From the Darlington & Stockton Times of June 18, 1921
THE equivalent of this column 100 years ago was obsessed, quite rightly, with witches, and especially Moll Cass of Leeming, who was “with great dordum dragged to the dam and there ducked, October 8, 1776”.
Among Moll’s many crimes was predicting the future by the time honoured device of a witch’s garter, which she tied around her calf. She inserted a magic cube into the fold and her client, who was after information about the future, then chose at random one of the tabs dangling from the magic garter. The tab provided the key to the witch’s magic and predictive tables, which only she could understand.
Moll had committed many other crimes, as this poem, composed in Leeming to commemorate her ducking, told:
For smiting Mary’s bairn wi’ t’pock
For setting Willie’s stack on fire
With some Hell flames she gat
And being so very kind with Nick
That the devil went and spat
Near t’altar rails and in t’church porch
And three times on t’toon Brig
And mair ‘an yance she spelled awd Tom
And laid him on his rig
For working much fildeed
With Tommy’s sheep and Hannah’s ducks
And makking Sally bleed
Worse than a stuck pig forsooth
And likewise we all swear
For casting pains in Martha’s bed
Past what a wife can bear
For drying up Ann Jepson’s breasts
Afore her bairn was speaned
For causing strife ‘mang wedded folks
We yan and all have deemed
That thoo shall be a water queen.
This is a long and devastating indictment of Moll who clearly set fire to chimneys, struck people with the pox, was in league with the Devil, did dreadful things on the land, caused poor Martha unbearable pain and sucked the life-giving milk out of Ann Jepson’s breasts. So it was quite right that she be ducked.
The description suggests that the punishment was meted out in Bedale Beck, perhaps near Leeming Mill where there used to be a dam to provide enough waterpower to turn the wheel.
The poet tells how it happened:
To the iron hoop we tied her wrist
All bone and wrassled skin
And to its legs her legs were bun’
Afore we dipped her in.
And to its seat her seat was tied
With t’rope about her waist
And over both her hips was laid
The seat beam to our taste.
Her e’en from sockets almost strained
With shaking gums and chin
With quivering brow and blanched cheek
T’old witch we dipped her in.
Despite being repeatedly ducked, “the amazement is that it was not her end for she amost drownded”.
And despite the ducking, Moll continued to practise her dark arts, predicting the future from her magic garter until her natural death in 1795.
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