British Folk Magic & Familiar Spirits
In popular imagination, the figure of a witch is accompanied by her familiar, a black cat. Is there any historical authenticity behind this cliché? Our ancestors in the 16th and 17th centuries believed that magic was real. Not only the poor and ignorant believed in witchcraft and the spirit world—rich and educated people believed in spellcraft just as strongly. Cunning folk were men and women who used charms and herbal cures to heal, foretell the future, and find the location of stolen property. What they did was illegal—sorcery was a hanging offence—but few were arrested. The need for the...
Read MoreThe Pendle Witches and Their Magic, Part 1
In 1612, in one of the most meticulously documented witch trials in English history, seven women and two men from Pendle Forest in Lancashire, Northern England were executed. In court clerk Thomas Potts’s account of the proceedings, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, published in 1613, he pays particular attention to the one alleged witch who escaped justice by dying in prison before she could come to trial. She was Elizabeth Southerns, more commonly known by her nickname, Old Demdike. According to Potts, she was the ringleader, the one who initiated all the...
Read MoreAll Hallows Tide in Pendle
When Halloween comes around, the popular imagination turns to ghosts and hauntings. And to witches.Especially in my neck of the woods. I live in Pendle Witch Country, the rugged Pennine landscape surrounding Pendle Hill, once home to twelve individuals arrested for witchcraft in 1612. Unfortunately Halloween seems to drag out all kinds of ghoulish speculation about historical witches and cunning folk in a way that is not only historically inaccurate but disrespectful to the dead. The Pendle Witches were not ghouls, but real people who were held for months in a lightless dungeon in Lancaster...
Read MorePendle Witch Library
Pendle Witches: Further Reading on the Pendle Witches, Historical Cunning Folk, and WisewomenFiction:Harrison Ainsworth, The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest (EJ Morten) (First published in 1849, written in dialect, very long, gothic, and dense.)Robert Neill, Mist Over Pendle (A lovely novel for both adults and young adults but not very kind to the witches!)Nonfiction, Primary Source:Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (Published in 1613, these are the official transcripts of the 1612 trial. Though not infallible, Potts’s account...
Read MoreThe Charms of the Pendle Witches
From Thomas Potts’s A Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, the official trial transcripts:Mother Demdike’s family charm “to get drink”: Crucifixus hoc signum vitam Eternam. Amen.(Literal translation: the crucifix is the sign of eternal life.)This charm to cure bewitchment is attributed to Chattox: A Charme Three Biters hast thou bitten, The Hart, ill Eye, ill Tonge: Three bitter shall be thy Boote, Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost a Gods name, Fiue Pater-nosters, fiue Auies, and a Creede, In worship of fiue wounds of our Lord.(In modern language the last part would...
Read MoreAbout Mary Sharratt
An American author living on the Silver Coast of Portugal, Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. She is the author of Revelations and seven previous critically acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the Witching Hill, the Nautilus Award–winning Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, The Dark Lady’s Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Muse, and Ecstasy, about the life, loves, and music of Alma Mahler. When she is not writing, you can find her riding her beautiful Welsh mare.
Mary’s Newsletter
