salem witch trials

The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, which resulted in 19 executions, and 150 accusations of witchcraft, are one of the historical events almost everyone has heard of. They began when three young girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam began to have hysterical fits, after being discovered engaging in forbidden fortune-telling (not dancing naked in the woods) to learn what sorts of men they would marry. Betty's father, the Reverend Samuel Parris, called in more senior authorities …

…characteristics of the interaction between humans and their myths. And a charter myth is certainly what the witch hunts in Europe and Salem have become, though they have more basis in fact than most myths. The stories of the witch hunts are charter myths for our time, to be told by feminists, left-wing intellectuals, and lawyers for President Clinton, each taking what he or she needs from the story, adding or subtracting as seems fit.