All About our Coal Fire: Christmas Entertainments (1734) is an influential and charming comic portrayal of all the customs of Christmas. The book describes feasts, silly games, drinking and scary stories around the hearth. It was popular for many years and probably influenced Dickens.
The stories and legends in the book (such as the one summarised below) have some bizarre twists and coarse scatological humour that is of its time… So top up your glass and prepare to meet Old Mother Damnable, the witch who can give you the shits…
Old Mother Damnable
Sometime in the sixteenth century, we don’t know where, there was an old woman named Gammar Martyn, Gammar meaning grandmother. She was known for her sour expression and ill-temper, and would sometimes be seen broomstick in hand shuffling to the market in her shabby clothes and high crowned hat, though all she seemed to buy were sheep lungs and cat food.
The local boys gave her the nickname of Old Mother Damnable, and shared stories about her and her ‘diabolical teats’ on which she suckled her devilish imps. It was said that she had been seen walking on the rooftops in the shape of a cat.
The young boys would sometimes taunt her with her nickname and pelt her with stones if their paths crossed, and for her part, Mother Damnable would lash out at them with her broomstick. If she managed to hit one the boys, he would suffer from pain in his bones for weeks.
If someone was sick, Mother Damnable was blamed. If someone got the shits, Mother Damnable was blamed. That seemed to be her speciality.
Shitting Pins and Needles
One day Old Mother Damnable was sitting by the door of her miserable cottage spinning, when the Squire rode up to her and asked where would be a good place to hunt for hares. She replied, ‘Sir, go to yonder hill and you will find that which will lead you a dance.’
The Squire followed the old woman’s directions, and sure enough a hare bounded out in front of him. The Squire gave chase for miles and miles over the hills, but eventually lost his animal and turned back exhausted.
As he passed Old Mother Damnable’s hovel, he noted that she was still spinning by the door but seemed to be all in a sweat. The Squire suspected that the hare he had been chasing had in fact been the old woman, for witches, as everyone knows, are notorious shapeshifters. He complained about how exhausted he was and how the fruitless hunt had left him feeling faint. The woman then offered him a glass of a cordial she had been brewing, and preoffered this ominous advice as the Squire drained the mysterious liquid: ‘Take care of your backside between this and home.’
The Squire rode away without giving the woman anything in return for the drink. However, before he got home he was seized with sharp griping pains in his stomach, and the next thing he knew he was shitting pins and needles – or so it felt to him.
For two weeks he suffered like this, and no doctor could help him.
The Spirit of Arse Smart
Of course, the Squire accused the old woman of witchcraft and at the next quarter sessions Gammar Martyn was found guilty and burned as a witch.
The Squire commented: ‘Though she gave me diversion in the chase, she certainly bewitched me with her spirit of arse-smart; she is plainly a witch.’
Was Old Mother Damnable really a witch? Well, her neighbours confirmed that Gammar Martyn had a long-running dispute with the Squire’s steward – about what, we don’t know. The Squire’s steward had paid a bunch of local hooligans to throw stones at the old woman and call her a witch. That’s how her reputation began. She had been sweating and agitated when seeing the Squire after his hunt because she was afraid of the consequences of her dispute with his steward. The drink she gave the Squire was in good faith.
What killed the poor woman was the coincidence of the Squire shitting pins and needles.
And that’s the story of Old Damnable.
Of course, English witches weren’t burned, they were hanged. So that part of the story can’t be true, but generally the tale reflects what happened to many a poor soul at that time in history.
I’m not sure what the moral of this legend is, but it must surely relate to power, gullibility and using the law to persecute those deemed deplorable.
Remember if you shit your breeches, clean it up and don’t hunt witches.
For more weird folklore from All About our Coal Fire, see below to find out why a ghost is like a fart…
Paul Weatherhead 