Thar Be Witches, and Us | Hacker News Reader

Thar Be Witches, and Us

nytimes.com

21 pointsVigier15 comments

Some called it out at the time. Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie of Witchcraft” is quite readable today: skeptical, detailed, charitable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discoverie_of_Witchcraft

> The intensity of the panic rose and fell more than once over these 200 years [..] It’s unclear how many were executed. The interactive map includes data on the deaths of 123 people. Other sources estimate 300 to 2,000.

So an upper estimate of 10 deaths per year - hardly an "extensive craze".

Isn't that a significantly higher number than the Salem witch craze, which was (1) much more tightly geographically focused and (2) one of the signal historical events of the era? We teach the Salem Witch Trials to children in elementary school; this is the first I'd heard of the Scottish witch craze.

It's a higher number, but it's over a much larger area and time-span - all of Scotland, and 200 years. So it's expected there would be more cases.

> this is the first I'd heard of the Scottish witch craze.

That's not surprising - compared to everything else going on at the time, this seems worth little more than a footnote. During the same period, over 1 million people were enslaved in the course of the Barbary slave trade alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

> it's over a much larger area and time-span - all of Scotland, and 200 years. So it's expected there would be more cases.

You're half right and half badly wrong. 10 deaths per year being a higher number is less surprising when you consider that the statistic covers a wider area. It's much more surprising if the statistic covers a huge span of time! You expect the rate to go back to something normal, not to maintain itself at severely elevated levels for 200 straight years.

The Salem Witch Trials being one of the signal historical events of the era is a judgment, not a fact. In 100 years what are considered the events worth teaching in classes about colonial British North America will be different.

In 100 years what are considered the events worth teaching in classes about colonial British North America will be different.

That seems like much more of an opinion than the actual fact of the abiding fascination with the Salem Witch Trials over the last couple of hundred years.

Overview of witchcraft cases in Scotland from the Scottish Witchcraft Project, more detail than the linked article: http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/Research/witches/introduction.html

http://archive.is/ipAln

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Nice try with the witches/contemporary leftist pet causes switcharoo. The fallacy is strong with this one.

It’s the New York Times. I’m pretty sure they don’t allow a piece to be published unless it does that.

And right in the prev paragraph: "But historical erasure poses a greater threat"

The NTY only likes free speech when they need it for something. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19719241

edit: broken Hitchens YT link: jyoOfRog1EM -> https://youtu.be/olefVguutfo

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21367020? You've been posting like that, in fact, for months. We ban accounts that post that way.

HN is not a place for ideological battle or religious flamewar. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended, we'd be grateful. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

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