Folklore of Yorkshire Read Online Free PDF

them.
    Similarly effective were stones through which a natural hole had been bored. This occurred as the result of water action over many centuries and such pebbles were usually plucked from the seashore or a streambed. Known variously as holy-stones, hag-stones or dobby-stones, smaller examples were kept about the person as a portable talisman – often attached to a door-key; whilst larger specimens were hung in the home or sometimes in stables. It was widely believed that witches stole horses and rode them hard to their sabbats, before returning them to their stalls sweating and exhausted. Animals found in such a condition were described as ‘hag-ridden’ and the holed stone was regarded as an effective defence against this danger.
    The wood of the rowan tree (sometimes known as mountain ash) was also thought to protect against witchcraft and being easier to come by than horseshoes and holed stones, it was very extensively deployed. Sprigs of rowan were hung in each room of the house; in the stables and byres, above the beds, behind every window and door. On farms it was considered prudent to make the churn-staff and whip-stocks from rowan wood, whilst it was tied around the horns or necks of cattle to keep them safe from maleficium. Some cottages even went so far as to have a rowan tree growing in their garden to hold the witches at bay. Beyond the home, people would wear posies in their buttonholes, carry twigs in their pockets and place leaves in their shoes.

    A sprig of rowan, hung to protect a house from witches. (Kai Roberts)
    In some areas of the county, cutting rowan for such use had to be performed with the appropriate ritual. Around Cleveland, St Helen’s Day (2 May) was the appointed time for this ceremony. Householders would rise before dawn and proceed into the woods to search for a suitable tree. For the rowan charm to be fully effective, the wood had to be cut with a domestic knife and taken from a tree of which the cutter had no previous knowledge. In Holderness, meanwhile, the rowan had to be gathered at a certain times of day to be fully effective. Noon was considered relatively favourable, but wood procured at midnight was thought to be the most potent – especially when fashioned into the shape of a cross.
    Rowan was also used to make witch-posts, an architectural feature unique to North Yorkshire farmhouses in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, especially around Farndale. These thick wooden posts were usually located beside the hearth to protect the threshold from unwelcome incursion. The chimney was regarded as a common access point for witches during the night, but such intruders could not pass beyond a rowan witch-post. For additional security, their faces were carved with a St Andrew’s Cross, beneath which were a number of lines believed to represent the number of people in the household requiring protection. Sometimes a crooked sixpence was stored in a niche in the centre of the post and if the butter would not emulsify due to some enchantment laid upon it, the sixpence was taken from this position and placed in the churn as a counter-spell.
    But such techniques were only good as preventative measures; if maleficium was already directed at the household, more evasive action was required. In such cases, the local cunning-person was again the resort of choice and often counter-attack was their recommended course of action. The principle by which maleficium was thought to operate required that the witch establish an intimate connection with the target of their spite; hence why the personal affects of a victim were often needed to direct the spell. However, this connection could be fruitfully turned against the witch so that in order to escape her own suffering, she would be forced to undo the original enchantment.

    A witch-post preserved from a Farndale farmhouse. (Kai Roberts)
    For instance, when the dairy was thought to be bewitched and the butter would not churn, it was imagined that