Text: N. P. Willis (?), Review of Wilhem Meinhold, The Amber Witch, Evening Mirror (New York), vol. 1, no. 1, October 7, 1844, p. 3, col. 1

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“THE AMBER WITCH”

THIS is one of the most romantic of romances, and the bewitchingest of witch-stories — besides possessing the great merit which Lord Byron claims for Don Juan, that of being “actually true.” Mary Schweidler, the Amber-witch, was the daughter of the learned Dr. Schweidler, pastor of Coserow, in the island of Usedom, (Pomerania,) some two hundred years ago; and having by her beauty, gentleness and sweetness, won the lusty admiration of the high sheriff, who set on old Lizzie Kolken (a real witch and no mistake) to circumvent and entangle Mary, her life, which had hitherto been that of the young rose amid spring dews and showers, pure and fragrant and happy, became a groaning and shrieking agony, and at last she herself was tried for a witch. She steadily denied the charge and proclaimed her innocence, and was finally put to the question — when, as they stretched her delicate limbs on the wheel, uncovered her white loins, and strewed her tender body with sulphureous goose-quills, boiled in oil, she gave way and confessed all that they would of her, so that she might be burnt in peace, and thus go back to heaven quickly and without further torture. But at the moment that they approach the pile of faggots, her lover, a young nobleman in the neighbourhood, who had been for long her stealthy but devoted admirer, makes his appearance, and the mysterious circumstances which had prejudiced her judges against her are cleared up — the wicked sheriff is thrown over a precipice, and left with his head sticking in the floats of a revolving mill-wheel — the fiend, in the shape of an enormous green lizard, flies away with the soul of old Lizzie Kolken, and the troubles of the fair girl end in love and joy.

This is the merest outline of the facts of this extraordinary trial. There is no kind of doubt that the book is, in reality, what it pretends to be — a genuine narrative of these events, written by the quaint old Parson Schweidler himself.