cat familiarsHumans have always had a powerful desire to learn what the future holds and, if possible, control it. As early as prehistory, people developed any number of practices and associated beliefs to try to accomplish this. People have employed various types of divination, oracular consultations, witchcraft, and the use of witch familiars throughout time to attempt to discern and influence the future.
The custom of observing animal or bird behavior as omens or indications of things to come is ancient. This practice in the British Isles is at least as old as Druidic times. But observation itself is limited to gathering information. The next logical step is to attempt some sort of control. Here is where the notion of the familiar is born. If a falconer trains a bird to hunt and return to the glove, why couldn’t a witch command an animal to do his or her bidding?
Accused witches, like most people, lived with pets. Once a person was suspected of witchcraft, the accusers stigmatized this pet as a ‘familiar’ (also known sometimes as an ‘imp’) and believed it to be able to assist the witch in the practice of witchcraft. People suspected that many small animals, which could live in a household, were familiars. Witch trial transcripts in Britain as early as 1566 cite cats, dogs, rats, mice, toads, moles, rabbits, ferrets, and even insects as familiars.
Familiars - Cats and the Devil
Cats have been common household pets for hundreds of years. Accusers understandably often suspected them of being familiars. Although several other animals could be familiars, people most often associated cats with witches. Some people believed that witches were able to turn themselves into cats. Other people believed a witch had the power to command her cat to cast curses or to spy or inflict other mischief on her behalf. Still others believed the cat belonged to the devil, to whom the witch had pledged her soul, and that the devil could use it to cause evil. People also sometimes believed familiars to be minor demonic spirits that took the shape of cats or other animals and could assist the witch in evil doing.
In a famous witch trial headed by King James himself, Agnes Sampson was tortured and executed as a witch in Scotland in 1591. King James suspected that his fiancé, Anne of Denmark, had been unable to reach Scotland by boat due to storms caused by curses. After torture, Agnes Sampson confessed that she and other witches had prevented Anne’s boat from reaching Scotland by throwing bewitched cats into the North Sea. Such were beliefs at the time that no one found this explanation questionable, including the King.
Consider the following story, taken from Witchcraft in England by Christina Hole:
Rutterkin the Cat Familiar
Margaret Flower was employed as a charwoman at Belvoir Castle, where she resided in the servant’s quarters. The Earl of Rutland owned the castle. His heir was his son, Lord Rosse. In early 1618, the Earl terminated her employment with charges that she took things she had no right to and was lax in her duties. Margaret decided to take revenge for her dismissal because she had lost both her residence and income.
Margaret asked for help from her mother, Joan Flower, a reputed witch with a cat familiar called Rutterkin. Joan herself held the Earl of Rutland in low regard as a result of former dealings and was eager to help her daughter in this matter. She instructed Margaret to steal a glove from Lord Rosse and give it to her mother. Joan stroked Rutterkin with the glove, dipped it in boiling water, pricked it and buried it. Subsequently, Lord Rosse fell ill and eventually died.
Trial documents indicate that Joan may have alluded to revenge in conversation with someone. At any event, people discovered their actions, and both mother and daughter were arrested. After torture, Margaret Flower confessed. She was hanged in March 1619. Her mother refused to admit guilt. Instead, she asked for bread and butter, invoking an ancient “test of ordeal” involving a prayer to God that the bread ‘would not go through her’ if she were guilty. Fascinatingly, she choked on the bread and died on the way to jail.
The Witch’s Teat or Devil’s Mark
The story of Margaret Flower is typical of testimonies about familiars given at witch trials in the seventeenth century. The Devil could gift a familiar to a witch. A witch could inherit a familiar. Another witch might gift a familiar to her. People believed the witch would feed the familiar with his or her blood. Either the familiar sucked directly from some part of her body, or she mixed her blood into its food. Evidence of any sort of mark on a witch’s body, often called a ‘witch’s teat’ or a ‘Devil’s mark,’ proved that she fed her familiar with her blood. A ‘witch’s teat’ could be any sort of mole, birthmark, discoloration, skin tag, or other skin anomaly.
Over time, people connected black cats in particular with a witch’s familiar. In the Scottish Highlands people still tell stories of the cat sith (pronounced ‘cot she’), a large black cat (think the size of a dog) with a white patch on its chest. The cat sith has the special ability to slip between our world and the realm of the fairies and sometimes serves as a guardian of the fairy realm. Seventeenth-century Scots took fairies very seriously. People were keen to avoid fairies, since they could trap you underground in their realm or do you other harm. It was best to avoid the cat sith as well, since it might be aiding fairies in their mischief, or was perhaps a kind of fairy itself.
Fairy Darts
Among their other activities, Scots believed that fairies roamed the Scottish countryside in search of sustenance. These fairies used ‘fairy darts’ or ‘elf darts’ to hunt game for food. (Such darts were associated with prehistoric arrowheads found throughout Scotland.) The fairies often used humans as archers for shooting their darts, since humans were stronger than fairies. Fairies were also often in league with witches, who were delighted to become their archers.
One of the most famous of all Scottish witches, Isobel Gowdie, claimed to shoot ‘elf-darts’ in her 1662 trial testimony. Witches such as Isobel could make use of these darts to harm or kill their enemies, which Isobel testified that she had done. Humans who were shot with such a dart and did not immediately bless themselves would sicken and die. Also, witches who followed the fairies in their feasting and processions through the countryside could gain magical benefits. Isobel claimed to have feasted with the fairy king and queen under the local hills.
Whether a fairy, a fairy guardian, a shapeshifting witch, or some other supernatural being, the cat sith lurked in moors and lonely pathways. A wise traveler would avoid such paths, especially at night or in other times of poor visibility. Fairies, with the help of the cat sith , collected human souls. The Highlanders carefully guarded their dead before burial so that the cat sith could not steal their souls before they were able to get to Heaven. The living mourners played games outside the home where their dead were laid out in order to distract the cat sith from going inside. Firelight would attract the cat sith, so mourners avoided lighting fires at all cost.
Shapeshifting Witches
Another common belief was that a witch could transform or shapeshift into her familiar. There were whispers that the cat sith might be a witch who could transform into a cat nine different times before she became stuck in cat form. Might that be why we say a cat has nine lives?
Julian Goodare, in Scottish Witches and Witch Hunters, speaks of Isobel Elliot and Marion Veitch who, in 1678, flew in the shape of bees. Thomas Lindsay, in 1697, confessed that “if he pleased, he could fly in the likeness of a crow.” In Glasgow in 1699, William Scott accused Margaret Duncan, Janet Gentleman, and Marion Ure of appearing in his bedchamber as a sow, a cat and an ape, where they danced around his bedstead. In the same book, Lauren Martin tells of Christian Grintoun, who in 1629 left his house in the shape of a cat.
The belief in shapeshifting is ancient and was once widespread throughout the world. Early cave paintings depict shapeshifting. Similar to the oracular interpretation of animal behavior, belief in shapeshifting has persisted and has been passed down throughout cultures. People associate shapeshifting with shamanism and with magical powers. Though often denied by the learned, in the seventeenth century the majority of ordinary people considered the ability to shapeshift as irrefutable. The idea that witches possessed such powers of transformation seemed self-evident.
Today it seems absurd to our rational minds that these beliefs could have been widespread. Very few people alive now would believe throwing cats into the North Sea could cause storms. Perhaps a few more would believe that people could turn into animals in shamanistic rituals. At the same time, there are a small but significant number of people who feel uncomfortable around black cats, especially at Halloween. Perhaps in some tiny dark corner of our minds, a certain resonance with such suspicions still lingers.
Susan Finkleman is currently working on a historical novel about the Crook of Devon witch trials in 1662. For more stories, please check out her substack (here)
