Pyewacket was one of the familiar spirits of a witch detected by the
notorious "witch finder general" Matthew Hopkins in March 1644 in his own
town of Maningtree, Essex, UK. According to his story, he spied on the
witches as they held their meeting close by his house, and heard them
mention the name of a local woman. She was arrested and deprived of sleep
for four nights, at the end of which she confessed and named her familiars.
They were:
The incident is described (with a frequently reprinted woodcut of the
witches and their familiars) in Hopkins's pamphlet "The Discovery of
Witches" (1647), which I have in the Scolar Press facsimile reprint titled
_Witches and Witch-Hunters_ (E. Ardsley: S.R. Publishers, 1971).
Hope this clarifies matters somewhat.
In the trial records the only names mentioned are 'Holt' (a young white cat), 'Jeremarye' (a sandy-coloured spaniel), Vinegar Tome (in the likeness of a greyhound), and 'Sacke and Sugar' (a black rabbit). In Hopkins's later account of the trial he adds a polecat called 'Newes', and the names of various familiars belonging to divers other women known to Clarke. Here the names 'Ilemauzer',
'Pywacket', 'Peck in the Crown' and 'Griezel Greedigut' appear for the first
time. John Stearne, in his account of 1648, only mentions the two dogs, the
cat, the rabbit and the polecat/ferret, and only names the spaniel
'Jermarah'. Both these later accounts also add exotic features to the
animals that are not mentioned in the trial records. Hopkins describes
Jarmara as having no legs, while Stearne says that his legs are no longer
than a finger; Hopkins says that Vinegar Tom has a head like and ox, and
Stearne says that he has legs like a stag, etc.
Clearly, we have a case here of evidence being invented after the fact by
the the notorious witchfinders as a way of sensationalizing an otherwise
fairly mundane description of four or five relatively commonplace pets.
James Serpell
Hopkins says he and nine other witnesses saw the first five of these, which
appeared to them in the exact forms described by the witch. Interestingly,
only the first of these was a cat; the next two were dogs, and the others
were a black rabbit and a polecat. So it's not clear whether Pyewacket was
a cat's name or not. Griezzel Greedigutt certainly sounds feline, though.
As for the meanings, Hopkins says only that they were such that "no mortall
could invent," so I assume that the principle is that the names were those
invented by the familiar spirits themselves and therefore are meaningful
only to them.
T. S. Eliot's has a similar notion of the naming of cats: in addition to
the names that their owners give them, they each give themselves unique
names in their own language that express their personalities in a way only
dimly understood by homo sapiens.
I assume that is why my cat calls himself Ollywolliver even though we named
him Edgar and his previous owner called him Bandit. Sadly, we have never
been able to train him to bring home milk or butter, even from the local IGA.
BE
Bill Ellis
Associate Professor, English and American Studies
President, International Society for Contemporary Legend Research
Highacres, Penn State University--Hazleton, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291
Voicemail: 717-450-3026 FAX: 717-450-3182
Home page: http://www.hn.psu.edu/faculty/bellis/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 10:16:42 -0400
From: James Serpell
