WitchCraft
You've got red hair?
Have a black cat? Are a woman? Know something about herbs? Have ever helped
out someone sick?
Well, then you're lucky that you live in this century. Back then, they would
have hanged or done worse things to you for any of those reasons. You were
a witch, in any case - if your neighbour/servant/child/ husband/anyone else
said so, then that's what you were, and you wouldn't have lived much longer.
And if you deny being a witch - well, you're a woman; you're as good as guilty
anyway.
Cutting someone's guts open
I did mention that it
all looks very realistic, didn't I. Yes. Well.
This is a way of torturing someone. I don't know what purpose it might have
to torture someone by tearing someone's guts out. You're pretty much dead
by then, and the torture won't affect you anymore anyway.
But sometimes people didn't die on the spot when this was done, and I don't
want to imagine the agony of going through that. No thanks.
An ordinary man's death
That didn't do it for
you? Hanging, boiling, chopping to bits, gut-spilling didn't do the trick?
Not good enough for you?
Well, then you could always go and get yourself killed in one of the many
little bar brawls, rebellions, throne succession wars, etc... Plenty of
opportunities there, I can tell you.
This poor guy got speared and stuck to a cart. He's probably still alive,
and trying to get the spear out, but I doubt he'll stay alive for long.
And I don't even want to start guessing what that thing next to him on the
cart is.
While we're on the subject - I read somewhere once that one way of doing this was cutting open one's stomach, taking out the intestines, wrapping them around a stick, and then letting the person attacehd to it run around the stick until all the intestines are out. Nice. *retch*
Anyway, this next one is Boiling
Imagine being boiled
to death? Well, no thanks, really. I don't even want to think of it. I like
soup, but not if I'm the main ingredient.
Apparently, this one was a quite common practice. And so was hanging people
head downwards off the ceiling, and then cutting their throats and bleeding
them out.
The Meat Market
Let's say you're a very
successful torturer or executioner, and you'renot very happy with the way
you're payed. How can you get make some more money?
Gather all the limbs you cut off your prisoners, and sell them on the market!!!
A guaranteed way to success!
People began to believe that they could get penance from their sins by buying
or selling their own or other people's limbs. I don't know what they promised
themselves for having their head cut off voluntarily, but evidently that worked
as much as buying a witches head and hanging it over your front door. And
why not??!
