is a woman mixing up dubious ingredients like “eye of Frog and toe of Bat” in a cauldron. Such names for spell ingredients were probably code names for common herbs used to make natural remedies, written down that way to stop others from stealing your recipe.
8. Another thing a witch might be doing is flying around on a broomstick. That idea is thought to originate from pagan rituals in which participants would rub herbal ointments containing hallucinogens on themselves and on a staff which they would “ride.” The hallucinogens would induce the sensation of floating as if they were actually flying.
9. While we may associate witches with Halloween, it isn't the only time of year a witch, or indeed, a modern day Wiccan, celebrates. May Day (Beltane), Midsummer and even (in Sweden) Easter are witch party days, too.
10. Only one of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth has a name – Hecate, after the Greek goddess of witchcraft.

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Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

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