Research source

The cat-witch on the preceding November 28 had climbed in at a hole in a chest, and Montgomery watched his…

Date of account: Published 1915
Source: Human Animals
Reference: Human Animals · selected passage 102
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

The cat-witch on the preceding November 28 had climbed in at a hole in a chest, and Montgomery watched his opportunity, intending to cut off her head when she should put it out of the hole

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

The cat-witch on the preceding November 28 had climbed in at a hole in a chest, and Montgomery watched his opportunity, intending to cut off her head when she should put it out of the hole. "Having fastened my sword on her neck," he continues, "which cut her, nor could I hold her; having (at length) opened the chest, my servant, William Geddes, having fixed my durk in her hinder quarters by which stroke she was fastened to the chest; yet after all she escaped out of the chest with the durk in her hinder quarter, which continued there till I thought, by many strokes, I had killed her with my sword; and having cast her out dead, she could not be found next morning." Four or five nights after, the servant cried out that the cats had come again, and Montgomery "wrapped his plaid about the cat and thrust the durk through her body, and having fixed the durk in the ground, I drove at her head with the back of an axe until she was dead, and being cast out could not be found next morning."

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.