by Kai Roberts
However, the milk-stealing, shape-shifting witch was most commonly associated with the hare. Like hedgehogs, hares are solitary, nocturnal feeding animals which might often have been seen in pastures after dark; unlike hedgehogs, they have a connection with magic extending into the pre-Christian past and an uncanny countenance that can disarm many. When a farmer in Commondale near Guisborough feared that a witch named ‘Au’d Molly’ was milking his cattle dry, he received advice to watch overnight in the field and carry a shotgun loaded with silver bullets, for nothing else could disable such a supernatural creature. But upon its arrival in the field, the witch-hare stalked up to the farmer and gave him such a stare with its piercing eyes that he turned heel and fled!
Sometimes the hare is not the witch herself but her familiar, albeit one with which the sorcerer is so intimately connected that injury to it has a corresponding effect on its mistress. This was the case at Eskdale where a drove of hares were causing great mischief by feeding on the saplings in a new plantation. The steward managed to cull them all except for one, which continued to evade both hound and bullet; he was subsequently advised to use silver slugs in his gun and with this contingency he finally succeeded in putting an end to the beast. At that moment, some distance away, an old woman with an evil reputation flung up her hands as she was carding wool and cried, ‘They have shot my familiar spirit!’ whereupon she fell to the floor dead.
The witch does not seem to have taken the form of a hare only to steal milk; in many tales, she seems to adopt such a guise for the sheer pleasure of it. In an archetypal narrative from Westerdale on the North York Moors, a party of hare-coursers encounter a witch simply known as ‘Nanny’. She asks them how their sport is going and when the men reply that they haven’t seen a single hare all day, she tells them of a field in which they might find just such an animal, one bound to give them a fine chase. They must only promise that they will not hunt it with a black dog. All members of the party agree to this stipulation and Nanny proceeds to tell them where this superior specimen of a leporid can be found.
Sure enough, the party find the hare in the place Nanny described, and they pursue it the length and breadth of the dale, never gaining upon it. But just as they are once more drawing near to the point where they started, a stray black dog joins the chase. It proves fleeter than any of their hounds and so little by little, it closes in on the hare until they reach the vicinity of Nanny’s cottage. The hare makes straight for a cavity in the cottage walls but squeezes through it just a little too late, as the black dog manages to bite a chunk out of the hare’s flank before it can get fully into the hole. The party of coursers is mortified: they know and fear Nanny’s reputation, and are concerned about how she will react if she finds out that her injunction was broken, so they enter her cottage to explain. Within, they find Nanny lying on her bed, bleeding profusely from a wound on her haunch.
The tale is told of many witches in several different localities, such as Peg Humphreys of Bilsdale or Peggy Flaunders of Marske-by-the-Sea. Indeed, it is a classic example of a migratory legend known throughout the British Isles and much of northern Europe, the motif now categorised by folklorists as ‘The Witch Who Was Hurt’. In Yorkshire, there are some minor local variations worth mentioning. For instance, the witch Abigail Craister, who dwelled in a cave on Black Hambleton, is said to have evaded pursuit by leaping from Whitestone Cliff into the waters of Gormire Lake below and re-emerged from a sinkhole some nine miles away. Her ghost is thought to haunt the vicinity of the lake still and can be seen riding over Kilburn on her broomstick.
Gormire Lake, haunted by the ghost of the witch Abigail Craister. (Kai Roberts)
However, the most developed and instructive version of the legend is told about Lady Sybil of Bearnshaw Tower in Cliviger, West Yorkshire. As a wealthy heiress, Lady Sybil was widely courted by suitors keen to lay their hands on her estates but unfortunately for them, Sybil was fond of her own company and her position was secure enough to rebut them all. Despite her repeated rejections, one suitor was more persistent than the rest: William Towneley was his name and he hailed from Hapton, near Burnley in Lancashire. Seeking to improve his chances, he sought advice from Mother Helston, a local wise-woman who intimated that she and Lady Sybil had much in common and rather than provide William with a simple love charm, directed him to go hunting around Thieveley Pike on All Hallows’ Eve.
William followed Mother Helston’s advice and sure enough he encountered a white doe of rare pedigree, which proceeded to run his hounds ragged across the moor. Eventually, they cornered the beast at a precipitous projection of rock known locally as Eagle Crag and William was able to slip a silk leash around its neck, as specified by the wise-woman. He led the doe back to the stables of his family seat at Hapton and the following morning was amazed to discover Lady Sybil sat where he had left it, with the silk leash still tied around her neck. With her secret discovered and prejudice against witchcraft being what it was, Lady Sybil was left with no option but to assent to William’s proposal of marriage, lest he reveal her true nature.
Although Sybil initially agreed to renounce her sorcerous ways for the sake of the marriage, she soon grew restless and yearned to run wild over the lonely hills around her old home once more. Increasingly, William found her missing from their bed during the night as she roamed the Cliviger district in the guise of a white cat. This particular feline, however, was not much liked in the neighbourhood as it riled up the other mousers and was often caught stealing milk from the dairy. One evening, a local miller decided to put an end to its visits and told his son to lay in wait for the animal overnight. When the cat finally arrived, the boy pounced; but whilst he managed to cut off one of its paws in the struggle, it escaped before he had the chance to kill it, leaving its severed paw behind.
Eagle Crag above Cliviger, burial place of Lady Sybil. (Kai Roberts)
The following morning, William Towneley found his wife confined to her bed-chamber with a terrible fever and blood-soaked sheets. Only when a mystified miller arrived from Cliviger, bearing a severed female hand with a distinctive ring on one of its fingers, did he understand what had occurred. Fortunately, although she was weak from loss of blood, Lady Sybil was able to use her magical art to reattach the appendage. Nonetheless, she bore an ugly red circle around her wrist thereafter and never again went roving the moors. She died barely a year after the event and as her witchery was now widely known, she was refused burial in consecrated ground. Instead, she was interred at the foot of Eagle Crag and it is said that on Halloween, a spectral doe pursued by phantom hounds can be seen bounding across the moors thereabouts.
It seems especially clear from the Cliviger version of ‘The Witch Who Was Hurt’ legend that the motif was an expression of the gender politics of its age. In narratives where the witch adopts an animal guise simply for the joy of it, her crime is not maleficium but daring to exhibit independence. Such tales symbolise the forcible ‘taming’ of headstrong, autonomous women by patriarchal forces, threatening the unfortunate consequences which may befall such individuals if they fail to adhere to gender norms and submit to male authority, whether it be social opprobrium or physical injury. Although it is simplistic to say that all fear of witchcraft arose from historical misogynistic attitudes, ‘The Witch Who Was Hurt’ undoubtedly displays profound hostility towards the possibility of liberated women.
There is no evidence for the existence of any Lady Sybil at Bearnshaw Tower, but often such migratory legends were attached to historical individuals for whom this must have represented a considerable danger. Nan Hardwick was a Danby woman with a reputation for witchcraft and it was her habit to spend evenings sat amongst the gorse on a bank about a mile from her cottage. No reason is given for her behaviour but it was regarded as ‘aberrant’ by the local community and as such, young men used to play a game they called ‘Hunt Auld Nan Hardwick’. It is said that on an evening in Danby her clogged feet were often heard rattling along the causey from the gorse
bank to her home, with a pack of baying hounds and jeering youths in hot pursuit.
Nor were the acts attributed to such women always so benign as shape-shifting, and many were accused of maleficium in local legend. Peggy Flaunders of Marske-by-the-Sea, who died in 1835 aged eighty-five, was believed to hold a grudge against a local farmer named Tom Pearson and when all his cattle died, she was blamed for bewitching them. Pearson was ruined and forced to sell his land to a cousin who had always been civil to Peggy. It is said that on the morning he took possession of the farm, she walked past and wished him well, before performing a curious ritual: she turned around three times, threw her cloak on the ground and leapt over it whilst muttering some incantation. The farm proceeded to prosper under its new owner.
A more sinister story is told of Auld Nanny of Ayrton, who according to Richard Blakeborough lived around the district sometime between 1750 and 1780. Mary Longstaffe of Stokesley was in Kildale to nurse her unwell cousin, Martha Sokeld and one day noticed the ill-favoured old woman hobbling towards her. To avoid conversation, Mary feigned picking some flowers from the verge but unfortunately for both Mary and her cousin, Nanny noticed this snub and took offence. The alleged witch said she would not forget the insult, banged the ground thrice with her stick and disappeared. As Mary was wearing a sprig of rowan at the time, which provided protection from witch-work, she thought little of the encounter and a few days later when her cousin had regained her health, she returned to her home in Stokesley.
Several nights later, Mary was surprised when Martha turned up at her home. She claimed to have taken a turn for the worse and would not live much longer, so she was travelling to Northallerton to bid farewell to her sister. She asked Martha if she could stay with her in Stokesley for the night before journeying on the following day. Mary agreed, and Martha sent her out for some items she wanted whilst she napped. Martha seemed so eager to be rid of her that Mary grew uneasy and returned before her time to spy through the window. To her horror, she saw her kinswoman dropping powders into a pan over the fire whilst muttering some incantation, at which point Mary realised that it was not Martha but Nanny in her cousin’s guise. She rushed and struck Nanny with a Bible, causing the witch to throw over the pan and flee. The next day, news came from Kildale that Martha Sokeld’s body had been found on the moors, three days dead.
Whilst Mary Longstaffe was fortunate enough to have interrupted the spell-casting before it could take effect, others were not so lucky and many stories suggest that it required considerable effort to ward off the effects of maleficium once it had been directed at them. Typically the blood of the witch was needed to neutralise the spell, which was not an easy thing to procure: often it had to be taken whilst the witch was in animal guise and even then certain procedures had to be followed before the creature could be caught. In some cases, these measures were familiar. For example, when the squire of Goathland called on Nanny Pearson to bewitch his daughter to prevent her eloping with a suitor of whom he disapproved, a wise-man advised the young lover to track the witch as a hare and shoot it with silver bullets to obtain the essential ingredient for a counter-spell.
In other instances, the instructions were more opaque. The folklorist William Henderson records that a Halifax man charged with obtaining blood from a local witch named Auld Betty was told to bake a cake before the fire of the household she was enchanting. This he did, and at length he noticed a black cat sitting by the fire, although he did not see or hear it enter. He was surprised to hear a voice from the cat purr ‘Cake burns’ to which he replied, ‘Turn it then.’ After a little while, the cat made the same complaint and the witch-catcher gave the same answer. This exchanged went on again and again, until the man grew so frustrated that he forgot that he had been warned against uttering any holy names in the witch’s presence and he responded with an oath. At the sound of this, the cat mewled and sprang up the chimney with the witch-catcher in hot pursuit. He emerged badly mauled but managed to wound the animal with a table fork and the bewitchment was undone.
A belief in the efficacy of the witch’s blood in counter-spells was evidently deeply ingrained in the Calderdale region. As late as 1904, a local antiquary noted that people believed that victims of witchcraft only needed to scratch their tormentor’s back with a pin to break her hold over them. Two and a half centuries earlier, the Heptonstall witch trial intimated similar superstitions were held. It records that the minister of Cross Stones Chapel told Daniel Briggs of Wadsworth that if he wished to break the suspected bewitchment of a neighbour’s child, if anybody crossed his path on his way home, he should ‘maul them in the head’. Briggs did in fact meet Elizabeth Crossley on his return journey, who suspiciously inquired after the health of the infant; but whilst Briggs was too afraid to act himself, the following day his maid attacked Crossley with a candlestick.
In many cases, it was the local wise-man or wise-woman who provided counsel when it came to combating maleficium. These individuals were sometimes referred to as ‘cunning folk’, derived from the Old English ‘cunna’ meaning ‘to know’ and indeed, knowledge was their most successful commodity. Such people were often literate in a widely uneducated society and tended to be well versed in arts such as astrology and herbalism. Yet cunning folk possessed an ambivalent reputation. Whilst their learned advice was often widely sought after, they were still regarded as being only a step away from witches themselves and should relations with a client turn sour, their position was tenuous. Equally, many stories circulated to suggest that they should not be trifled with – possibly propagated by the cunning folk themselves.
In some respects, people were right to fear cunning folk as the awe in which they were held provided the perfect cloak for nefarious deeds and whilst they may not have practiced maleficium through sorcery, they undoubtedly practiced it through more orthodox means. The infamous example here is Mary Bateman of Leeds, who used her reputation as a wise-woman to poison at least three clients and obtain their property. She was finally caught when the coroner investigating the death of her third victim found evidence of arsenic in the deceased’s stomach and with the help of the woman’s husband entrapped Bateman, who was passing off arsenic-laced concoctions as healing potions. Bateman was executed on 20 March 1809 and such was her reputation as a witch, her skin was tanned and her tongue pickled to be sold to those who wished to exploit their supposed supernatural power.
On the other hand, some cunning folk were certainly held in great esteem and John Wrightson, known as the Wise Man of Stokesley, was one such example. Wrightson died in 1840, but remembrances collected later by J.C. Atkinson and Richard Blakeborough suggest he was favourably regarded by all who’d had dealings with him. His methods seem to have been a potent mix of showmanship, charlatanry, herbalism and canny insight into human nature – he maintained a network of informants to keep him apprised of local gossip and like many modern fortune-tellers, he was probably adept at cold-reading. Wrightson also undoubtedly cultivated his image, claiming to be the seventh son of a seventh son and receiving clients in a room full of esoteric paraphernalia whilst wearing a long gown and strange headgear.
Numerous stories about Wrightson’s powers have been recorded. Some are perfectly explicable – such as his successful diagnosis of tumour in a cow – whilst others have probably been exaggerated to enhance his reputation, especially those which emphasise his powers of precognition and mesmerism. One tale relates that as two young men were passing close to his house, they thought to have a little fun with Wrightson and so called to see him. He received them warmly enough, told them to take seats by the fire and proceeded to engage them in conversation about all manner of topics, during which time he placed log after log on the hearth. After a while, the two men grew uncomfortably hot, but when they tried to move away from the fire, they found themselves paralysed in their seats. They endured this ordeal for some time before Wrightson decided they had learnt their lesson and sent the pair away with a reprimand for their impudence in thinking the
y could toy with him.
Another credited with second sight was the Wise Woman of Littondale, who lived in a rundown cottage near Arncliffe filled with black cats and pictures of Merlin, Michael Scott and Nostradamus. When a sceptic visited her to seek proof of her power, she is said to have shown him a vision of one of his friends in her scrying vessel and told him to wait alone at Arncliffe Bridge at midnight. The man followed her instructions and at the foretold hour heard a low moan and saw a great disturbance in the waters below. As he returned home, he encountered a great black dog which vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. The following day this man returned to the Wise Woman to ask the meaning of these things. She told him that the dog he’d seen was a barguest and despite his scepticism, the man knew such an encounter portended death. Later in the day, he was told that the friend whose image he’d seen in the scrying glass had committed suicide from Arncliffe Bridge that very morning.
If the famed Mother Shipton of Knaresborough was a historical figure, it is likely that her reputation during her lifetime was as a cunning-woman with powers of precognition. Her alleged prophecies were almost certainly fabricated by later writers in order to feed the seventeenth-century appetite for such material, but it is possible that they were inspired by an older oral tradition. In 1684, Richard Head recorded biographical details, claiming that she was born Ursula Southiel around 1488 in a cave on the banks of the River Nidd and adopted the name Mother Shipton following her marriage to Toby Shipton in 1521. However, as she is supposed to have died in 1561 and documentary record of her name does not appear until the first publication of her supposed prophecies in 1642, the evidence for her historical existence is thin.
