Witch Trial in 1930

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 928, 22 March 1930, Page 5

Witch Trial in 1930

Charge in Mecklenburg Court A HAMLET HARD HIT The year 1930, too, is to have its witch trial. The case is being heard in a Mecklenburg court. The witch operated for some time in a little Mecklenburg village on the Baltic Sea. All sorts of hard J luck hit the hamlet and its country- | side. The curse was especially virulent 1 among the bovine population, a proper 1 characteristic in any good household of a witch curse. Numerous cows ; died for no discoverable reason—dis- j coverable to the peasant owners, at least. The only explanation was the j presence of a certain strange, sinister j woman in their midst who had always been suspected of occult practises. So the more aggressive of the peasants took counsel together and engaged the services of a widelyknown hexenmeister wizard to drive out the witch. His countercurse was so terrifying tnat the expectant peasants scattered in great fright, not waiting to see whether the witch would flee. But she did flee, with satisfactory precipitateness before the withering exorcism, as the peasants learned later. So they were pleased—until some head a little sharper and less medieval than the rest discovered evidence that the wizard and the witch, instead of being enemies engaged iu a deadly occult feud, had really been in cahoots all the time. That the sinister witch, in fact, had from the beginning been paid by the wizard to play the part. Hence the present trial. Calling lit a witch trial is perhaps a bit ! strong. It is really just a commonplace case of fraud.