Something About Pyewacket

Nine lives, or some such.

I ran into the film Bell, Book, and Candle (1958) a few months ago.  I have slowly been trying to get through ever since to little avail. It should not be hard to do, but for some reason I’m not as interested as I was during previous viewings. I first gravitated toward it over a decade ago because you don’t see many movies whose names match the plot point of a Bellairs novel. I’m sure the films Hand of Glory and The Shawabti would have been great Hammer productions had Lee and Cushing stuck around. But this film referenced the bell, book, and candle of the exorcism ritual as described by Bellairs in The Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb (1988), so -- sure.

The film is based on the 1950 Broadway play by John Van Druten and stars Kim Novak as a witch who casts a spell on her neighbor, played by James Stewart. Elsewhere in the film appear Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs, among others. I wonder if Columbia Pictures milked the whole Novak-Kovac thing at the time? Audiences who prefer starring actors have rhyming surnames would have been appreciative (recall the Betty Grable-Clark Gable hoopla of 1951).

There’s also a cat in the film and it’s Kim Novak's real-life cat. Its name, both as Novak’s pet and in the film, is Pywacket, which may sound like a misprint, but it is not. The name apparently originated from an alleged witch accused by the witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins in March 1644 in Essex, England.  Here is the story from from Hopkins's pamphlet, "The Discovery of Witches" (1647):

Immediately after this Witch confessed severall other Witches, from whom she had her Imps, and named to divers women where their marks were, the number of their Marks, and Imps, and Imps names, as Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel, Greedigut, &c. which no mortall could invent; and upon their searches the same Markes were found, the same number, and in the same place, and the like confessions from them of the same Imps, (though they knew not that we were told before) and so peached one another thereabouts that joyned together in the like damnable practise that in our Hundred in Essex, 29. were condemned at once, 4. brought 25. Miles to be hanged, where this Discoverer lives, for sending the Devill like a Beare to kill him in his garden, so by seeing diverse of the mens Papps, and trying wayes with hundreds of them, he gained this experience, and for ought he knowes any man else may find them as well as he and his company, if they had the same skill and experience.

All said, what is the collective noun name for two or more familiar spirits?  Surely not a coven.  A gaggle?  A waggle?  A bangle?  A snare?  What?

Pyewacket was the name of a familiar spirit of an accused witch in A Discovery of Witches by witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins. It’s assumed that this was a cat but was actually an imp. The spirit in cat form was named Holt ‘who came in like a white kitling’ #FairytaleTuesday pic.twitter.com/gALz0SU9Ed

— Folklore, Food & Fairytales (@FairytalesFood) January 12, 2021