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 shape-changers, 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
