Recommended Reading: Witch Child

The first law against witchcraft was in 1542, followed by more laws in 1563 and 1604, putting in place the death penalty for 'invoking evil spirits and using witchcraft, charms or sorcery whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed'.

But how did you prove someone was a witch? Firstly, lots of paranoia and gossip. Strange woman on the edge of the village who never got married and lives on her own? Probably a witch then...!!!

And the proof? Does she float if thrown into a lake with her hands tied? Does she own a pet animal? Does she have a wart of birthmark? Does she confess after being tortured for days on end? If the answer to any of these questions was YES - then no further proof was needed... (Click HERE to read more about witchcraft trials in Great Britain)

Nowadays, there is no such crime as witchcraft in this country, although it was still considered a crime, for example, in Zimbabwe until last year. (Click HERE to read the news article)

Unsurprisingly, witchcraft has inspired lots of powerful literature over the years. Perhaps the most famous is Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. However, in the year 2000, Celia Rees wrote a fantastic novel for teenagers called WITCH CHILD. Here is an excerpt:

Early March 1659

I am a witch. Or so some would call me. 'Spawn of the Devil,' 'Witch child,' they hiss in the street, although I know neither father nor mother. I know only my grandmother, Eliza Nuttall; Mother Nuttall to her neighbors. She brought me up from a baby. If she knew who my parents are, she never told me.

'Daughter of the Erl King and the Elfen Queen, that's who you are.'

We live in a small cottage on the very edge of the forest; Grandmother, me, and her cat and my rabbit. Lived. Live there no more.

Men came and dragged her away. Men in black coats and hats as tall as steeples. They skewered the cat on a pike; they smashed the rabbit's skull by hitting him against the wall. They said that these were not God's creatures but familiars, the Devil himself in disguise. They threw the mess of fur and flesh on to the midden and threatened to do the same to me, to her, if she did not confess her sins to them.

They took her away then.

She was locked in the keep for more than a week. First they 'walked' her, marching her up and down, up and down between them for a day and a night until she could no longer hobble, her feet all bloody and swollen. She would not confess. So they set about to prove she was a witch. They called in a woman, a Witch Pricker, who stabbed my grandmother all over with long pins, probing for the spot that was numb, where no blood ran, the place where the familiars fed. The men watched as the woman did this, and my grandmother was forced to stand before their gloating eyes, a naked old lady, deprived of modesty and dignity, the blood streaming down her withered body, and still she would not confess.

They decided to 'float' her. They had plenty of evidence against her, you see. Plenty. All week folk had been coming to them with accusations. How she had overlooked them, bringing sickness to their livestock and families; how she had used magic, sticking pins in wax figures to bring on affliction; how she had transformed herself and roamed the country for miles around as a great hare and how she did this by the use of ointment made from melted corpse fat. They questioned me, demanding, 'Is this so?' She slept in the bed next to me every night, but how do I know where she went when sleep took her?

It was all lies. Nonsense and lies.