Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/55
the motions of according him a fair trial before sentence could be legally pronounced and executed.
On Monday, September 19, 1692, Giles Corey was taken to a spot near what was later to be the site of the Howard Street burial ground and Brown Street, Salem, laid on his back, and buried under a great pile of timber and rocks.
Puritan conscience battled Puritan conscience. The firmness of purpose which led the conscientious officers, blinded by the crude superstition they mistook for religion, to torture aged Giles Corey was the same firmness of purpose which made the old man refuse to go through the farce of a trial for a crime he knew to be impossible. It was the same uncompromising spirit which had already wrested a new world from red-skinned men of the woods and would later hold it against red-coated men of the king. Giles Corey suffered for being ahead of his time. He denied the existence of witchcraft in a day when nearly every one firmly believed in a personal devil with horns, hoofs and tail.
When the process of applying pressure commenced. Corey begged theofficers to pile as much weight on as possible, "that his sufferings might the sooner be ended."
Robert Calef, a liberal-minded merchant of Salem, who did all in his power to stem the rising tide of madness during the witchcraft prosecutions. relates a horrifying incident of Giles Corey’s death:
"In pressing, his tongue being pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his cane forced it baek again while he was dying."
Martha Corey was hanged on Gallows Hill, Salem, September 22, 1692, three days after her aged husband suffered the crudest death ever imposed by civilized men on the North American continent.
An old ballad, written in the contemporary style, tells of Giles Corey's death in these quaint words:
Giles Corey was a Wizzard strong,
A stubborn Wretch was he.
And fitt was he to hang on high
Upon ye Locust Tree.
So when before ye Magistrates
For Trial he did come,
He would no true confession make,
But was compleatlie dumbe.
"Giles Corey," sayeth ye Magistrate,
"What hast thou here to plead
To these that now accuse thy Soule
Of crimes and horrid Deed?"
Giles Corey—he sayeth not a Worde,
No single Worde spake he;
"Giles Corey," sayeth ye Magistrate,
"We'll press it out of thee."
They got them then a heavie Beam,
They laid it on his Breast;
They loaded it with heavy Stones,
And hard upon him prest.
"More Weight," now sayed this wretched Man,
"More Weight," again he cryed,
And he would no confession make,
But wickedly he dyed.
The third of Seabury Quinn's true tales of witchcraft, "Rebecca Nurse, Saint of Salem," tells how a Colonial court, in violation of the principle of trial by jury, sent a saintly old woman to the gallows on the testimony of hysterical children. It will appear in WEIRD TALES next month.