The next morning
Grace Pett was found burnt to a cinder, except her feet. Her fate is
recorded in the _Philosophical Transactions_ as a case of spontaneous
combustion."[755]
[In burning the bewitched animal you burn the witch herself.]
This last anecdote is instructive, if perhaps not strictly authentic. It
shows that in burning alive one of a bewitched flock or herd what you
really do is to burn the witch, who is either actually incarnate in the
animal or perhaps more probably stands in a relation of sympathy with it
so close as almost to amount to identity. Hence if you burn the creature
to ashes, you utterly destroy the witch and thereby save the whole of
the rest of the flock or herd from her abominable machinations; whereas
if you only partially burn the animal, allowing some parts of it to
escape the flames, the witch is only half-baked, and her power for
mischief may be hardly, if at all, impaired by the grilling. We can now
see that in such matters half-measures are useless. To kill the animal
first and burn it afterwards is a weak compromise, dictated no doubt by
a well-meant but utterly mistaken kindness; it is like shutting the
stable-door when the steed is stolen, for obviously by leaving the
animal's, and therefore the witch's, body nearly intact at the moment of
death, it allows her soul to escape and return safe and sound to her own
human body, which all the time is probably lying quietly at home in bed.
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