Note 24 — BOOK III.
Reading edition
The Dunbar witches were famous in East, as the Borrowstounness witches were in West, Lothian. It is, however, among the melancholy and unaccountable problems in the history of the human mind, that persons of excellent understanding were implicated in these and similar horrid transactions. In England, even Judge Hale condemned two. Had the witches, or wizards, been tried for operating upon the fears and the superstitions of their country folk, as the Africans in the West Indies and on their own coasts operate on the fears and superstitions of each other by the obi, bitter water, and other really noxious practices, their persecution might have been proper, and their punishment just; but, dancing reels with Satan, and flying through the air upon broomsticks, were accusations so truly ridiculous, that, how they came to be ever gravely listened to, is passing strange. Dr Hutchinson says, “the word witch, in old English, according to Dr More, signifies a wise woman; in the vulgar Latin, it is venefica, a poisoner.” Hist. Essay on Witchcraft, p. 183.