Pyewacket: A Familiar Spirit of the Witchfinder General

Abstract

The name of a witch’s familiar, Pyewacket, was reported by the Witchfinder General of England, Matthew Hopkins, at the height of the witch persecution in the middle of the seventeenth century. It has eluded explanation so far. It is suggested that it derives from the name of a village presently in the State of Maine, and that it became known in England through family connections between Hopkins and the Governor of Massachusetts John Winthrop.

Keywords:

• witch persecution
• witch’s familiar
• cat-name
• State of Maine
• Abenaki language
• Maine place-name

Notes

1 Based on a Broadway play by John Van Druten. See Figure 1.

2 John Stearne does not appear in the ‘credits’ of Hopkins’ book. It is Stearne who identifies Elizabeth Clarke of Manningtree in his own book, published after Hopkins’ death (1648: 14–15), but he does not name her familiars, and he denies personal responsibility for the observations (‘I came not at her during that time’).

3 No imp by the name of Pyewacket appears anywhere in the anonymous narration A True and Exact Relation (1645), even though it rests in part on the testimony of Hopkins. Some of the other familiars, like Vinegar Tom and Jarmara, do indeed appear. Nor does a Pyewacket appear in the diary of Nehemiah Wallington, covering the confession of Rebecca West in connection with some of the same trials, on MSS pages 178–181.

4 Dunn et al. (1996: 418). ‘They went up Saco river in birch canoes, and that way, they found it 90 miles to Pegwagget, an Indian town, but by land it is but 60.’ The wording suggests that the place was known to the colonists before the date of the expedition.

5 Evans (1939: 121–125). There may be even more, as I have not trawled all the indexes of the State Records of New Hampshire and Maine. There are occasional references to the mentioned Abenaki people as the Pigwacket in Massachusetts documents (e.g., the historical overview of the southern coastal town of Marion, <http://www.sec.state.ma.us/MHC/mhcpdf/townreports/SE-Mass/mrn.pdf>, p. 4), and there is a commemorative Pigwacket Lane in adjacent Mattapoisett.

6 The current best guess seems to be Eastern Abenaki apíkwahki ‘land of hollows’ (Snow, 1978: 146). Huden (1962: 181), followed by Stewart (1970: 384), offers an alternative Algonquian solution meaning ‘broken land’ for the similar Pequawket Pond, a different place, in New Hampshire, but he also assigns to Pequawkett, i.e., Jockey Cap Mountain, Maine, and to Pigwacket, a meaning ‘land naturally clear or open’ or ‘broken, punched-up land,’ the former, and possibly the latter, being from Malecite (i.e., Maliseet) Algonquian (1962: 181 and 185). ‘Broken land’ looks comparable with Snow’s interpretation. It is also believed locally that the name is translatable as ‘crooked place,’ with reference to the great bend in the Saco river here (unattributed opinion in Wikipedia, entry Fryeburg (accessed January 14 2013), which since November 11 2011 has been incoherent about the semantic relation between Fryeburg and Pequawket; source of this idea not discovered).

7 Biographical details can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

8 See, for example, Kupperman (1993: 44–45) and Bremer (2003: 231), citing published Winthrop family papers. James Hopkins’ will (Norfolk Record Office, NCC 1634/233 (Playford)) mentions ‘our frinds in Newe England.’

9 The 1790 editor James Savage normalized Winthrop’s spelling. The original manuscript of the relevant part of the journal was destroyed in 1825.

10 This is not the first American place-name to turn up in England. That honor goes to Pimlico, though its circumstances and import are very different (Coates, 1995). See also Wright 2012 on the seventeenth-century The Bermuda Islands (later Cribby Islands) in London.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Coates

Richard Coates is Professor of Onomastics at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has a special interest in place-names, and has been Hon. Director of the Survey of English Place-Names since 2003. He is currently also Principal Investigator of the project Family Names of the United Kingdom, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom (2010–2014). His interests also cover name theory, the philology of western European languages, historical linguistics, the cultural history of English, dialectology and dialect literature, and local history.

Correspondence to: Richard Coates, Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Bristol bs16 1qy, UK. Email: richard.coates@ uwe.ac.uk