Suckling the Witch's Familiar

Medieval Britons, and those even as recent as 18^th century Britons, saw witchcraft everywhere. The witches in question, although sometimes male and occasionally of the ruling elite, most often came in the form of rural village women, and were most often accused by their own neighbours. Interestingly, in the brilliantly titled Malevolent Nurture (1995), Deborah Willis finds that the accusers, too, were mainly females; the neighbours of the indicted.

Proof of witchcraft came in the form of muttered so-called ‘curses’ followed by the target of the curse experiencing some sort of ill fortune; failed crops, a sow that wouldn’t feed her piglets, even a death. The other form of proof came in the testimony of those who had seen the accused with a small animal, or animals. The accuser might have seen the ‘witch’ leaving food out for a dog or tending to an injured bird. She might even be known to house animals in her cottage overnight.

It was common knowledge that a witch would have a familiar, and indeed there are numerous testimonies from self-confessed witches (although the methods of torture used in order to glean a confession could be brutal, and it’s hard to pinpoint who truthfully considered themselves a witch) regarding their species and special names. Depending on the time and locality, this familiar was alternately seen as a demon that did the witch’s bidding, or the devil himself, guiding and instructing the witch whilst in the guise of an animal. The animal in question, then, was not considered to be an ‘evil animal’ per se, rather, it was seen as a vessel, a container for the demonic spirit within. Animals were non-reasoning beings and did not have the capacity to be evil in and of themselves.

Once the accused was brought before trial there was one surefire way to determine whether she was a witch or not. This was the Devil’s Teat. A mark on the witch’s body, which could look like anything from an actual third nipple, to a scar, birthmark or mole, and with which it was said that the witch was able to suckle her familiar, either with milk (which was believed to be generated from blood) or with blood itself. Once the mark was found (and it inevitably was, a woman would have to be impossibly blemish free to escape) it was considered solid evidence of the witch’s maleficium.

Having taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room upon a stool or table, cross legged, or in some other uneasy posture, to which if she submits not, she is then bound with cords; there she is watched and kept without meat or sleep for the space of 24 hours for (they say) within that time they shall see her imp come and suck. A little hole is likewise made in the door for the imp to come in at; and lest it might come in some less discernable shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders or flies, to kill them. And if they cannot kill them, then they may be sure they are her imps. (John Gaul, Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcrafts, 1646)

In Malevolent Nurture Willis borrows heavily from the work of Melanie Klein to demonstrate how women who were often past the child-bearing age, either widowed or spinsters, and who might be poor and forced to ask other neighbours for help or charity, were prime targets for the accusation of witchcraft. Their muttered ‘curses’ were frequently a response to neighbours telling them essentially to get lost when they asked for help. In psychoanalytic terms the neighbour, often younger than the accused, who had rebuffed the plea for charity can be seen to identify the older woman’s helplessness as a lack of maternal grace and dignity. In psychoanalysis every older woman represents ‘the mother’, and therefore, when ‘the mother’ is seen to plead for help ‘the child’ is put in an uncomfortable, guilt-inducing position.

Willis is strongly into the psychoanalytic interpretation of the patterns of these events, which may or may not apply to these cases. If we allow for this train of thought though, it could arguably be said to follow on that the disgruntled neighbour, seeing the poor old woman nurturing or caring for a small animal, considers this a perverse enough action to be an indicator of more sinister forces at work.

1. The old (or old-er) woman can barely afford to keep herself
2. The older woman might have often asked for charity for herself
3. The older woman is seen caring for a dumb animal
4. There must be a reason for the old woman to want to care for the animal.

There must be a reason for the old woman to want to care for the animal. It was not understood that an old woman might try to fulfil her urge to nurture with the only thing that she was able to help – a small animal. It was not seen that the old woman, often maligned within her community, might feel a sense of appreciation from the rabbit, or the dog, or the sparrow that she helped. The only explanation for a woman to be taking the time to care for something small, vulnerable, and distinctly non-human, was that the animal was not an animal at all.

Strikingly, despite the Europe-wide belief in witches, the notion of the ‘sucking familiar’ is actually geographically limited to England (see M.A. Murray, Witches’ Familiars in England). How the transgression of feeding an animal with some bread or a bowl of milk could become, in people’s minds, all the more deviant with the idea of the actual suckling of the animal on the witch’s own flesh, shows us the deep sense of threat felt by those (i.e. the majority) who could not conceive of a relationship between a human and an animal. Understanding this viewpoint requires a deeper investigation into the more general attitudes towards animals of the time.