Far away from Charlestown and Boston, where the two women noticed in the preceding pages had their homes and met their fate, Ann Cole was the unconscious mouthpiece through which invisible beings carried on dialogues, partly in languages, or, at least, in tones, which she had never learned. The manifestations through her were no imitations of anything before known on this continent, so far as history shows. Her reputed doings were unlike any for which Massachusetts had hanged two of her daughters.
From whom came the tones, if not the words, of languages which this possessed girl had never learned? From whom came the things put forth through her which “she knew nothing of”? And especially who “improved her tongue to express what was never in her mind”? Any satisfactory explanation of witchcraft must point out distinctly, and must admit the action of some force competent to all such performances; a force controllable and controlled by intelligence. The facts in the case were set forth by a personal witness of many of them, who wrote at a time when he was not under any excitement or hallucination which their novelty might at first produce, but twenty years subsequent to their occurrence, when their recorder should have been, and no doubt was, calm and cautious, and when, too, the girl’s own good character had been confirmed by good Christian deportment through twenty years succeeding the marvels manifested through her organs. If any history is worth reading, Ann Cole’s lips were used by intelligences not her own “to express what never was in her mind.” Either embodied intelligences—the Greensmiths and their associates whose bodies were not present with her—used her vocal organs, as Hutchinson’s account implies that they did, or demons—spirits, as Whiting supposed—spoke through her form.
ELIZABETH KNAP.
At Groton, Mass., in 1671, Elizabeth Knap was more singularly beset than most others of that century who were deemed bewitched. The authority transmitting an account of her is exceptionally good, having been written by Rev. Samuel Willard, minister then at Groton, in the prime and vigor of life. He had graduated at Harvard College twelve years before, afterward became minister at the Old South Church in Boston, and was for several years at the head of Harvard College. The girl in question was his pupil, residing in his family during the earlier portion of her affliction, and was under his watch till its close. His opportunities for observing the case in its rise and progress were certainly very good, and he made a journalistic account of its phases and progress under many specific dates from October 30, 1671, to January 15, 1672, a space of eleven weeks or more. He was an attentive observer and close questioner of the girl, and also a cautious and intelligent chronicler.
She was at first subjected to extraordinary mental moods and violent physical actions, which came on rather gradually, showing themselves in marked singularities of conduct, for which she, when questioned, would give little if any account. Strange, sudden shrieks, strange changes of countenance, appeared first. These were soon followed by the exclamations, “O, my leg!” which she would rub; “O, my breast!” and she would rub that, it seeming to be in pain. Her breath would be stopped. She saw a strange person in the cellar, when her companions there were unable to see any such. She cried out to him, “What cheer, old man?” Afterward came fits, in which she would cry out sometimes, “Money, money!” offered her as inducements to yield obedience; and sometimes, “Sin and misery!” as threats of punishment for refusal to obey the wishes of her strange visitant. She said the devil appeared to her, and that she had seen him at times for three years. He often talked with her, and urged her to make a covenant with him, which she refused to do. November 26, six persons could hardly hold her. The physician, who for about four weeks had considered and treated the malady as a natural one, now pronounced it diabolical. She barked like a dog, bleated like a calf, and seemed at times to be strangled. At length distinct utterances came out. “A grum, low, audible voice” said to Mr. Willard himself, “You are a great rogue—a great rogue;” and yet “her vocal organs did not move.” The voice was replied to as being that of Satan himself, and its author responded, “I am not Satan; I am a pretty black boy; this is my pretty girl; I have been here a great while.” “When he said to me” (Mr. Willard), “O, you black rogue, I do not love you,” I replied, “Through God’s grace I hate thee.” He rejoined, “You had better love me.” The strength shown through the girl, the writer and witness says, “is beyond the force of dissimulation, and the actings of convulsions are quite contrary to these actings.” Through all her sufferings “she did not waste in body or strength.” Speech came from her without motion of the organs of speech. Also “we observed, when the voice spoke, her throat was swelled formidably, at least as big as one’s fist.” She said she “saw more devils than any one there ever saw men in the world.”
No attendant sacrifice of life gave intensification of interest to this Groton case, and it failed to become prominently conspicuous among witchcraft events. Still it is more instructive on some points than almost any other one of them. Here first have we found in colonial history any statement that an intelligence speaking through a borrowed or usurped form disclosed who he was.
Mr. Willard, to whose care this girl was intrusted, and in whose family she had been a resident, was convinced that some other being than the girl herself was giving utterance through her lips, and in harmony with a necessary inference from the general faith of his times, addressed the unknown one under supposition that he was veritably The Devil. The being thus accosted promptly said, “I am not Satan; I am a pretty black boy.”
The girl said she had been accustomed to see her visitant, at times, during three preceding years, and that she saw more devils than any one there ever saw men in the world. Her notions in reference to the proper application of words were obviously just as loose as the prevalent ones in community then, which deemed any spirit visitant whatsoever a devil, or the devil. An observer of such beings as she saw would to-day call them spirits. When she perceived and called out to some personage invisible to her companions, saying, “What cheer, old man?” she plainly indicated that the being thus hailed was apparently neither more nor less than an old man, and he, judged by her address to him, was by no means austere or repulsive; and yet he doubtless was one of those whom she, or whom the reporter of her utterances, was accustomed to call devils. There is no indication that she ever saw one specially huge, malformed, malignant personality, or that she ever intended to indicate perception of such a one.
The purposes and moods of Mr. Willard’s interlocutor seem to have been playful and kindly, rather than morose and satanic. Temporarily reincarnated spirits are often prone to smile at the long-faced and cringing thoughts which their advent evokes in persons not accustomed to interviews with them. “You are a great rogue—a great rogue,” and “you had better love me,” can hardly be deemed ill-timed or inappropriate expressions from a lively boy, whatever his hue, who, on being mistaken for the devil, would naturally banter the sedate clergyman whose creed forced him to regard such a visitant as the Prince of Evil. He said truly, and in better spirit than the minister’s, it would be better for you to love than to “hate” me.