'Swimming a witch' and other medieval tortures
Poor witches. They have a long history of being punished and persecuted. And yet witch-hunting might even be described as an art -- or craft -- when you consider the many means used to exterminate them.
A few remedies have stood the test of time, however. Here's a short list of tried-and-true methods for removal, just in case:
"Swimming the witch"
Everybody knows witches and water don't mix -- remember what happened to the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz"?
But where does the expression "swimming the witch" come from?
During medieval times, a popular way to test a person's witch quotient was to tie up and weigh down the accused (usually a woman) and throw her into a body of water.
If she drowned, she was innocent. If she floated, she was a witch -- and then could ritualistically be punished for surviving.
"Swimming the witch" may have been inspired by the baptism tradition that anoints believers into a faith. The idea is that water accepts a willing Christian (hence, the drowning -- and thanks for nothing, we say) but rejects the evil embodied in a witch (sparing her to be punished by mortals).
Burning a witch
In the 15th- and 16th-century witch trials of Europe, burning witches at the stake was so popular the era became known as the Burning Times.
Bonfire, anyone?
Stoning a witch
If drowning and burning weren't options, then stoning was certainly a good backup. This popular punishment goes back to biblical times, when a stoning often came about spontaneously with an angry mob descending on the suspected witch.
Cursing a witch
Beat her at her own game. A witch-hunting strategy in some countries, such as Tudor England, went like this: Collect items from a witch's artillery -- special herbs, human hair, needles -- then stuff them in a bottle and bury it under your hearth or in the walls of your home. If a witch comes too close to your homemade talisman, she'll lose her power and die -- in some cases by explosion.
