The Penguin Book of Witches (31 page)

3
.
The Salem episode took place before the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian in the English Atlantic world in 1752. The Gregorian system was a Catholic reform, and Protestant nations hesitated to adopt a papal scheme. Under the Julian system the new year began on March 25, which means that dates for the first three months of the year are often denoted as they are here, with a slash.

4
.
Abbreviation for “masters.”

5
.
Thomas Putnam was a wealthy landowner in Salem Village, father of afflicted girl Ann Putnam Jr. and husband of afflicted woman Ann Putnam Sr. Edward was his brother. Bother and Nissenbaum identify Thomas Putnam as being at the center of the affiliation group of powerful village men who were on the side of Samuel Parris, the beleaguered minister in town. See Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).

6
.
Elizabeth Parris was about nine years old, the daughter of village minister Samuel Parris, and the first girl who was “afflicted.” Abigail Williams, rather than being the nubile seventeen-year-old minx of Arthur Miller’s fevered imagination, was a kinswoman of Parris’s (she is often described as his niece, though such a term had more general use in the seventeenth century), eleven years old, and working as a servant in the Parris household. Elizabeth Hubbard, however, was seventeen and an indentured servant of Dr. William Griggs, the man whom most historians agree was the first to diagnose the girls as being under an evil hand rather than suffering from a physical disease. See Mary Beth Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare
(New York: Knopf, 2003), 22.

WARRANT FOR THE APPREHENSION OF SARAH OSBURN AND TITUBA, AND OFFICER’S RETURN, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1692

1
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ecca.xml.

2
.
Tituba’s ethnicity has been the subject of much debate and analysis, particularly given that since the advent of Arthur Miller she has morphed from being “an Indian woman,” as she was described in the primary sources, to a woman commonly represented as African American in popular culture. Marion Starkey further racializes Tituba by alluding to her (entirely made up) expertise in “voodoo.” See Marion Starkey,
The Devil in Massachusetts
(New York: Knopf, 1949), 30. In some respects Tituba’s constantly changing physiognomy is a perfect approximation for the use of Salem as a prism through which historians view their own times.

3
.
Masters.

4
.
Sarah Osburn was about forty-nine when the witch trials began. Alexander was her second husband, and her marriage had scandalized her community, as he was a young servant whose indenture she had purchased. See Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare
, 22.

5
.
Elizabeth Hubbard.

6
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Sarah Good was imprisoned overnight at the constable’s house. Watchers reported the following morning that she had disappeared from the room for a time “both bare foot and bare legde,” and so was thought to have sent her spirit out in the night to accost the afflicted girls. See Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare,
29.

EXAMINATIONS OF SARAH GOOD, SARAH OSBURN, AND TITUBA, TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1692

1
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ec ca/medium/ecca1011r.jpg.

2
.
Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare
, 27.

3
.
A common belief about witchcraft involved the use of spirit familiars to do evil works. Accounts vary as to whether the familiars are devilish imps that attend on the witch, or whether the witch is able to transform herself into the form of an animal; examples of both metamorphoses appear in the historical record. In either case, the question of craft and technique remains at the center of early modern assumptions about how witchcraft works.

4
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Sarah Good was a beggar. Good would have approached the parsonage hoping to be given something to eat for herself and her child, but in a culture that examined every turn of personal fortune for signs of God’s approval or disfavor, begging for sustenance would have been shameful not only from an economic standpoint but from a social one. Good received something for her child and went away with thanks—but her thanks may not have been sincere, or the Parrises may have found her thanks insufficiently humble for their taste.

5
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The afflicted girls are asked to identify if it is Sarah Good who is hurting them, and they identify her not only by sight, but by acting out their torments for the benefit of the onlookers.

6
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So far Sarah Good’s crime is one of attitude rather than commission. She is pressed to explain her muttering when she goes away from someone’s house, but this time instead of claiming she was saying thanks, she dismisses the question by saying she was speaking her commandments, or a psalm. It is tempting to regard this answer as the Puritan equivalent of “it’s none of your business.”

7
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Worshipful.

8
.
Hathorne.

9
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In 1710, William Good would file for restitution for the death of his wife, but in this instance he appears as a witness against her, again with complaints of her attitude toward him. If she isn’t a witch yet, he fears she will “be one very quickly.”

10
.
Sarah Osburn posits that the Devil might be doing harm in her shape, but if so it’s nothing to do with her.

11
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The children are all saying that they know Sarah Osburn and that they recognize her clothes.

12
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“A thing like an Indian all black”—this example supports Mary Beth Norton’s persuasive thesis that much of the volatility of the social world that coalesced in the Salem panic can be attributed to lingering fears connected to the Indian wars along the Maine frontier. The slippage of language used to describe Indians with that used to describe the Devil, together with the recognition that Puritan New Englanders would have regarded any unconverted people as devilish apostates, suggests a tangling of these concepts in the Salem Village mind. See Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare,
58–59.

13
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A signal element of Osburn’s suspicion is that she has not been present at church services for over a year. Parris was an unpopular minister, and Bother and Nissenbaum point out that a faction of villagers preferred to travel to Salem Town for meeting rather than stay in the village. In neighboring Marblehead, more villagers skipped church than not. But in the village, skipping out on meeting was sufficient to draw suspicion, particularly from a minister who felt as beleaguered as Samuel Parris.

14
.
OED, 1901, defines “ken” as an archaic word meaning “to (be able to) distinguish (one person or thing
from
another).”

15
.
Tituba and the two Sarahs were initially imprisoned in Boston rather than in Salem Town.

16
.
Original document reads “hure,” which could be either “her” or “here,” depending on the accent.

17
.
In the transitional handwriting of this time period distinguishing a “c” from an “r” can be difficult. Most transcriptions agree that Tituba is talking about having seen cats of various colors, rather than rats.

18
.
Ann Putnam Jr.

19
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Lieutenant.

20
.
To “ride upon sticks” (either branches or brooms) shows up frequently in woodcuts and other descriptions of witches flying in the medieval and early modern period. It is an example of witchly behavior drawn from the English tradition rather than the African, yet another error of attribution in later characterizations of Tituba as practicing Caribbean magic.

21
.
Tituba says that a wolf was set upon Elizabeth Hubbard, and upon hearing that suggestion, members of the audience agree that yes, sure enough, Elizabeth Hubbard complained yesterday of a wolf. The spectacle feeds upon itself.

22
.
A man in black clothes, as distinct from “a black man.” Norton points out the differences between attribution of whether the blackness refers to raiment, to skin, or possibly to moral character. The black clothes and white hair in this instance could suggest Samuel Parris or any number of powerful Puritan men.

TWO EXAMINATIONS OF TITUBA, AS RECORDED BY JONATHAN CORWIN

1
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/NYPL/LARGE/NYPL03A.jpg.

2
.
A lentoe is a lean-to, the term for a low-ceilinged add-on room, commonly used to enlarge living space in early North American houses. The lean-to often became the kitchen or storage area. See David Freeman Hawke,
Everyday Life in Early America
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 53.

3
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Earlier Tituba had only identified two other witches, but now her account has raised the number to four.

4
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At this point Tituba suggests that the witch conspiracy extends beyond the bounds of Salem Village, for the other people she does not recognize, coming as they do from Boston. Tituba actually lived in Boston with Samuel Parris before his household moved to the village parsonage, so her reference to that town comes as no surprise.

5
.
The yellow bird appears frequently in Tituba’s account, often offered as a present or as part of a selection of “pretty things.” Though the usual interpretation of the yellow bird is as another incarnation of the devilish spirit familiar, traditions in early and mid-eighteenth-century American portraiture use delicate animal pets, such as hummingbirds and squirrels, to denote refinement in the portrait sitter. It’s possible that the “yellow bird” is a goldfinch or canary, and a coveted class signifier, though such an interpretation is difficult to prove.

6
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Mr. Griggs’s maid is Elizabeth Hubbard, the eldest so far of the afflicted girls.

7
.
The testimony shifts between first and third person. This passage describes Tituba saying that Sarah Good came to her while Samuel Parris was praying and would not let Tituba hear the prayers.

8
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Marion Starkey and her “slave voodoo” assertion would have done well to review this testimony. Though Tituba is being figured as other in the course of this testimony, as someone who belongs to another country, Tituba is confessing here to practicing English witchcraft, which she learned only upon her arrival in New England.

9
.
The Proctors, John and Elizabeth, lionized in
The Crucible
, whose servant Mary Warren would shortly join the ranks of the afflicted, and who later would be accused themselves.

10
.
Another shift in point of view as Jonathan Corwin slips into his own voice to describe the behavior of the afflicted girls while Tituba is talking. Tituba is asked who is hurting them, and she accuses Sarah Good, which the children confirm.

11
.
Transcribed from an image of the original document in the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/NYPL/ LARGE/NYPL04A.jpg.

12
.
The two examinations taken down by Jonathan Corwin occur one day apart. The first will strike a reader as largely similar, with only a few shifts in descriptive detail, to the foregoing account by court reporter Ezekiel Cheever. Many of the examinations were recorded simultaneously by different people, usually Cheever or Samuel Parris himself. The difference between the two examinations transcribed by Corwin will at first appear subtle, but on closer examination the substance of Tituba’s confession, and the opening that it creates for a conspiracy, will become clear. Jonathan Corwin’s house is still standing, and is operated as a museum in Salem. Called the Witch House, even though no accused witches lived there, Corwin’s house is the only extant physical structure in modern-day Salem with a legitimate tie to the witch trials.

13
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Tituba’s seeming pining for fine things is a poignant detail. One is reminded of Reginald Scot’s complaint that too many of the people accused as witches, whom one would expect to have bartered away their souls in exchange for fine things and ease from labor, are instead impoverished people with nothing to show for their supposed diabolical covenant.