Witch of Berkeley

The Witch of Berkeley is a medieval English legend recorded by the monk William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum Anglorum (c. 1125), making it one of the earliest named witch legends in English writing. The tale is set around 1065 and concerns a woman of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, described as 'addicted to witchcraft, excessively gluttonous, perfectly lascivious,' who had made a pact with the Devil in exchange for his protection and assistance.

Warned by her pet jackdaw—a possible early instance of a familiar—that her death was imminent, the woman confessed her sins to her surviving children, a monk and a nun, and begged them to take elaborate precautions. Her body was to be sewn inside a stag's hide, laid in a stone coffin fastened with three iron chains, and guarded by monks and nuns chanting psalms for three successive nights; only then was she to be buried. The plan failed. On the first night demons tore asunder the outer chain; on the second, the middle chain; on the third, the Devil appeared on 'a black horse of immense size with iron hooks projecting over the whole of its back,' snapped the last chain, dragged the body from the coffin, and galloped off into the night with the woman screaming on his back; her cries could be heard for four miles.

Malmesbury presented the tale as an allegory of the fate of sinners, but scholars note it draws on a genuine local tradition. The jackdaw familiar and the motif of the iron hooks (linking the legend to the Wild Hunt) have roots in Germanic and Christian tradition. Katharine Briggs discussed it in A Dictionary of Fairies; it is examined in detail at the William of Malmesbury and the Witch of Berkeley blog (2018) by Stephen R. Gordon. The village of Berkeley is the same settlement as Berkeley Castle, where Edward II was murdered in 1327.