AMBER WITCH;

The most interesting Trial for Witchcraft ever known.

EDITED FROM A DEFECTIVE MANUSCRIPT OF HER FATHER, ABRAHAM SCHWEIDLER,

PASTOR O F COSEROW, IN USEDO M.

BY

W. MEINHOLD,

DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, AND PASTOR, ETC.

"Ordinary minds make every thing in the trials of witchcraft to be the work of imagination. But he who has read many such trials finds that impossible."-JEAN PAUL.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,

BY

E. A. FRIEDLENDER,

LONDON:

H. G. CLARKE AND CO., 66, OLD BAILEY

1844.

PREFACE.

IN submitting to the public this deeply affecting and very romantic trial of witchcraft, which in the foregoing title-page, I have probably not unjustly called "the most interesting hitherto known," I offer in the first place, the following account respecting the history of the manuscript.

In Coserow, upon the Island Usedom, in my former parish and the same, over which upwards of two hundred years ago our venerable author presided, there was under the singers' seat of the parish church, and almost level with the ground, a sort of niche or closet, in this I had often seen a number of written papers lying about, which on account of my short-sightedness, and the darkness of the place, I took for old hymnbooks. One day however, when engaged in instructing the children at the church, I was seeking for a

paper-mark in the catechism of one of the boys, and not being able to find it immediately, my old Sexton, more than eighty years of age, (who was called Appelmann, but altogether unlike his namesake in our biography, and although poor was yet a very excellent man), went under the choir and returned with a folio book, which I had never seen before, and out of which he without any more ado, tore a strip of paper and handed it to me. I immediately laid hold of the book, and I cannot say whether after a few minutes I was more astonished or provoked at the treasure I had found. This manuscript bound in pig's-leather was not only defective at the beginning and at the end, but, I am sorry to say, there were also in the middle here and there some leaves torn out. I gave the old man such a sound talking to, as I had never done before; but he excused himself by saying that one of my predecessors had given him the manuscript for waste paper, as it had been lying about since time immemorial, and that he had often been at a loss for a little paper to wrap round the altar tapers, etc. The gray headed half-blind pastor must have taken it for old church. accounts, which were of course no longer of any use.*

Scarcely arrived at home I set about deciphering

* In the original a few accounts in fact occur which at first sight might very easily lead to this error, and the nandwriting

my new found treasure, and after I had with much difficulty read through the book, I was powerfully excited by the matters recorded therein.

I soon felt the want of more light respecting the nature and circumstances of these trials for witchcraft, and indeed respecting the whole period, in which such proceedings took place. But the more I read of these truly astonishing histories, the more I became lost in amazement, and neither the trivial Beeker (Die bezauberte Welt, the enchanted world), nor the more cautious Horst (Zauber-bibliothek; magic-library) and other works of the kind to which I had referred, were able to relieve my embarrassment but only served to increase it.

There runs not merely so deep a demoniac feature through most of these shuddering histories as fills the attentive reader with horror and dismay; but even the eternal and unchangeable laws which govern our feelings and actions, are also frequently interrupted in such a violent manner as to bring the understanding in the proper sense of the word to a stand still; as for instance, in one of the original trials, which a legal friend in our province had picked up, the relation is found, that a mother, after she had already endured the rack, par

moreover is very difficult to read, and in several parts turned quite yellow and rotten.