in passing. The pamphlets were written of course by
credulous people who easily accepted what was told them and whose own
powers of observation were untrained. To get at the facts behind their
marvellous accounts demands the greatest care and discrimination. Not
only must the miraculous be ruled out, but the prejudices of the
observer must be taken into account. Did the pamphleteer himself hear
and see what he recorded, or was his account at second hand? Did he
write soon after the events, when they were fresh in his memory? Does
his narrative seem to be that of a painstaking, careful man or
otherwise? These are questions to be answered. In many instances,
however, the pamphlets were not narrative in form, but were merely
abstracts of the court proceedings and testimony. In this case, too,
care must be taken in using them, for the testimony damaging to the
accused was likely to be accented, while the evidence on the other side,
if not suppressed, was not emphasized. In general, however, these
records of depositions are sources whose residuum of fact it is not
difficult to discover. Both in this and in the narrative material the
most valuable points may be gleaned from the incidental references and
statements. The writer has made much use of this incidental matter. The
position of the witch in her community, the real ground of the feeling
against her upon the part of her neighbors, the way in which the alarm
spread, the processes used to elicit confession--inferences of this
sort may, the writer believes, be often made with a good deal of
confidence. We have taken for granted that the pamphlets possess a
substratum of truth. This may not always be the case. The pamphleteer
was writing to sell. A fictitious narrative of witchcraft or of a witch
trial was almost as likely to sell as a true narrative. More than once
in the history of witch literature absolutely imaginary stories were
foisted upon the public. It is necessary to be constantly on guard
against this type of pamphlet. Fortunately nine-tenths of the witch
accounts are corroborated from other sources. The absence of such
corroboration does not mean that an account should be barred out, but
that it should be subjected to the methods of historical criticism, and
that it should be used cautiously even if it pass that test. Happily for
us, the plan of making a witch story to order does not seem to have
occurred to the Elizabethan pamphleteers. So far as we know, all the