SUPERSTITION AND CRIME. 219 



1577 a man was put to the rack in Bamberg, North Bavaria, for 

 murdering and disemboweling three pregnant women. In the 

 seventeenth century a band of robbers, whose chief was known as 

 " King Daniel," created intense consternation among the inhabit- 

 ants of Ermeland in East Prussia. For a long time these free- 

 booters roved and spoiled with impunity, but were finally arrested 

 and executed. They confessed that they had killed fourteen women, 

 but, as the unborn infants proved to be female, their hearts were 

 devoid of talismanic virtue. Indeed, they attributed their capture 

 to this unfortunate and unforseeable circumstance, and posed as per- 

 sons worthy of commiseration on account of their ill luck. One of 

 the strangest features of this cruel and incredible superstition is its 

 persistency in an age of superior enlightenment. Dr. Gross records 

 two cases of comparatively recent occurrence in the very centers 

 of modern civilization: one in 1879, near Hamburg, where a woman, 

 great with child, was killed and cut open by a Swede named Ander- 

 sen, and another of like character ten years later in Simmering, near 

 Vienna. 



An ordeal very commonly practiced in the middle ages to deter- 

 mine the guilt or innocence of any one accused of theft was to give 

 him a piece of consecrated cheese, which, if he were guilty, it would 

 be impossible for him to swallow. Hence arose the popular phrase, 

 " It sticks in his throat." Thus Macbeth says, after he had " done 



the deed " : 



" But wherefore could not I pronounce amen ? 

 I had most need of blessing, and amen 

 Stuck in my throat." 



Wuttke states that this custom still prevails in the Prussian prov- 

 ince of Brandenburg, where a person suspected of larceny is made to 

 swallow a piece of Dutch cheese on which certain magical letters 

 and signs are scratched. His failure to do so is regarded as con- 

 clusive evidence of his guilt. Various other means of making in- 

 quest for the detection of crime are in vogue, some of them merely 

 silly, and others mercilessly savage. Thus a mirror is laid for three 

 successive nights in the grave of a dead man. It is placed there in 

 the name of God, and taken out in the name of Satan. It is believed 

 that by looking into such a mirror the person of the thief can be 

 clearly seen. A bull belonging to a peasant not far from Perm, on 

 the Kama, died suddenly. The owner declared that the death of the 

 animal was due to witchcraft, and demanded that all the women of the 

 village should be made to creep through a horse collar in order to 

 discover the hag who had wrought the mischief. This plan was ap- 

 proved by his neighbors, and, although their wives protested against 

 being subjected to the degrading and for corpulent women extremely 



