MDMD & "she turned me into a Newt"

[Terrance]

Speaker Of The House Gingritch said to his Mom, "The First Lady is a
Bitch, she's a bitch, she's a bitch! 

Mom asked, "How do you know she's a  B-I-T-C-H ?" 

In Scotland also witch-finding became a trade. They were
known under the designation of "common prickers...

These common prickers became at last so numerous, that they were
considered nuisances. 
In the year 1716, a woman and her daughter, - the latter only nine years
of age, -- were hanged at Huntingdon for selling their souls to the
devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a
lather of soap. This appears to have been the last judicial execution in
England. From that time to the year 1736, the populace raised at
intervals the old cry, and more than once endangered the lives of poor
women by dragging them through ponds on  suspicion; but the philosophy
of those who, from their
position, sooner or later give the tone to the opinions and morals of
the poor, was silently working a cure for the evil. The fear of witches
ceased to be epidemic, and
became individual, lingering only in minds lettered by inveterate
prejudice or brutalizing superstition. In the year 1736, the penal
statute of James I. was finally
blotted from the statutebook, and suffered no longer to disgrace the
advancing telligence of the country. Pretenders to witchcraft,
fortune-tellers, conjurors, and
all their train, were liable only to the common punishment of rogues and
impostors -- imprisonment and the pillory. 

In Scotland, the delusion also assumed the same phases, and was
gradually extinguished in the light of civilization.


Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds

By Charles Mackay

Heywhatayaknow it's online! 


http://www.litrix.com/madraven/madne015.htm