The grumbling swelled, and the aggrieved whispering went on from mouth to mouth, and from village to village; but time is inexorable, and the days went by towards Colley’s execution. At first he was stubborn, but towards the end, with some notion of saving his own skin, he recanted, and swore on oath that he had no belief whatsoever in the power of witches or witchcraft. The vicar of Long Marston procured a copy of this declaration, and read it to his parishioners from the pulpit of the church from which the two innocent and senile wretches had been dragged to their death.
Nothing saved Colley from his fate. With all the savage publicity of the age he was brought back to the scene of his crime, and hanged at Gubblecote Cross, where another mob turned out to see the fun of the execution they believed to be a travesty of law.
Not being able to save him from the gallows, they aired their resentment of his death in talk, and before long he had become a martyr in the cause of justice, and a hero among his own folk.
Legends began to attach themselves to him, and to the spot at which he suffered. While the gibbet remained where it had been set up, people began to fear to pass it, especially at night, when a black shadow lay at its feet, which, said eye-witnesses, turned itself into a huge black dog. The terror of seeing this supernatural beast curdled the blood, for it was accepted by all to be the outraged spirit of the sweep so unjustly executed there.
The village schoolmaster was one who was given the doubtful privilege of beholding the dreaded creature. The gibbet by this time was falling to pieces, though the legends surrounding it lived on. The teacher was driving home late one night as passenger in the gig of a friend. As they approached the spot where the gibbet’s ruins stood, they saw on the grassy bank by the side of the road two glaring lights like flames of fire ‘as big as a man’s hat’.
‘What’s that?’ said the schoolmaster, in terror, while his companion pulled on the reins and brought his horse to a sudden stop. Then both men gazed down into the road just in front of the horse, where lay an immense black dog as big as a good-sized calf. He was thin and gaunt, and his black coat was long and shaggy. His drooping ears and tail, covered with shaggy black fur, hung loose, and his eyes ‘big as a man’s hat’ gleamed and glowed like twin balls of fire. He opened his mouth and drew back curling lips to reveal huge, yellowing teeth in a ghastly, sardonic sort of grin. Then while the two men sat staring downwards, as if petrified by what they beheld, the mouth closed, the eyes dimmed, and what had been the shape of a dog melted again into shadow. Next minute, the horse and gig passed right over the spot, and the men returned home to tell the tale. And so the ghost of Colley the sweep keeps his vigil – some say, even to this day.
Lynching a Witch
Another example of folk-hysteria, generated by their ability to believe in oft-told tales of witchcraft, fear of the supernatural and a common desire to fall back on their own folk remedies for ridding themselves of it.
The winter was a severe one, and several times the Ouse had been frozen over. On Wednesday, 17th February, however, there had been several hours of thaw when a young woman called Alice Brown decided to take a short cut across the ice to her home in Great Paxton. A friend of hers, Fanny Amey, was already on the other side, and stood waiting for Alice to cross.
She had barely got out as far as the middle of the river when the ice began to bend in that sickening way that warns skaters it is liable to break, and before she reached the side, it gave way beneath her weight. It was only with great difficulty that she prevented herself from being dragged under the ice, but somehow or other she struggled until she was able to pull herself up on the bank. Fanny Amey, who had seen it all happen, was utterly helpless to do anything to aid her friend, and was in a state of terror almost as high as that of the victim of the accident. Frozen with cold and shivering with terror, the two sobbing girls ran as fast as they could to Alice Brown’s home, which was about half a mile away; and there, as soon as she had made the safety of her father’s fireside, the terrified girl collapsed on to the floor in a dead faint.
Now it so happened that Fanny Amey had for some time past been subject to epileptic fits, and no sooner had Alice fallen to the floor than Fanny stiffened, rolled up her eyes, frothed at the mouth and pitched forward also into unconsciousness. It was some time before either came round, and could be put into their beds. Whether it was as a result of the shock to her system, or of the severe chill she had taken, Alice did not recover as she should have done; and the strange thing was that from that time on, she, too, was subject to the distressing epileptic fits from which Fanny continued, from time to time, to suffer.
Alice grew worse, and the fits became so frequent and so violent that she could do no work at all, and at last took to her bed, while her friends began to give up all hope of her recovery.
The Reverend Isaac Nicholson, who was the vicar of Great Paxton at that time, was distressed to hear of the illness of one of his parishioners. As he happened upon Alice’s mother in the village street one day in April, he approached her to ask how the girl was. He was given a graphic description of her seizures, of general weakness and the fits of awful depression to which she was subject, and was then startled to hear the mother declare that there was no doubt that it was all due to witchcraft.
A knot of neighbours had gathered, and to the clergyman’s dismay they all seemed to concur with this diagnosis of the malaise.
‘Ah!’ said one youth. ‘That’s what it is! She’s under an evil-tongue, you may depend upon’t.’
‘That’s right, Sir,’ said another man. ‘As sure as you’re a-standing there, it is. An’ so are them other two girls, as live near Alice – Fanny Amey and Mary Fox, as both have fits an’ all. I knowed a man in Bedfordshire, where I come from, as were just the same as Alice – cou’n’t do no work, started dwining away, an’ lost all ’is strength, he did; then another chap telled ’im what were the matter with ’im, an’ ’ow he might get hisself cured. He had to fill a bottle wi’ something – I reckon as it were his own water. Sir, on’y I don’t like to say – stuff the cork, top and bottom, with pins, and set it in the oven, aside o’ the fire, an’ then keep quiet. So he done it, an’ set there still as a mouse, an’ sure enough that begin to work afore long. He see a lot o’ queer shapes a’floating in front of him, and among ’em there were one as looked just like an old woman what lived in the same parish. Then he knowed who it were that had been witching him. An’ as it happened, that same old woman died not many days arterwards, an’ soon as ever she’d been put away, the chap got as right as rain in no time. I told Thomas Brown about it, an’ they tried it out last night to see who it is witching their gal, but it di’n’t work proper, so they ain’t found out yet who it is doing the mischief.’
The clergyman could hardly believe that he was actually hearing a recital of such superstition in his own parish, but as the days passed it became all too clear to him that what he had heard was the opinion generally held by most of his poor parishioners. They believed wholeheartedly that Alice, Fanny and Mary were all under the evil influence of somebody who, for wordly gains or out of sheer wickedness, had made a pact with the Devil, at the expense of his or her soul; and because of their belief, they were trying out all sorts of charms and spells and extraordinary rituals in an attempt to discover the identity of the witch.
The parson decided to call on the girls. He found Fanny Amey so well that he could hardly discover anything the matter with her. As he said, ‘she was perfectly collected, and looked the picture of health’; but Alice Brown was in bed and asleep, so he could not judge for himself in her case. He took the opportunity, in both cottages, of trying to convince the parents and other relatives of the utter impossibility of one person being harmed by another by the aid of supernatural agency, and he begged them to try to find ways of helping their daughters other than bothering to discover a nonexistent witch. But they seemed sullen and unresponsive towards him, though not openly rude or discourteous.
However, on the
following Sunday morning, as he was getting ready to go to church, he was told that a woman was at the door asking to see him. He went, and found one of his parishioners, a sensible and respectable elderly woman of about sixty years old, named Ann Izzard, in a state of great fear and agitation. In tears, and trembling with apprehension, she told him that all her neighbours had turned on her and accused her of being a witch, and said that it was she who had ‘overlooked’ Alice Brown, Fanny Amey and Mary Fox. They said they had proof of her wickedness from some of the charms they had tried out, and that they were going to punish her. This had been going on for some days, she said, and her neighbours had frightened her so much that she was ill herself – she had dropped to the ground in fainting fits several times, and didn’t know what to do, she was so scared.
‘So I come to you, Sir,’ she said. ‘I am not a witch, an’ I’m willing to be weighed against the church Bible to prove it! I’m a respectable married woman as has had eight children, though there’s only five living.’
The clergyman soothed her as best he could, and then went into the church. After his sermon that morning, he took his congregation severely to task about the matter. He pointed out the folly of their beliefs, and also the dangers that might arise from brooding upon such superstitious fears. He then dealt with the situation from a much more practical angle, saying firmly that though they might see no harm in laying violent hands on a person they had persuaded themselves to be a witch, the law of the land would undoubtedly take a different view, and he warned them in no uncertain terms to take care of what they were about. He was very troubled to see that neither persuasion nor threat had the least effect on them. It seemed almost as if they were the ones possessed of the Devil.
The next incident in the story happened on Thursday, 5th May. Thursday is market day at the nearby town of St Neots, and on that day Ann Izzard went, as usual, to market on foot. But it so happened that one of her sons, who worked for a farmer named John Bidwell, of Great Paxton, was sent to St Neots by his master to fetch a load of corn. When he was ready to return, his mother and one of her neighbours who kept a tiny shop in the village took a lift home with him. The neighbour had a large pannier-basket full of stock for her shop with her, and this she placed on top of the sacks of corn in the cart. Ann Izzard advised her against this, saying it was not safe, and would come to harm there; but the woman insisted, and away they went. Ann Izzard’s son was in charge of a pair of horses, however, of which one was very young and new to harness. It became very restive and unmanageable, plunging and rearing, so that the women got down; and as the cart was proceeding down the hill towards Great Paxton, the horse began to play up to such an extent that young Izzard, who was only sixteen, could not hold it, so that eventually it managed to turn the cart over. Then, of course, the basket of groceries was severely damaged, being squashed among the heavy sacks of corn.
Now the fat was truly in the fire, because the irate and distressed shopkeeper gave it out that the whole incident had been caused by Ann Izzard and her infernal art. She had said several times that the groceries would come to harm on top of the cart, and to make sure they did, she had overturned it.
The news travelled like wildfire round the village. ‘Did you ever hear the like of it!’ said one to another ‘She j ust toppled a loaded cart over as if it had been as light as a spinning wheel!’ ‘That’s proof enough, ain’t it? In broad daylight she does it, bold as brass! Stands to reason she’s the one doing all the mischief, now don’t it? Ah – we shall have to put a stop to it, or there’ll be no livin’ anywhere nigh her.’
Everyone, man, woman and child, had something to say on the matter. ‘You hev to draw a witch’s blood,’ said one wiseacre. ‘Draw her blood, and she won’t be able to do no more harm.’
Three days later, they carried out their threat. As darkness fell on the following Sunday evening (8th May) they gathered together, taking with them in their midst the girl, Alice Brown, whose fall through the ice had begun it all. About ten o’clock they went to the lonely cottage where Ann lived with her aged husband, Wright Izzard. The poor old couple were in bed, but the mob broke down the door, went in, and pulled Ann, stark naked, from her bed. They dragged her into the yard, and proceeded to ‘knock the devil out of her’. One had taken from the cottage door the heavy bolt of wood with which it was secured, and using this as a weapon he laid about her till her face, abdomen and breasts were black and blue with bruises. They then seized her and bashed her head against the large stones marking the causeway; and finally, using any mixture of sharp instruments they could come by, but mostly pins, they tore the flesh off her arms so as to draw blood as effectively as possible. And being then satisfied that they had done a good job, they left her lying, naked as she was, in the yard.
When she was able to pick herself up, she crawled back into the house, got dressed, and made her way to the village constable, but he, being afraid of the revenge of the mob, protested he had no power to protect her ‘because he was not sworn’. In despair, she turned homeward, but by this time the effects of the attack were making themselves evident and, in a fainting condition, she collapsed at the door of a poor widow named Alice Russell. Here she found all the kindness, sympathy, help and comfort that it seems reasonable to expect from one unfortunate to another. Mrs Russell took her in, comforted her, washed and anointed her wounds with such medicaments as she had, and bound up her bleeding arms with strips of clean rag, finally seeing her back safely to her own cottage and her distracted old husband.
When the mob heard of this kindness next morning, they were outraged, and their indignation knew no bounds. They talked and gossiped with venom towards Alice Russell, declaring their vengeance upon her. ‘Them as protect proved witches is just as bad as the witches theirselves,’ they said; and they made quite sure that Alice Russell knew of their muttered threats.
She was terrified, having seen at first hand what they had done to Ann Izzard. Her terror and dread were so great that she went into a decline, neither eating nor sleeping for days together, until after three weeks she died.
However poor Ann’s troubles were not yet over when Alice Russell took pity on her; for on the very next night, that is, the Monday after her first ordeal on the Sunday, the hysterical neighbours repeated their attack, once more dragging her from her bed, beating and kicking her, and gashing her arms and breasts to draw blood. It appears that they had hoped the second attack within so short a time might finish her off; but when they learned, on their way to work on Tuesday morning, that she was still alive and likely to survive, they gave it out that as soon as the day’s work was finished, they would seize her again and duck her in the village pond.
When the couple heard this, they hastily packed up what they could, and leaving their home and possessions to the frustrated fury of the insane mob, they staggered two miles to a neighbouring village and took refuge there (probably with one of their married children). At any rate, for the time being, they were safe.
When recovered, Ann lodged a complaint, and in due course the slow wheels of the law turned upon the foolish and deluded village witch-hunters. The judge at Huntingdon assizes reprimanded severely four men and five women (Fanny Amey and her mother, Mary Fox and Mary Hook, and the cause of all the trouble, Alice Brown, who seemed perfectly well enough to play a violent part in the assault), committing them all to gaol for one calendar month. The whole of this sad episode of lingering village superstition and belief in witchcraft was related in detail by the vicar concerned, the Reverend Isaac Nicholson, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about it all is the date, for the year in which it happened was no longer ago than 1808!
Possessed by the Devil
Popular belief in witchcraft and possession by the Devil reached its apogee in the seventeenth century. The vivid details of this account demonstrate just how real to the folk this chapter of history was, and what courage was required by the relatives of the afflicted to deal with it.
In the Hertfordshire vill
age of Sarratt, so the tale goes, there once lived a worthy, well-respected man named John Baldwin. John and his wife had three daughters, all grown up, and all as pretty and slender as country lasses have usually been through the ages, for they ate sparingly, worked hard, honoured their parents and dutifully said their prayers. Their names were Anne, Rebecca and Mary, and all were now robustly healthy, though in her early childhood Rebecca had been subject to distressing fits and convulsions.
Then, one day in the year 1700, everything changed. Without warning, Rebecca went down with some mysterious illness that no one could diagnose. However, as time passed, she began to recover, and was almost well again when the thing the family dreaded above all once more happened. Rebecca went into convulsions, of the kind she had had when a child; but these were of a much more severe nature, and as she came out of the fit, she began to make most extraordinary noises. At first her sisters, who were sitting with her, thought there was a bumble bee in the room, for the sound of a bee buzzing was so loud in their ears that they could not but believe in the reality of the insect; but as the sound seemed to come from their sister’s couch, they went close to her, and were terrified to find the sound issuing from her mouth. Then, even while they clung to each other in distress and superstitious fear that their sister’s soul was endeavouring to free itself from her body, the sound ceased, though only for a moment.
It was followed, almost immediately, by the feeble mewing of a kitten, which grew in loudness and intensity to the rude caterwauling of cats on a summer’s night. By the time the distressed parents had been brought to the room, the cats had given way to the furious barking of a dog. And so, through the night, the cacophony of bestial noises issued from the throat of the unconscious girl, while her family and neighbours watched in dread and terror.
The Book of English Folk Tales Page 23