The Penguin Book of Witches (25 page)

Moll Pitcher, born in Marblehead (immediately east of Salem), who resided much of her life in Lynn (immediately south of Salem), embodies the shift of the witch in North American consciousness from a figure of fear to a figure of folklore. She made her living as a fortune-teller and was immortalized in a poem that bears her name by John Greenleaf Whittier. She was consulted on affairs of love and money by the educated and the uneducated alike, and her particular specialty concerned the outcomes of sea voyages. Whittier’s representation of Pitcher is hardly complimentary, however: he writes that she was “A wasted, gray, and meagre hag / In features evil as her lot / She had the crooked nose of a witch.”

In some respects, Moll Pitcher represents a consistency of Anglophone North Atlantic witch belief: in her function as a cunning woman in the early modern English sense, as an individual with particular occult skills available for a fee, and one able to stir both respect and fear in her community, Pitcher could just as easily have been born in 1538 as in 1738. However, her proximity to Salem, living among—and surely patronized by—people who felt the shadow of the Salem trials at their backs, renders Pitcher a curious character.

Most important, Moll Pitcher was born at the beginning of the consumer revolution in colonial North America. Though part of her skill, like the traditional cunning person, lay in conjuring to find lost property, scarcity was less of a grinding problem for average people by the 1730s than it had been a generation earlier. Pitcher’s services could be seen as a boon, without the risk of being as threatening as they would have been a generation previously.
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Moll Pitcher simultaneously embodies folk magical belief, which had its roots in early modern practices in Europe and the British Isles, while also ushering in the figure of the witch in colonial North America, from the confused waning category in the early part of the eighteenth century to the fantastical fairy tale figure that she would assume in the nineteenth century. That’s a tall order for one elderly New England woman to fill with only some tea leaves to help her.
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The reader should now be informed that the poetical extract foregoing is from a poem commemorative of as great and notorious a witch as any that can be found described in the annals of witchcraft, and that we are indebted to the bard of Lynn for a graphic outline of her real history. But the reader should be reminded that the amiable and excellent author of that work was himself a poet, and that it is possible that his account may have a tinge of poetry or be a little bordering on romance. With this premonition it shall follow in his own words.

The celebrated Mary Pitcher, a professed fortune-teller, died April 9th, 1813, aged 75. Her grandfather John Dimond lived at Marblehead and for many years exercised the same pretentions. Her father, Captain John Dimond, was master of a vessel from that place and was living in 1770. Mary Dimond was born in the year 1738. She was connected with some of the best families in Essex County, and with the exception of her extraordinary pretentions, there was nothing disreputable in her life or character. She was of the medium height and size for a woman, with a good form and agreeable manners. Her head, phrenologically considered, was somewhat capacious, her forehead broad and full, her hair dark brown, her nose inclining to long, and her face pale and thin. There was nothing gross or sensual in her appearance. Her countenance was rather intellectual and she had that contour of face and expression which, without being positively beautiful is nevertheless decidedly interesting: a thoughtful, pensive, and sometimes downcast look, almost approaching to melancholy, an eye, when it looked at you, of calm and keen penetration, and an expression of intelligent discernment half mingled with a glance of shrewdness. She took a poor man for a husband and then adopted what she doubtless thought the harmless employment of fortune-telling in order to support her children. In this she was probably more successful than she herself had anticipated and she became celebrated, not only throughout America but throughout the world for her skill. There was no port on either continent, where floated the flag of an American ship that had not heard of the fame of Moll Pitcher. To her came the rich and the poor, the wife and the ignorant, the accomplished and the vulgar, the timid and the brave. The ignorant sailor, who believed in the omens and dreams of superstition, and the intelligent merchant, whose ships were freighted for distant lands, alike sought her dwelling, and many a vessel has been deserted by its crew, and waited idly at the wharves for weeks in consequence of her unlucky predictions. Many persons came from places far removed to consult her on affairs of love or loss of property or to obtain her surmises respecting the vicissitudes of their future fortune. Every youth who was not assured of the reciprocal affection of his fair one and every maid who was desirous of anticipating the hour of her highest felicity repaired at evening to her humble dwelling, which stood on what was then a lonely road, near the foot of High Rock,
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with the single dwelling of Dr. Henry Burchard nearly opposite, over whose gateway were the two bones of a great whale, disposed in the form of a Gothic arch. There for more than fifty years, in her unpretending mansion, did she answer the inquiries of the simple rustic from the wilds of New Hampshire, and the wealthy noble from Europe; and doubtless her predictions have had an influence in shaping the fortunes of thousands.

INTRODUCTION

1
.
Of course, to say that witchcraft has not persisted into our own time is not exactly true. Wicca as an organized religion began in the middle decades of the twentieth century and has only continued to grow. The ablest history of the establishment of this religion, and of the relationship that it has with early modern witchcraft, is elucidated in Ronald Hutton’s
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

WITCHES IN THE BIBLE

1
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The Valley of the Son of Hinnom is both a literal place, located in Gehenna, outside of ancient Jerusalem, which was associated with apostate human sacrifice, and a figurative reference to hell. The blending of the figurative and the literal in this biblical account of the location of witchcraft, or in the idea of wickedness as having a concrete reality outside the body or the soul of the wicked person, will come to play a substantial role in the anxiety about witches in the North American landscape. The “observation of times” here alludes to the practice of astrology.

TRIAL OF URSULA KEMP, ST. OSYTH, ENGLAND,
1582

1
.
Gregory Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials: A History of English Witchcraft and Its Legal Perspectives
(Chichester, England: Barry Rose Law, 2000), iv. Witchcraft in this period was both a legal and an ecclesiastic offense, and could be tried on both a civil and a religious basis. We will limit our inquiry to the treatment of witchcraft within the legal system, which nevertheless turned to theological writing for its legitimacy.

2
.
Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials,
v. The problematic traits of Kemp’s personality, together with the long-standing complaints she has engendered in her neighbors, place her on a continuum of women who garner suspicion as a result of socially deviant behavior.

3
.
Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials,
vi. The nature of the evidence entered against Kemp, which mainly consists of unsubstantiated gossip, suggests the fragility of social relationships in the early modern village, when networks of acquaintanceship could mean the difference between prosperity and ruin.

4
.
Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials,
vii. Before the Scientific Revolution, the difference between correlated phenomena and causation between phenomena was not as widely understood as it is today. Close juxtaposition of two events could easily be mistaken for causation. Similarly, before the spread of the germ theory of disease, sickness could often strike with bewildering, and therefore suspicious, suddenness.

5
.
Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials,
viii. The phenomenon of false confession poses some intriguing problems. A few North American cases seem to suggest that the confessing witch enjoys having a negative reputation. In other instances, most notoriously the probable forced confession of Tituba Indian at the outset of the Salem panic, confession appears as against the will of the confessor.

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.
Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials,
xi. Popular imagination assumes that witches were executed by burning at the stake. In English settlements, however, this was not the case. Witchcraft was a felony and was punished as a felony by hanging.

7
.
Durston,
Witchcraft and Witch Trials,
xii.

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Excerpted from W.W.,
A true and just recorde, of the information, examination and confessions of all the witches taken at S. Oses in the Countie of Essex,
originally published in London by Thomas Dawson, 1582. Images of the original document held at the Huntington Library may be viewed on Early English Books Online, http://gateway .proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.882003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft _id=xri:eebo:image:1960. As Early English Books Online is a subscription service, an alternate version may be found at http://gateway .proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88=200&res=xri:eebo&rft _id=xri:eebo:image:1960.

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The tragedy of a healthy four-month-old baby falling from a cradle and breaking its neck provides a focal point for the conflict between Ursula and Grace. Ursula has publicly questioned Grace’s fitness for motherhood, whereas Grace has taken Ursula’s regret—or lack of surprise—at the baby’s death as an example of threat followed by maleficium, or evil done by supernatural means. Instead of expressing doubt about Grace’s capacity, Ursula was instead making a prediction, which she then caused to come true.

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To “lie in” means to take to bed in preparation for childbirth.

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“Unwitching” someone was a skill for cunning folk, people of importance in the early modern village system, who offered occult services for a fee, marshaling folk magical belief to their own economic gain while sidestepping the label of “witch.” See Owen Davies,
Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), 29.

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“Priuily” in the original, so “privily.”

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Michaelmas, or the feast of Saint Michael, one of the quarter days in England, usually falling around September 29. In English tradition, quarter days fell roughly on Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas, and Christmas, and beginning in the Middle Ages were days on which lawsuits were settled and rents were due.

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Ursula needs sand probably to scour her floors and she is offering to trade for it her labor dyeing a pair of women’s stockings. Barter for goods and services was a more common mode of commerce between neighbors than the use of cash.

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Modern usage treats “naughty” more mildly, connoting childlike misbehavior. However, the OED defines “naughty” in this period as “morally bad, wicked.”

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“Gyile” in the original.

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Another reference to the cunning person, who blames Ursula for the sick Letherdall child. The cunning person’s main task in the early modern English village was unbewitching, which often involved reinforcing assumptions held by the client about who the responsible witch might be.

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Spirit familiars were thought to be small demons or imps that attended to a witch and helped with maleficium, or mischief done using spiritual means, in exchange for feeding from the witch’s body. Even the name of one of these spirits, Tittey, alludes to the images of inverted motherhood common to folk beliefs about witches.

19
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Saint John’s-wort, which is still used by some today as a mood regulator.

20
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“Wonderful” did not have today’s positive association in this time period. Instead “wonderful” means astonishing. See OED, 1928.

21
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Seven eight?

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Ursula Kemp confessed to her various witchly activities in the apparent hopes of being treated leniently, but her hopes were in vain. In Salem a century later, confessions would help accused witches escape execution, but such an outcome was unusual. In previous examples of witch trials such as this one, confession was more likely to hasten conviction and punishment than it was to lead to any leniency.

REGINALD SCOT,
THE DISCOUERIE OF WITCHCRAFT
, 1584

1
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Sydney Anglo, “Reginald Scot’s
Discoverie of Witchcraft
: Skepticism and Sadduceeism” in
The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft
, ed. Sydney Anglo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 108.

2
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Anglo, “Reginald Scot’s
Discoverie of Witchcraft,”
117.

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Scot represents a way station on the movement of witchcraft thought from the Continent to the British Isles, and eventually to North America. He turns his critical attention not only to witch trials contemporary to his own experience, but also to examples drawn from earlier Continental witch-hunting manuals such as the
Malleus Maleficarum
of 1486; writing as a Protestant, Scot sees some of the most notorious descriptions of witchcraft in the
Malleus
as examples of the venality so widespread in the Catholic Church.

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Excerpted from Reginald Scot,
The discouerie of witchcraft vvherein the lewde dealing of witches and witchmongers is notablie detected . . .
Originally published in London by Henry Denham for William Brome, 1584. Images of the original document held at the Huntington Library may be viewed on Early English Books Online, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res _id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:44. An alternate site is https://archive.org/details/discoverieofwit00scot.

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This is widely read as a reference to Job 5:17, which states, “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.” All Bible quotes are taken from the King James Bible (American version).

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Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me, all thee that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

7
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Original reads “fraied.”

8
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Johan Brentius, 1499–1570, a Lutheran theologian.

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This assertion derives from a number of biblical passages; among them Psalms 25 and 83, Ecclesiastes 43, Luke 8, Matthew 8, and Mark 4:41. “And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41).

10
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For “cousining,” which meant “cheating.”

11
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John 10:21, “Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?”

12
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Haggai 2:17, “I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labors of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD.”

13
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Eyewitness.

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Foolish or insipid. See OED, 1897.

15
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It is tempting to regard this passage as evidence that the vicar resorted to a cunning person to determine who was responsible for bewitching his son.

16
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Syphilis.

17
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In this case M. D. Lewen is likely an “ordinary” in the ecclesiastical sense, which the OED of 2004 defines as “A person who has, of his or her own right and not by the appointment of another, immediate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical cases, such as the archbishop in a province, or the bishop or bishop’s deputy in a diocese.”

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Scot has no love for this licentious vicar, though his criticism is subtle. Even writers about witchcraft depend on the power of rumor and reputation as much as, if not more than, hard evidence.

19
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Scot also notes the degree of risk inherent in the making of a witchcraft accusation at all. In colonial North America in the generation following, the mere spreading of a rumor of witchcraft was sufficient for the rumored witch to bring charges of slander against the rumor monger. Witches were so feared as a category that Scot admits that simply being accused could as often as not end in death for a suspected witch.

20
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Original word reads “boten.”

21
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Stew or porridge.

22
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Scot points out a surprising irony about suspected early modern witches, which is that usually they were living in poverty. In a time of scarcity, without structured public means of relief for the poor, begging was a sad necessity for some, while also imposing a hardship on the rest of the community.

23
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A sudden-onset malady, usually taken to be a stroke.

24
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Misdeeds and charms cover ignorance.

25
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Defined by the OED, 1989 edition, as a “deceiver, cheat, impostor.”

GEORGE GIFFORD,
A DIALOGUE CONCERNING WITCHES AND WITCHCRAFTES
, 1593

1
.
Alan Macfarlane, “A Tudor Anthropologist: George Gifford’s
Discourse
and
Dialogue
,” in
The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft
, ed. Sydney Anglo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 140.

2
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Scott McGinnis, “‘Subtiltie’ Exposed: Pastoral Perspectives on Witch Belief in the Thought of George Gifford,”
Sixteenth Century Journal
XXXIII/3 (2002): 665.

3
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McGinnis, “‘Subtiltie’ Exposed,” 672.