Cautionary Tales The Pedlar and the Witch | Halloween Season

Pushkin. An early spring day. A country lane in Lancashire, England, in the shadow of looming Pendle Hill with its bare moorland slopes. The year is 1612. A different world. A middle-aged man and a teenage girl are about to pass each other The man has a pack on his back. He's a peddler, a kind of 1612 answer to Amazon, a one-man walking warehouse bringing wares to rural people who can't easily get to a shop. And the teenage girl? Her grandma is a notorious local witch. What happens on this lane will cause the deaths of ten people, and will still bring tourists to Lancashire over 400 years later, especially at Halloween. So, what does happen? It's hard to be certain. Our sources are questionable, for reasons we'll get to. But the encounter goes something like this. The young woman tells the man she wants to buy some pins. He has pins in his pack, it's the kind of thing a peddler carries... but he refuses to stop and get them out. Why? Perhaps he assumes that the young woman, Alison, wants the pins on credit and he doesn't trust her to pay. Perhaps he knows who Alison's grandma is and that witches use pins to curse people by stabbing them into crude clay figurines. The peddler takes up the story. She was very earnest with me for pins, Alison adds. He sturdily answered that he would not lose his pack, whereupon, the peddler continued, she seemed to be very angry. The peddler trudges on with his pack and gets a couple of hundred yards down the lane, unaware that Alison is now conferring with a vicious-looking, talking dog. The dog asks Alizon, what wouldst thou have me do to yonder man? She replies, what canst thou do to him? The dog offers, I can lame him. Alizon says, lame him. Down the lane, the peddler suddenly collapses, lame in great extremity, his entire left side useless, his leg, his arms. The left side of his face deformed. He can't speak. And then, standing over him, he sees a great black dog with very fearful, fiery eyes, great teeth, and a terrible countenance looking me in the face, whereat I was very sore afraid. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Witchcraft was real in England in 1612. Just ask the King of England, King James, who literally wrote the book on it. Demonology. Such assaults of Satan are most certainly practiced, the King assured his readers. Witches, those detestable slaves of the devil, deserve most severely to be punished. The King himself had been subject to an assault of Satan after he decided to marry a princess from Denmark. First, When his bride-to-be tried to sail to Britain, she had to turn back as the weather at sea was too bad. It happened again. And again. Six times. Then, when James himself sailed over to pick her up, his ship, too, encountered terrible storms. He reached for the obvious explanation. Witchcraft. a suspect was soon identified, a young maidservant with a noble family in Scotland. Placed in thumbscrews, she named other Scottish witches, including the wise wife from Keith, who refused at first to confess. She too was tortured. A rope twisted tight around her head and her pubic hair shaved off to reveal a suspicious mark near her genitals. Clearly, the devil had sucked on her. She admitted everything. She had kissed the devil's buttocks. She had brewed up a potion from Adder's skin and roasted toad. She had caused the storms by sacrificing a cat. King James had her strangled and her body burned. Having survived this demonic attempt at regicide, James made a careful study of how witchcraft works. Such persons as are in great misery and poverty, wrote the king, the devil allures to follow him by promising unto them great riches. Misery and poverty were common enough in Lancashire in the time of James's reign. It would be no surprise then if witchcraft were common too. The peddler said, who collapsed on the lane, lame in great extremity, was helped to an alehouse. A message was sent to his adult son, who worked in a nearby town. Your father is speechless, it said. The left side lamed, all save his eye. From the description of his symptoms, we can reasonably assume that the unfortunate peddler had likely had a stroke. By the time his son arrived at the alehouse... his speech was starting to recover. He told his son the story, his refusal to sell pins, Alison's angry reaction, his collapse, and they reached for the obvious explanation. Witchcraft. The accusation reached the local magistrate, an eminent gentleman, whose role combined the work we'd now associate with both police and prosecutor. he interviewed the recovering peddler, who apparently told him about that great black dog with its fearful, fiery eyes. The magistrate had Alison arrested. Luckily for Alison, under English law, she wasn't supposed to be tortured like the Scottish witches. Still... It was 1612. She won't have been read her rights and offered a lawyer. Alison, it seems, readily confessed to instructing the talking black dog and told the magistrate about the first time the dog had appeared to her. He'd made her an offer. Give me your soul. And in return, he'd give her the power to do anything she would. Alison agreed. They sealed the deal. by means of the black dog sucking on Alizon's breast a little below the paps. At this point, I should pause to answer a question. How do we know all this? It's one thing when witches attempt to kill a king, you'd expect that to make it into the history books. but disputes between peddlers and beggars on country lanes tend not to have been recorded for posterity. Our information comes from an account written later, by a legal clerk called Thomas Potts. The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancashire. It's a deeply suspect source. Potts wrote his account at the request of the judges who later heard the case the magistrate built. No doubt the judges will have wanted to look good to the king. Their clerk will hardly be a reliable narrator. Still, suspect or not, the wonderful discovery is a rare insight into everyday provincial life in 1612. We hear, for example, what Alison supposedly told the magistrate about the powers of her grandma, the notorious witch known locally as Old Demdike. Like the time Alison begged a jug full of milk and brought it to her grandma, half an hour later there was butter to the quantity of a quarter of a pound in the said milk, and the quantity of the said milk still remaining. Alison's grandma had magicked up butter. She told young Alison how she too could gain such powers. She did sundry times advise me to let a devil suck at some part of me. But the grandma had a rival. Another woman aged about 80, Old Chattox. The two old matriarchs vied for trade as cunning folk. Many communities had them, people with powers. You'd go to them if you'd lost something, or had it stolen, or you'd been bewitched, or you were ill. Only the rich could afford a doctor. Anyway, such was medical knowledge that a doctor might do you more harm than good. The cunning folk used charms and spells, and for illness, herbal remedies, some of which even helped. Cunning folk were respected, but also feared. Upset them, it was believed, and they might turn their powers against you. Alizon told the magistrate about a farmer who'd asked her grandma's help to heal a sick cow. The cow died. and we hear that Alison did verily thinketh that her said grandmother did bewitch the said cow to death. Cunning folk could even operate a kind of protection racket. Nice cow you've got there. Shame if something were to happen. Alison's own father was so afraid of old Chattox that he gave her eight pounds of oatmeal a year so she wouldn't harm him. Ben. One year, he didn't, and he died, convinced on his deathbed that old Chattox was to blame. As the magistrate extracted these stories from Alizon, he began to realise that Lancashire was home to more detestable slaves of the devil than he could have imagined. He had Alison's grandma, her rival Old Chattox, and Old Chattox's daughter rounded up and sent with Alison to the dungeons in Lancaster Castle. But the story of the Pendle Witches was only getting started. Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. Visit Lancashire today and you could take a stroll up Pendle Hill, a five-mile circular from the car park with 400 yards of elevation. On a clear day, from the top, you might see Blackpool Tower. In the little village of Newchurch in Pendle, you could visit the gift shop, Witches Galore, to buy yourself a commemorative Pendle Witches mug or tea towel. or fridge magnet, all depicting a witch in traditional garb, broomstick and pointy hat. You could stop for a pint at the pub, the Pendle Witch. The reviews are good. Super friendly staff and a quirky witch-themed beer garden. And then you could go to the village of Roughly, down the road from the Pendle Valley Caravan Park, and take a selfie with a statue of Alice Nutter. lovingly sculpted in brass and steel by a local artist. The Alice Nutter statue was unveiled in 2012, marking the 400th anniversary of the Pendle Witches' trial. So, who was Alice Nutter? Back in 1612, Alison and her grandma, Old Demdike, had been locked up in Lancaster Castle. A few days later, A gathering takes place at old Demdike's house, hosted by Demdike's daughter, Alizon's mother. Present are assorted relatives, friends and neighbours. Or, as the legal clerk Thomas Potts describes them in The Wonderful Discovery, all the most dangerous, wicked and damnable witches in the country, far and near. Potts, remember, is writing at the behest of the judges who heard the case. He wants to justify their verdict. With great cheer and merry company, Potts tells us, this great assembly resolves on a plan of action to free their imprisoned comrades. The jailer shall be slain. The castle of Lancaster to be blown up. It's unclear how exactly Potts thought these damnable witches would blow up the castle, but he was delighted to report that their scheme was thwarted when some notice of this meeting comes to the attention of the local magistrate. He has eight more people rounded up for allegedly being at this great assembly. They include Alison's mother and brother and various local associates of the family. one of these people is not like the others. Her name is Alice Nutter. In his book Demonology, King James had explained how the devil allures such persons as are in great misery and poverty. While that described most of the unfortunate souls the Lancashire magistrate had arrested for witchcraft, it did not describe Alice Nutter. Thomas Potts tells us she was a rich woman, had a great estate, and children of good hope. And yet, here she was, confined to a cell in Lancaster Castle, accused of murder by witchcraft. The alleged victim was a landowner. The story of the murder went like this. Old Demdike asked him for a penny. He refused her. Later... He died. The explanation was obvious and explicitly confirmed by Alizon's brother. He told the magistrate how his grandma had got her revenge by bewitching the man to death. He also mentioned Alice Nutter as being somehow involved in this bewitchment. King James admits in Demonology that even the rich might sell their soul... If they burn in a desperate desire of revenge, the devil may promise them to get their turn satisfied to their heart's contentment. Did Alice Nutter then have some burningly desperate desire to revenge herself against the man she supposedly helped bewitch to death? It seems not. In the common opinion of the world, says Thomas Potts, Alice Nutter was considered a woman of good temper, free from envy or malice. Potts doesn't tell us much more about Alice Nutter. What did she say when it was put to her that by force of witchcrafts she feloniously did kill and murder? Nothing, apparently. She didn't confess. She didn't defend herself. the judge's clerk seems almost embarrassed by how little he has to go on when recounting her case. Oh, he's sure she committed murder and many other vile and damnable practices, but as to her motive, he can only limply say, I know not. It's a mystery. A woman of apparently flawless character is accused of vague but murderous black magic, She has no apparent motive and she remains silent when charged. No wonder the enigmatic Alice Nutter exerts such fascination that tourists head to Ruff Lee to take a selfie with her statue. We can imagine, of course, what might have happened. In 1848, the writer William Harrison Ainsworth published a best-selling historical novel titled the Lancashire Witches, after visiting Pendle and hearing the stories the locals passed down from generation to generation. In his telling, the wealthy Alice is engaged in a property dispute with a local magistrate who cynically takes the chance to ease her aside by having her accused of witchcraft. It's a fun idea, but we'll never know, right? It all happened over 400 years ago. There's no chance now of any new evidence coming to light. Or is there? In 2023, the author Charlotte Meredith... published a fascinating book on the Pendle Witches. For the most part, it draws on the same source material as other authors, primarily Thomas Potts and the wonderful discovery of witches in the county of Lancashire. But Meredith has also uncovered never-heard-before testimonies from several of the key protagonists. As I tell you about these new testimonies, see if you can guess where Charlotte Meredith came by them. We'll start with Alice Nutter. The true story is nowhere near as dramatic as William Harrison Ainsworth's imaginings. Alice was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. She'd known old Demdike for years. She used the old woman's herbal remedies to treat arthritis in her feet and lower back. They helped, and she gladly paid for them. When she heard old Demdike had been arrested, she went to the house with a gift of food for the woman's family. That was all. Did she help to feloniously kill and murder the man who'd refused old Demdike a penny? Of course not. She had no reason to want the man dead. She barely knew him, beyond seeing each other at church. So why not speak up to defend herself? She simply felt powerless, she said in this newly discovered testimony. Only God had the power to help me now. There's a new account from Alison, too. What really happened on the lane with the peddler. Yes, she'd asked for pins, he'd refused, and she'd got angry and shouted at him. But she hadn't set a talking black dog on him. She'd just turned and walked away. After a while, she heard raised voices, turned back to look, and saw the peddler on the ground with other men helping him. She didn't give it much thought. Later, she learned how unwell the peddler was, and that people were gossiping she'd done it. At first, she was worried. Could her anger really have lamed the peddler? She hadn't meant to, but she did believe that some people had the power to do things like that. Might she have that power? She began to feel strangely good about herself. As a young woman, she did find that people were often dismissive of her, like the peddler. Maybe they'd respect her now. As for the peddler... His new testimony reveals he hadn't meant to treat Alison dismissively at all. By the time he met her on the lane, he already wasn't feeling right. That's why he said that he wouldn't loose his pack, not because he thought Alison was begging, he just wanted to get to the alehouse so he could rest. By the time he came to again, after his collapse, he was alarmed to discover that everyone had already decided he'd been bewitched. It's not that the peddler doubted such things were possible. He just didn't think it had happened to him. He'd felt poorly before that brief encounter with Alison, but the magistrate who interviewed him was keen to get a witch convicted. He offered the peddler money to testify, reminding him that there was no guarantee his health would recover enough to ever let him work again. The peddler agreed. But he regretted it when he saw Alison in court, desperately afraid because she knew she faced the gallows. He was consumed with guilt for the rest of his life. Have you guessed yet where the author Charlotte Meredith found these new accounts? Let me quote from the introduction to her book. There is life after death. The best way to learn the truth about the Pendle Witches is to ask them what happened. Thanks to the kind and patient assistance of an experienced spiritualist medium, who also happens to be the author's mother, it is time for the Pendle Witches to be heard. Yes, the author, Charlotte Meredith, has written an impressively sourced account of the Pendle Witch Trials with all the endnotes and bibliography you'd want to see in a proper work of history, and augmented it by having her mum talk to the dead. I said that 1612 was a different world, a world of strange beliefs. But perhaps we too have our own strange beliefs to contend with. And there's one more thing I need you to know about Charlotte Meredith. cautionary tales will return. In 2022, on International Women's Day, the then First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, gave a speech to the Scottish Parliament. Thousands of Scottish people, she explained. The vast majority women stood trial for witchcraft in the late 1500s, 1600s and early 1700s until the law was finally amended. Scottish women, like the wise wife from Keith, tortured until she confessed that she'd colluded with the devil to cause the storm that hit King James's ship. These women, Nicola Sturgeon said, were not witches. They were poor, or different, or vulnerable, or, well, women.

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Speaker 2

It was injustice on a colossal scale, driven at least in part by misogyny in its most literal sense, hatred of women.

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Speaker 1

Sturgeon was responding to a petition asking for an apology and a pardon for the Scottish witches. The pardon, said Sturgeon, would need Parliament to legislate. But in the meantime... As.

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Speaker 2

First Minister on behalf of the Scottish Government, I am choosing to acknowledge that egregious historic injustice and extend a formal posthumous apology to all those accused, convicted, vilified or executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563.

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Speaker 1

The campaign for a pardon continues. And not just in Scotland, but England as well. where nobody in government has ever even apologised to the likes of Alison, Old Demdyke and Alice Nutter. The Justice for Witches webpage points out that these people could not possibly have committed the crimes of which they were accused, because the idea that you can use magic to harm your neighbours is a make-believe idea. Quite so. The campaign reflects our modern, rational understanding of the world. Oh, and the head of the campaign? Charlotte Meredith. If you go to the author's website, charlottemeredith.co.uk, and click on the Justice for Witches tab, you can add your name to the petition calling for a pardon. Because, obviously, harmful magic is a make-believe idea. Then you can click on the Book tab to buy Charlotte's History of the Pendle Witches Trials, because, obviously, it's perfectly plausible for Charlotte's mum to interview the dead. This tale of two tabs on Charlotte Meredith's website raises an intriguing question. How do we think about the supernatural? What makes one idea seem patently absurd... while another can still be advanced with a straight face. Opinion polls are no help in solving the puzzle. In 2025, the pollster YouGov asked Britons about their supernatural beliefs. Some 20% say it's either definitely or probably possible to communicate with the dead. But wait, 21% say the same about the existence of witches with magic powers. In the US, the figures are similar. According to Gallup, 27% believe in messages from the other side and 24% believe in witches. These are minorities, but they're not nothing. There's clearly a market for posthumous interviews with people falsely accused of witchcraft. But the opinion polls also suggest that about the same numbers of Brits and Americans should be open to the idea that at least some people in 1612 might really have been witches. In August 1612, two judges decided the fates of the Pendle witches. Their clerk, Thomas Potts, took careful notes as one by one the case was made against each of the accused. Not old Demdike, though. She had already died in her cell. in Lancaster Castle. Her great rival, old Chattox, was still going, just barely. A very old, withered, spent and decrepit creature, as Potts described her, clearly a witch. Alison, of course, had also confessed to witchcraft, but her mother pleaded not guilty. So the prosecution brought out their star witness, her other daughter, Alison's younger sister. Janet, says Potts, was about the age of nine years. Courts wouldn't normally rely on such young witnesses, but the usual rules of evidence were relaxed in witchcraft trials. the sight of Janet on the witness stand had quite an effect on her mother. Outrageously cursing, says Potts, she cried out against the child in such fearful manner that poor Janet, with weeping tears, told the court she was not able to speak in the presence of her mother. Once her mother had been removed, Jenet did confesseth and saith that her mother is a witch, and this she knoweth to be true. Guilty. Then there was wealthy, good-tempered, enigmatic Alice Nutter, who was stubbornly refusing to incriminate herself. The judges found an ingenious solution. An identity parade. Young Janet, after all, had been present at that great assembly of all the most dangerous, wicked and damnable witches in the country. Would she recognise others who'd been there? She assured the judges that she would. And so, in the presence of this great audience, in open court... the nine-year-old girl went and took Alice Nutter by the hand. Case closed. Even in 1612, not everyone believed in witchcraft. On the very first page of Demonology, King James refers to the damnable opinions... of a writer who is not afraid, in public print, to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft. We don't know how common such scepticism was. Yougov and Galapalas weren't around back then. But we get an example from Potts himself. We hear an account of a young man, convinced he's been cursed by old Chattox, whose father tells him, Thou art a foolish lad. It is not so. Admittedly, when the son promptly dies and the father himself takes to his deathbed, he does change his tune. He did sundry times say that he was bewitched. It must have been hard to stay sceptical. What we believe as individuals is reinforced or undermined by how much those beliefs are reflected back to us. The sociologist Peter Berger gives us the idea of a plausibility structure, in which personal and collective beliefs are in constant dialogue. Berger was interested in analysing religion, but his idea applies just as well to supernatural beliefs. In 1612, witchcraft had a plausibility structure. You get ill, your cow dies, your ship meets a storm … many around you will say you were obviously bewitched. Today, in many parts of the world, that structure has been dismantled. Tell someone you've been bewitched, and chances are you'll get a raised eyebrow or a polite smile. But in some places, belief in witchcraft remains all too plausible. In the 2010s, the Pew Research Center asked people in 95 countries, do you believe in the evil eye? Or that certain people can cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen to someone? The percentage saying yes ranged from as low as 9 to as high as 90. In communities where witchcraft still has that plausibility structure, We get stories like the 81-year-old woman in Uganda beaten by her neighbours for causing a drought, the Haitian gang leader who massacred elderly people in Port-au-Prince because witchcraft made his son ill, or the 13-year-old girl in Nigeria deprived of food for bewitching her uncle's motorbike. When Nicola Sturgeon apologised to Scottish witches, she knew there'd be those who asked questions Why bother? Wasn't it all so long ago?

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Speaker 2

For some, this is not yet historic. There are parts of our world where even today women and girls face persecution and sometimes death because they have been accused of witchcraft.

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Speaker 1

Charlotte Meredith agrees. By pardoning our historic witches, our government can send a powerful educational message. When strange ideas are reinforced by a plausibility structure, they have consequences. Without such a structure, the stakes tend to be lower. Claim you can talk to the dead, and you must know that most people aren't going to take you seriously. Perhaps that difference can help us to resolve the Charlotte Meredith paradox. What we say about witchcraft matters. In parts of the world, Belief in harmful magic still gets people killed. But a message from beyond the grave is unlikely to get anyone convicted of murder. Ten of the Pendle accused were found guilty, including Alison, her mother and brother, old Chattox and Alice Nutter. The judge put on his black cap.'' You shall all go from hence.'' We don't hear much on the hanging from Thomas Potts. He just notes that it took place the next day. We hear from Charlotte Meredith that Alison wept hysterically. It would hardly be surprising. In truth, we'll never know the details of what happened in Lancashire in 1612, from the meeting on the country lane to the tightening of the noose. But if the spirits of the Pendle witches really are floating around, ready to communicate over 400 years later, I'd love to know what they make of those commemorative fridge magnets, tea towels and mugs. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben-Nadav Hafri edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohen, Corinne Gileard-Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show... please remember to share, rate, and review. It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it ad-free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com slash cautionaryclub. That's patreon, p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash cautionaryclub. Thank you.