A Travelling Woman, Coarsely Dressed: Another Witch, Another Footprint

Here's a little story from John McNab Currier, a 19th century physician and folklorist:

In the summer of 1852 I was at a farmhouse in a rural town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, when a travelling woman, coarsely dressed, called to get a glass of water to drink, and inquire the distance to the next village. She drank the water and started on her journey. Scarcely had she gone thirty rods when the woman of the house said she believed the traveller was a witch, and she was going to try her. She immediately took a knitting needle from her work, found one of the traveller's tracks in the path, and stuck the needle into it. Almost immediately the traveller stopped, stood still, and gazed towards us, who were watching the trial. The woman of the house said she would not remove the needle from the track, even if the traveller should never move again; but she turned soon, and went on without stopping. The woman with the needle believed the steel had the power to fasten a witch in her tracks so she could not move, and shen she saw that the woman went on her way, she believed the power was lost by her speaking; so she tried another track with the needle, but without effect. 

It's interesting to compare McNab's story with a similar one I wrote about in March, which had two small children trying to test a witch with a needle, and was recorded in the 1920s or 1930s. McNab's story is a first-hand account of adults trying this form of folk magic 70 or 80 years earlier. In the 19th century witchcraft was not child's play.

Both stories involve women, seemingly poor, walking by houses. Is it their poverty and their mobility that causes such concern? I'm sure there's some sociological reason why these women were suspected of witchcraft.

The magic of steel seems to work in McNab's story, unless you want to be a skeptic and claim the travelling woman just stopped because she was amazed someone was sticking a needle in her footprint.

Even when it doesn't work there's an explanation consistent with the magic: the woman of the house spoke, and broke the spell. Maybe if she had never spoken a word the witch would still be standing in the road today. Silence is a key ingredient in some types of folk magic. Bittersweet root is best harvested in total silence, and a witch can be controlled with her own witch bridle only if you remain silent.

McNab's story appeared in the The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 14, in 1891.

The Witch's Footprints

We tend to think of our selves as being contained by our our bodies. Our self is limited by  the boundaries of our skin. To appropriate the title of a feminist classic, our bodies are our selves.

Folklore and legend tell us otherwise, that our essence is also contained in the effluvia and products of our body. Why else can someone control us by incorporating our hair into a poppet, or can we stop evil from harming us by boiling our urine?

Folklore also tells us that our essence is contained in our image, which is why poppets are shaped like people, and why we need to exercise caution around mirrors and reflections. Think about people afraid that a camera will steal their soul, or poor Peter Pan who lost his shadow. It all comes from the same idea. Our images are our selves.

Folklore tells us that our essence is even contained in the minor traces that we leave behind. This is particularly true for witches, who derive much of their supernatural power from their souls' ability to leave their bodies. Their souls are loosely attached to their bodies, and their essence spreads further into the world than the average person's. As this story from Eva Speare's New Hampshire Folk Tales illustrates, even a footprint left in the road can affect a witch.

Two small children in Epping, New Hampshire often saw an old woman wearing a red kerchief passing by their house. They thought she might be a witch, and asked their grandmother how they could find out if she was.

Their grandmother said: "I have heard that if you place some article made of steel in her footprints, she will turn around and look at you, and sometimes chase you."

The children devised their plan. One day after the old woman had walked by their house, they waited until she had gone a good distance down the dirt road and then ran outside. Finding one of her footprints, they stuck a steel knife into it.

Although the woman was hundreds of feet away, she turned abruptly and glowered at the children. They ran inside the house, terrified. It was true. The old woman was a witch.

Horseshoe Magic: Secretly Pleasing to the Devil?

A few years ago I purchased an iron horseshoe in a neighborhood botanica. There is a decent-sized Santeria community in Boston, and the horseshoe is an attribute of Ogun, the orisha (spirit or deity) who governs iron, the military, and physical strength. Don't mess with Ogun!

I don't practice Santeria, though; I just bought the horseshoe because I've always heard they're lucky. I'm not sure where this idea originated, but it's been found in New England for a long time. For example, in the late 19th century farmers in western Massachusetts told folklorist Clifton Johnson the following:

1. Nailing a horseshoe above the door of your house brings luck.

2. Nail it so the opening points upwards. Otherwise, all the luck will run out!

3. In the old days, horseshoes were used to repel witches from the house.

The first two are still commonly held beliefs, but I don't think many people in the 21st century use horseshoes to protect themselves from witches. If I am wrong please let me know.

Those 19th century farmers were quite correct that their ancestors thought a horseshoe would keep witches out of the house. Richard Godbeer provides a great example in his book The Devil's Dominion, which examines witchcraft and magic in early New England.

The story goes something like this. Goody Chandler of Newbury Massachusetts became quite ill in 1666, and thought her sickness was caused by her neighbor Elizabeth Morse, who was unpopular and therefore considered a witch. Goody Chandler was determined to keep Morse out of her house, and nailed a horseshoe over the door. Apparently it worked because Elizabeth Morse refused to enter once the horseshoe was put up.

This probably would be the end of the story if an uptight neighbor named William Moody hadn't gotten involved. William Moody was opposed to any kind of magic, and he thought putting up a horseshoe was just as bad as witchcraft. He knocked down the horseshoe, and once again Elizabeth Morse began to come into Goody Chandler's house under the pretense of being neighborly.

William Moody was not alone in condemning all forms of magic as witchery - it was the official platform of the Puritan church in New England. Cotton Mather himself, the leading minister in Massachusetts, wrote in Wonders of the Invisible World that,

"The Children of New-England have Secretly done many things that have been pleasing to the Devil. They say, That in some Towns, it ha's been an usual Thing for People to Cure Hurts with Spells, or to use Detestable Conjurations, with Sieves, & Keyes, and Pease, and Nails, and Horse-Shooes... 'Tis in the Devils Name that such Things are done."

I suppose William Moody thought he was being helpful, but he comes across as a pious busybody. And his actions certainly didn't help Goody Chandler, who just got sicker and weaker. She finally convinced another neighbor to nail up the horseshoe again (she was now too weak to do it herself) but William Moody took it down and this time carried it away. Elizabeth Morse was able to enter the house, and Goody Chandler died soon after.

It's an interesting story. Who was to blame for Goody Chandler's death? Elizabeth Morse, William Moody, or natural causes? I say natural causes (and I hope you do too), but her contemporaries had other ideas. Elizabeth Morse was brought to trial and eventually convicted of witchcraft, but even the judges must have had some doubts since she only served one year in jail.

A horseshoe could also be used to keep a dead witch in his or her grave. As I've noted in an earlier post, the people of Hampton, New Hampshire staked the heart of suspected witch Goody Cole after she died. To make double sure she stayed in her grave they tied a horseshoe to the stake.

Although the horseshoe is considered lucky and magical across Europe and North America, it's not quite clear why. The writer Robert Means Lawrence devoted an entire book to this topic (The Magic of the Horsehoe, published in 1898). Is it because its shape is reminiscent of the horns of a ferocious animal? Is it because it resembles a crescent moon? Or perhaps it's because it's made of iron, and supernatural creatures (such as fairies) fear iron.

I'm actually a fan of the iron theory, since other metals have the power to repel magical monsters (like silver against vampires and werewolves), and the defining lines between supernatural creatures are blurry. Witches can transform into animals, including wolves, and sometimes they return from the dead to cause trouble, like vampires. In the British Isles, witches often were accused of cavorting with fairies, and peasants nailed horseshoes over their doors to keep fairies out of the house. So I think it all boils down to this - if you have trouble with a supernatural creature, use some metal.

The next question is "Why does metal repel monsters at all?" but my blog is limited, and a question like that would probably lead me on an infinite regression into mankind's distant and murky past!