ABSTRACT
What can be said to explain the accusations and the trial for witchcraft of Amy Denny and Rose Cullender? Attempts to interpret witchcraft, like attempts to explain most complex historical phenomena, face formidable hurdles. The more general the roster of causes put forward, the less likely they are to have specific predictive value. It seems to be true, for instance, that outbursts of witchcraft prosecutions were associated with unsettled political and social conditions, but there has been an almost endless array of such conditions in places where no attention was paid to the possibility of witchcraft. Other explanations also falter when looked at in a cross-cultural context. Misogyny clearly seems to play a role in much of the world’s witchcraft, but why is it that in some places, such as Iceland and Finland, men rather than women overwhelmingly bore the brunt of witchcraft charges?1 While broad-based studies of witchcraft can cite political, social, and psychological irregularities that seem to be associated with the presence of prosecutions, case studies, such as ours, can merely affirm that in one particular instance the forces said to be at work generally did or did not prevail. At the same time, a case study can offer rich detail by being able to focus on aspects of the situation that tend to be overwhelmed or camouflaged in inquiries which summarize a great number of episodes over a longer period of time.
