York folklore can be a bit tough to search for on Google. It keeps trying to direct you to New York. As if the old one doesn’t exist.
Which is idiotic. The Ghost Research Foundation International even labelled York the most haunted city in the world in 2002. Every pub boasts its own ghost.
But I won’t dwell on Google algorithms in this post. Having visited Newcastle and Manchester in our whistle-stop tour of northern cities, we’re off to York this week.
We’re not going to focus on ghosts though. Let’s explore some of the wider folklore of this picturesque English city!
York Folklore and the Cat Statues
23 cat statues stand guard on walls or rooftops around York. Well, Secret York says there are “at least” 23. Quite how anyone knows there are 23 is beyond me. According to one legend, anyone who sees all of them is cursed for the rest of their life.
The York Glass shop clearly doesn’t believe in such a curse. They sell York Lucky Cats and you can follow the York Cat Trail, available from their website. The shop’s website theorises that the original statues were to scare off mice or rats that can carry disease. Some intended the statues to ward off spirits too. Their original intention was clearly to bestow luck on the medieval city. Yet they’ve passed into York folklore as part of a curse.
If anyone knows anything about the origins of the curse superstition, please leave me a comment! I’d love to dig into it further.
The Stonegate Devil
If you’ve read my post on Newcastle’s Vampire Rabbit, then you’ll know my fascination for weird statues. York has the Stonegate Devil.
A printer’s shop once stood at 33 Stonegate, an area known for printers and bookshops in the 16th century. This carved red devil is a throwback to that era.
Printers had their own folklore and claimed a demon haunted each printer’s shop. These demons inverted type, removed lines or even mis-spelled words. The acts of these ‘printer’s devils’ eventually got transferred to the printer’s own assistant. The assistants became known as ‘printer’s devils’.
Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate
I couldn’t feature York folklore and not include one of my favourite street names ever.
No one really knows where Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, one of the shortest streets in York, got its name.
Some think its original name was ‘Whitnourwhatnourgate’, aka ‘What a Street!’ Others think York’s whipping post stood here in the Middle Ages.
And yet more think it basically means ‘Not One Thing Nor Another’. If that’s true, it makes it the most liminal place in York. Liminal places are usually crossroads or other spaces that aren’t one place or another. This street connects two other streets, so it’s a ‘between’ place of sorts. Though you could say that about a lot of short streets!
Wherever the name came from, the ‘gate’ part of the name comes from the Norse word for street, ‘gata’. So not an actual gate.
A strange place name wouldn’t normally be enough for inclusion on this blog. But Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate’s general weirdness has earned it a place in York folklore all the same!
Buried Alive in York
I’d heard this story on a ghost walk in York and found it again in a 1901 book about folklore, County Folk-Lore (1901, p. 388). As the legend goes, a wealthy woman died and her family buried some of her jewellery with her. The sexton knew of this and opened the vault after the funeral. But alas! The fingers had swollen and he couldn’t remove her rings.
So he tried to cut off her fingers. As you do. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for her, as it turns out), she suffered catalepsy. The injury to her fingers broke her trance and she came around. The sexton bolted in fright and the woman went home.
As fantastic a tale as it is, I can’t help thinking it’s just an early urban legend about being buried alive. After all, I heard the exact same story on a London ghost walk. The story relocated to the City. As in this version, the hapless resurrected woman and the thieving sexton remain nameless.
Mary Bateman, the York Witch
Every city needs a good witch story and York is no different. Their version tells the tale of Mary Bateman, the ‘Yorkshire Witch’. She’d left York in disgrace having worked as a servant, and ended up in Leeds. Mary started fortune telling there, although the records claim she conned people out of their property using her “powers”. That would be bad enough, but apparently, she also poisoned people to cover up her fraudulent crimes.
She was hanged on 20 March 1809 at York Castle. Crowds of people paid to view her body. After being dissected, “her skin was tanned and distributed in small pieces to different applicants” (Gutch 1901, p. 143-4).
That sounds gross to us now, but it wasn’t as uncommon as you’d think. Bear in mind this is 1809, well before the 1832 Anatomy Act which allowed surgeons to dissect bodies other than those of criminals. Dissection was inevitable from a convicted witch.
As for the skin? The same fate met notorious Edinburgh bodysnatcher William Burke in 1828. If you pop into The Cadies & Witchery Tours on West Bow in Edinburgh, you can see a card case covered in leather made from Burke’s skin.
In Conclusion?
There is far more to York folklore than I’ve been able to cover here. But unlike Newcastle, which boasts links to Roman gods and local deites, or Manchester, with its occult links, York folklore tends to stick to ghosts. Whether it’s spectral Roman legions marching through a cellar or ghostly nuns drifting through pubs, many of the tales revolve around the supernatural.
I’m not sure why, given the Roman and Viking histories of York. But the city’s unusual tales survive and remind us that the north is truly a culturally vibrant place to live.
References
Gutch, Eliza (1901), County Folk-Lore, vol. 2: Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning the North Riding of Yorkshire, York, and the Ainsty. London: Published for the Folk-Lore Society by David Nutt.
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Lita says
I always leave your blog posts comfortably spooked, Icy! 😀
Icy Sedgwick says
Always good to hear!
Ruchira says
Wow. This is creepy and intriguing and fascinating all together.
Icy Sedgwick says
Thank you!
Em Hardy says
I grew up in York and was told the original cats were left by builders as their building mark. In the 1980’s a local architect Tom Adams repeated this by leaving a cat on his designs in the city centre. A lot of the cats are only 40 years old. The York lucky cats are a relatively new thing as is the Cat Trail more for the tourists than anything. Despite its age and history York is not that spooky ! Apart from the odd Roman ! It’s real history obviously is far more disturbing, persecution, massacre etc
Icy Sedgwick says
True, but I don’t want to get into a lot of the tales of massacre etc. on the blog. But it’s a shame a lot of the cats aren’t very old! They’re such a lovely idea.
Eric Jeric says
Wonderful article! Thanks for providing this post and I am happy to read this article. I would love to read more blog about it. Keep it up and keep sharing.
Icy Sedgwick says
My pleasure!
Paul Gibbons says
Black cat idols can be used by witches to spy. Practice dates back to Ancient Egyptians, they used to worship an mummify their cats. Cats played a major role in Caananite pagan practices.
Beware of black cats watching you.
The black cat idols are not of God.
Think of it as a witches CCTV network.
Icy Sedgwick says
Have you got sources for any of that?
Paul Gibbons says
No good ones. Plenty of information about Egyptian practices and association between witches and cats. That’s where it comes from. There’s no new ‘magic’. It’s all old fashioned Caanite idolitory and pagan worship. Why the bible warns us about idolitory. It’s clearly a Pagans cheeky joke sticking some cat idols under the shadow of the minster.
Paul Gibbons says
Bizarrely enough after responding to your post I see a poster for a ‘Black Cat’ gone missing round our way. Very sad.
I used to own one. Most intelligent pet you could ever wish for.
I no long beleive in coincidence.