What is a Familiar?

A familiar is a helper spirit that usually took the form of an animal or bird. During the persecutions, it was alleged that every witch had a familiar-a servant provided by the Devil to do the witch's dirty deeds. The witch would feed his or her familiar by giving a drop of blood, occasionally from a extra teat. Such a teat would be sought out when an individual was charged with witchcraft. Any similar protrusion, mole, or papilla of any nature was deemed damning evidence. Matthew Hopkins made familiars a key issue in his hunting of witches and had every accused witch searched for the extra teat and the devil's mark.

King James's Witchcraft Act of 1604 specified that it was a felony to "consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit." Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) states that demons could take the form of an animal and be kept as pets by witches, who would feed them milk and blood. Richard Bernard, in his Guide to Grand Jurymen (1627) said that witches "have ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, in the shape of a man, woman, boy, dog, cat, foal, fowl, hare, rat, toad, etc. And to these spirits they give names."

The very act of having a pet, particularly one to which the owner spoke kind words, was in itself an indication of a witch and familiar, according to the accusers of the Middle Ages. From time to time, the simple fact that an animal-even one not belonging to the accused-had been seen running toward the alleged witch was sufficient to indicate that it may possibly be the familiar.

According to the evidence of the 1692 Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, both Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn had familiars. Sarah Good's was a cat and a yellow bird; the bird sucked her "between the forefinger and long finger upon the right hand." Sarah Osburn had a thing with "wings and two legs and a head like a woman," according to the children accusers. Also in Salem, young Dorcas Good, Sarah's five-year-old daughter, claimed to have a familiar. She said it was a snake. When asked where it sucked, she pointed to her forefinger, where the examiners observed "a deep red spot, about the bigness of a flea bite."

In Finnish, Lapp, and Norwegian folklore, familiars commonly took the form of flies, whereas Malay witches had owls and badgers. In European belief, cats are the most common, along with dogs, rabbits, and toads. The cat (and occasionally the hare) is frequently referred to as a malkin or malking.

In 1324, Dame Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny, Ireland was accused of having a familiar in the form of a cat, although it sometimes emerged as a shaggy dog and at times as a black man. She called it Robin Artison. Dame Alice credited all her wealth to the works of this familiar.

Ursula Kemp, one of the witches of St. Osyth in 1582, had four familiars: a toad named Pygine, a lamb named Tyffin, a gray cat named Tyttey, and a black cat named Jack. The frontispiece to Matthew Hopkins's Discovery of Witches (1647) shows the "Witch Finder General" along with two witches and a variety of familiars. They assume such names as Pyewacket, Ilemauzar, Sacke and Sugar, Jarmara, Vinegar Tom, Pecke in the Crowne, Newes, and Griezzell Greedigutt.

Bibliography:
Hansen, Chadwick: Witchcraft In Salem. 1969.
Hole, Christina: Witchcraft In England. 1947.
Murray, Margaret Alice: The God of the Witches. 1931.
Scot, Reginald: Discoverie of Witchcraft. 1584.
Scott, Sir Walter: Demonology and Witchcraft. 1831.