Celebrating Stratford’s witchy history and depictions of the ‘weird sisters’ in art and culture

This one goes out to Agnes Sampson.

Agnes was a midwife and healer who was living in East Lothian in the late 16th century when James VI of Scotland, soon to be James I of England as well, was on his way back by ship from Copenhagen where he’d married Anne, the daughter of the king of Denmark. His voyage was beset by storms and once he eventually arrived ashore he began to launch an enquiry into what supernatural forces may have been plotting against his safe return. In other words, he instigated a witch hunt which Agnes somehow got herself caught up in. Next thing you know, she’s been accused of storm-raising and brought before the king and his advisers. Refusing to confess, she’s imprisoned, tortured and all her body hair is shaved off to reveal a “devil’s mark” under her pubes which apparently proves she’s been in cahoots with the prince of darkness. It’s said ol’ Satan liked to lick his chosen concubines with his scorch-y tongue, leaving a tell-tale scar.

Under further torture it was reported that Agnes finally admitted to attaching parts of a human corpse to a cat, sailing out to sea in a sieve, then chucking the cat into the water to create a bout of inclement weather to shipwreck the king. James was somewhat sceptical about this story and thus Agnes’ guilt until she piped up with details about the conversation he'd had on his wedding night with Anne, his new bride - something no mere normal mortal could possibly impart. That sealed her fate and on 28 January 1591 she was garrotted, then burned at the stake.

More than 100 suspected witches were rounded up in the North Berwick area around this time and their trials ran for the next two years, many a poor soul meeting a similar fate to Agnes.

So, what’s all this Scottish stuff doing in the Stratford Herald? Well, firstly, it’s Halloween and we all know that means ghouls and ghosts and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. And witches. And secondly, in order to justify the slaughter in North Berwick and elsewhere, in 1597 king James published his Daemonologie, a book full of “signs” and “proofs” that the supernatural posed a significant threat to the spiritual, moral and physical well-being of the populace. This work was intended to educate about the origins and practices of black magic, as well as make a theological case justifying the persecution of witches under Christian law. And it’s from James’ Daemonologie that our very own Shakespeare conjured one of his most terrific and terrifying creations, the weird sisters aka the three witches who prophesy and wrack with riddles the murderous Macbeth.

The Scottish play was written in 1606-7, three years after James had assumed the English throne and Shakespeare, mindful of which way the wind was blowing politically and keen to keep in the king’s good books, flattered him by using various obvious characteristics referenced in his tome. For instance, James was adamant that witches could curse men with impotence or weaken them by subjecting them to repeated sexual encounters. In Act 1, Scene 3 of Macbeth the first witch describes her plan to torment a sailor thus: “I’ll drain him dry as hay” and “I’ll do and I’ll do and I’ll do”, suggesting that she will leave him totally shagged out.

The weird sisters are, of course, among the bard’s most memorable characters and audiences have become accustomed to directors having tons of fun with them down the many years. Orson Welles cast them as voodoo priestesses in his 1936 production, located on a fictional island modelled on Haiti. More recently at the RSC, the witches have been portrayed by spooky children and, in our last encounter, they were employed in the removal business, hauling corpses off stage. Oh, and one of them was a bloke.

As for cinematic representations, Joel Coen's 2021 The Tragedy Of Macbeth found national treasure Kathryn Hunter playing the part of all three witches or, more accurately, a trio of personalities inside a single twisted body which was mightily unsettling.

Obviously once seen, utterly unforgettable is Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch Of The West in the classic 1939 movie The Wizard Of Oz, such a chilling portrayal that not only has Wicked The Musical and is forthcoming rather dodgy-looking movie spin-off been born from an attempt to explain her psyche but her evil spirit is celebrated by Polly Holliday in her role as Miss Deagle in Joe Dante’s brilliant 1984 comic horror Gremlins. Another (dis)honourable mention is due to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project in which we never actually get to see a witch but get scared witless all the same. Then there’s 2015’s The Witch starring a Sutherland family favourite, a demonic goat called Black Phillip, plus 2016’s neat erotic horror comedy The Love Witch.

As for paint on canvas, it’s probably true enough to say that Henry Fuseli’s 1783 painting of the Macbeth three witches is the image of the sinister hags that stays embedded longest in the memory. Musically our witchy sisters are widely and richly represented. When I was growing up in the early 1970s, one song that freaked me out was the top 10 single The Witch by a German beat group called The Rattles which featured a fairground giddiness and much scary cackling. I’m not sure what was going on cosmically in 1970 but that same year Jethro Tull released their breakthrough single The Witch’s Promise which spelled out the dangers of getting yourself romantically tangled with a winsome mistress of the coven.

Then there was The Witch, a creepy track off Dreaming With Alice which was recorded and released to no response whatsoever by a teenaged hippie called Mark Fry in Italy in 1971 but miraculously emerged rediscovered in 2006.

Grandmommy of them all, though, is Season Of The Witch, first released by Donovan in 1966 on his Sunshine Superman album. Cool and spooky, it’s been marvellously covered many times – notable versions being Lana Del Rey’s slinky take for the soundtrack to the 2019 movie Scary Tales To Tell In The Dark, Julie Driscoll and The Brian Auger Trinity’s ace and groovy jazz version from 1968 and, in 2003, Richard Thompson recorded the most twisted and creepy Season for the American TV series Crossing Jordan.

As for ‘real life’ witches, Stratford’s history’s a little bare. On 3rd December 1867 John Davis of Sheep Street was sentenced at the Warwickshire Assizes to 18 months’ hard labour for attacking his neighbour, Jane Ward, and wounding her with intent to do grievous bodily harm. The reason for the assault was that Davis claimed she was a witch and had sent two headless ghosts down his chimney in the middle of the night whereupon they chucked the furniture about and pinched members of his family.

On 15th September 1875, some 16 miles south of Stratford in the village of Long Compton, a farm labourer called James Hayward viciously attacked and killed a 79-year-old lady called Ann Tennant, stabbing her in the legs with a two-pronged pitchfork insisting that she was the leader of a coven of 15 other witches in the area, all of whom he could name and would slaughter if he got the chance.

Hayward was tried, found to be insane and confined in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he eventually died.

A couple of miles further, on the Oxfordshire border, stand the Rollright Stones, thought to be a Neolithic burial site. Local folklore has it that once upon a time a king was riding across the county with his army when he met a famous witch called Mother Shipton, a hunch-backed, crooked-legged woman who had been born Ursula Southeil in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire in about 1486.

She prophesied that if the king could see Long Compton after taking seven strides from the spot on which he stood he would become ruler of all-England. The knights stood in a huddle discussing the challenge while the king stepped forward only to find his view blocked by rising ground.

Mother Shipton allegedly cackled with glee and turned him instantly to stone - an edifice known today as the King Stone – while the knights she transformed into the stone circle. Four of the knights had lagged behind planning a plot against the king so, before changing herself into an elder tree, she also fossilised them. We know them today as the Whispering Knights.

Legend says that, as the clock strikes midnight in Long Compton’s Church Of Saint Peter And Saint Paul, the King Stone comes alive, and in the late-18th into the 19th centuries the stones became associated with fertility rites. Local girls apparently ran naked around the stones at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve in the belief that they would see their future husbands. Childless wives are rumoured to have prayed to or near the King Stone, or rubbed their bare breasts on the surface as a means of enhancing their chances of conceiving a child.

Finally, a few last words concerning poor Agnes Sampson. Her naked ghost is said to roam Hollyrood Palace, scaring the bejesus out of those she encounters. All things considered, can’t say I blame her.