64: Something Familiar

Shauna: Double double toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Chances are you've heard that phrase at least once in your life. Shakespeare's Macbeth helped create one of the most recognizable images of witchcraft. A gathering of witches huddled around a bubbling cauldron, throwing all sorts of strange and uncomfortable ingredients into the mix. And in many ways, that image has become part of the commercial version. Of the witch we still see in every modern Halloween display, with a bit extra pieces inserted over the years, of course. But our fascination with witches goes much, much farther than Shakespeare. For thousands of years, witches and witchcraft have appeared in legends, laws, artwork, religious text, and stories passed from one generation to the next across the world. But the witches we picture in our modern minds, the broomstick, cauldron, and pointy hat, is very different from what people imagine when they spoke about witchcraft in some of the earliest civilization manuscripts. In fact, one of the earliest known images that even looks somewhat like a modern witch doesn't appear until 1451. Drawn in the margins of a manuscript copy. Of Martin Lefranc's poem Le Champion de Dame, or The Defender of Ladies, and it depicts two tiny women that can be seen soaring through the air, one riding a stick and the other a broom. And when I say tiny, I mean tiny. The figures only measure to about three centimeters high. Above them are the words Devaudois, referring to the Waldison's members. Of a Christian movement that had been declared heresy by the church in the 13th century. And those members were even sometimes accused of witchcrafts themselves. And the illustration was likely created by Peron Lamy, an artist of Savoy, that may have been influenced by the Valet Witch Trials, which took place between 1428 and 1447. So while this little drawing gives us one of the earliest glimpses. Of broomstick riding witches that would eventually become so familiar, the belief of witches themselves is far older. One of the earliest known laws dealing with sorcery actually comes out of ancient Sumar, around 21 BC. And it translates roughly like this: if a man is accused of sorcery, he is to be thrown in the river. If the river gods allow him to survive, He is considered innocent, and the person who accused him has to pay him three shekels for his trouble. So I'm sure you would want to be very certain the person you were tossing into the river was in fact a sorcerer. A few wrong throws, and your paycheck might be looking pretty slim. But there is something else that stands out in that text, and I wonder if you caught it. A man. Yes, long before Salem, one of the earliest written laws surrounding witchcraft was quite literally dealing with a man. Now, in fairness, the word translates as man could have been used in a more generalized term back then, meaning persons, kind of like how we use the term guys today in referring to a group of people. But I still think it's worth pointing out. Because modern images of witchcraft have become so closely tied to women that it can be easily assumed that it was always that way. But it wasn't. And there's another interesting piece hidden within that law. Even more than a thousand years ago, people apparently understood that an accusation of sorcery could come with something as simple as a grudge. If you accuse someone and they are proven innocent, there's a consequence to you too. Which tells us something important about the history we're about to explore. The witch has never been just one thing. It depends on where you were, when you lived, and who was telling the story. A witch could be feared, respected, blamed, hunted, sought out for help, transformed into folklore. Or eventually turned into the broomstick riding figure that decorates our home every October. And it's exactly that long, strange history that we're going to explore. So, in honor of the witches we love, no matter what image comes to mind when you hear the word, we're dedicating the entire month of October to them. Each week, we'll explore a different piece of the witch phenomena. The folklore, the beliefs, the fear, and the history, and the real people whose names became forever tangled up in the idea of witchcraft. Because before there were pointy hats and bubbling cauldrons and Halloween decorations, there were thousands of years of stories. So let's listen. Thumb story. The unfamiliar. They whisper in the night, waiting to be heard. So let's listen. Welcome back, spooky souls. We are diving into October strong. This is my favorite month, and not just because it's pumpkin spice everything, though that is quite a highlight. There's just something calm about the transition of seasons and the beauty that it creates. And there's also something spooky about the stories that seem to come out of all the dark corners that make this month. So much fun. So tonight we're starting our witch month off strong with the topic of the familiar. I have always found the idea of a furry companion kind of magical. As I've mentioned before, I have a golden retriever, and we're kind of in the market for a studio cat, so if you have name recommendations, drop them here. If you are new here and you're wondering, What it is you just stumbled upon, welcome. Let's Talk Spooky dives into the dark corners of history, folklore, and urban legends. We explore all things that make us keep the light at the end of the hallway on, or maybe cause us to check under our beds more than once before we close our eyes at night. And if that resonates with you, then you're in the right place. Be sure to stick around, hit that follow button. Because this month is gonna be a special one. So if you're ready, light a candle, ready your brooms, and let's talk spooky. Now I want you to channel that image of witches that we talked about in the beginning of the episode just one more time. There's something else that shows up in those images alongside most of what we imagine when we think of modern witchcraft. And that's the creature that sits just off to the side of the spooky scene, viewing the magic from their perch, or looking over the cauldron with curiosity at the bubbling concoction within. Pop culture has referred to them in several different ways. We see them appear in Salem, in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and in Hedwick and the Harry Potter series. Familiars have been at the side of witches and witchcraft For centuries. And they could show up in a number of different shapes and forms, not necessarily just a black cat, or toad even. They have even showed up in the forms of larger animals, like bears, wolves, foxes, or in some forms of more mystical-like creatures. Something that has the body of a dog, the face of an ape, and a set of baby hands. To top it all off. Though I'm really trying hard to imagine how anybody could brush that off as their pet. And the familiars are not just concentrated to one area of Europe either. They show up in areas across the world. In parts of rural Japan, the fear wasn't a lone witch with a pet. It was an entire family holding on to an animal spirit. Anthropologist Konan Sasuki wrote in 1984 of villages where one household could possess the spirit of a fox, a dog, or another creature, and then pass it down the family line. In parts of Siberia, shamans were the go-between for the human world and the world of the spirits, and that work was done alongside a spirit helper, which often took the shape of an animal. Anthropologist Isaac Nihas found that stories of witches were also connected to the owning of familiars that would take the shapes of snakes, owls, hyhenas, baboons, and even large wild cats. But for this episode, we're going to focus on England, where animal familiars became a particularly prominent part of the witchcraft accusations and the craze that spanned. From fifteen sixty to the mid seventeen hundreds. In English law, familiars were often described as evil spirits, taking the shape of ordinary creatures, like cats and dogs or toads, and under the Witchcraft Act of sixteen ⁓ four, employing, feeding, or making any kind of arrangement with an evil spirit could be punishable by death, even without proving. That it did any harm to anyone. So if you're just hanging outside with your cat, well, you could be accused of witchcraft. And that's exactly what seemed to happen in this story. The flower women had worked at the Belvoir Castle, the home of the Earl and the Countess of Rutland, for a number of years. According to a pamphlet published in 1619, They initially came to the household looking for assistance and were eventually given work. Margaret secured a position inside the castle, looking after the poultry and working the wash houses. But soon complaints began to surface that the women were taking things that didn't necessarily belong to them, items from the households, as well as food from the kitchen. Eventually, Margaret herself was dismissed, her mother Joan shortly after, and followed by her sister Philippa. But shortly after the dismissals, an illness entered the Earl's family. His eldest son, Henry, had become sick and then later died in 1613. His younger son, Francis, also began to suffer from an illness, as well as his older daughter Catherine. But she did eventually recover. Years passed before the flower women were finally arrested, after even more accusations of ill intent began to surface. But when they were finally questioned around Christmas of 1618, it was the loss of their employment that became part of the explanation for what might be happening. The first accusation was that Joan, the mother, Had wanted revenge against the family for firing both her and her daughters. And she employed the help of her cat Rutkin to take care of business, per se. Now I want to mention that most of the details that we have of the Flower Women and their case come from that pamphlet in 1619 called The Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcraft of Margaret and Philip Flower. And it includes statements attributed to the women during their arrest and examinations, but it was published after the daughters had been executed and was written in support of their guilt. So as unsettling as the story does become, we are hearing an account of alleged witchcraft rather than proof that anything actually happened. So I want you to keep that in mind when moving forward. According to Philippa, Margaret brought their mother something from the castle. Something that belonged to little Henry, his right hand glove. Joan supposedly rubbed it against Rutskin's back and then placed it in boiling water, pricking it repeatedly, and then she buried it in her yard. Margaret then described a very similar act. Although, in one account, she said the glove was burned. She also recalled asking her mother why she wanted it in the first place. And the answer was simply that she wanted to harm the little boy and kind of stick it to the family for firing her. And this is where the ordinary glove becomes something much more disturbing. It had belonged to the little boy, and it did touch his body, and within the belief that connected the witchcraft to the familiar, Joan had used it to reach out to him without ever having to enter his room. As discussed in Bottleford's Living History Research, this was a form of image magic. Harm done to an object was intended to affect the person that that object was connected to. And Rutterkin's role was to bring the familiar into that process. Margaret claimed that within a week of the glove being treated, Henry became ill and eventually died. And the same accusation was made to a glove that also belonged to Francis. Again, there was the cat and the hot water and the repeated prickling. Margaret also said that the woman had agreed to bewitch the Earl and Countess so that they could no longer have children. To those who believed the story, Joan was attacking the household through its children, using Personal belongings and her familiar to get the deed done, essentially. But the accounts in the pamphlet and the historical records don't necessarily support that accusation. No one can truly agree what exactly happened to Henry's glove. One said it was buried and the other said it was burned. Anne Baker, a woman who worked in the castle. Was questioned during the investigation and repeated a story that it had been left on the ground to rot. And with that decay, the boy's liver began to waste away. Anne had heard from neighbors, but she had not witnessed it for herself, so it was still a bit of a stretch. Even so, the story became part of the evidence that was gathered around the family. Joan herself, though, never reached trial. The pamphlet says that while she was being questioned, she asked for bread and butter. She held the bread high and declared that it should never pass through her if she was guilty. She put it in her mouth, stopped speaking, and apparently died on the floor of the inn on the way to the Lincoln Gallows. Later, folklore places her death in Ancaster and Sometimes it turns the bread into a communion bread. But in the earliest account, it was bread and butter, and it seems as though she may have choked. Unfortunate. Now with Joan dead, the questioning continued through Margaret and Philippa. Rutterkin was no longer the only familiar in this story. You see, Margaret described two spirits of her own: one white, one black. And spotted, which supposedly fed from hidden places within her body. The Bottleford History Group identifies these spirits as rats. But other women who testified during the investigation described them as a white dog, a creature that resembled a kitten, or perhaps a mole. So I guess it's up to you to decide. Some even insisted that. Their spirits helped people. Others described sending them against neighbors who had insulted or hurt them. Either way, they did the deeds for the girls, and therefore were considered their familiars. Now you might wonder why the investigators were so interested in these creatures. Under the England's witch law of 1604, keeping, employing, or feeding an evil spirit. Could itself be punishable by death. The authorities did not simply hear a woman with a cat, they heard an accusation that she maintained a relationship with a supernatural creature. And that relationship in itself was a crime. Margaret and Philippa were tried at Lincoln before judges, including Sir Edward Bromley, who'd also presided over the Story that we're going to tell in this episode. He had heard the accusation involving the named familiars and recorded it in Thomas Pott's account of the trials. And on March 11th, 1619, the Flower Sisters were hung. Their story soon appeared in a ballad spreading the accusations beyond the courtroom to the people of England who would buy them, sing them, And pass them on. There is one detail though worth keeping in mind. The pamphlets blamed the women for the deaths of both boys. But Francis himself actually lived past the execution of the two sisters. He did eventually pass due to illness, but it wasn't till many years later. And it seems that there could have also been an explanation for the children's illness. And the Bottleford's history group reports that contemporary letters written to John Chamberlain describe that the falling sickness occurred, which was a period term for epilepsy. The Earl, however, preserved the witchcraft accusation on his family and declared that his sons had died through wicked practice and sorcery. Now you might be wondering what happened to Rutterkin? The poor little cat. Well, we don't really know. After the accusations and the deaths of all three women, any knowledge of the cat kind of disappears within the history books. But one can only hope that maybe he ran off into the sunset. For our next story and our next familiar, we head north to Lankshire, to the countryside around Petal Hill. Among the people living there was Elizabeth Southerns, better known as Old Demdike. Thomas Potts, the court clerk, who recorded the trials, described her as about 80 years old, and claimed that she had practiced witchcraft for decades before. Later editor James Crosley interpreted Demdike and her neighbor, Old Chettux, as a rival. Hunning woman, of both individuals that their neighbors may have approached to acquire charms, cures, and any type of tinkature for ailments. But the story Elizabeth told about her familiar began with her coming home from begging. According to her examination, in April of 1612, she had been passing a stone pit about 20 years earlier. When a spirit appeared in the shape of a young boy, his coat was divided into two colors, one half black and the other brown, and he told her to stop. He offered her anything that she wanted if she would give him her soul. And Elizabeth asked his name, and he answered, Tib. Hoping he would make good on his promise, she agreed. Now you might be expecting that the agreement was followed. Immediately by some terribly dark request. But according to Elizabeth, for about five or six years, Tip kept returning and asking what she wanted from him. And she kept answering that she didn't really want anything yet. He appeared around dusk at the time described in the accounts as Daylight Gate. So I want you to imagine that you're walking home as the light begins to fade and you encounter The same figure again, still waiting for you to make use of your bargain. And that's exactly what kept happening. Though his appearance began to change. Elizabeth said that early one Sunday morning, she was dozing with a small child on her knee when Tip came up to her as a brown dog. The creature pressed against her. And drew blood from beneath her arm. She managed to call out for Jesus to save the child, but said that she could not make the same appeal for herself. The dog eventually vanished, and she described being deeply disturbed for weeks afterward. Her daughter, also named Elizabeth, later told the magistrate that her mother had a long-standing mark on her left side. Just as we saw in the spirits described in the Flower Sisters, a familiar was believed to feed from its keeper's body. But Tib was a little different, a little bit more ruthless. He supposedly encouraged the act of revenge. And Elizabeth recalled a confrontation with a neighbor, Richard Baldwin, who ordered her off his land and called her and her grandmother witches. As her grandmother led her away, Tib appeared suddenly and he urged her to take revenge on the man. And according to the statement that Elizabeth gave, she told him to avenge her against Baldwin or his family. She said she never saw that spirit again. Most of these details come from Potts the wonderful discovery of witches in the county of Lenshire. Published in 1613. It does preserve the examination, but it was ordered to be written by a judge, and Bromley did help revise it. So, like the flower pamphlets, its accounts really hold against the prosecution aspect. So it's very hard to decipher what is of truth and slightly elaborated for promotional purposes, of course. But we can follow the women recorded in these without treating the statements as complete proof. It was Elizabeth's grandmother, Alison Device, whose encounter brought the family under the initial investigation. On March 18, 1612, Allison met a traveling peddler named John Law and asked him for pins. He refused to open his pack. And according to her confession, a familiar resembling a black dog suddenly appeared. It asked what she wanted done with him, and she told it to lame him. And Law collapsed on the road in front of her. Though he did survive, his body was left badly impaired. In the account preserved by Potts, he also described seeing a large black dog beside him afterwards. With frightening teeth and fierce red eyes. Alison believed that she had caused his condition, and the investigation soon spread to the rest of her family. A dispute over pins had become an allegation that a young woman could command an evil spirit to injure someone. And from that, more familiars emerged as the questioning continued. Remember Elizabeth's rival? Old Chuttucks? Well, she described a familiar that she also employed, named Fancy, which appeared like a man that asked for her soul. She also recalled a strange meal at Elizabeth's house, where the food was plentiful and the spirits provided light despite there being no fire or candle. Afterward, Fancy and Tibbs. Supposedly carried away the leftovers. The guests had eaten to their fill, but didn't feel full at all. And Elizabeth's grandson James described something a little bit more frighteningly physical about the whole altercation. After hearing cries like children and then yelling of cats, he said a dark creature lay heavy upon him for about an hour before jumping out of his bedroom window that night. His younger sister, Jeanette, would also tell the court that her mother had kept a familiar in the form of a brown dog that she named Ball. Across the family's statements, spirits and familiars appeared as companions, feeders, agents of harm, slipping between both human form and shapes of animals. Now Elizabeth herself died in Lancaster Castle. before she could even be tried completely. The case continued on without her, though, and her youngest granddaughter became one of the most consequential witnesses in the case. And Jeanette was about nine years old. According to Potts, she would not speak while her mother was present. So Elizabeth was removed, and the child was placed on a table to give her evidence before the court. And Jeanette did. She testified All about the gathering, about her family's familiars, and a number of other incidents. All in all, ten people were hanged on August 20th, 1612, including Allison, her mother Elizabeth, her brother James, and the neighbor Old Chattox. The use of Jeanette's testimony became another lasting part of Pettle's history. King James had supported children giving evidence in witchcraft cases, and legal historians have identified that these trials and Potts widely circulated accounts as helping the practice gain acceptance. As with Rutkin, the law already made dealing with evil spirits like familiars a capital offense. Tibbs' alleged bargain, his feeding, And Elizabeth's request for revenge all fit the kind of activities that investigators were looking for. Pott also stressed the belief that a familiar could not harm someone unless its keeper consented to it. Pettle's influence reached beyond the trials themselves. A legal pamphlet published in 1645 explicitly drew guidance from the Lancaster account. Describing named familiars, changing animal form, secret feedings and body marks as signs investigators should begin to look for. Unlike uncertain connections between the flower case and later manuals, here is a source connection that is accurate and direct. Potts book helped teach others what alleged witchcraft was actually supposed to look like. Kind of like a user manual for hunting witches. But when another child accused Pendle residents in 1633 and 1634, the outcome changed. Edmund Robertson told stories of dogs turning into people and supernatural feasts. Seventeen people were found guilty, but the executions were halted while the accusations were investigated a little further. Robinson eventually admitted that he had kind of lied and made up the whole story. A woman named Jeanette DeVice were among the accused, which is kind of interesting since she was the accuser from 1612. Later, the physician John Webster openly challenged the beliefs that spirits sucked blood from witches or that people could even transform into animals. More recently, historian Emma Wibbly explored whether familiar accounts drew on older belief systems such as fairy spirits. Although the similarities are there, there is still some differing factors. What remains though is the image of Tib beside the stone pit, offering help to a woman returning from begging, and in her recorded account, he waited. Years to fulfill her request. And after hearing these stories, that little creature sitting beside the Halloween witch starts to look a little bit different. In the English trials, we've explored tonight the familiar gave people a way to explain how witchcraft supposedly worked. A kind of connection between evil and magic. If someone became ill after an argument or an animal died unexpectedly, a familiar could be blamed for carrying out the harm. And in the National Archive collections show just how closely accusations of witchcraft were tied to the troubles and relationships of everyday life. Now, Rutkin and Tibbs were not the only familiars. There are plenty of company in those records. In the Chelmsford pamphlets of 1566, Elizabeth Francis was said to receive a white-spotted cat called Safin as a gift from her grandmother. The account claimed that she fed it milk and bread and rewarded it with her blood, and eventually passed it on to Angie Waterhouse in exchange for a slice of cake. Waterhouse was subsequently hung for witchcraft, which shed a little bit of new light that one familiar could be passed on to another person, and then essentially carrying out the deeds once their original host was gone. Decades later, Matthew Hopkins described the creatures called Holt: a white kitten, sack and sugar, a black rabbit, and Vinger Tom, a greyhound like. Creature with the head of an ox. Those were memorable names, but they appear in Hopkins' defense of his witch finding methods, published in 1647. Cornell University Library connects the book's illustration to Elizabeth Clark, who was hung in 1645 on evidence concerning her alleged connection to familiars. And Hopkins' own account. Tells us something especially troubling. The women he described had been kept awake for several nights while watchers awaited her to call upon her familiars. He also defended searches of bodily marks supporting the use of feeding them. The familiar belief therefore influenced how suspects were even treated, as well as how their statements were interpreted. Even the question printed in his books challenged whether or not natural growth could be mistaken for a supernatural mark. So at least he brought forth some doubt, I suppose. And as we leave these stories, I want you to remember that the pamphlets preserve an extraordinary description, but they also preserve an argument of people trying to prove that witchcraft was evil or justifying. Their techniques within their investigation. And we can find the creatures fascinating while being careful about what the records actually establish. A named familiar, a supposed feeding mark, or the confession made after days and days without sleep can't really tell us that a supernatural being was ever involved. For the people accused, though. Claims could have been devastating, the familiar help turn fear into something investigators believed that they could identify. A creature with a name, a shape, and a connection to a particular person. And behind every account we've heard tonight, someone who had to live or die with that interpretation connected to them. So the next time you see the cute little cat. Perched beside a witch. Perhaps you think of Rutkin, maybe Tib, or even the very strangely named Vinegar Tom. Their stories have survived for centuries, but it's important to remember the names of the people accused of keeping them. So thank you for joining me and the beginning of the month of witches. I hope you enjoyed tonight's episode, and I apologize if I pronounced Anything not quite right. I look forward to scaring you guys next week, so stay curious, and as always, stay spooky.