Thursday, August 7, 2008

Turius und Shurius Inturius

This late sixteenth century phrase originated in the Netherlands and figured into the witchcraft trials of the 1700s. In Amsterdam “a crazy girl confessed that she could cause sterility in cattle, and bewitch pigs and poultry by merely repeating the magic words Turius und Shurius Inturius! She was hanged and burned”. [Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841].

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