A peculiar modification of the hot-iron ordeal is employed by the aboriginal hill-tribes of Rajmahal, in the north of Bengal, when a person believes himself to be suffering from witchcraft. The _Satane_ and the _Cherreen_ are used to find out the witch, and then the decision is confirmed by a person representing the sufferer, who, with certain religious ceremonies, applies his tongue to a red-hot iron nine times, unless sooner burnt. A burn is considered to render the guilt of the accused indubitable, and his only appeal is to have the trial repeated in public, when, if the same result follows, he is bound either to cure the bewitched person or to suffer death if the latter dies.[919]
In the earlier periods of European law, the burning iron was reserved for cases of peculiar atrocity. Thus we find it prescribed by Charlemagne in accusations of parricide;[920] the Council of Risbach in 799 directed its use in cases of sorcery and witchcraft;[921] and among the Thuringians it was ordered for women suspected of poisoning or otherwise murdering their husbands[922]—a crime visited with peculiar severity in almost all codes. In 848 the Council of Mainz indicates it specially for slaves,[923] while the Council of Tribur, in 895, orders it for all cases of accusation against freemen.[924] Among the Anglo-Saxons the accuser had the right to select the ordeal to be employed,[925] while at a later period in Germany this privilege was conferred on the accused.[926] In England it subsequently became rather an aristocratic procedure as contradistinguished from the water ordeals.[927] On the other hand, in the Assises de Jerusalem the hot iron is the only form alluded to as employed in the _roturier_ courts;[928] in the laws of Nieuport, granted by Philip of Alsace in 1163, it is prescribed as a plebeian ordeal;[929] and about the same period, in the military laws enacted by Frederic Barbarossa during his second Italian expedition, it appears as a servile ordeal.[930] In the Russian law of the eleventh century, it is ordered in all cases where the matter at stake amounts to more than half a _grivna_ of gold, while the water ordeal is reserved for suits of less importance.[931] In the Icelandic code of the twelfth century it is prescribed for men, in cases in which women are required to undergo the hot-water ordeal;[932] while the reverse of this is seen in an English case occurring in 1201, where six men and a woman were accused of burglary; the men were ordered to the water ordeal and the woman to red-hot iron.[933] A specially severe form was provided for women in Ireland, who, when accused, were obliged to lick with the tongue a bronze axe-head heated to redness in a fire of black-thorn.[934]