Folk Magic and Catholic Prayers
The magic used by both Mother Demdike and Old Chattox combined folk magic and Roman Catholic prayers. Later, other witches would confirm these practices as standard. The first kind of magic was a form of sympathetic magic, which involved the making and using of items that resembled the people they wished to have influence over. The second kind involved charms that combined folk beliefs with elements of Catholic prayers.
Mother Demdike described how she made a clay model of her victims or ‘a picture of clay” which she used as the focus of her will. Once the clay was shaped to resemble the victim, Demdike dried it. Then, when she wanted them to be “ill in any one place more than another” she would drive in a pin or thorn in the place she wanted to cause illness. When she wanted “any part of the body to consume away” she broke off that part of the image and burnt it. If she wished to kill someone, Demdike took a similar action: she incinerated the whole figure, and the person would die.
Chattox had used another kind of folk magic to curse a cow belonging to John Nutter of Bullhole, according to Alison Device. The old woman had performed a charm over a pail of milk from the cow “with two sticks across it.” Chattox provided Roger Nowell with a rendition of one of her charms, which shows a combination of sympathetic magic and Christian prayer:
“three biters hast thou bitten, The heart, ill eye, ill tongue: Three bitter shall be thy boote, Father, son and holy ghost, a gods name. Five pater- nesters, Five avies and a creede, in worship of the five wounds of our Lord.”
The ‘biters’ name the parts to be afflicted, in this case, the heart, eye and tongue. But combined with these folk beliefs are Catholic references. ‘Pater nesters’ were the Lord’s prayer, but the ‘Avies’ referred to the Hail Mary’s of Catholicism. Not only was Chattox cursing but she was also combining folk beliefs and Catholicism in her witchcraft. It was a potent mix.
Either way, Nowell had now heard enough. He had Alison Device, Mother Demdike, Old Chattox and Chattox’s daughter Anne Redferne arrested that very day and sent to Lancaster Castle to await trial.