XLII.—Concerning the bewitching of a Child in Ireland.
At Antrim, in Ireland, a girl of ninteen years of age, inferior to none in the place for beauty, education, and birth, innocently eat a leaf of sorrel, which she got from a witch, after she had given the begging witch bread and beer at the door: it was scarcely swallowed by her, but she began to be tortured in her bowels, to tremble all over, and even was convulsive; and, in fine to swoon away, as dead. The doctors used remedies on the 9th of May 1698, at which time it happened, but to no purpose. The child continued in a most terrible paroxysm: Whereupon they sent for a minister, who scarce had laid his hand on her, when she was turned by the demon, in the most dreadful shapes. She began first to roll herself about, then to vomit horse-dung, needles, pins, hairs, feathers, bottoms of thread, pieces of glass, window-nails, nails drawn out of a cart or coach wheel, an iron-knife, above a span long, eggs, and fish shells. And when the wretch (I should have said the witch) came near the place, or looked to the house, though at the distance of 200 paces from the house where the child was, she was in worse torment, insomuch, that no life was expected for the child, till the witch was removed to some greater distance.——This Witch was apprehended, condemned, strangled, and burnt; and was desired to undo the incantation, immediately before strangling; but said she could not, by reason others had done against her likewise: But the wretch confessed the same, with many more. The child was about the middle of September thereafter, carried to a gentleman’s house, where there were many other things happened scarce credible, but that several ministers, and the gentleman, have attested the same. The relation is to be seen in a pamphlet printed 1699, entitled, “The bewitching of a child in Ireland.”