Colonial Horrors

by Graeme Davis

  You are a liar! said she to a man who called her a witch to her teeth, and would have persuaded her to confess and live. You are a liar, as God is my judge, Mike! I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and you know it Mike, though you be so glib at prayer; and if you take away my life, I tell you now that you and yours, and the people here, and the judges and the elders who are now thirsting for my blood shall rue the work of this day, forever and ever, in sackcloth and ashes; and I tell you further as Elizabeth Hutchinson told you. Ah ha! . . . . how do you like the sound of that name, Judges? You begin to be afraid I see; you are all quiet enough now! . . . . But I say to you nevertheless, and I say to you here, even here, with my last breath, as Mary Dyer said to you with her last breath, and as poor Elizabeth Hutchinson said to you with hers, if you take away my life, the wrath of God shall pursue you!—you and yours!—forever and ever! Ye are wise men that I see, and mighty in faith, and ye should be able with such faith to make the deep boil like a pot, as they swore to you I did, to remove mountains, yea to shake the whole earth by a word—mighty in faith or how could you have swallowed the story of that knife-blade, or the story of the sheet? Very wise are you, and holy and fixed in your faith, or how could you have borne with the speech of that bold man, who appeared to you in court, and stood face to face before you when you believed him to be afar off, or lying at the bottom of the sea, and would not suffer you to take away the life even of such a poor unhappy old creature as I am, without reproving you as if he had authority from the Judge of judges and the King of kings to stay you in your faith!

  Poor soul but I do pity thee! whispered a man who stood near with a coiled rope in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. It was the high-sheriff.

  Her eyes filled and her voice faltered for the first time, when she heard this, and she put forth her hand with a smile, and assisted him in preparing the rope, saying as the cart stopped under the large beam. Poor soul indeed!—You are too soft-hearted for your office, and of the two, you are more to be pitied than the poor old woman you are a-going to choke.

  Mighty in faith she continued, as the high-sheriff drew forth a watch and held it up for her to see that she had but a few moments to live. I address myself to you, ye Judges of Israel! and to you ye teachers of truth! Believe ye that a mortal woman of my age, with a tope about her neck, hath power to prophesy? If ye do, give ear to my speech and remember my words. For death, ye shall have death! For blood, ye shall have blood—blood on the earth! Blood in the sky! blood in the waters! Ye shall drink blood and breathe blood, you and yours, for the work of this day!

  Woman, woman! we pray thee to forbear! cried a voice from afar off.

  I shall not forbear, Cotton Mather—it is your voice that I hear. But for you and such as you, miserable men that ye are, we should now be happy and at peace one with another. I shall not forbear—why should I? What have I done that I may not speak to the few that love me before we are parted by death?

  Be prepared woman—if you will die, for the clock is about to strike said another voice.

  Be prepared, sayest thou? William Phips, for I know the sound of thy voice top thou hard-hearted miserable man! Be prepared, sayest thou? Behold—stretching forth her arms to the sky, and lifting herself up and speaking so that she was heard of the people on the house-tops afar off, Lo! I am ready! Be ye also ready, for now!—now!—even while I speak to you, he is preparing to reward both my accusers and my judges—

  He!—who!

  Who, brother Joseph? said somebody in the crowd.

  Why the Father of lies to be sure! what a question for you to ask, after having been of the jury!

  Thou scoffer!—

  Paul! Paul, beware!—

  Hark—what’s that! Lord have mercy upon us!

  The Lord have mercy upon us! cried the people, giving way on every side, without knowing why, and looking toward the high-sea, and holding their breath.

  Pho, pho, said the scoffer, a grey-haired man who stood leaning over his crutch with eyes full of pity and sorrow, pho, pho, the noise that you hear is only the noise of the tide.

  Nay, nay. Elder Smith, nay, nay, said an associate of the speaker. If it is only the noise of the tide, why have we not heard it before? and why do we not hear it now? just now, when the witch is about to be—

  True . . . true . . . it may not be the Evil one, after all.

  The Evil one, Joe Libby! No, no! it is God himself, our Father above! cried the witch, with a loud voice, waving her arms upward, and fixing her eye upon a group of two or three individuals who stood aloof, decorated with the badges of authority. Our Father above, I say! The Governor of governors, and the Judge of judges! . . . The cart began to move here . . . He will reward you for the work of this day! He will refresh you with blood for it! and you too Jerry Pope, and you too Micajah Noyes, and you too Job Smith, and you . . . and you . . . and you . . .

  Yea of a truth! cried a woman who stood apart from the people with her hands locked and her eyes fixed upon the chief-judge. It was Rachel Dyer, the grandchild of Mary Dyer. Yea of a truth I for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that spilleth his brother’s blood, or taketh his sister’s life by the law—and her speech was followed by a shriek from every hill-top and every house-top, and from every tree and every rock within sight of the place, and the cart moved away, and the body of the poor old creature swung to and fro in the convulsions of death.

  MOLL PITCHER

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  1832

  Born in 1807, John Greenleaf Whittier was one of the “Fireside Poets,” a group whose membership included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the father of the famous American jurist. The first American poets to rival the popularity of British writers like Tennyson, the Fireside Poets received their name from the fact that their works were read and recited at firesides throughout the country. Their works were unashamedly American in character, often featuring reformist themes.

  A Quaker from Massachusetts, Whittier campaigned against slavery and was the editor of a Boston temperance weekly. He was one of the founding contributors to Atlantic Monthly magazine (now The Atlantic magazine). He is best known for his long narrative poem Snow-Bound, in which a New England family, snowbound for a week in their home, tell each other stories to while away the time. Several of his poems have been turned into hymns, including “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.”

  Whittier wrote the nine-hundred-line Moll Pitcher early in his career. Moll (not to be confused with the Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher, who was probably fictional) was a real woman who lived near Lynn, Massachusetts. Probably born around 1736, she died in 1813. She was well-known as a clairvoyant and fortune-teller, but Whittier, perhaps inspired by the image of New England witches that developed after the Salem witch trials, paints her in an altogether darker light.

  Moll Pitcher was not Whittier’s only foray into the realm of the supernatural, though it remains the longest. The previous year he had written “The Weird Gathering,” inspired by Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witches, and in 1867 he rendered a Rhode Island ghost story into verse as “The Palatine.”

  PART I

  Ha, ha—ha, ha—ha, ha!—

  The old witch laughed outright

  Ha, ha—ha, ha—ha, ha!—

  That cold and dismal night.

  The wind was blowing from the sea

  as raw and chill as wind might be—

  Driving the waves, as if their master

  Towards the black shore, fast and faster,—

  Tossing their foam against the rocks

  Which scowl along yon island’s verge,

  And shake their gray and mossy locks

  Secure above the warring surge.

  Keen blew the wind, and cold,

  The moon shone dim and faintly forth,

  Between the gray cloud’s parting fold,

  As if it sickened of the earth,

  So very pale and ghastly lay

 
Its broken light along the bay,

  Silvering the fisher’s stealing skiff—

  Or whitening o’er the jagged cliff,

  Or resting on the homes of men,

  As if its awful sheen had been

  A white funeral shroud outspread

  By some kind spirit o’er the dead;

  And, now and then, a wan star burned.

  Where’er its cloudy veil was rended—

  A moment’s light, but seen and ended,

  As if some angel from on high

  Had fixed on earth his brilliant eye,

  And back to Heaven his glances turned!

  She stood upon a bare, tall crag,

  Which overlooked her ragged cot—

  A wasted, gray and meagre hag,

  In features evil as her lot.

  She had the crooked nose of a witch,

  And a crooked back and chin,

  And in her gait she had a hitch,

  And in her hand she carried a switch,

  To aid her work of sin,

  A twig of wizard-hazle, which

  Had grown beside a haunted ditch,

  Where a mother her nameless child had thrown

  To the running water and merciless stone.

  Who’s coming up the winding path,

  Worn faintly in the mossy rock?—

  Enveloped in its ample cloak

  The form a woman’s semblance hath.

  Why laughs the witch to see her come

  So stealthily towards her home?

  Knows she that dim shape thus afar,

  When scarce one shorn and shadowed star,

  With its faint line of wizard light

  Crosses the shadow of the night?

  Long laughed the witch—and then she spoke,

  And echo answered from the rock,

  As if some wild and evil elf

  Within its caverns dared to mock

  Her strange communion with herself.

  “And so,” she cried, “she’s come at last,—

  The oak will kneel before the blast,

  And wherefore should the sapling frail

  Bend its light form against the gale?

  The heart is strong—but passion stronger

  And love than human pride is longer—

  And ill may woman’s weakness scorn

  What manhood’s strength hath hardly borne!

  I know her tread—’tis haughty yet,

  As if she could not all forget

  Her early scorn of me and mine.

  Ay. let her come!—the early spell,

  Which binds her heart so sweetly well,

  Shall serpent-like around it twine!

  I know the charm—I know the word,

  Which, powerless as the snake-charmed bird,

  Shall bind her with its fearful tone—

  Her cherished thoughts shall all be heard,

  Her secret hopes shall all be known.

  Again she laughed as down the crag

  She swung her meagre skeleton—

  No fears for thee, thou hateful hag—

  The Devil keeps his own!

  “Walk in, walk in my pretty maid

  This night is fitting for my trade!”

  “Ha, mother Moll—’tis well—I’ve come,

  Like other fools to know my doom.”

  The twain passed in—a low dark room

  With here and there a crazy chair,

  A broken glass—a dusty loom—

  A spinning-wheel—a birchen broom,

  The witch’s courier of the air—

  As potent as that steed of wings

  On which the Meccan prophet rode

  Above the wreck of meaner things

  Unto the Houri’s bright abode.

  A low dull fire by flashes shone

  Across the gray and cold hearth-stone

  Flinging at times a trembling glare

  On the low roof and timbers bare.

  How has New England’s romance fled,

  Even as a vision of the morning!

  Its rites foregone—its guardians dead—

  Its altar-fires extinguished—

  Its priestesses, bereft of dread,

  Waking the veriest urchin’s scorning!

  No more along the shadowy glen,

  Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men,—

  No more the unquiet church-yard dead,

  Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,

  Startling the traveller, late and lone;

  As, on some night of cloudy weather,

  They commune silently together.

  Each sitting on his own head-stone!

  The roofless house, decayed, deserted,

  Its living tenants all departed,

  No longer rings with midnight revel

  Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;

  No hellish flame sends out its flashes

  Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!—

  The witch-grass round the hazle spring,

  May sharply to the night air sing,

  But there no more shall withered hags

  Refresh at ease, their broomstick nags;

  Or taste those hazle-shadowed waters

  As beverage meet for Satan’s daughters;

  No more their mimic tones be heard—

  The mew of cat—the chirp of bird,

  Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter

  Of the fell demon following after!

  The cautious good man nails no more

  A horse shoe on his outer door,

  Lest some unseemly hag should fit

  To his own mouth her bridle bit—

  The good wife’s churn no more refuses

  Its wonted culinary uses,

  Until with heated needle burned

  The witch has to her place returned!

  Our witches are no longer old

  And wrinkled beldames, Satan sold,

  But young and gay and laughing creatures,

  With the heart’s sunshine on their features—

  Their sorcery—the light which dances

  Where the raised lid unveils its glances;

  Or the low breathed and gentle tone

  Faintly responding unto ours,

  Soft, dream-like, as a fairy’s moan

  Above its nightly closing flowers!

  Sweeter than that which sighed of yore,

  Along the charmed Ausonian shore!

  Even she, our own weired heroine,

  Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn—

  Despite her fortune telling sin,

  Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;

  And the wide realm of sorcery,

  Left, by its latest mistress, free,

  Hath found no gray and skilled invader

  So perished Albion’s “glammarye,”

  With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,

  His charmed torch beside his knee

  That even the dead himself might see

  The magic scroll within his keeping.

  And hence our modern Yankee sees

  Nor omens, spells nor mysteries;

  And nought above, below, around,

  Of life or death, of sight or sound,

  Whate’er its nature, form or look.

  Excites his terror or surprise—

  All seeming to his knowing eyes

  Familiar as his “catechize,”

  Or, “Webster’s Spelling Book.”

  But to our tale.—In contrast strange,

  Within the fire-light’s fading range

  The stranger stands in maiden pride,

  By that mysterious woman’s side.

  The cloak hath fallen from her shoulder

  Revealing such a form as steals

  Away the heart of the beholder

  As, all unconsciously it kneels

  Before the beauty which had shone

  Ere this upon its dreams alone.

  If you have seen a summer star,

  L
iquidly soft and faintly far,

  Beaming a smiling glance on earth

  As if it watched the flowret’s birth,

  Then have you seen a light less fair

  Than that young maiden’s glances were.

  Dark fell her tresses—you have seen

  A rent cloud tossing in the air,

  And, showing the pure sky between

  Its floating fragments here and there—

  Then may you fancy faintly, how

  The falling tress—the ring-like curl

  Disclosed or shadowed o’er the brow

  And neck of that fair girl.

  Her cheek was delicately thin,

  And through its pure, transparent white

  The rose-hue wandered out and in,

  As you have seen th’ inconstant light

  Flush o’er the Northern sky of night—

  Her playful lip was gently full,

  Soft curving to the graceful chin,

  And colored like the fruit which glows

  Upon the sunned pomegranite boughs;—

  And oh, her soft, low voice might lull

  The spirit to a dream of bliss,

  As if the voices sweet and bland

  Which murmur in the seraph land

  Were warbling in a world like this!

  Out spoke the witch—“I know full well,

  Why thou has sought my humble cot—

  Come sit thee down—the tale I tell

  May not be soon forgot.”

  She threw her pale blue cloak aside,

  And stirred the whitening embers up,

  And long and curiously she eyed

  The figures of her mystic cup—

  And low she muttered, while the light

  Gave to her lips a ghastlier white,

  And her sunk eye’s unearthly glaring

  Seemed like the taper’s latest flaring:

  “Dark hair—eyes black—a goodly form—

  A maiden weeping—wild dark sea—

  A tall ship tossing in the storm—

  A black wreck floating—where is he?

  Give me the hand—how soft and warm

  And fair its tapering fingers seem—

  And who that sees it now would dream

  That winter’s snow would seem less chill