Trial by Apple －林檎による審理－

You believe you have found a witch, but you cannot be completely sure. 

Perhaps your crops have failed.  Perhaps an ugly wart has grown on your face.  You think that the old woman living at the edge of town is putting curses on you.  Whatever the reason for your suspicions, you need a way to test whether that old woman is a witch or not. 

So here is what you do: 

You tie the woman’s hands behind her back and throw her into a river.  If she somehow manages to float to the surface, then she must be a witch.  How else could she have escaped but with the Devil’s assistance?  Burn her! 

If, instead, she sinks to the bottom then she was not a witch after all.  Good for her.  She is probably dead, but at least her soul is now in heaven. 

This trial by water was really used in 16^th and 17^th century Europe to find witches.  It seems pretty unfair on the suspect, who either drowned or was burned to death at the stake. 

To remember this awful trial, at Halloween we play a game with children called ducking for apples.  We float some apples in a bucket of water.  Without using their hands, the children have to put their face into the bucket and pick an apple out with their teeth.  I did it this year with my son.  Last year he couldn’t do it without help.  This year he succeeded at last.  I knew it – he is a witch!

 

Vocabulary:

crops – plants or vegetables grown by farmers

a wart – a small, hard growth on the skin, caused by a virus