The Baobhan Sith

 BAOBHAN SITH

The baobhan sith is a female vampire in the folklore of the Scottish Highlands, though they also share certain characteristics in common with the succubus and fairy. They appear as beautiful women who seduce their victims before attacking them and draining their blood.

According to the Scottish folklorist Donald Alexander Mackenzie, the baobhan sith usually appears as a beautiful young woman wearing a long green dress that conceals the deer hooves she has instead of feet. Like other vampires she drinks the blood of human victims and will vanish with the rising sun. She may also take the form of a hooded crow or raven.

There are numerous stories about the baobhan sith with a general theme of hunters being attacked in the wilderness at night. In one tale recorded by Mackenzie, there were four men who went hunting and took shelter for the night in a lonely shieling or hut. One of the men supplied vocal music while the others began dancing. The men expressed a desire for partners to dance with, and soon after that four women entered the hut. Three of them danced while the fourth sat beside the vocalist. He then noticed drops of blood falling from his companions and fled from the hut, taking refuge among the horses. His vampiric partner chased him but was unable to catch him, and when daylight came she disappeared. The man went back inside and found all three of his friends dead and drained of blood. The folklorist Katharine Briggs suggested that the baobhan sith was unable to catch the fourth man among the horses because of the iron with which the horses were shod, iron being a traditional fairy vulnerability.

In a similar tale one of the men noticed that the women had deer hooves instead of feet and fled from them. He returned the next morning to find that the other hunters had their "throats cut and chests laid open".

In a third story the hunters took refuge in a cave. Each of the men said he wished his own sweetheart were there that night, but one of them, named Macphee, who was accompanied by his black dog, said he preferred his wife to remain at home. At that moment a group of young women entered the cave, and the men who had wished for their sweethearts were killed. Macphee was protected by his dog who drove the women from the cave.

One recurring motif in these stories is that the baobhan sith appear almost immediately after the hunters express their desire for female companionship. This is connected with a traditional Scottish belief that if one were to make a wish at night without also invoking God's protection, then that wish would be granted in some terrible manner.

Mother Shiptons Cave

 Mother Shiptons cave and the petrifying well Knaresborough.

Decorated with teddy bears, bicycles, and other souvenirs, Mother Shipton’s petrifying well is thought to have an unusual quality—it can turn objects to stone!

According to lore, Mother Shipton was born Ursula Southhell in 1488, in a Knaresborough, England, cave. She was said to be a witch and an oracle, associated with many tragic events in the area and predicting, in prose, the horrors that were to doom the Tudor reign. She is to blame for bewitching the well.

The well’s petrifying properties can also be explained by modern science. When the well water flows over objects, its unusually high mineral content hardens them—much like the way stalactites and stalagmites form in caves. Astoundingly, objects are hardened in just three to five months!

The first publication of her prophecies, which appeared in 1641, eighty years after her death, contained a number of predictions—some all too accurate:

“For in those wondrous far off days, the women shall adopt a craze. To dress like men, and trousers wear, and to cut off all their locks of hair. They’ll ride astride with brazen brow, as witches do on broomsticks now.”

Women increasingly wore trousers in the 1920s and began adopting short, bold hairstyles, and forget riding side-saddle—ladies were taking on horses and bikes like gentlemen!

“A carriage without horse will go, disaster fill the world with woe.”

This sounds eerily like the introduction of automobiles and trains, accompanied by the accidents that come with them.

“Around the world men’s thoughts will fly, quick as a twinkling of an eye.”

The invention of mass communication, from the telephone to television and, later, the Internet helped thoughts be shared.

“Then when the fiercest strife is done, England and France shall be as one”

England and France worked as allies during World War II.

Good Monday Morning Bloggers!

 Good Morning. 

Lately I have been working in such detail on my website that I almost forgot I had this Blog. Feel Free to look around, as I am updating as much as possible. 

I have wiggled my way into photography. My website as well as this blog will have detailed links to go see what all I am doing! Soon to come, metaphysical trinkets, new jewelry, photographs, artwork and of course book reviews. Give me some time, and it will all come together. It is time I come back in full action. 

Until then, have a blessed day!

Joan Wytte "The Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin"

 Wytte, Joan (1775–1813) Cornish woman known as “The Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin,” renowned as a witch. Joan Wytte was born in 1775 in Bodmin to a family of weavers and tawners (makers of white leather). Small in stature, she reputedly could communicate with Fairies and spirits. Wytte was clairvoyant, and people sought her services as a seer, diviner and healer. She was known to visit a local holy well called Scarlett’s, where she did scrying and tied clouties on the branches of the trees. (A cloutie, pronounced kloo-tee, is a type of Charm that

is a strip of cloth taken from the clothing of a sick person. As it decays on the tree limb, the limbs of the sick person heal in a form of sympathetic magic. Clouties, consisting of strips of cloth and ribbons, are still tied to the trees at holy wells in modern times.) Sometime in her twenties, Wytte developed a serious tooth decay that eventually caused a painful abscess, for which there were few dental remedies at the time. The pain of this condition changed her behavior, and she became more ill-tempered. She shouted at people and picked fights, and turned to drinking. She suffered bouts of delirium and muttered in her sleep, causing others to think that she was possessed by the Devil. One day Wytte became involved in a fight with several people and Demonstrated almost supernatural strength by picking them up and hurling them around and beating upon them so seriously that they were injured. She was arrested and taken to Bodmin jail.

Wytte languished in jail for years, suffering the fate of other prisoners who had no wealth by which to procure their release. Eventually, the bad diet, damp and dreadful conditions—especially working the treadmill, the fate of all prisoners—caused her to become ill with pneumonia, and she died. Her body was dissected by the jail’s surgeon, and the skeleton was placed in a prison storeroom. A new prison governor arrived, William Hicks, who decided to use Wytte’s

skeleton for amusement in a Séance for friends. The skeleton was placed in a coffin and a bone put in it for her spirit to use in answering questions. Two persons were given bones, which would be rapped. One was for receiving yes answers and one was for receiving no answers. Offstage Hicks secreted a person who also had a bone, and would play the part of Wytte. According to lore, the Séance took an unexpected turn of events. The coffin lid allegedly flew open, and, with a great whooshing sound, the bones were yanked from all three people and sent flying about the Séance room, beating upon the heads and shoulders of those present. The violence then stopped as abruptly as it had started.

Wytte’s bones remained in the jail storeroom. In 1927, after the jail was closed, her skeleton was acquired by a doctor in north Cornwall. It eventually passed into the hands of an antique dealer, and was acquired by Cecil Williamson, founder of the museum of Witchcraft. Williamson put the bones on display in a coffin in the museum. When the museum, in Boscastle, Cornwall, was sold in 1996, the new owners, Graham King and Liz Crow, experienced poltergeist phenomena associated with the skeleton. They consulted a witch from St. Buryan, Cassandra Latham, who told them the spirit of Wytte did not want to be on public view and would not rest until she had been given a proper burial. The bones were removed for that purpose. The empty coffin remained on display, along with an account of the tragic story of Wytte.