A witch’in good story
My humble reader, let me take you back to a simpler time. Far, far back in time. In a small village in Colonial America, the populous is on high stress as they try to cope with the unknown. Strange events such as, cattle dying, children and adults losing control of their bodies and minds, severe weather disrupting crops, random theft, and small social gatherings at odd hours of the night. People would speak, but often in secret, giving way to a network of gossip and accusation that often led to persecution, and even death. This ‘simpler’ time in this small community would go down as one of the biggest mass hysteria events of our land’s history. It rocked theologian institutions, inspired and tarnished culture, and is ingrained in the Halloween season: it is 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, also known as the Salem Witch trials.
To clarify, I do not find the senseless and brutal loss of life to the innocent people unobjectively prosecuted in Salem from 1692-93 a good story, at all. What I do find a good story is one of the theories of why the Salem Witch trials occurred - ergot.
Ergot is a product of a fungal infection in small grains, but especially in winter cereal rye. Most farmers would have seen this without realizing it. Taking on the same appearance as white mold sclerotia in soybeans, the disease begins in these grain-sized sclerotia in the shallow surface of the soil. When spring comes and the conditions are right, tiny mushrooms will sprout from the sclerotia and “sneeze” spores into the air waiting to land on a host, which are small grain crops like winter rye. If the spore lands on a flower (floret is the proper name. They are really, really tiny) it can infect that area of the plant, producing a rat fecal shaped ergot in place of the grain. Once the winter rye plant matures and either drops grain or is harvested, the ergot falls to the ground, waiting to begin the process over again. But sometimes, it doesn’t hit the ground, and instead is gathered up by the unsuspecting farmer. This fungal infection is toxic to animals and humans, especially in sizeable quantities. And that means you either have to ingest a large amount at once, or small quantities consistently over a period of time. Animals will see blood flow issues, dairy cows will have reduced milk production, even gangrene on ears, tails, feet/hooves. In humans symptoms include convulsing, incoherent thoughts, muscle pains, hallucinations, and even death. Modern technology in seed cleaning has eliminated these risks to the general public, but before that, it posed a serious problem come harvest season and when the grain was made into food.
Does any of this sound familiar to the beginning of our story? People seeing strange things, livestock becoming lame and dying, children losing control of themselves; mind and body. In a passage I read a long time ago, a historian noted that the rings on trees during 1692 were very, very wide, marking that there was a lot of precipitation. This would give a clue that a severe blight of ergot affected the grain, because ergot thrives in cool and moist conditions. Grain storages infected with ergot started to be ingested by people and cattle, from bakeries and barns alike. And the gradual, consistent consumption of the toxins accumulated in everyone’s body, and drove them crazy and some cases, death.
Fear is the strongest emotion, and the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Village doctors and elders couldn’t piece together what was happening. No one knew what ergot or ergotism was, just only they were seeing and hearing unnatural things around them. So they came to the only conclusion that made the most sense: witchcraft. Fear became suspicion, then accusation, and finally, judgement. And all of this from a simple process in nature that happens in grain fields all over the world. The witch trials did end abruptly in the spring of 1693, thanks to common sense, but also, according to the ergot theory, Salem ran out of contaminated grain.
Happy Halloween.
THE SOIL
SOUNDOFF
BY
MATT OEHMICHEN AGRONOMIST
