Cats paws in a 15th Century Manuscript.
Time's Echo by Pamela Hartshorne
York 1577 Elisabethan time, mainly women are tortured, burned, drowned or hung as witches. Hebalists who were able to help and ease certain diseases were also victims. They have been accused to be witches and casting evil spells for which they have faced trials and have been condemned to death.,
How horrible and sickening have these trials been, accused and executed by
moral panic and mass hysteria.
Cats and dogs which were kept as pets, were accused to be a familar of the accused witch and were also destroyed.
In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits (sometimes referred to simply as "familiars" or "animal guides") were supernatural entities believed to assist witches in their practice of magic
This story has got a twist to it, it weaves from the present to the past.
Chapter One
I feel no fear, not yet......I am somehow suspended between the sky and the water....between disbelief and horror. It is All Hallows Eve, and I am going to die...now I struggle as horror clogs my mind, but my thumb is tied to my toe and I can't swim, even if I knew how.
The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In the Kingdom of Great Britain. Witchcraft ceased to be an act punishable by law with the Witchcraft Act of 1735. In Germany, sorcery remained punishable by law into the late 18th century. Contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Papua New Guinea. Official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon.
