AGoat for Azazel (A.D. 1688)
Katherine Anne Porter
MARTHA
GOODWIN,
fourteen year old, elder daughter of •
pious brick mason named John Goodwin, was behaving very
strangely. She had been behaving with conspicuous strangeness
since she was eleven years old and it had long been suspected ,that
she was in the grip of a diabolical possession. Cotton Mather early
. noted her symptoms and marked their progress. The Goodwins
lived in Charlestown, and during a Sabbath visit to his father·in·
law, John Phillips, Mather heard an encouraging bit of gossip.
Not only Martha, but all four of Goodwin's children had
fallen, almost overnight, into a state of mind very puzzling and
sinister. Little Mercy, seven years old, was in a continual tan·
trum. She yelled and her body grew rigid while she was being
dressed; she refused to do the useful household task suitable to her
age; and she would not, without a fearful struggle, allow herself
to be put to bed at the customary hour. Naturally the Devil found
an easy abiding-place in the bodies of children, conceived as they
were, poisoned to the bone with original sin, but a sound beating
would usually dislodge him. He sat firmly in this child against all
such persuasions. The slightest rebuke from her parents affected
her like a lightning shock. She fell prone, turned blue in the face,
her eyes rolled upward and her teeth clenched in a paroxysm
of
lockjaw. The elder son, sixteen years old, shouted that he was a
wolf, retired into corners and howled bestially. The third child,
John, suffered with shooting pains, and showed signs of epilepsy.
He would sprawl on the floor and scream that he could not get
up
again because his head was nailed to the floor.
Martha was a pretty, inventive, restless girl. She suffered all
the afflictions of the others, with a few added symptoms acutely
her own.
One
affli~ted
child had been troublesome enough, but four
of
them succeeded in terrorizing their parents completely. They called
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