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Bibliographical notes on the witchcraft literature of Scotland
Bibliographical notes on the witchcraft literature of Scotland Author:John Ferguson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: to the student, whether he be an antiquary, a folk.loreist, a historian, a psychologist, a physiologist, or a physician. It is impossible, indeed, to disjoin the... more » two kinds of interest. A student desirous of becoming acquainted with the subject has no alternative but to examine the original literature, and to do so he must either visit some large library, not always readily accessible, or he must turn collector himself and bring the books together. If he does not do one or other he cannot read ; few of the original books and pamphlets have appeared in easily acquired reprints, and there are, in this country at least, hardly any modern works in which the subject is dealt with in a scientific as well as in a historic manner, and there are no general guides to the literature, no bibliographies or catalogues similar to Grasse's.1 § 4. Perusal of what modern histories there are will give the reader a notion of the main characteristics of the supposed crime of witchcraft, and with some of the proceedings at the witch trials ; but however vividly narrated these be, it is most difficult to comprehend from them how the belief in witchcraft prevailed, and how it produced such direful results alike to the accusers and the accused. In perusing a modern history in which detail is often necessarily omitted, and in which the grotesque and ridiculous aspect of the narratives is apt to appeal more strongly to the writer, and to be by him more effectively pourtrayed, than the ignorant and savagely cruel elements, one is inclined to view it all as a romance, and to doubt whether it was possible for the whole of Europe to have run mad on this subject some three centuries ago. But one has only to turn to the original documents to be convinced of the existence of the witch mania. In a pamphlet or boo...« less