Creepy, Occult, and Otherworldly Episode #2 of 4. Get a complete transcript and the show notes for this episode at digpodcast.org. An old woman with a pointy hat, cauldron, broom, cat, and smelly brew? Why, she must be a witch! This tableau has titillated and thrilled and terrified Europeans and Americans for centuries. But this woman is not communing with the devil or cursing her neighbors. She’s not even making herbal remedies to heal the ailments of her village, as did so many women accused of witchcraft from the 14th to the 17th centuries. She’s just one of thousands of medieval/early modern brewsters -- women who brewed ale to sell -- trying to cobble together a living.

Select Sources

Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Annie Bender, “Halloween witches resemble medieval beermakers, says Waterloo historian,” CBC Kitchener-Waterloo (27 Oct 2015)

Judith M. Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England : Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600(Oxford University Press, 1996).

John Crabb, “Woodcuts and Witches,” Public Domain Review (4 May 2017)

Elaine Crane, Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores : Common Law and Common Folk in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Kat Eschner, “How New Printing Technology Gave Witches Their Familiar Silhouette,” Smithsonian Magazine (30 Oct 2017)

Susan Frye and Karen Robertson, Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 1996).

Gary F. Jensen, The Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

Brian P. Levack, The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe(Routledge, 2006).

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