Pyewacket was one of the supposed

familiar spirit In European folklore of the medieval and early modern periods, familiars (sometimes referred to as familiar spirits) were believed to be supernatural entities that would assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic. According to ...

s of an alleged

witch Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have u ...

accused by the claimed Witchfinder General

Matthew Hopkins Matthew Hopkins ( 1620 – 12 August 1647) was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during the English Civil War. He claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament, a ...

in March 1644 in the town of

Manningtree Manningtree is a town and civil parish in the Tendring district of Essex, England, which lies on the River Stour. It is part of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Natural Beauty. Smallest town claim Manningtree has traditionally claimed to ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Hopkins claimed he spied on the witches as they held their meeting close by his house, and heard them mention the name of a local woman. She was arrested and

deprived of sleep Sleep deprivation, also known as sleep insufficiency or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having adequate duration and/or quality of sleep to support decent alertness, performance, and health. It can be either chronic or acute and may vary ...

for four nights, at the end of which she confessed and called out the names of her familiars, describing the forms in which they should appear. They were: *Holt, "who came in like a white kittling" *Jarmara, "who came in like a fat

Spaniel A spaniel is a Dog type, type of gun dog. Spaniels were especially bred to flush game out of denser brush. By the late 17th century, spaniels had been specialized into water and land breeds. The extinct English Water Spaniel was used to retrie ...

without any legs at all" *Vinegar Tom, "who was like a long-legg'd

greyhound The English Greyhound, or simply the Greyhound, is a breed of dog, a sighthound which has been bred for coursing, greyhound racing and hunting. Since the rise in large-scale adoption of retired racing Greyhounds, the breed has seen a resurgen ...

, with a head like an Oxe" *Sacke and Sugar, "like a black Rabbet" *Newes, "like a

Polecat Polecat is a common name for several mustelid species in the order Carnivora and subfamilies Ictonychinae and Mustelinae. Polecats do not form a single taxonomic rank (i.e. clade). The name is applied to several species with broad similari ...

" *Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, Grizzel Greedigut, described as

imp IMP or imp may refer to: * Imp, a fantasy creature Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Imp (She-Ra), a character in ''She-Ra: Princess of Power'' * Imp a character in '' Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony'' * Imp, a character in the ''Cla ...

s Hopkins claims he and nine other witnesses saw the first five of these, which appeared in the forms described by the witch. Only the first of these was in the form of a cat; the next two were dogs, and the others were a black rabbit and a polecat – so Pyewacket was, presumably, not a cat's name. As for the other familiars, Hopkins says only that they were such that "no mortall could invent." The incident is described in Hopkins's pamphlet "The Discovery of Witches" (1647).

In film and fiction

In the Hollywood film ''

Bell, Book and Candle ''Bell, Book and Candle'' is a 1958 American fantasy romantic comedy film directed by Richard Quine from a screenplay by Daniel Taradash, based on the 1950 Broadway play of the same title by John Van Druten. It stars Kim Novak as a witch who ...

'' (1958) Pyewacket is the name of the brown sealpoint

Siamese cat The Siamese cat ( th, แมวไทย, Maeo Thai; แมวสยาม, Maeo Seeaam) is one of the first distinctly recognized breeds of Asian cat. Derived from the Wichianmat landrace, one of several varieties of cat native to Thailand ( ...

/familiar of Gillian Holroyd, a witch played by

Kim Novak Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter. Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...

. The film was adapted from a 1958 Broadway play that continues to be produced in community theatres. In the 1967 children's novel '' Pyewacket'' the title character and protagonist is an alley cat. Fantasy author Dianne Sylvan’s “Shadow World” series features a Wiccan character, Stella, whose cat is named Pyewacket after the film. '' Pyewacket'' is a 2017 horror film.

References

{{Reflist

External links

The Discovery of Witches
at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

1644 in England Fictional characters introduced in 1644 17th century in Essex English legendary creatures Witchcraft in England Manningtree Imps