Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?

Subject: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 02:57 AM

A buried cottage, in shadow of Pendle Hill.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-16066680

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 03:09 AM

How fascinating. As sombody who was brought up in the shadow of Pendle Hill (I'm originally from the village of Whalley) I often heard stories about the Pendle Witches. My grandfather knew several tales about them, which he passed on to me. I especially like the mention of the dead cat.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 04:25 AM

As the report itself suggests, the presence of the mummified cat is more likely to indicate the desire of the owner to deter witchcraft, rather than to practise it themselves!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 05:00 AM

Using a cat to ward off evil spirits IS witchcraft.
Witches did not and do not consider themselves to be evil, or to be practitioners of evil.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 05:23 AM

I bet the property developers bulldoze the site in a few weeks. Nothing is sacred in this country that stops property developers from making a few bob from destroying our cultural heritage. Either that or the scrap metal dealers will be trawling the site for Victorian junk like they did Ironbridge Gorge a while back.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Silas
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 05:29 AM

Trouble is with this country is that no matter where you shove your spade into the ground you are going to hit some archaeology of some sort, this place is too small and has been populated for so long that you just can't avoid it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 05:30 AM

You reckon you can wring a song out of this one, Ron???

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: banjoman
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 06:01 AM

Its an established fact that the "Witches of Pendle" were in fact a small group of inocent women who were victims of tittle tattle, false evidence and superstition Nowadays they are called Herbalists or environmentalists or - The Green Party.
Interseting find . I enjoyed many rambles around Pendle area in my younger days. Its one of the finest bits of countryside we still have left. I recall that there is a song somewhere already?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Silas
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 06:05 AM

NO, Alice Nutter and familiy were trading on their 'witchcraft'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: mikesamwild
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 06:15 AM

Nice piece of work by the local Tourist Board , lots of TV and press miles.Plant a dead cat in the ruins and bingo.
Sounds strangely familiar?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 08:45 AM

Banjoman "I recall that there is a song somewhere already?"

There is the well known "Old Pendle" - ("Pendle Oh Pendle thou standest alone") though that one only mentions the famous Pendle witches in passing rather than relating the full story with Demdike, Chattox etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 08:51 AM

Alice Nutter was a local gentlewoman and no relation to the families of Old Demdike and Chattox. No one really knows why she was ever even implicated.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Silas
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 08:55 AM

Sorry, memory lapse, I think it was Alison Devises and familiy, though I recall that Alice was also hung.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 09:32 AM

Ron Baxter's written several songs around the subject of the Pendle Witches which we've performed as part of DEMDYKE! featured at the Fylde Festival in 2009 & 2010. There is a Myspace Page extant (if you can get it to work): http://www.myspace.com/demdyke which includes The Witches Justification - a rare Baxter setting of a Baxter lyic, sung to the tune of The Owl.


The Witch's Justification

Counting their silver, gathering their thithes,
Christ's charity to us denied;
Rector and warden, they passed us by -
They did not care if we lived or we died.
And so to him who from heaven did fall
On him we called -

There high upon Pendle we made our vow,
He held us then and he holds us now;
Holds, holds, holds, holds!
The Lord of Hell our souls doth hold.
Out of despair and for hope of gold -
He's gathered us into his fold.


Though with him our pact we made,
By Lord Satan we've been betrayed!
Soon our bodies will lie in their graves,
And of hell's fires we're sore afraid!
So unto Him who died for us all,
on Him we call!

Fast in this prison condemned to die,
Oh sweet Jesus please hear our cry;
Hear, hear, hear, hear!
Friend of the friendless our prayer hear!
Now penitent we call upon Him -
Oh, Lord of All, forgive us our sins!

Ron Baxter


For the 400th anniversary we'll be doing a special show at Fylde 2012 devoted to the Pendle story and related 'folklore'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 09:37 AM

PS:

Not forgetting the classic Mendle, written by Carole Pegg back when Mr Fox were touring in Lancashire and she was reading Mist over Pendle and Spoonerised the title which was a bit much for the record company who abbreviated it accordingly. For those who don't know:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3UgnRLoDFA

Maybe we'll cover it for the Fylde show???

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 10:05 AM

Alice Nutter was a 'gentlewoman'who had nothing to do with Demdike, Chattox and Co. She was one amongst those named by young Jenet Devise, as being at Malkin Tower on Good Friday, this was the only 'evidence' against her. Unlike all the other 'witches' she did not pleed guilty, but insisted to her very end that she was innicent of all the charges. Why was she accused? Probably because she was known, or at least suspected of being a Catholic & harbouring Jesuit priests. Roger Newell, the local magistrate almost certainly 'schooled'young Jenet in what she had to say to the court.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 11:35 AM

Just one other point. The 'Pendle witches' were not hung for being witches, they were hung for MURDER by witchcraft. One of the accused was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of practicing witchcraft, for whitch she got one year in prison,. The three 'Salmsbury witches' who were tried at the same asize were all aquitted, and their main accusor, the grandaughter of one of the accused was warned that she would be deported to 'the swamps of Virginia' if shewas ever in court again! The 'witch hunt' against Catholics was the obvious reason for their trial.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 02:13 PM

The Pendle witch trials were in 1612. The cottage looks as though it went out of use about 1900. What evidence is there, apart from it being somewhere in the area, to associate it with those unfortunate women three hundred years before?

Mummified cats are quite common, though perhaps more usually found in the roofspace or in chimneys.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 08 Dec 11 - 02:51 PM

I do not know Paul, but I assumed the significance was that the place had been buried.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Silas
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 04:20 AM

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/cottage-of-17th-century-witch%11columnist-elizabeth-jones-discovered-201112094651/

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 05:12 AM

The article linked in the OP speaks of a 19th century kitchen range and Victorian crockery. Even if a with had lived there in the 17th century there would be few traces of her in the house after having been lived in for another two centuries.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 05:44 AM

I took my mum for a drive round Pendle on Tuesday. There was less snow than I'd expected but the great hulk was as majestic as ever. Incidentally, it's never "Pendle Hill," just Pendle.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 07:11 AM

I understand that pen means hill. Pen hill has become abbrevriated to pendle, so pendle hill would be 2 hils too many.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 07:46 AM

Pendle is a fine, upstanding word. "Hill" just diminishes it. I don't know whether they have changed it, but on one OS map I possessed, back in my Three Peaks bagging days, I saw the name "Pen-y-Ghent Hill." Awful! I'd rather by guided by Wainwright in such matters (though he does, sadly, refer to "Pendle Hill" in his Pennine Way Companion). It'll always be Penyghent to me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,The Former Tom Bliss
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 11:19 AM

I think I may have some inside information...

Have they found the site of this song, perhaps?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Bainbo
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 06:01 PM

Mo - Indeed. Pendle Hill could be rendered as Hill-Hill Hill. And one of the many places you can see it from is in Ribchester, if you go the end of Stoneygate Lane. Or Lane-Lane Lane.

Bizarrely, I've just finished re-reading The Lancashire Witches, the Victorian piece of nonsense by Harrison Ainsworth. It starts off nicely ambiguous, expressing sufficient doubt about whether these women were really witches or just the victims of an atmosphere of fear and superstition whipped up by King James's conviction that there were witches everywhere to be got rid of. So far, so Salem.

But it's not long before they're worshipping the Devil at witches' Sabbaths, consorting with familiars, flying on broomsticks and casting curses. Not too subtle, then. The obnoxious part of this is that he uses for his characters the real people who were burnt as witches despite, as banjoman points out, there being no real evidence. Damaging to thier memories and a nasty piece of fiction.

I recommend as an antidote The Trials Of The Lancashire Witches, by Edgar Peel and Pat Southern, which aims to set the stories in a proper context and repair the damage done by Ainsworth.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 06:05 PM

If it's any comfort Bainbo, the English didn't burn witches. They hanged them (formally) or drowned them or tortured them to death (informally).

None of which will take away my pleasure in Robert Neil's excellent Mist Over Pendle.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Bainbo
Date: 09 Dec 11 - 06:32 PM

Thanks for that, Paul. You're right. The end of Ainsworth's book must have been fresh in my mind:

In the area before the castle she sees a ring of tall stakes. She knows well their purpose and counts them. They are thirteen in number. Thirteen wretched beings are to be burnt on the morrow. Not far from the stakes is an enormous pile of faggots.

But Peel and Southern point out:
England to its credit, alone among the countries of Western Europe, did not permit witches to be tortured; unless they had committed treason they were straightforwardly sentenced to be 'hanged until dead'. Scotland followed the continental example with torture and the stake, and the margin of many an old Scottish Court Book bears the melancholy record written in after trial 'Convicta et combusta'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,AEOLA
Date: 10 Dec 11 - 03:53 PM

Alice Nutter's sister married into my wife's family, aren't I the lucky one!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,p
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 02:36 PM

Oy Aeola, you are! Get in there and investigate the connections, and take a few lessons on the broomstick's controls.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 11 Dec 11 - 08:43 PM

When will MUDCAT - move beyond the old Bulitine Board Service BBS - and become more like Wikipedia.

There are some ASTOUNDING - claims in the above thread.

It would be civil if: references were given.

It would be nice if the "clones" spent more time in the "above the line" area questioning "GUEST"

sources

than in the "below the line" BS area "defending" the sullied honor of questionables.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Title, Publisher, Date, Location, page

Subject: RE: Folklore: Pendle Witches. Cottage found?
From: Bainbo
Date: 01 Apr 12 - 06:05 PM

Exhibition of artefacts to mark the 400th anniversary of the trials.