As Holy Scripture forbids us to allow witches to live, many persons have made it a matter of conscience and of religion to be severe in respect to such a crime.  This principle has without doubt made many persons credulous.  How often have purely accidental associations been taken as convincing proofs?  How many innocent people have perished in the flames on the asserted testimony of supernatural circumstances?  I will not say that there are no witches; but ever since the difficulty of convicting them has been recognized in the island, they all seem to have disappeared, as though the evidence of the times gone by had been but an illusion.  This shows the instability of all things here below.

Coming down now to within a century ago, we find an article in the Gazette de Jersey, of Saturday, March 10th, 1787, complaining of the great increase of wizards and witches in the island, as well as of their supposed victims.  The writer says that the scenes then taking place were truly ridiculous, and he details a case that had just occurred at St. Brelade’s as corroborative of his assertion.  It appears that a worthy householder there, had dreamed that a certain wizard appeared to him and ordered him to poison himself at a date which was specified, enjoining him above all things not to mention the incident to anyone.  The poor silly fellow was dreadfully distressed, for he felt convinced that he would have to carry out the disagreeable command.  At the same time he was quite unable to keep so momentous a secret to himself, and so he divulged the approaching tragedy to his wife.  The good woman’s despair was fully equal to his own, and after much anxious domestic counsel they determined to seek the good offices of a White Witch (une Queraude), with the hope that her incantations might overcome the evil spells of the Black Witch who was causing all the mischief.  This White Witch prescribed lengthened fasting and other preparations for the great ordeal, and on a given night she and the bewitched householder, together with his wife and four or five trusty friends with drawn swords, shut themselves up in a room, and commenced their mysterious ceremonial.  There was the boiling of occult herbs; the roasting of a beeve’s heart stuck full of nails and pins; the reading of certain passages from the family Bible; a mighty gesticulating with the swords, which were first thrust up the chimney to prevent the Black Witch from coming down, and anon were pointed earthward to hinder him from rising up; and so the ridiculous game went on.  The only person who benefited was of course the imposter, who was paid for her services; while we may perhaps charitably hope that her dupes also were afterwards easier in their minds.  The writer adds that many other persons besides this man at St. Brelade’s, had latterly believed themselves bewitched, and had consulted wizards, who were thus driving a profitable trade.

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