Between a Barrel and a Hard Place!

Meg Shelton - the ‘Fylde Hag’ – was crushed to death between a barrel and a wall and then buried as a witch.

But this was not good enough for her neighbours in Woodplumpton (Preston, Lancashire) who, convinced she twice dug herself from her grave at the local St Anne’s Church, just to spite them, then reinterred her head-first down a vertical shaft, placing a boulder over the spot to stop her ‘re-escaping’!

The above events may have happened in 1705 but I suggest that today, Shelton – really ‘Margery Hilton’ – would instead be publicly reprimanded for misperceived injuries to others, horribly humiliated and insulted and then ostracised by cyber-bullies on social media.

The legend of the Fylde Hag is well documented but is nonetheless among material used by former Cambridge University don Dr David Barrowclough in his paper The Wonderful Discovery of Witches Unearthing the Occult: Necromancy and Magic in Seventeenth Century England.

Barrowclough uses his paper that first appeared several years ago, to suggest that in order to confirm evidence of ancient occult practice, it would be better to “triangulate archaeological evidence with that from historic sources and folklore in order to construct the case for the occult”.

Most of Barrowclough’s work here concentrates on a once-remote site at Barway, Cambridgeshire but he concludes that his “triangular approach is potentially available for the study of all historic periods, although it is likely to be most appropriate to the study of periods from the seventeenth‐century onwards where the written record tends to be much richer than the preceding centuries”.

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I feel duty-bound to note that Dr Barrowclough, also a former solicitor, may himself feel ‘demonised’ by extensive negative publicity throughout the popular and academic Press that accompanied two spells in prison for fraud and theft.

© Natalie Wood (10 August 2019)