Horses and Orange Cats and Rats, Oh My!

Today's Folklore Thursday theme is animal folklore. We have written about black cat folklore before and today bring you some snippets about fantastic water horses, seals, orange cats and rats (or, to superstitious sailors, ''the cowld-iron chiel'')

 

Information taken from D31/1/6/20 and D31/1/1/25

Baby Booze

We have written before about Orkney's strong temperance movement and described the central part that alcohol played in a traditional Orkney wedding.




We were also amused recently when we discovered from the 2nd Statistical Account of Scotland that the island of South Ronaldsay had 16 inns in the 1840s, although "seven would be sufficient" according to the disapproving author.




So we knew that Orcadians of yore enjoyed their drink. It was with great horror, however, that we read Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish by John Firth which was published in 1920.


The enquiry which occasioned our perusal of this book was an enquiry about pregnancy in 19th century Orkney. We turned to the chapter entitled 'Birth' which begins:

"It was no uncommon occurrence at an accouchement for the mother and all her attendants to be the worse for drink",

and continues:

" One does not wonder that the Orcadian of the time possessed an inherent craving for strong drink, for the first thing given to a baby was a spoonful of toddy, and a dose of the same stimulant was believed to be an infallible cure for all his infantile ailments."

This is then followed by a story of 'groggy' midwives laying a baby thought to be stillborn on a cupboard shelf before more sober visitors discover that the baby is just feeling the effects of their mother's imbibing.




 We are then told of a  drunken baby falling out of their coverings on the way to their own christening (they have been given some toddy to keep them quiet in the church) and being discovered in a ditch by passers-by who then have to chase the inebriated family members who are still merrily marching up to the kirk with their empty shawl, none the wiser.




As Firth says earlier on in the book:




 "the need for some stimulant was much felt by the Orcadian peasant, whose lot forbade him tasting freely even the few pleasures and comforts obtainable in those days"





...and it is later pointed out that home-brewed ale was really the only available substitute for milk during the winter months. Still though... drunk babies.




No wonder these folk were so convinced they were seeing ghosts and witches and elves all the time... they were all just really drunk. All the time.

'Keeping Company and Society With The Devil...'

Today in 1692, 5 'witches' were put to death at the famous Salem Witchcraft trials. Orkney had it's fair share of this sort of trial too and you can see a transcription of the trial of Katherine Grieve, dated 1629  above. The original copy is kept in Edinburgh.

These trials were held in front of an assisa, which was a sort of jury and these people would listen to witnesses give evidence against the accused. The 'evidence' was nearly always anecdotal and usually involved someone getting ill after a meeting with the defendant, someone getting better after meeting the defendant, cattle dying after meeting the defendant or crops failing after meeting the defendant.

Sometimes threats were attributed the women which Ernest Walker Marwick, in his work Orkney Witches, thought perhaps meant that some of the accused had been playing up to their reputations a little bit. He gave his 'identikit' of the average witchcraft suspect:

She is a person who is both poor and something of a misfit in the community. Better-off and better favoured women marry happily and have children to take up most of their time and attention. She may have a quick temper, and may have become embittered by her circumstance, so that she is morbidly ready to take offense and ruthless in repaying injury, real or imagined. Her only way of exercising power over her neighbours is to pretend to supernatural knowledge.

This is sad, and it is unbelievable that lonely women, whose only crimes were empty threats and bitter glances were sent to death by a jury of their peers.

Modern readers can see explanations in some of the seemingly strange, unexplainable happenings that were reported during trials:

Barbara Boundie's hearing told of her 24 hour lapse into speechlessness which indicated to her prosecutors that she had "been with the fairie". Her explanation was that she had been travelling four years with an "unhoven (unbaptised) child" and had "fainted", Clearly, she had fallen into exhaustion after four years of the stress of being moved on from place to place with her illegitimate baby.

In 1633 Katherine Grieve and Marion Richart were both asked about the time that a male mutual acquaintance found both women sitting at the table with "the deill (devil) in lykness of a black man". Katherine shouted "tak him, for he will tell upon us" but Marion replied "let him alone, for na body will believe him."

It is now obvious that, if the witness was telling the truth, that the 'deill' was just a man who was not white, perhaps a shipwrecked sailor who was being sheltered by the two women for fear of his persecution.

Marion was executed and Katherine was subjected to 'Non-Capital Punishment' which probably means torture and a stay in 'Marwick's Hole' a dank little cell in St Magnus Cathedral.

There is not a lot of evidence to show the exact nature of the torture that was dished out after sentencing. The only details of torture we really know are those of poor Alison Balfour who was accused of plotting to murder Earl Patrick Stewart. She was kept in a 'cashielawes' for forty eight hours, it is unclear what this contraption is, and her husband was torured in the 'lang irons'. Her children did not escape, with her seven year old daughter put in thumb screws. After days of torture, a confession was finally extracted, only to be fully recalled by Alison at her trial. She claimed complete innocence and said that it was only the unbearable pain which had caused her to confess in the first place.

Orkney Witches by Ernest Walker marwick reference D31/4/4

Folder of witch information reference D31/1/5/15

A Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft compiled by Christina Larner

Transcriptions of Witch trials held in Edinburgh reference SC11/79/1