An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Hills associated with Witchcraft

Perhaps the most famous British hill to figure in stories of witches is Pendle Hill, in Lancashire. Today, cheerful village shops cash in on its witchcraft associations by selling souvenir models of witches on broomsticks, to tourists in its vicinity. But in times past the shadow of Pendle Hill, and the wild doings that were said to take place upon and around it, lay dark across the countryside, and people spoke of it in whispers. The gypsies in George Borrow’s day called Lancashire Chohawniskytem, ’Witch-country’.

Pendle Hill itself is almost a mountain; a dark, almost treeless bulk, flat on top, and giving a wide view over the countryside to the far-off waves of the Irish Sea. The name of Pendle became known all over England, when in 1613 appeared a book by Thomas Potts entitled The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster. This was a detailed account of the events of the previous year, 1612, when twenty people from the Pendle area stood trial as witches. Ten of them ended their lives on the gallows, and another, an old woman called Demdike, said to be a leading witch, died in jail before the trial started.

The Lancashire witches were accused of holding their meetings in Pendle Forest, close by the shadow of the great hill; but it is evident that Pendle Hill itself is a place with an unwritten history of ancient sanctity, dating from prehistoric times. Like Chanctonbury Ring, another witches’ meeting place on a hill, Pendle has a tradition of gatherings at the beginning of May, to see the sun rise from its height. An old festival called Nick o’ Thung’s Charity, which used to be held for this purpose, was revived in 1854; and on the first Sunday in May hundreds of working people from the countryside round used to gather on the slopes of Pendle Hill. They brought food with them, and cooked it in the open on camp-fires, just as the common people had done at the Great Sabbats in times past. This popular celebration was evidently connected with the old May Eve and May Day festivals.

It is not so well known about Pendle Hill, that upon its summit George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, saw a vision and had a mystical experience which inspired him in his religious mission. This happened in 1652, at a time when the persecution of witches was still very active in Britain. Fox was lucky not to have been accused as a witch, in view of the place where his vision occurred. He tells us that he climbed Pendle Hill because he was “moved of the Lord” to do so. One may wonder whether something numinous, some psychic atmosphere, lingers upon the hill of Pendle, from days of long ago when it was a sacred height.

The connections between Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex and the practice of witchcraft have already been noted. (See CHANCTONBURY RING.) The notorious Brocken in Germany and Glastonbury Tor with its mystic associations have also been described elsewhere. (See BROCKEN, THE AND AVALON, THE ANCIENT BRITISH PARADISE.)

Another hill with witchcraft associations is Bredon Hill, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. On its summit are the remains of a prehistoric camp, and an ancient stone called the Bambury Stone. Harold T. Wilkins, who writes of Bredon Hill in his book Mysteries Solved and Unsolved (Odhams, London, 1960), suggests that this stone derives its name from Ambroisie petrie, ’anointed stone’. It seems possible to me that another origin of the name is derived from the Latin ambire, ’to go round’, meaning ’the stone that is danced around’. Both derivations relate to the fact that this stone, as Wilkins notes, was a focus for witchcraft ceremonies in centuries past.

Bredon Hill earns its place in Harold Wilkins’ book, because in May 1939 it was the scene of the mysterious death of a man called Harry Dean, an event still surrounded with uncertainty and dark questioning. He was found dead in a deserted quarry, apparently strangled; in a place which itself seems to have been adapted at some time for ritual use, because it is described as having a level floor, and four boulders roughly marking the cardinal points, north, south, east and west. It was beside the boulder on the south side that Dean’s body was found. The coroner’s verdict was “Accidental Death”; a verdict which seems questionable, to say the least.

Bredon Hill marks an angle of a triangle, formed in the Cotswold area and which can be drawn on the map; the other two angles being occupied by Meon Hill, the scene of another mysterious death associated with witchcraft, and Seven Wells, the witches’ meeting-place referred to in Hugh Ross Williamson’s historical novel about Cotswold witchcraft, The Silver Bowl. The death of Charles Walton upon Meon Hill in February 1945 was definitely murder, still unsolved. (See COTSWOLDS, WITCHCRAFT IN THE.) Another triangle can be drawn between Seven Wells, Meon Hill and the Rollright Stones, another traditional haunt of witches.

Upon the heights of the Shropshire hills is the strange natural rock formation called the Stiperstones. Among these rocks is a throne-like elevation known as The Devil’s Chair. Upon this natural throne the Devil was supposed to sit, when he presided over the meetings of the Shropshire witches. The story goes that if anyone else ventures to sit in the Devil’s Chair, a storm will arise soon afterwards.

Ditchling Beacon, the highest point of the Sussex Downs, seems very innocuous in the summer season, occupied only by picnic-munching tourists admiring the view. In the winter, however, when these hills are lonely and deserted, it is a different story. Then the Wild Hunt, locally known as the Witch Hounds, goes yelling and raging across Ditchling Beacon upon windy nights; a rush of phantom hounds and horsemen, whose cries and hoofbeats pass by upon the wind, though nothing is seen.

Stray whispers of witch-gatherings upon lonely heights cling to The Wrekin, in Shropshire, close to where the old Roman road of Watling Street passes on the way to the ruins of Uriconium, an important town of ancient days. From here, perhaps, in the times of the Roman occupation, followers of pagan mystery cults went up to The Wrekin to celebrate their rites.

Britain has quite a few places called Herne Hill or some variant of this. These are usually explained as being named after hern, the old English name for a heron. But did herons really nest on all these hills? Or is this name, like that of Herne the Hunter, the horned phantom of Windsor Forest, derived from a name of the old Horned God?

Some gatherings were held also in times past upon Snaefell, in the Isle of Man; but, apart from calling them ’disgraceful scenes’ and so on, local historians are very vague as to what they were.

As long ago as the days when the Old Testament was written, moralists have been denouncing ’disgraceful scenes’ upon pagan high places. The Maenads and Bacchantes of Ancient Greece held their wild revels upon the hills. Yet upon high places also, men have experienced religious visions which changed their lives. The gods of many pantheons were believed to dwell upon mountain-tops. Perhaps it is the very inaccessibility of the height itself, the effort needed to climb it, which invests it with the sense of other worlds beyond the everyday.

There is a sense, too, of eternity upon heights seldom trodden by the feet of men; as evidenced in the popular saying, “As old as the hills”. There, indeed, “the Old Gods guard their round”, and the veil between the seen and unseen may grow thin. Pagan temples were frequently built upon hilltops; and the memory of these old gatherings and rites is often behind the association of a particular hill-top with witchcraft. This is certainly so in the case of Chanctonbury Ring and of the Brocken, as already noted; and another instance of the same thing is the Puy-de-Dome in France, which was once the site of a pagan sanctuary, and in later years became the traditional scene of witch rites.