Witches, charmers and cattle
Animals were an essential part of everyday life in early modern Scotland, and so it is no surprise that they were often caught up in witch-belief. Dr Lizanne Henderson unpicks this relationship between livestock and magic with specific reference to cattle
Dr Lizanne Henderson unpicks the relationship between livestock and magic, with specific reference to cattle
Historical studies of European witchcraft beliefs and prosecutions have blossomed over the past 40 years or so and many of the questions around the where, when, who, what, how and why have been satisfactorily answered, including revised figures as to the numbers of people accused and executed for the crime of witchcraft.While this might remain a debatable point, there is no doubting that historians have a much clearer picture of the nature of witch beliefs, including in a Scottish context, than ever before. And yet, despite progress, there are still many questions that remain unanswered; and a great deal more that may prove unanswerable. One of those areas awaiting fuller investigation are the relationships between the suspected witches and practising charmers with non-human animals, the topic of my current research and forthcoming book. By way of illustration, and because this is potentially a vast subject, this article will focus on one species in particular, namely Bos taurus, or cattle.
Cattle, among the most common type of large domesticated ungulates (hoofed mammals), have been selected due to the crucial role they have played within the lives of many people living in the early modern period, roughly 1500 to 1800, and because they make the ideal exemplar to explore the ‘spaces of interaction’ between humans and nonhuman animals, as well as the gendered nature of that interaction. But most importantly, cattle have been chosen as they were quite often central characters within Scottish, and wider European, charming cases and witchcraft trials,
from both a healing and harming perspective. Furthermore, associations once made between witches, charmers and cattle can, arguably, open up wider discussions around contemporary understandings of the natural and supernatural worlds and, potentially, explain how some forms of magic operated within everyday life.
Humans and cattle
As Pia Cuneo has observed, ‘we use all kinds of animals… to tell ourselves and others who we are, where we are, and where we are going’. Furthermore, ‘we use animals to orient ourselves, to fix our position in mutually inflected physical, social, economic, political, cultural, moral, philosophical, even spiritual and confessional systems of identity and epistemology’. Identity, like ‘magic’, is a notoriously slippery concept, it can be ‘precarious, unstable, fleeting’. But, just like today, animals were used in the early modern period to perform and express identities.
Cuneo notes, ‘as historians, we depend on documents written by humans for other humans.The animals have left no documents behind. Did they therefore necessarily also lack agency? Is it possible to hear their voices? Are we even trying to listen for them?’ Now, this is the sort of statement that can elicit howls of derision from the historical establishment, but let us not forget that this was the initial reception to calls for the study of the working classes, to ordinary people, to the study of race or the history of Africa, to the study of women.
Researching the history of animals does, of course, present some unique problems, but this has not prevented, or inhibited, the rise of animal studies as a legitimate field of enquiry. Steve Baker asserted, ‘attitudes to living animals are in large part the result of the symbolic uses to which the concept of the animal is put… Any understanding of the animal is inseparable from knowledge of its cultural representation’. But there is more to animals than their historic symbolism. In 2002 an influential article by Erica Fudge suggested the way to think about a history of animals was to balance the discussion between the representational and the physical/material uses to which many animals were put:
Animals are present in mostWestern cultures for practical use, and it is in use
– in the material relation with the animal – that representations must be grounded. Concentration on pure representation (if such a thing were possible) would miss this, and it is the job – perhaps even the duty – of the historian of animals to understand and analyse the uses to which animals were put… A symbolic animal is only a symbol… unless it is related to the real.
How can we apply this good advice to human-cattle relationships, and specifically, the relationship between cattle, charmers and witches? In the process, can those affiliations tell us anything about gender in the early modern period?
Scotland had a high proportion of farm animals and livestock in this
period; the meat and dairy produce of cattle were a staple within most western European rural economies and contributed to the general health and wellbeing of the population. On the average Scottish farm, women were responsible for looking after the animals, particularly the cows and hens, did the milking, made the dairy products, and took that produce to market, thus significantly contributing to the household economy. Women took the cows out to pasture in the summer, and in the winter months ‘byre-women’ were tasked with looking after the sheltered cows. Men were in charge of the bulls and oxen used for ploughing, led cattle long distances over the drove roads to market, while women regularly assisted the men with some of the heavier farm work of mucking out the byre and stables, and other labour-intensive field work, especially during harvest time.
Cattle were regarded, first and foremost, as working animals, an important source of food and a tradable commodity. Before the systematic breeding of bovines began in the 18th century, Scottish cattle were small by today’s standards, comparable in size to a modernday Dexter (approx. 650lb), with disproportionately large heads, a gaunt frame, valued most for their ability to survive on poor pasture and not for their size or appearance. Their price varied, according to breed, size, age, geographical location and so on, ranging anywhere from around £1 to £4 Sterling in the late 16th to 18th centuries.
Cattle, curses and charms
As cattle were expensive, they were vulnerable to theft. Drovers and farmers were often required to keep watch over their cattle to protect them from banditry. Physical injury to cattle and other livestock was treated as a capital offence and could lead to banishment or the death penalty. A particularly sinister crime was ‘houghing’, or cutting the hamstrings of the cattle, thus causing them great pain and an inability to walk. Magical injury to cattle was also a serious crime, essentially viewed as a malicious act upon the family or household in question due to the economic loss it could incur. Evidence
Researching the history of animals does, of course, present some unique problems, but this has not prevented, or inhibited, the rise of animal studies as a legitimate field of enquiry
of magical attack on domestic animals by suspected witches took various forms, such as eyewitness accounts of suspicious behaviour, but might also include discovery of material evidence. For instance, widower Janet McGown (1659) from Borgue, Kirkcudbrightshire, quarrelled with a man who accused her of leaving a black ‘cleise’ (cloth) and three blue yarns under his milking cow. Others described a specific ritual, such as Anie Tailzeour of Orkney (1624), who allegedly transported the milk profits from one family’s cow to another’s by taking three tail hairs from the cow, three of her own pubic hairs, and three hairs from her breasts, and recited ‘cum butter, cum’.
The relative frequency of cattle – second only to cats – in the Scottish witchcraft trials is a reflection of just how important cattle were deemed to be in the pre-industrial era. A search of the online Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database between 1563 and 1736 – the years when witchcraft and charming were illegal under the Witchcraft Act (1563) – reveals at least 141 trials containing a charge of folk healing, of which roughly ten per cent made explicit mention of the charming of cattle.The real figure is almost certainly higher as there are currently problems with gathering this kind of evidence using the database, and as yet, no one has gone through every existing trial record to look for cases involving cattle. Accompanying charges of cursing or maleficium (harmful magic) are not uncommon. Elspeth Culsetter from Orkney was executed in 1644 for maleficium and for performing a ritual involving three wheat straws placed in a cog of water and put on the back of an ailing cow.
Concern over the health of cattle is reflected in such cases. In the days before professionalised veterinary care, charmers had a crucial role to play. And the skills of the charmer could be learned or passed down in some instances, such as IsobellYoung from Dunbar (1629), who taught her sons a water ritual to cure cattle. Water, especially south-running water, was a common charming element, as was salt, cloth, or threads. Kathareen Manson in Orkney (1665) used ground salt wrapped in a ‘cloute’ (cloth) and a ‘wresting thread’ to treat a ‘wrested cow’ – meaning the cow had a twisted or sprained ankle. Some charmers used small ‘cattle’ stones, such as Johnne Brughe of Kinross (1643), who used enchanted stones to heal cattle ‘elfshot’ by the fairies. Farquhar Ferguson from the isle of Arran (1716) was able to heal humans who had been elfshot, having learned the diagnosis and treatment from observing others treat elfshot cattle.
Sympathetic magic, or the transference of disease onto something or someone else, is also found in cattle charming. William Scottie in Orkney (1643) was accused of stroking a sick cow and transferring the illness onto a cat that later died. Beatrix Leslie of Newbattle (1661) tried to cure her cow by rubbing it with the shirt belonging to a sick woman, thus moving the cow’s complaint to the already ill woman. Similarly, human diseases might be transferred to cattle. Northeast charmer John Philip (1631) cast the sickness from a male patient ‘putting it upon ane oxe’. He was also charged with performing a charm using a belt that had first been put around the waist of a dead child before using it to cure a cow. If the services of a charmer or cattle-doctor were not available, there were alternative actions that could be taken, such as taking the sick cattle to a healing well and leaving behind the shackles, harness, or tethers, the idea being that the illness would remain at the well. Smearing the lips of a newborn calf with its mother’s dung was believed to protect the milk from theft.
Cattle were vulnerable to many forms of supernatural attack, such as the evil eye, or from the fairies. For elfshot cattle, one treatment noted in Galloway was to take a horseshoe three times around the animal’s belly and over its back, and a burning peat was laid at the threshold of the byre door. If the cattle walked over the peat quietly, it was still afflicted, but if it first smelled the peat and ‘sprang over it’, the remedy had taken effect. Another treatment from Galloway ‘herbwives’ was to give them a kind of grass called ‘elfgirse’.
Evidence of the live burial of cattle or oxen to effect cures on humans or protect other animals from disease suggests the practice was viewed by farming folk as an acceptable form of curing and of animal husbandry, though the Church and secular authorities did not share this view. IsobelYoung (1629) was prosecuted for witchcraft and, with the help of her sons, the burying of a live ox. Alexander Drummond was charged with burying ‘a quick [live] ox, for effectuating his sorcerie’. In 1656 the ministers of Lochcarron and Applecross investigated bull sacrifices being made by some of their parishioners. In Dunkeld, the same year, four men were disciplined by the presbytery for ‘using of a charm, to wit, the putting of an ox under the earth, and calling the cattle over him’.Though not a common archaeological find, the heart of a calf, punctured with several iron nails, was discovered in Dalkeith under the flagstones of a building used for cattle. Its precise purpose is unknown though it was claimed, by an elderly woman, at the time of its discovery in 1812, to have been put there some 50 years previously during an outbreak of disease among the cattle caused by witchcraft.
Gender perspectives
Was cattle-charming and bewitchment a gendered activity? Julian Goodare has pointed out that conflicts around ‘women’s work’, such as cheese- or milk-making, feature more prominently in Scottish witchcraft and charming cases than those around ‘men’s work’. In my own research I have found that milk-stealing charms were invariably committed by women. Of the fourteen explicit cases of cow-healing and cattle charming in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database, all save one were female. Men were mentioned in two of these cases (as sons or as a husband).
Women also seem to be the primary accusers of other women where harm to cattle is involved, indicating this was a source of strife, fear and competition between women. Furthermore, magical milk theft was not necessarily restricted to cow victims. Ellen Gray of Aberdeen (1597) was accused of spoiling the milk of cows and women, though she also restored one woman’s breast milk to her after she approached Gray to break the spell. Marion Layland of Orkney (1633), in an act of revenge following a quarrel, took away the milk from both a cow and a wet nurse. Where men tended to dominate was as cattle-doctors – a type of charmer who specialized in all manner of bovine complaints – but men were infrequently connected with stealing milk or ruining butter. However, men, on occasion, were blamed with turning a cow’s milk to blood, as was Patrik Lowrie of Dundonald, Ayrshire (1605), or with causing the animal to sweat blood, as was John
Laing of Elgin (1597).
Another aspect of gender is shapeshifting. Some Scottish female witches were credited with an ability to physically transform into the shape of animals, notably cats, hares and crows, but never as cows.While cows may have been closely connected to women with respect to farming and dairying practice, as their healers and nurturers, and sometimes as the target of hostile magical attacks by female witches, the witch was never a cow and the cow was never a witch. Some witches did, however, use animal disguise to steal milk from cows.The neighbours of Galloway woman Jean Thomson of Borgue (1659) blamed her for ‘cow trouble’ and for shapeshifting into a hare to steal milk from the cows out in the fields. Male witch suspects were not commonly ascribed with metamorphic talents, though some could assume crow shape.The devil, on the other hand, was regularly seen in animal guise, usually as a dog, a horse, or hybrid creature with tail and cloven hooves; Lillias Adie of Torryburn (1704) described the devil as having cold skin, wearing a hat, and with feet ‘cloven like the feet of a stirk [a yearling bull or heifer]’. The devil was witnessed by many others in the shape of a calf, cow, or an ox.
According to Fudge an ‘animal history of agriculture… can enable us to think about how livestock animals changed the environments and the cultures they lived within’, encouraging us to move beyond looking at animals, such as cattle, as mere ‘props’ within human history, but as beings that have made an impact in their own right. What was it like to be a cow in the early modern period? Could this approach be applicable to witchcraft and charming cases that feature cattle? Is there a ‘cow’s-eye’ view within such narratives?
Charms to protect, or to increase, milk yields, speak to the importance of cattle to one’s prosperity, but could also
be the source of neighbourhood rivalry. Elspeth McEwan from Galloway (1698) was found guilty of stealing milk from her neighbour’s cows by placing a wooden pin on their udders and thus magically transporting the milk to her own beasts. Suspected witches stealing milk from cattle, causing disease, or killing livestock were obviously upsetting, frightening and potentially ruinous for the human victims. But the question is, could alleged witch attacks have had an effect upon the cattle involved? Some benevolent charms, we might assume, did actually work, especially those involving a washing ritual or prescribing certain foods, but what of maleficent charms? What was it like to be a cow being touched or milked by a stranger, by natural or supernatural means, in early modern Scotland?
In order to address such questions, we need to get ‘under the cow’s hide’, so to speak, and understand a cow’s view of the world. Cattle are very sensitive to change in their environment, they are ‘hyper-specific’ in that they will zone in on particular things that are anomalous to their normal, everyday lives. Cattle have 360-degree vision, an acute sense of smell, and are sensitive to highpitched noises. Like most mammals, they are also capable of forming close, interspecies bonds and attachments. Cattle can recognise individual humans and they would know the person who came to milk them every day.The process of milking and grooming is itself an intimate relationship built on mutual trust and communication.
With this information in mind, an alleged witch entering into the cattle’s domain – in the byre or field – becomes the anomaly.The presence of a stranger would not go unnoticed by cattle. If the encounter was stressful in some way, producing an ‘alarm reaction’, this could well have led to a physical reaction, of becoming startled, or kicking; a stressed cow might yield less milk. From the cow’s point of view the stranger had, perhaps, frightened them, but from the farmer’s point of view witchcraft or some malevolent charm had been deployed against their animal. Direct physical contact with the cow does seem to have been a feature of milk theft by witchcraft and the employment of a material object, such as a wooden pin, hair tether, cloth, or threads. Isobel Gowdie of Auldearn (1662) described such a charm: ‘When we tak away any cowes milk, we pull the tow [rope], and twyn it and plait it in the wrong way, in the Divellis name; and we draw the tether in betwixt the cowes hinder foot, and owt betwixt the cowes forder [further] foot’. The only way to return the milk again was to cut that tether.
Many of the issues raised here might be considered highly speculative but hopefully has opened the byre door to some interesting questions regarding human-cattle-witch relationships in early modern Scotland.
Dr Lizanne Henderson is Senior Lecturer in History at Glasgow University. She has written widely on witch-hunts, including ‘Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of the Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670-1740’ and is working on (super)natural animals in early modern Scotland.