Witchcraft

The Witch of Alderney and the Blue Flame

St Anne, Alderney

19th century, before 1903

This is the only Alderney witch story in "Guernsey Folk Lore", and it came second-hand through a Methodist minister. The first episode is a view through a cottage window at night: a bright blue flame shooting up in the room, and in it the old woman dancing, surrounded by small dancing figures. Mr Barbenson's question, how did you know they were devils, gets a wonderfully practical answer. The man recognised them from the illustrations of Apollyon in his copy of "The Pilgrim's Progress".

The second episode happened in daylight. Coming home from milking, the man saw two large black birds wheeling above his head. They sank down almost at his feet behind a small furze bush, and then the woman stood up from behind the same bush and ran off. The bush, he said, was far too small to hide a woman, and she could not possibly have been crouching there.

Both episodes fit the Channel Island belief that witches could turn into birds, which MacCulloch noted for Guernsey (choughs) and Pitts for Sark (wild duck). The witch is not named, so the map point is placed generally at St Anne and is approximate.

General location in St Anne; no site identified.
Evidence
Single witness account
Access
Open ground
Location
49.714, -2.204 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Edgar MacCulloch, ed. Edith F. Carey, "Guernsey Folk Lore" (1903), Project Gutenberg [public-domain]

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