Resumen
Resumen de Relatos de brujas
Para quién es
For readers who love social history, folklore and Victorian writing, and anyone who wants to understand how panic and law combined to turn neighbours into accusers.
De qué trata este libro
Witch Stories is a book of historical essays by the Victorian writer Eliza Lynn Linton, first published in the 1860s. She gathers accounts of witch belief, witch trials and the persecution of the accused in Britain, and she writes as a journalist who wants her readers to see how ordinary people came to hunt their neighbours.
You get a clear picture of how the fear worked: the old folk beliefs, the laws, the court cases and the suffering of those named. Linton writes with a nineteenth century eye, sceptical and often indignant. Let us begin with where the fear came from.
En este resumen
- 1The fear grew from old beliefsFree
- 2Law turned suspicion into execution
- 3Accusers, hunters and the accused
- 4A Victorian looks back
Idea clave 1 de 4
The fear grew from old beliefs
Linton begins with the idea that belief in witches did not appear from nowhere. Across Britain, villagers had long held that some people could harm crops, cattle and children by secret means. Cunning folk, healers and wise women were trusted and feared at the same time. A person who could cure an illness might also be blamed for causing one.
Church teaching gave these village fears a larger frame. Learned writers described witches as servants of the Devil, bound to him by a pact. That turned a quarrel between neighbours into a crime against God. Linton shows how easily the two streams joined, the rural belief in spells and the scholarly belief in a Satanic plot.
For a reader today, the point is that persecution needs both a popular fear and an official explanation. Neither alone would have filled the courts. Linton asks you to notice how reasonable the accusers thought they were, because they were acting on what their world taught them.
That’s 1 of 4 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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