Ten things you never knew about... witches

Tonight is Hallowe’en, when witches are said to take to the air on their broomsticks to wreak mischief before All Saints’ ( or all Hallows’) Day on November 1.

1. The word ‘ witch’ comes from the Saxon ‘ wicca’, meaning ‘ wise one’.

2. In Saudi Arabia, witchcraft and sorcery can still be punished by the death penalty.

3. In 16th and 17th- century Europe an estimated 60,000 people were put to death for witchcraft.

4. Matthew Hopkins ( c. 1620- 1647), was England’s Witchfinder General. He and his assistants were paid at a rate of £ 5 per witch detected.

5. The last alleged witches hanged in the UK were

Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth, aged 9, in 1716; the last in Scotland was Janet Horne in 1727.

6. In 2008, a court in Switzerland cleared the name of Anna Goldi, who was beheaded for witchcraft in 1782, the last alleged witch executed in Europe.

7. In England, convicted witches were hanged; in Scotland and the rest of Europe, they were burnt at the stake, sometimes after being strangled.

8. Nineteen people were hanged was witches in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. It is still not known where they were buried.

9. Only one of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth is named: she is called Hecate.

10. Hecate was the Greek goddess of witchcraft.