Fairies, Folklore and Forteana

SIMON YOUNG FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF

THE FEWSTON WITCHES

Imagine that your family are attacked by witches.You cannot see the witches and their familiars, but your children are in agony from their assaults and one daughter is even murdered by the coven. Imagine that you have a quill and paper at the ready. Imagine now that as your kids are giving the most extraordinary accounts of these invisible attacks (that they conveniently can see), you take copious notes in diary form and that these are eventually published.

Not the least strange thing about the Fewston witch scare, 1621-1623 – which I’ve just discussed with Chris Woodyard, on the Boggart and Banshee podcast – is that it is so little known. The author was Edward Fairfax, the famous early modern British poet, and the victims were three of his daughters: all were resident at Fewston in Yorkshire. Anne, a baby of four months, died from a witch pin being inserted in her head. Hellen (21) and Elizabeth (seven) went, instead, into trances. The assaults lasted for two and a half years and Edward diligently recorded all of Satan’s soldiers, as described by his daughters, as they marched through his family home. These included hairy shapechangers, fairy-looking witch assistants and an adorable (and not unfriendly) witch bird called Tewhit. Edward was clearly convinced that his family were the victims of a coven and had several women put up on charges. His neighbours, though, were less sure and an assizes judge, after closely questioning the Fairfax daughters, had the accused released. Fairfax records, in the midst of all this, fortean style events. Some of these depend entirely on the girls’ testimony: in one notable incident Hellen talked to the spirit double of a witch, while her father talked to the witch’s physical form downstairs! On other occasions Edward alleges that the girls were told things by the witches ahead of them happening: for instance, they knew the name of a visitor to the house before he was announced.

Like the Fairfaxs’ neighbours 400 years ago, I suspect that the Fairfax girls had their trances “to be more cherished” by their father. Fairfax went from treating his girls like working chattels to seeing them, as they rolled around on the floor, as a fascinating occult lab experiment. Then, there is the element of social contagion. Not only did two girls enter trances in the Fairfax household, four other local girls and young women entered trances concurrently. I’ve put out a new version of a Victorian edition of Fairfax’s diaries as The Fewston Witches (Pwca Books) with some notes and an introduction. The original Victorian edition is also available free online as Daemonologia (1882). Those of a fortean turn of mind would find, I think, Fairfax’s account instructive.

EDWARD RECORDED ALL OF SATAN’S SOLDIERS AS THEY MARCHED THROUGH HIS FAMILY HOME