The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1886-01-21

ferhapS the enforced violent deaUnS OF
parents and lover may have imbittered
the girl, for Jinney henceforth was
more reckless than ever. A third tenn
porary liege lord was n Pitcher, of
whom little was known. 1t was not
many months when his body was dis
covered in the oven burnt to a cinder.
Jinney escaped hanging for this muir
der because an associate ''proved
he had often gotten into the over to
escape Jin's tongue" Although ac-
quilted, Jinney was "a lone woman"
for eve the lowest of her former com
panions feared her with a deadly fear.
She prowled about at nightfall in the
lanes, no one either knowing or caring
how or where she got her food. She
became a hunted, scorned creature,
more like an animal of the woods than
a human being. During the common
wealth troubles, a man closely pursued,
sought refuge by the back door in jim
ney's house, and on his knees he implor-
ed a nights shelter. His face was thin
and full of terror. He offered Jinney
money, of which he had an abundance,
and she gave him a lodging. For years
blClC dlGtI SlC Afcu WILL Guc uldu, Wiz
gave her liberal money gifts, although
hard words, often blows, were heard
from her cottage. One day he died, and
the customary inquest followed. 1t was
thought he was poisoned. but, lacking
proof, the stealthy murderess, his para
mour, escaped a second time the clutch
es of the law. She was termed 'the
gallows cheated" and she had not one
friend in all the world. But she was
not p~enniless, as she owned her cottage,
which had been built on waste land by
her father. Years pass in hermit-like
life for the poor creature, whose foul
tongue blackened all of whom she spoke.
To make matters worse she was report
ed far and wide as a witch, a dabbler in
the black art, in which it was said
her father had trained her. One can
imagine her a veritable Macbeth witch
about the burning caldron. She,told for
tunes and healed strange diseases. Ifany
calamity occurred, the poor old creature
was jeered and hooted by the mob, who
showed here no mercy, pelting her with
stones, and setting all sorts of traps for
her. At this stage of her mild, fitful
career, she would lean out of her hatch
door, with a weird red cap set upon her
uncanny head. The crowd would jeer
and call her old "Mother Red Cap"
Her nose was broad and huge, her eye
brows shaggy and sinister, her brow
deep SCARED with wrinkles, and her
sensual mouth with an habitual sullen
expression. On her shoulders she wore
a gray striped frieze, patched in black
dabs, looking like a swarm of black
bats. Suddenly she would allow her
enormous black cat to jump up beside
her, when her Knockers fled dreading
superstitiously blacklist double enemies.
To-day, we should call the poor wretch
ga maniac" but in her days she was a
witch" Her death is described in a
time-yellowed pamphlet in the British
museum as follows: Hundreds of men,
women, and children were witnesses of
the devil entering her house in his
very appearance and state, and that, al
though his return was narrowly watch
ed for, he was not seen again, and that
Mother Damnable was found dead on
the following morning, sitting before
the fireplace, holding.a crutch over it
with a teapot full of herbs, drugs, and
liquid. parto which being given to the
catthe hair fell off in two hours, and the
cat soon after died. That the body was
stiff when found, and that the underta-
ker was obliged to break her limbs be-
fore he could place them in a coffin,
and that the justices have put men in
possession of the house to examine its
contents. Such is the closing history of
this strange being, whose name will
ever be associated with C~amdentown,
and whose Renaissance will ever be re-
vived by the old wayside house, which,
built on the sight of the old beldame's
cottage, wears her head as the sign of
the tavern"
At the beginning of the current CEN
tury, the Mother Red Cap was a favor
tie place of resort for weary Londoners
who ,longed to breathe fresh air and
revel in country quiet in this house, then
standing in the open fields and ap
preached by green lanes and poisoning
Indigenous. Over the way was a dairy,
4 sort of ''milk fair at which visitors
we're served with fresh milk from the
,cw.
Leaving Mother Red Cap, who was, it
seems, .'neither man nor woman, Meth
II brute nor human, but ghoul," to par
Edgar Allen Poe, less than half
q mile brings us to Mother Shipton, no
less mythical mother than Red Cap. In
rural England, as in rural America,
Mother Symptoms prophecies are some
what believed. She is regarded as a
prophet by simple folk. She is also of
the reign of bluff King Henry VIII.
Tradition accords her birthplace as
Knaresborough. and relates that she
'.sold her soul to the devil" that she
might be able, while living on earth, to
forecast the future to her. seekers after
mysteries. Alas! this idea still
even in aesthetic nineteeeth CEN
tury peoples, only they call that sort OF
women by hi%gh-sounding titles-"astrol-
ogers'' and "clairvoyants." She was a
yet she was not destined to share
the fare of the traditional witch, for she
died in her bed in Yorkshire, near Cliff
ton, at a very advanced age. In the
churchyard of Clifton a memorial stone
set forth: