SUPERSTITION AND CRIME. 211 



found that the lad had done nothing worthy of blame, but that his 

 only fault was an exceptionally large head. This cranial peculiarity, 

 offensively conspicuous in what seems to have been a narrow-headed 

 family, was reason enough for the parents to disown their offspring, 

 and to treat him as the counterfeit of a child foisted in by the fairies. 

 At Hadersleben, a considerable market town of North Silesia, the 

 wife of a farmer, in 1883, gave birth to a puny infant, which the 

 parents at once assumed to be a changeling. In order to defeat the 

 evil designs of the elves and to compel the restoration of their own 

 child, they held the newborn over a bed of live coals on the hearth 

 until it was covered with blisters and died in intense agony. In East 

 Prussia, the Mazurs, a Polish race, whose only notable contribution to 

 modern civilization and the gayety of nations is the mazurka, take pre- 

 cautionary measures by placing a book (usually the Bible, although 

 any book will do) under the head of the newborn babe, so as to pre- 

 vent the devil from spiriting it away and substituting for it one of 

 his own hellish brood, thus unwittingly furnishing a marvelous illus- 

 tration of the beneficent influence of the printing press and the 

 magic power of literature. The Estnian inhabitants of the island of 

 Oesel in Livonia refrain from kindling a fire in the house while the 

 rite of baptism is being celebrated, lest the light of the flames should 

 render it easier for Satan surreptitiously to exchange an imp for the 

 infant. After the sacred ceremony has been performed there is sup- 

 posed to be no danger of such a substitution. 



One of the most incredible instances of this extremely silly and 

 surprisingly persistent superstition occurred in 1871 at Biskunizy, a 

 village of Prussian Posen, where a laborer, named Bekker, had by 

 industry and frugality gradually acquired a competence and been 

 able to buy a house of his own, in which he led a happy domestic 

 life with his wife and five children, of whom he was very fond. 

 After fourteen years of unbroken felicity the wife's elder sister, 

 Marianne Chernyak, came from Poland to pay them a visit. This 

 woman was a crackbrained devotee, who spent half her time in going 

 to mass and the other half in backbiting her neighbors. She also 

 claimed that she could detect at once whether a person is in league 

 with Satan, and could cast out devils. The villagers came to look 

 upon her as a witch, and avoided all association with her, especially 

 as her aberrations manifested themselves in exceedingly malevolent 

 and mischievous forms. Unfortunately, she acquired complete 

 ascendency over her younger sister, who accepted her absurd pre- 

 tensions as real. On November 19, 1871, Marianne, after return- 

 ing from confession, went to bed, but at midnight Mrs. Bekker, who 

 slept with her youngest child, a boy about a year old, was awakened 

 by a fearful shriek and lit the lamp. Thereupon the sister rushed 



