For a control-freak like myself, I think one of the biggest problems with the life of a historical romance heroine would be the lack of choice and corresponding lack of control. Oh, you might get to choose what to wear and exercise control over the dinner menu, but you’d have very little choice in matters such as where you’d live and who you’d live with. And sleep with. An educated woman of even minor gentility could not choose a career to support herself. Even if she had scads of money (I’m sure there’s a more fitting period term, but you get the idea) she was still expected to make an appropriate marriage so her husband could manage that money. If she had little fortune, she had to marry it. Her only other choice would be to serve as a companion or governess, or to live with a family member or lover—all choices that involve dependence on a man. As a female, there was virtually no hope of being independent. Even a woman of means generally needed to marry to be fully accepted into society—and then her husband would control her money.

Now I do think that I am happy living in co-dependence with my husband. But in the back of my mind, I always have the knowledge that I have supported myself before and could do so again if necessary. To live in a society that offered no such option would be terrifying. So why do I like to read about it?

Is it the same kind of thrill I get from riding a roller coaster? After all, if I was speeding down a real mountain in a real runaway mine car, I don’t think I would find it nearly as entertaining.

Or do I conveniently ignore the lack of choice while I’m reading and fantasizing, just as I ignore the lack of indoor plumbing and central heat?

Since it is the lack of choice that creates so much of the drama in these stories, I guess I can’t say I ignore it. So it must be the thrill of escaping danger—in this case, the probable danger of an unhappy living situation.

Since the heroine in these books never settles happily ever after into a life teaching someone else’s children, the story must be about finding a loving husband despite near impossible odds. Think how much difficulty we have making relationships work in the modern era, where, thanks to the internet, the virtual pool of virtual mates is virtually limitless. By contrast, the Regency heroine gets to meet only: (1) the gentlemen in her neighborhood, (2) the rakes and boobies she dances with during her disappointing first season, and (3) the random dashing hero that crosses her path on page three when she’s given up hope of ever finding a man to capture her fancy. What are the odds that her marriage will end up happy?

Well, this is fiction, so the odds are a lot better than they were in real life.

So, like the ride on the Disney version of a runaway mine train, readers of historical romance get to experience a hint of danger with a safe ending that likely would not have happened had the experience been genuine.

I’m sure I could turn this roller coaster analogy into a strange reality show if I thought about it long enough. But now I’m wondering why this genre appeals to people who don’t necessarily like either roller coaster or wacky analogies. What do you think?

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THE WINNER!

Thanks to those who joined the discussion about the level of sluttiness for romance heroines! The winner of the Valentine Giveaway Hop (as selected by a random number generator) is Mayra Calvani. She wins her choice of any of my books. I had a lot of fun with this event so I’m sure I will join in another one soon. I need another excuse to use the random number generator again!

This is a traditional Regency with absolutely no sex, but you'd never know it from all the groping hands on the cover

Now let’s consider the story in similar settings, popular Regency-set historical romances, which take place during the same time period, between 1790 and 1820. But these stories are written by 21st Century authors for 21st Century audience. In public, the conventions remain the same—if anything, those in the more recently-written stories are more rigid. The heroine must not be alone with a man or she could be “ruined.” If she is caught alone with a man, particularly in a compromising position, friends will force them to marry. Many plots hinge on this convention, whether it truly existed or not. A heroine must behave in public.

But in private, she’s expected to be something of a nymphomaniac, obsessed with the tightness of the hero’s breeches (really they would be pantaloons but that just doesn’t sound heroic). Even though Miss Ladylike and Lord Dashing detest one another and cannot possibly marry, by Chapter Five they still end up having sex (a) on the desk of the hero’s study (b) in the carriage on the way to visit indigent tenants (c) in the bedroom that one has mistakenly walked into thinking it was the butler’s pantry or (d) all of the above.

Heroines in today’s novels are expected to have a strong virtuous streak that is overcome by an even stronger sex drive (and really, when the reader gets the description of the hero, who can blame her?) So what has happened? Have women really changed that much in the last 200 years? Or is it our ideal of a heroine that has changed?

To my mind, human nature really hasn’t altered over time and that’s why I find the study of history so interesting. Social conventions evolve all the time so humans have to channel their needs, urges, desires into different outlets, and that is fascinating to observe. I don’t think most women are or have ever been totally chaste angelic creatures or devil-may-care sexual mavens wielding unstoppable power from the bedroom (or that desk in the study). The truth lies somewhere in between. But I suppose the truth is not much fun to read about . We want to place ourselves in the position of a heroine we can admire. It just so happens that what we as a society choose to admire seems to have changed.

I thought the whole brouhaha over the kiss on the hand in Camilla was a bit much. But really I would rather read Francis Burney or Jane Austen’s books than those of most modern authors. I think my husband would rather have it the other way around. However, he needs to face facts: (a) Our minivan doesn’t have as much room as a carriage, (b) he doesn’t even have a study with a desk in it, and (c) really, would he want to wear 19th Century pantaloons? I think not.

But what do you think? About the depiction of heroines, I mean, not my husband in pantaloons. Do you think modern fictional heroines are over the top or right in line with human nature? After all, I’ve been on the fringe before, so if I’m completely wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. Let me know what you think!

READING ROMANCES ROMANCING THE VALENTINE GIVEAWAY HOP!

As part of this week’s Valentine giveaway, I’m giving away a copy of any of my ebooks, winner’s choice. To enter, all you have to do is either leave a comment on this blog or send a message to email@katedolan.com. And follow the link below to many more Valentine Giveaways! Have fun!

Thanks for reading!

And it wasn’t easy to find them, even though I know they’re out there. Oh I found books, just not many I wanted.

There were all sorts of subscription services that would alert me to free books–for a fee. Um, if I wanted to spend lots of money, I wouldn’t be looking for cheap books. So I said “no” to that idea.

Three of my own books are being offered for sale at 99₵, and frankly, I wish they all were. The goal for me is not to see how much money I can make per book, but to get books into as many people’s hands as possible. Some of those people will, hopefully, like my stories.

It is the publisher’s decision, not mine, to price books, and the ones that are more expensive are not necessarily any better. In other words, my 99₵ books are as good as anything else I’ve written, and I figure that’s the case for other authors, too.

I want to have a place to find those books. A place to find the cheap books that are worth having, or at least worth giving a closer look.

So I’m creating a “Value Menu” on my website for books priced $1.99 or less. These are books that I’m familiar with and I think are worth buying. Does it mean I’d give them a five star review? Not necessarily. It means I think they’re worth at least as much as a bag of McDonald’s French fries.

Please check back when you’re looking for a cheap read, and hopefully I’ll have something that sounds appealing.

Thanks for reading!

“First of all, thank you Lord.” That’s what I heard when I turned on the TV this morning.  Because I live with a husband and son who are avid football fans, I’ve managed to hear quite a bit about Tim Tebow over the last couple of months. We were in Denver (searching the radio band for the Ravens game) when Tebow lead his team to victory over Kansas City in a game in which he completed only two passes.  Sports commentators talked about him nonstop for weeks. In one discussion I heard the panel of sports experts ask “are you a believer?”– meaning – do you believe this quarterback who can’t seem to throw a pass can lead his team to victory?

Well many are believers now after last night’s win over the Steelers. And I think that’s because Tebow is a believer–not in himself, but in God.  When I first started hearing about this quarterback, sportscasters and other players weren’t quite sure how he was doing it, but it was clear that Tebow inspired his team to win.  Now  I’m sure his faith has a lot to do with it.

I saw bits of last night’s game and several times I saw him kneel after a big play. I hoped he was praying, but I wasn’t sure. Then this morning, I heard the start of a press conference and the first words out of his mouth gave thanks to God for the achievements that all the reporters were asking about.

Now I’m a believer – not only in the Lord but also in a professional sports figure who has kept his perspective and can publicly give glory where it is due. You don’t get to be a quarterback in the NFL without having been an outstanding athlete for years beforehand. Players who are that good hear about it all their lives and they can usually see that they are more talented than the other players in their peewee league, high school and college teams. It would be hard not to believe it when everyone tells you how good you are.

But Tebow has resisted that flattery and instead remembered that it is God who is good, God who is great, and God who deserves the praise.

I’m a believer – because he is.

Twelfth Night is part of the twelve days of Christmas that stretch from Christmas day to Epiphany, the day Christians celebrate the arrival of the Magi or wise men who came to pay homage to the baby Jesus. Epiphany is set for January 6, which is just as arbitrary as deciding that Jesus was born on December 25 on a calendar that hadn’t been invented yet. Scholars can’t even decisively determine what year Jesus was born, let alone what month or day. And the wise travelers following the star probably arrived a little more than twelve days after his birth. Historians believe Jesus was a toddler by the time they made it, since Herod ordered the killing of all boys under age two.

The celebration of Epiphany is actually older than the celebration of Christmas, at least in the Eastern churches. January 6 Epiphany celebrations covered everything in the life of Jesus from his birth through the time of his baptism (as an adult, mind you) by John the Baptist. Who said life was slower in the old days?

When Western scholars started trying to calculate the date of Christ’s birth, most of them placed it somewhere in March or April. But the ancient retailers of the Holy Land wanted the celebration to occur in a different season so it wouldn’t take business away from the Passover and Easter sales.

Okay the selection of the December date wasn’t quite that mercenary, but it was close. It was celebrated on December 25 to coincide with two pagan sun festivals, the Roman Natalis Solis Invicti— “birth of the unconquered sun”— and the Iranian celebration of the birth of Mithras,— “Sun of Righteousness.” And of course the Winter Solstice was just before that so the Christian Christmas holiday was positioned to take over the season. And nominally, it has, although I think today it is celebrated more like a Roman holiday than a Christian one.

In any case, Christmas celebrated as a season rather than a day was a tradition for centuries and I think it still make sense today. It took me four weeks to finish putting up the Christmas decorations and I’m in no hurry to take them down. It may be Twelfth Night, which marks the end of the season, but hey, some churches continue to celebrate Epiphany until Candlemas Day (February 2) so I think I may just pick up that tradition. I like my Christmas dishes better than my regular ones anyway.

And now I’m back to trying to figure out whether it really is Twelfth Night yet. Tomorrow, January 6, has been referred to as Twelfth Day. In my mind, that makes tonight “Eleventh Night.” But the holiday was traditionally celebrated with big fancy parties like we hold on New Year’s these days, and we celebrate that the night before. So maybe Twelfth Night is the night before the actual Twelfth Night.

It’s going to take me another whole year to figure this one out. And next year I’ll find out a better way to celebrate than sitting in front of my computer!

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My thanks to Polmont Old Parish Church’s Advent Calendar (http://www.polmontold.org.uk/advent08day12.html) for the artwork and to the Christianity Today website (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2000/dec08.html) for much of the information in this article.

I started my research with a book on “Colonial Christmas Cooking,” partly because it’s relevant to the season and mostly because it’s one the rabbit pulled off the shelf so I had to pick it up anyway before she ate it. Eggnog certainly seems like it could have been consumed in the 18th Century, when milky drinks like syllabub and posset enjoyed great popularity. Syllabub is a mixture of wine, sugar, spices and milk that was sometimes squirted directly from the cow to give a bubbly effect. In fact, my Christmas cookbook says the strange name of the drink derives from the town in France from which the wine was imported (Sillery) and “bub” which is an Elizabethan word for bubbly drink. Posset is a similar drink served warm.

"What is this? Posset? Syllabub? Eggnog?"

My colonial Christmas book discusses syllabub, posset and eggnog, but the footnote for the recipe for eggnog refers to a book written in 1958. So we’ve got a lapse of a couple centuries and I need to dig a little more if I want to find early references to eggnog.

I turned to a much more scholarly cookbook, Karen Hess’s annotated version of Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, which gives many recipes for syllabub, posset, and caudle, but none for eggnog. This book is a collection of recipes handed down through Martha’s family and many of them are Elizabethan or even medieval in origin – these would have been the old standby “comfort foods” of the 18th Century, not the modern trendy recipes. Hess refers to one of the posset recipes as being a “warm eggnog,” but I think she does that only to help modern readers understand the taste, not because the name was necessarily in use. But it seems maybe the drink we recognize today as eggnog was around before the name was coined.

Hannah Glasse, who was the most popular cookbook author of the 18th Century both in England and the U.S., gives recipes for syllabub, “everlasting syllabub” and “solid” syllabub in her book. But there’s no mention of eggnog that I can see. (Her first version of Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy was published in 1747; I’m using an American edition published in 1805.)

None of my other historic cookbooks have an index so I become lazy and start looking online. It’s getting late now and my quest for the origin of the drink is starting to lose out to my desire to go downstairs and pour another one.

I’m growing convinced that the drink dates to the colonial era, probably having derived from posset. It would have to be a drink for the rich because eggs were in demand as leavening agents in baking and were expensive. The “egg” part of the name is obvious. Wikipedia and other sources suggest that the “nog” could come from “noggin,” a carved wooden mug, or from “grog” a term for a drink made with rum. But this all conjecture. I’m guessing some well-to-do English and Americans were drinking eggnog by the late 1600s, even if they called it by another name. The English used fortified wine like sherry in the their posset; with eggnog, the preference was for brandy. Americans often used rum because it was cheaper. And then when rum could not be imported, they turned to native bourbon.

Regardless of how long the drink may have been popular in the past, eggnog’s popularity may not continue too long into the future due to concerns about the high fat and calorie content. To reduce the fat and create a drink more in keeping with today’s healthier lifestyle, I recommend diluting the egg/milk mixture with a dark Jamaican rum made from whole grain sugar cane. To increase the fiber content, add a generous sprinkle of fresh grated high fiber nutmeg, then stir with a magnetically charged spoon to encourage a beneficial ion balance and be sure that if you set down your glass, you arrange it in keeping with practices of feng shui for a harmonious table setting.

Or just hang onto your glass until it’s time for a refill.

Merry Christmas Eve!

But wait, you say. That’s Scrooge’s catchphrase. Written by Dickens. So it’s Victorian.

Ah, but so are most of the holiday traditions of “Colonial” Williamsburg.

Several people told me they’d always wanted to see the recreated colonial village decorated for Christmas. And I considered myself fortunate that we had the chance to spend a day in December enjoying the sights of the old rebuilt colonial town before moving on to the real purpose of our visit – a day at the indoor waterpark. But while Colonial Williamsburg was quite festive, it was not really colonially festive.

We arrived in the evening, so we first saw the quaint homes and shops by candlelight. Sort of. The lights look like lanterns, but of course they’re lit with electricity. And there were some surreptitious spotlights, too. So, all in all, the scene throughout the village was much brighter than it would have been in the colonial era, or possibly even up through the days of gaslight.

I realize that complaining about the extra light is pretty picky. The light did enable us to see the elaborate wreaths that the town is famous for. But I think those wreaths are the sort of thing you’d find on a house in the Victorian times, rather than in the colonial era. Even Lou Powers, a historian for Colonial Williamburg, admits that “[n]o early Virginia sources tell us how, or even if, colonists decorated their homes for the holidays.” Looking at the few extant English prints to see how people decorated in the 18th Century, Powers notes that the main feature is usually a large sprig of mistletoe, with some sprays of holly or bay leaves in vases or laying against windowpanes. There’s no evidence of those big fancy wreaths full of fruit and greenery that are de rigeur on the fronts of buildings in Williamsburg today. But Powers notes that the practice of forming greens into wreaths for midwinter decoration dates back at least to Roman times, so we can’t say for certain that the shopkeepers of colonial era Williamburg didn’t have them.

There are a lot more shops in Williamsburg now than there were in colonial days, because we have the recreated old businesses and then modern ones have sprung up to capture trade from the tourists who come to see the old ones. Windows–edged with those wreaths–are full of toys and other gifts for Christmas. But in colonial days, there was little gift-giving, and usually it was just cash, little books or sweets given from superiors to their inferiors. That is, masters to apprentices, slaves, and servants or parents to children. So no one needed to look for the perfect gift for the dad who had everything. He was the one doing the giving. And though children might get a small gift at Christmas, the holiday did not focus on kids the way it does now. Period accounts describe the highlights of the season as balls, foxhunts, and other revelries to which children would not be invited.

And one final Christmas tradition I noticed in Colonial Williamsburg was stacks of “old fashioned” Christmas cards. You’ve probably guessed that those are a Victorian tradition as well. However, it was interesting to discover that there were actually pre-printed Christmas cards of a sort in the 18th Century. Schoolboys in London wrote “Christmas pieces” on special paper with a pre-printed holiday border. But the merchants probably couldn’t sell too many of those — boys haven’t changed that much over the years so you can count on the fact that they wrote as few of those Christmas cards as they could get away with.

The last thing I will say about Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg is, appropriately enough, about the end of it. And the beginning. Since the recreated village relies on the modern commercial tourist trade, it also has to rely on the modern commercial calendar. That means you start selling Christmas before Halloween and have it torn down by Christmas Eve. In the colonial era, however, the “holidays” didn’t start until December 25. The Advent season before that was a time of preparation, not office parties. So the colonial Christmas season started at the time we now end it. And they continued until Epiphany, or Twelfth Night. While I like the wreaths, Christmas trees, Chipmunk Christmas songs and all the other un-colonial parts of the modern holiday, I do wish we could time the celebrations the way they did in colonial days. Celebrating the twelve days of Christmas before Christmas–while still getting ready for Christmas– is a little crazy.

And that’s my excuse for leaving my Christmas decorations up until February.

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Quoted material comes from “Christmas Customs” by Emma L. Powers, reprinted from The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, vol. 16, no. 4, winter 1995-96 and at the Colonial Williamsburg website.

This article first ran on my website in December 2008

If you had hair like this, would you be worried about losing it?

 It’s no secret that women frequently color their hair, but the subject of hair loss is one that women rarely talk about and would never dream of ridiculing the way that men do. But our sex probably spends more money than men on products designed to camouflage or reverse hair loss, and that trend is not at all new, as recipes from a 1772 beauty book demonstrate. Of course, women back then were not spending money to buy the packaged products, but they would have had to invest substantial resources to purchase the ingredients and devote significant time to create the potions.

The beauty book has two titles, the first and most brief of which is The Toilet of Flora. The second, longer title, takes up the entire remainder of the title page. It’s  “A Collection of the Most Simple and Approved Methods of Preparing Baths, Essences, Pomatums, Powders, Perfumes, Sweet-Scented Waters and Opiates for Preserving and Whitening the Teeth & c. & c. With Receipts for Cosmetics of Every Kind that can Smooth and Brighten the Skin, give Force to Beauty, and Take Off the Appearance of Old Age and Decay.” This book seems to me like the 18^th Century precursor to the 19^th Century Snake Oil salesman standing on a soapbox selling miracle cures (which in turn presaged the 20^th Century infomercials hyping celebrity beauty systems).

In any case, the Toilet, as I’ll refer to it, has six different “receipts” (recipes) for concoctions to prevent baldness and aid hair growth and only four different methods to color hair. And though one of those hair color receipts refers to blackening the beard, the book does specifically say on the front that it is “for the ladies.” So despite the fact that fashionable ladies wore wigs in the 18^th Century, hair loss was still obviously a concern for some of them.

The question was whether any of the remedies in the book could do anything about it. The receipts range from the simple (powder your head with parsley seed three nights in a year) to complex potions requiring a litany of ingredients that might prove difficult to locate. One recipe requires the practitioner to boil and strain bruised southernwood with red wine and sweet oil three times and then add bear grease. It may be a lot of work, but it’s worth it because “this oil quickly makes the hair shoot out.”

Bear grease and southernwood also figure in another recipe which includes the addition of honey, almond oil, ashes of calamus aromaticus roots, balsam of peru and six drachms of labdanum, whatever that is.

As I said, it’s a sensitive topic but I will admit that I, too, am concerned about hair loss and started using an overpriced product that’s designed to regrow hair or at least provide sunscreen for the increasingly large patches of scalp on the top of my head. I could probably save a lot of money by making my own remedies and now I have six recipes to try. But gosh darn it, I seem to be out of bear grease. So I guess I’ll have to hold off for now.

If you’re curious as to the effectiveness, you can download your very own copy of The Toilet for free from Google Books here and try out the recipes for thickening your hair, coloring it black (not a great selection of color choices in the 18^th C) or removing it with a homemade depilatory fluid.

Just let me know how it works for you!

A good citizen would have passed this warning message along to her email contacts as others had done for me.

I did not.

Instead I considered starting online rumors of an impending major disaster so that when the emergency alert kicked on, we’d have a full scale mass panic on our hands like that caused by the infamous “War of the Worlds” broadcast.

For those not familiar with that legendary bit of mania, the panic was touched off by a 1938 radio broadcast dramatizing H.G. Wells’s novel War of the Worlds. When radio listeners heard accounts of alien attacks, some apparently thought they were hearing actual news broadcasts of a real alien invasion. Mass panic ensued.

It sounded like a lot of fun and I thought it would be cool if we could recreate that mass hysteria over nothing. But I had trouble deciding what threat would be most likely to send people into a panic these days.

An alien invasion wouldn’t do it. Half the population doesn’t believe in UFOs and the other half would probably welcome the invaders with open arms.

In this year of unexpected earthquakes and devastating tornadoes, a natural disaster might instill the requisite panic, but it would be difficult to sustain on a national scale. It’s a big nation.

So what would set off a big national panic today? As I noted in my earlier blog about facing your fears, an invasion of giant or even moderately large spiders would do it for me. But I’m not everyone.

What do most people consider the greatest threat to security? Military invasion? A deadly virus? The impact of a giant asteroid hitting the planet? Another Kardashian wedding?

When the opportunity comes again, I want to be ready to set off a national panic and to do that, I need your help. What threat do you think would send the greatest number of people into a panic?

Yes, I’m being a bit silly, but I am genuinely curious. I think most Americans have not faced any real dangers in their lives (as opposed to people in other countries where suicide bombings and warlords with personal armies are commonplace) and I think it wouldn’t take much to make us panic. What do you think?

And by the way, I did happen to have the radio on when the historically significant alert was broadcast. I could barely hear it. When I turned up the volume, the message sounded exactly the same as every other “test of the blah blah blah system.” Very anticlimactic. The only fright came when the regular broadcast resumed at a volume level loud enough to split my eardrums.

As I said, War of the Worlds it was not.

That’s what King James had to say about witchcraft in a three volume treatise he wrote a few years before he issued instructions for the translation of the Bible that bears his name. Last week I discussed the first volume of his Daemonologie, which covered sorcery, in my post “King James and the Zombies”.  On Friday, I talked about the second volume, which deals with witches, in a guest blog “Witchcraft is Where You Find It.”  Today, in honor of All Hallow’s Eve, we’ll see what James had to say about ghosts in Volume Three.

He divides spirits into four categories—those that haunt a place, those that follow a person, those that possess a person and “fayries.” Regarding the first type, he explains that devil sends ghosts to haunt solitary places because man is at his weakest there and because God will not permit him to “dishonour the societies and companies of Christians, as in publicke times and places to walke visiblie amongst them.” But what about hauntings that occur in a house full of supposedly Christian people? James says that’s a sign of either “grosse ignorance” (he doesn’t specify whose) or “grosse and slanderous sinnes among the inhabitantes” of the house. In other words, if your house is haunted, it’s your fault and your neighbor should be wondering whether you are sinful or just stupid.

James wrote Daemonologie specifically to refute the notion that there is no such thing as magic and witchcraft. Practitioners of the “devill’s arts” are all around, he argues, and they need to be recognized and punished. (Some rulers focus on conquering territory, others on stabilizing the economy. Clearly James had different priorities.)

So when people argue that ghosts do not exist because most people never see them, James answers that God only allows some people to know of their existence. So there. But he also says that just because ghosts and witches exist doesn’t mean that every supernatural tale should be taken as truth. For instance, he discounts the existence of “men-woolfes”, saying that it is just an overabundance of melancholy that makes men think they’re animals so they act that way. And he makes no mention at all of vampires. But though he doesn’t use the word, he spends a number of pages explaining the presence of zombies as the devil reanimating dead bodies, even the dead bodies of very “good” people. So if your body rises from the grave to terrorize people, it’s not necessarily your fault.

The same thing can be said for those who are haunted or even possessed. James explains that God allows the devil to torment people in this way either because they have sinned and need to be punished or because they’re really good and need to have their strength tested. So if your daughter is possessed, you can tell your neighbors that this is a status symbol of your extraordinary faith. Try to top that, if you dare!

While you may not know whether a possessed person is saintly or riddled with sin, you can be sure if you do see a spirit, it’s evil, even if it is disguised as an angel. James says all Christians should know “that since the comming of Christ in the flesh, and establishing of his Church by the Apostles, all miracles, visions, prophecies, & appearances of Angels or good spirites are ceased.” Though I’ve heard some theologians despair over the cultish fascination with angels, I’ve never heard one flat out say that they don’t ever appear to humans anymore. For his proof, James offers the parable of Lazarus and the rich man who begs Jesus to send a ghost to his brothers to warn them to change their ways. Jesus refuses, saying “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” It’s an interesting argument, but I’m not sure I buy it.

Besides, who wants to argue about “good spirites” on Halloween? We want the scary stuff.

So how about stories of the devil’s spawn—is that scary? James devotes several paragraphs to a scientific explanation of why sex with a spirit (or a dead body reanimated) could not result in pregnancy.  So like “men-woolfes,” James says he also doesn’t believe in midwives’ tales of monstrous births and he doesn’t believe in “phairies” with their woodland courts and frolics.

I’m not quite clear on all his arguments, but somehow, I think he blames women for most of the evils of witchcraft. Remember, he said that there are more women witches than men because they are weaker and more subject to temptation from the devil than men. And he also said that witches (predominantly women) are motivated by greed to follow the devil whereas sorcerers (mostly men) are motivated by intellectual curiosity. I’m guessing James was bullied by his nurse—he seems to be afraid of women and belittles them to make himself feel better.

I must say, though, that while he seems almost ready to excuse the male sorcerers for the temptation to follow their art, he absolutely does not. They are “all alike guiltie” and must be put to death, regardless or age, sex or rank. While fire is “commonly used,” he leaves it up to the custom of the individual country as to what sort of death is needed.

He counsels that it is important not to condemn the innocent, but it would still be a little worrisome to me, especially since he believes that because witches have rejected the water of their baptism, God reveals witches with the sign that “water shal refuse to receive them in her bosom.” In other words, they float.

So I won’t be inviting James to my next pool party.

Happy Halloween!