by Kai Roberts
Nonetheless, between the seventeenth and nineteenth century, her reputation as a soothsayer was unassailable across the whole of England. Following the publication of Two Strange Prophecies in 1642, interest burgeoned so rapidly that the pamphlet had expanded to Fourteen Strange Prophecies by 1649. The celebrated diarist, Samuel Pepys even records that during the Great Fire of London in 1666, the king’s cousin, Prince Rupert, was heard to remark, ‘Now Shipton’s prophecy is out.’ This was in reference to a notorious couplet which ran, ‘Triumphant Death rides London through / And men on tops of houses go’. Typically, however, like most prophecies, Mother Shipton’s alleged divinations are couched in ambiguous, symbolic language and for any event, there are lines which can be imagined to fit.
With the success of the prophecies, a rich body of legend grew up around Mother Shipton’s birth and supposed childhood in Knaresborough. It was said that she was born from her mother’s union with the Devil and that fearsome sounds accompanied her entry into the world. Even as an infant, Ursula was reported to be fearsomely ugly, with a crooked body, hooked nose and goggling eyes. Her powers manifested from an early age and she would make the furniture in her nurse’s house dance up and down the stairs. On one occasion, the child went missing and when her nurse returned with a search party, they were all magically compelled to take the four ends of a cross and dance until they dropped, whilst a simian imp goaded them with pins. A priest was eventually summoned and he found Ursula in her cradle, floating three full yards above the ground.
Mother Shipton’s fame endures today, as the cave in which she was purportedly born has been turned into one of North Yorkshire’s principle tourist attractions – although arguably its appeal rests on the neighbouring petrifying well rather than the cave itself. Nonetheless, the sibyl has become something of a county icon, which may be some small vindication for all those who were persecuted for their uncanny reputation in Yorkshire’s history. Her birthplace is certainly a more edifying spectacle than the skeleton of Mary Bateman, which following the donation of her corpse to an anatomy school after her execution now hangs forlorn in the Thackerary Medical Museum – a stark reminder of the havoc superstition could wreak in centuries gone by.
TWO
CHARMS AND TALISMANS
Before the advance of modern science, when livelihoods could be destroyed by a simple crop blight and lives suddenly snatched away by some unknown sickness, so many individuals must have felt cast adrift in a hostile environment, powerless against forces beyond their understanding or control. With the human tendency to anthropomorphise and seek causal agency, the world could not help but be transformed into a demon-haunted place, apparently overrun by baleful supernatural forces bent on doing harm to persons and property. It is scarcely surprising that these beleaguered folk attempted to assert control by any means necessary, and a rich legacy of protective charms and talismans survives as testament to their endeavour. Whilst such contingencies may seem absurd today, they once represented the only hope in the face of an unforgiving universe.
Should a house find itself tormented by a restless spirit, there were few expedients available following the Reformation, as the rite of exorcism was forbidden to Protestant clergy and often householders were forced to resort to a local cunning-person to help ‘lay’ the ghost. Such individuals might perform a corrupted remembrance of the old Catholic ritual or provide a charm to ward off the spirit, which had to be kept in the house indefinitely. For instance, in 1905, the occupier of High Fernley Hall at Wyke in West Yorkshire discovered seven pieces of parchment concealed in the rafters of the building, apparently deliberately fixed into place for posterity. These parchments were inscribed in the legal hand of the latter half of the eighteenth century, each with a series of largely nonsensical words doubtless meant as magical formulae.
It was locally believed that the charm had been placed to offer protection against the ghost of a former owner of the hall, who had committed suicide there. Legends record that in the mid-eighteenth century, High Fernley Hall was occupied by two brothers named Bevers, both of whom loved the same woman. Only one brother won the lady’s affection, however, and they were married at Kirkheaton Church on 5 May 1742. After witnessing the ceremony, the spurned suitor returned to High Fernley, whereupon he told the servants that tragedy would soon befall him and he would ‘come again’ minus his head. He then proceeded to take his own life, supposedly by decapitating himself, although this might be a later embellishment to account for the condition of his ghost.
Sure enough, the unfortunate Bevers brother returned every night as a headless horseman, galloping up and down the lane which led from High Fernley Hall to Judy Woods. Few locals dared walk that way after dark and the house stood untenanted for many years, until that portion in which the suicide had taken place was demolished. Considering the apparent agreement between the date of the suicide and the approximate date of the parchment charms, it seems highly likely that they were intended to ward off Bevers’ acephalous spectre. Following their rediscovery in 1905, a local belief developed that bad luck would befall the hall and its tenants should the charms ever be removed.
Of course, the majority of household talismans between the sixteenth and nineteenth century were intended as a defence against witchcraft – specifically maleficium. In some cases, they were purely prophylactic; designed to protect against potential witchcraft, rather than a spell already directed against the house (which typically needed stronger measures to undo). The most common example, known throughout the British Isles, was a horseshoe nailed to the door of the house. In his 1686 work, Remains of Gentilism and Judaism, the antiquarian John Aubrey noted that the power of horseshoes derived from the fact they were made of iron; although it is not clear why most sources insisted that their points should be directed upwards. Nonetheless, positioned thus, no witch could cross the threshold and their spells would be reflected back upon them.
Similarly effective were stones through which a natural hole had been bored. This occurred as the result of water action over many centuries and such pebbles were usually plucked from the seashore or a streambed. Known variously as holy-stones, hag-stones or dobby-stones, smaller examples were kept about the person as a portable talisman – often attached to a door-key; whilst larger specimens were hung in the home or sometimes in stables. It was widely believed that witches stole horses and rode them hard to their sabbats, before returning them to their stalls sweating and exhausted. Animals found in such a condition were described as ‘hag-ridden’ and the holed stone was regarded as an effective defence against this danger.
The wood of the rowan tree (sometimes known as mountain ash) was also thought to protect against witchcraft and being easier to come by than horseshoes and holed stones, it was very extensively deployed. Sprigs of rowan were hung in each room of the house; in the stables and byres, above the beds, behind every window and door. On farms it was considered prudent to make the churn-staff and whip-stocks from rowan wood, whilst it was tied around the horns or necks of cattle to keep them safe from maleficium. Some cottages even went so far as to have a rowan tree growing in their garden to hold the witches at bay. Beyond the home, people would wear posies in their buttonholes, carry twigs in their pockets and place leaves in their shoes.
A sprig of rowan, hung to protect a house from witches. (Kai Roberts)
In some areas of the county, cutting rowan for such use had to be performed with the appropriate ritual. Around Cleveland, St Helen’s Day (2 May) was the appointed time for this ceremony. Householders would rise before dawn and proceed into the woods to search for a suitable tree. For the rowan charm to be fully effective, the wood had to be cut with a domestic knife and taken from a tree of which the cutter had no previous knowledge. In Holderness, meanwhile, the rowan had to be gathered at a certain times of day to be fully effective. Noon was considered relatively favourable, but wood procured at midnight was thought to be the most potent – especially when fashioned into the shape of a cross.
>
Rowan was also used to make witch-posts, an architectural feature unique to North Yorkshire farmhouses in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, especially around Farndale. These thick wooden posts were usually located beside the hearth to protect the threshold from unwelcome incursion. The chimney was regarded as a common access point for witches during the night, but such intruders could not pass beyond a rowan witch-post. For additional security, their faces were carved with a St Andrew’s Cross, beneath which were a number of lines believed to represent the number of people in the household requiring protection. Sometimes a crooked sixpence was stored in a niche in the centre of the post and if the butter would not emulsify due to some enchantment laid upon it, the sixpence was taken from this position and placed in the churn as a counter-spell.
But such techniques were only good as preventative measures; if maleficium was already directed at the household, more evasive action was required. In such cases, the local cunning-person was again the resort of choice and often counter-attack was their recommended course of action. The principle by which maleficium was thought to operate required that the witch establish an intimate connection with the target of their spite; hence why the personal affects of a victim were often needed to direct the spell. However, this connection could be fruitfully turned against the witch so that in order to escape her own suffering, she would be forced to undo the original enchantment.
A witch-post preserved from a Farndale farmhouse. (Kai Roberts)
For instance, when the dairy was thought to be bewitched and the butter would not churn, it was imagined that sticking a red-hot poker into the cream would be quickly felt by the witch. More elaborately, when a farmer living near Skipton in the eighteenth century believed his cattle to be bewitched, a local wise-man instructed him that on a specified day he was to kindle a fire behind his house and gather his family round. They were then to take the heart from one of the diseased cows and boil it in a pan suspended over the fire; when the organ was removed, each member of the family was to stick a pin into it. The next stage of the procedure varied: sometimes the heart was burnt on the fire; sometimes it was placed in the chimney; and sometimes it was buried in consecrated ground.
When an individual was suffering from an illness believed to be the result of maleficium, a witch-bottle was used. Typically, the hair, fingernails and urine of the target was placed with a great quantity of pins or nails in an earthenware jar which was then heated over a fire. Again, it was believed that the link an enchantment established between a witch and her victim was such that this tactic would cause great pain to her. It was imagined she would feel the heat from the fire and the symbolic stabbing of the pins, and she would be forced to reverse the initial spell to spare herself this agony. Her only other hope of release was for the jar to shatter during the heating process or if she could get to it herself and destroy it.
Often this would also have the effect of identifying the malefactor. One story relates that when the child of a Halifax family fell ill, the above procedure was followed and the witch-bottle was left to heat on the fire overnight. During the early hours of the morning, there was a rap at the door and outside stood the notorious Auld Betty in an evident state of distress. She asked if they needed their fire ‘riddling’ (to sieve out the ash) but unfortunately such a transparent attempt to access the house and destroy the witch-bottle was immediately recognised. She was chased from the door and shortly thereafter, the child began to recover, suggesting Auld Betty had been forced to lift her spell.
A typical witch-bottle was unearthed around 1960 at Halton East, near Skipton, buried upside down in a field, apparently far from the nearest habitation. It was found to hold several lumps of clay, each one pierced through; altogether there were thirty-five pins, twenty-two nails and sixteen needles. This location was unusual, however. More often witch-bottles were placed in the fabric of the building or beneath the threshold to preserve the household from further mischief and they have frequently been discovered in such contexts many years later. A particularly unique example was discovered in the 1970s, buried beneath the doorstep of an outbuilding attached to a seventeenth-century farmhouse at Ogden, near Halifax. The jar contained some form of liquid, which could well have been urine, and two fragile clay figurines, doubtless intended to represent the bewitched individuals.
It is quite common for other magically protective artefacts to be found in the fabric of old buildings, especially near threshold locations such as doorways, windows, chimneys and eaves. Such items are described as ‘apotropaic’ meaning ‘to ward off evil’. Amongst the most common discoveries were old shoes, which have been turned up in such large quantities and in such unusual locations that accidental deposition can be ruled out. Nobody has yet produced a convincing explanation as to why old shoes were regarded as an appropriate defence against evil. In a study of apotropaic practices, archaeologist Ralph Merrifield suggested that they were ‘considered an effective trap for an evil spirit’, based on a fourteenth-century legend concerning a Buckinghamshire priest who cast the Devil into an old boot.
A witch-bottle discovered at Ogden near Halifax. (Kai Roberts)
Not quite as ubiquitous but rather more memorable is the desiccated cat. These are usually discovered in airtight cavities in the walls of seventeenth-century buildings, where they were deliberately placed and allowed to starve or suffocate. Sometimes they have even been fixed in position to simulate a cat on the hunt. It is not entirely clear how widespread this practice was, as such finds are inadequately recorded. Often workmen assume they were simply an animal that got trapped and dispose of them; or else, understanding their possible significance, replace them in the wall when the work is complete. Nonetheless, it appears that it was not a purely secular custom, as a desiccated cat was discovered in the roof of the Church of St Thomas a Becket at Heptonstall when it was demolished in 1875.
Again, the exact function of desiccated cats remains debatable. Some deflationary historians have suggested they were merely intended to deter rats and mice. However, as Ralph Merrifield notes, ‘As such it was hardly less superstitious, with its quasi-magical imitation of a hunting cat. It is also possible that the real fear underlying the practice was spiritual rather than actual rodents.’ It was a familiar principle of magical thinking that ‘like affects like’ and considering the preference of witches for feline familiars, people may have believed a totem cat represented the building’s best defence against such attack. This would certainly explain why desiccated cats are found at vulnerable threshold points such as chimneys and roofs.
The use of desiccated cats has also been associated with the practice of foundation sacrifice. There is abundant archaeological evidence to suggest that nearly all the pre-Christian cultures of the British Isles made ritual offerings to guarantee the fortune of a new building, the remains of which were typically deposited in the foundations. Animals were the most common sacrifice, and the placing of horse-skulls in this context continued for many centuries – as another discovery at Halton East attests. But there are also indications that humans were occasionally used in such a fashion; and whilst such grisly practices are often thought to be a relic of pagan superstition, the principle of foundation sacrifice may have persisted well into the Middle Ages.
In 1895, renovation work was undertaken on the medieval tower of St Luke and All Saints’ Church at Darrington, near Pontefract, following damage during a storm. The Yorkshire Herald reported:
It was found that under the west side of the tower, only about a foot from the surface, the body of a man had been placed in a sort of bed in the solid rock, and the west wall was actually resting on his skull … The grave must have been prepared and the wall placed with deliberate intention upon the head of the person buried, and this was done with such care that all remained as placed for at least six hundred years.
Although this individual may not have been deliberately killed for the purpose, it certainly suggests that the power of human remains to ensure th
e luck of a building did not die out with the conversion of Britain to Christianity.
Indeed, the cult of relics was an archetypal feature of medieval Catholicism and whilst this orthodox doctrine may not have extended to the apotropaic use of human remains in secular contexts, there was undoubtedly a continuum between the two. Yorkshire has several examples of human skulls being used for apotropaic purposes and although these traditions primarily seem to date from the seventeenth century and beyond, it is possible that their roots go much deeper. The use of the skull as opposed to any other bone is easy enough to understand; many cultures regard the skull as the seat of the soul and there is extensive evidence to suggest that the image of the head itself is frequently considered apotropaic in magical thinking. Certainly it reinforces the image of watchful guardianship and such relics are often referred to as ‘guardian skulls’.
The most famous example in the county is the skull known as ‘Owd Nance’, kept at Burton Agnes Hall in East Yorkshire. Local folklore relates that this mansion was built during the reign of Elizabeth I by three sisters named Frances, Margaret and Anne Griffith. Anne was the youngest and the most enthusiastic about the project, but tragically before the building was complete, she was attacked by robbers whilst travelling home one night and mortally wounded. On her death bed, she made her surviving sisters promise that following her death they would remove her skull and give it a position of honour in the new Hall. Frances and Margaret solemnly agreed to Anne’s request, but failed to fulfil the vow once she had passed away.
Burton Agnes Hall in East Yorkshire, home of a guardian skull known as Owd Nance. (Kai Roberts)