First Years, Lesson Three

"Good morning, everyone," Gabrielle greeted. "No time to waste, get ready to write because this is going to be a big one. Behave yourselves, and we'll go on a field trip after we get through this topic." She turned around and put a header on the board saying 'The Salem Witch Trials', and cleared her throat.

"1692, Salem Village, Massachusetts. Salem is a port town, so you have all sorts of trade coming into the harbour, and a thriving economy. You'd think this would be a great thing, right?" she asked, somewhat rhetorically. "However, as you may well know, there are always those who are resistant to change. So you have on one side the people who are tied to the port economy, making their money in trade and growing the town, and on the other side, you have the Puritans. The Puritans were primarily farmers, very religious - Christianity, naturally, although highly opposed to the Catholic church, even more so than the Church of England was - and set in their ways. They did not approve of the individualism the sea trade was creating. Merlin forbid anyone make money." She paused to take a drink, giving the students a chance to rest their hands.

"The Puritans, meanwhile, were very communal. This was centred around the church, naturally. So in order to solidify the divide between the central business distract and the farmlands, the Puritans established their own parish in the year 1689. This congregation was led by, importantly, the Reverend Samuel Parris, and they began their worship in the Salem Village meeting house. The Reverend Parris is of note especially here because he had a nine year old daughter, Betty, and an orphaned twelve year old niece, Abigail Williams. The Puritans believed that idleness and play were things that could lead to the corrupting influence of Satan," Gabrielle paused, briefly, to let that sink in, "and that the devil could grant the power of witchcraft, which was a great evil, and against the word of the Lord. Feels bad, doesn't it, my little hellspawn?"

It was a pretty heavy lesson, but Gabrielle soldiered on. "These two girls, along with a few others, began to have fits, and the doctor could not find a sign of any ailment. It was therefore believed that the girls had been cursed by witches. Behind the Reverend's back, his slave Tituba and her husband John Indian were ordered to bake a 'witch cake', which would supposedly allow the girls to name their tormentors." Gabrielle cleared her throat. "Now, this is pretty disgusting, but the witch cake was made from rye mixed with the urine of the afflicted, which is then fed to a dog to see if the dog displays symptoms. I'm no healer, but it sounds...pretty dubious. Nevertheless, the girls spoke, and named Tituba, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good of the grievous sin of witchcraft." There was a gentle sarcasm in her tone, despite the heavy nature of the lecture. She at least wanted to deliver it in good humour.

"So these three women, why would they be accused of witchcraft? Well, they were all outsiders. Sarah Osborne was elderly and did not attend church, which was considered sinful. Sarah Good was homeless, and a beggar. She would mutter under her breath if people did not give her alms, possibly cursing. People would attribute her visits to the death of their livestock. And Tituba, of course, was known to the girls. She was a slave from the West Indies," Gabrielle explained, unable to hide a look of distaste at that, despite her better judgement. Of course, she didn't have time to lecture on slavery now. "The low social standing and different race made her a prime target for accusation."

"These women, along with others, were interrogated and branded as witches. They were executed for their alleged crimes, being hanged. Previous witch hunts had burned witches at the stake. Of course, real witches would simply use the flame-freezing charm. Wendelin the Weird was said to have allowed herself to be caught for witchcraft up to forty-seven times just because she liked the sensation of the flames after the use of the charm. Try it yourselves sometime - though maybe don't set each other on fire until you feel confident with the charm." Gabrielle hoped that tidbit lightened the mood a little bit. "But of course, regardless of whether the original accused were witches or not, this dealt a huge blow to relations between the magical and non-magical communities, relations which were already strained. And so, later in 1692, the International Statute of Secrecy was established, and has remained in force ever since." Witch-hunts were still practiced in parts of the world, but Gabrielle didn't need to bog the students down with a depressing fact right now.

Gabrielle stopped to take a drink of water, looking around at the tired faces of the students and giving them a smile. "Sorry, that was pretty long. Don't worry, that's the longest lecture you'll have for a while. For homework, I'd like you to have a bit more of a look in to the witch trials, and write a short essay on the trials or anyone associated with them, if you want to look back to the previous witch hunts please be my guest. Let me know if you're having any trouble." She dismissed the class with a smile, glad that she wouldn't have to give such a lengthy lecture to those poor first years again this year. Unless they started acting up even more. Then she was sure she could come up with something.

Homework
RP the lesson. Extra credit for the assigned essay (1-2 paragraphs, no minimum word count), please list sources.

 

[Mania Athanasiou]

Mania arrived to her History lesson in time and took a seat. She was glad she had glasses because when notes were mentioned the Gryffindor sure hoped their Professor would list things on the board or something as to make their lives a tad easier. She barely held her groan in at the notes though, if writing notes had zero hates Mania Athanasiou would be dead. Nia swallowed at the topic at hand, she was aware of The Salem Witch Trials, not like extremely aware but she knew bits and pieces. Enough to know it wasn't from the lightest end of history.

The lecture started and unlike usually Mania sat kind of frozen in her seat. She stared at the Professor listening, trying to write some notes down but presumably failing. An involuntary laugh left her mouth though at being called 'hellspawn' not the first nor second time she had been called such. As Professor Moncrieffe expanded on the ways they went about discovering who the witches were, Nia all but gagged, poor dogs. A question bubbled at the base of her throat though and she held it down for as long as she could, not wanting to interrupt the lesson.

Eventually it became too much and Nia raised her hand signaling she had a question. "Witch trials? Were they only women that were accused of this crime of witchcraft?" Mania questioned @Professor Gabrielle Moncrieffe, hoping to have some light shed on this question. She truly wanted to know if women were the only targeted ones or if they did consider the possibility of wizards too? In the end to accuse someone of witchcraft is to admit magic is real, so why only limit such crimes to women? As if men were any less capable of it though maybe it was less of a question of being capable of such thing and more of a wanting to blame it on simply women.

 

[Finley Mackintosh Baros]

Lectures, and thus note taking, were not Finley’s favourite parts of classes or well, anything. He found it difficult to listen sometimes, but had been careful to try and be on time for this class better than he had been in the first lesson, when the professor called him out and last semester when he’d been more lost than anything. He just really liked his bed though and tried to stay in it as much as possible. Still, it did all sound quite fascinating and he tried to go over his notes, he didn’t want to miss anything out. He let out a low whistle at the sheer length of the lecture, shaking out his wrist to try and get some feeling back into it. That was a lot, he thought, and despite writing it all down, he wasn’t sure how he was going to remember it all come exams. At least the bit about Wendelin the Weird was kind of funny. He couldn’t imagine wanting to be burned at the stake that much. It really made him think that this was way wizards fear persecution from muggles, and these days, he was sure there were worse ways to go.​

 

[Christa Langley]

This was one of the classes that Christa found it difficult to deal with, apart from the fact that it was about a history she didn’t have a lot of experience with, it was also just a really long class. She wasn’t as used to it as she had a mostly non-traditional education when she was still learning from her parents before she came here. As the lecture wrapped up, Christa stretched her fingers, feeling the cramp coming in. It wasn’t just that the lesson had been long, it was partly also because the quills were unfamiliar and she wasn’t used to using them, a bit like when she had experimented with using chopsticks and it had made her hand cramp for ages when she started. The more she learned about magical history the darker it seemed to get, she hadn’t really learned about anything fun yet, and she wasn’t sure when or if, that would ever happen. Mostly it was about all sorts of persecution in history and she wasn’t sure at what point she was supposed to start being okay with that.​

 

[Huw Carew]

Huw was listening to Professor Moncrieffe, interested in the topic even if it was disturbing in some of its content. He had not taken many notes. He was not worried though, maybe it was his musician ear, but he retained information better by listening than he did reading or writing. He wasn't likely to forget much that had been said today. At the end of the lesson he did write down the homework assignment to refer to later then packed up and left the classroom.