THE AMBER WITCH
by
Wilhelm Meinhold
The most interesting trial for witchcraft ever known. Printed from animperfect manuscript by her father Abraham Schweidler, the pastor ofCoserow, in the Island of Usedom.
Translated from the German by Lady Duff Gordon.
Original publication date: 1846.
PREFACE
In laying before the public this deeply affecting and romantic trial,which I have not without reason called on the title-page the mostinteresting of all trials for witchcraft ever known, I will first givesome account of the history of the manuscript.
At Coserow, in the Island of Usedom, my former cure, the same which washeld by our worthy author some two hundred years ago, there existedunder a seat in the choir of the church a sort of niche, nearly on alevel with the floor. I had, indeed, often seen a heap of variouswritings in this recess; but owing to my short sight, and the darknessof the place, I had taken them for antiquated hymn-books, which werelying about in great numbers. But one day, while I was teaching in thechurch, I looked for a paper mark in the Catechism of one of the boys,which I could not immediately find; and my old sexton, who was pasteighty (and who, although called Appelmann, was thoroughly unlike hisnamesake in our story, being a very worthy, although a most ignorantman), stooped down to the said niche, and took from it a folio volumewhich I had never before observed, out of which he, without the slightesthesitation, tore a strip of paper suited to my purpose, and reached it tome. I immediately seized upon the book, and, after a few minutes' perusal,I know not which was greater, my astonishment or my vexation at thiscostly prize. The manuscript, which was bound in vellum, was not onlydefective both at the beginning and at the end, but several leaves hadeven been torn out here and there in the middle. I scolded the old man asI had never done during the whole course of my life; but he excusedhimself, saying that one of my predecessors had given him the manuscriptfor waste paper, as it had lain about there ever since the memory of man,and he had often been in want of paper to twist round the altar candles,etc. The aged and half-blind pastor had mistaken the folio for oldparochial accounts which could be of no more use to any one.[1]
No sooner had I reached home than I fell to work upon my new acquisition,and after reading a bit here and there with considerable trouble, myinterest was powerfully excited by the contents.
I soon felt the necessity of making myself better acquainted with thenature and conduct of these witch trials, with the proceedings, nay,even with the history of the whole period in which these events occur.But the more I read of these extraordinary stories, the more was Iconfounded; and neither the trivial Beeker (die bezauberte Welt, theenchanted world), nor the more careful Horst (Zauberbibliothek, thelibrary of magic), to which, as well as to several other works on thesame subject, I had flown for information, could resolve my doubts, butrather served to increase them.
Not alone is the demoniacal character, which pervades nearly all thesefearful stories, so deeply marked, as to fill the attentive reader withfeelings of alternate horror and dismay, but the eternal and unchangeablelaws of human feeling and action are often arrested in a manner soviolent and unforeseen, that the understanding is entirely baffled. Forinstance, one of the original trials which a friend of mine, a lawyer,discovered in our province, contains the account of a mother, who, aftershe had suffered the torture, and received the holy Sacrament, and wason the point of going to