'I gave birth to a rabbit' - by Karen Maitland

I was giving a book talk recently when I made an off-the-cuff joke about have read a ‘true life’ magazine containing an article titled – 'My daughter gave birth to a hamster.’ Inevitably someone asked me if there really had been such an article and I had to confess I’d just invented that title to illustrate a point, but I should have known that whatever a fiction writer dreams up, they discover that at some time in history it has actually happened. And just a few days after that talk, I came across a wonderful account from 1726, in which a woman claimed to have given birth, not to a hamster, but to 15 furry rabbits. You won’t be surprised to learn it was an audacious money-making scam, and one that intrigued me, since many characters in my medieval novels are scam artists of one kind of another.

In 1726, a local male midwife, John Howard, reported that Mary Toft, wife of a journeyman clothmaker in Godalming, Surrey, had given birth to several animal parts including three legs of a tabby cat, and over several days between 1st November and 6th had given birth to four rabbits, born dead, but which had been seen leaping vigorously in her belly prior to birth. This account so fascinated King George I that he sent the court anatomist, Nathaniel St André to investigate.

Mary Toft

Mary had continued to produce rabbits since the report, and St André had arrived in time to watch her give birth to her 15th bunny or bunny-part (depending on which account you read), which the anatomist claimed to be full-formed and about the age of a normal four month old rabbit. Over the course of the next few days, St Andre ‘heard’ the rabbits leaping in Mary’s abdomen and witnessed the birth of several dismembered pieces of rabbit. Having succeeded in persuading St Andre, the midwife, John Howard, and Mary Toft then asked for life-time pensions from the King for their successful, if unorthodox method of rabbit production.

The king, a trifle sceptical, dispatched the royal gynaecologist Sir Richard Manningham, who, after the application of a hot towel, witnessed the violent jerking in Mary’s stomach, but this time Mary gave birth to part of a pig’s belly which was a birth too far for Manningham. He had the wisdom to move Mary to Mrs Lacy’s bagnio in London, where he could keep a close eye on her. A bagnio was a bath-house and women often there went to give birth because of the soothing effects of the hot water.

Unfortunately for Mary, the whole scam unravelled on 4th December when Mrs Lacy’s porter reported that she had asked him to buy a rabbit for her. Several villagers back in Godalming then admitted that they had supplied rabbits to her around the time she was giving birth, and she finally admitted she’d set up the whole thing to obtain money from visitors, as well as the hoped-for pension, though she blamed everyone one she could think of, including a gypsy and the midwife, for putting her up to it.

A contemporary cartoon of Mary Toft giving birth to rabbits

But the time the hoax was revealed, so many eminent physicians had become involved that as the reports of what this woman had seeming given birth to became wilder, the whole affair brought great ridicule to the medical profession, with sceptics like William Hogarth openly mocking their gullibility. Many professional reputations were ruined as a consequence.

It is interesting that Mary Toft chose rabbits which, in paintings, were sometimes depicted in the birth scenes of both Jesus and the birth of his mother. As well as being regarded as a symbol of fertility and the rabbit is also curiously a symbol of virginity and the mystery of the Incarnation, because rabbits can conceive a second litter while still pregnant with the first, so it was believed they could give birth without sex.

Vittore Capaccio - 'Birth of the Virgin Mary' 

Mary Toft might also have been inspired in her scam by the persistent rumours that had circulated for a few decades concerning the son of King James II who was born to his wife Mary of Modena in 1688. When she suddenly fell pregnant after years of childlessness, even the testimony of the 42 witnesses called in to verify the birth of the James Francis Edward in 1688 at St James's Palace, could not counter the rumours that the baby had been smuggled into the bedchamber in a warming pan or through a secret door in the bedhead. King James and his wife claimed they had conceived thanks to the ‘magic waters’ at Holywell, but the boy never became king and William of Orange seized the throne shortly after.

It was certainly not the first time that such rumours circulated about noble or royal heirs, so perhaps we can’t entirely blame commoners for getting inspired to do a little birth-room smuggling of their own. Besides, you’ve only got to read Greek mythology and even English folktales to realise that legend claims women have given birth to some pretty strange creatures. Just imagine being Pasiphae and giving birth to the Minotaur. If Mary Toft had managed to fake that birth she might even have got her pension.

Pasiphae nursing the infant Minotaur

A Caravan of Stoats and Confusion of Weasels by Karen Maitland

Living in a country Devon village brings some unexpected delights. Last week, I stepped out of my

English Stoat. Photographer: Kevin Law, Los Angeles, USA.

front door to find an adult stoat and four plump, sleek little kits scampering through my porch on their way to the hedge. They were so close to me that the babies were actually leaping over my feet. Having reached the hedge, one of youngsters came bounding back and sat up on its hind legs, staring at me from its bright eyes with as much curiosity as I was watching it. Then it joined its siblings who decided to play hide and seek around the plant pots. I was enchanted by the encounter, but in the past, stoats and weasels were considered vermin and ruthlessly hunted down not just for their valuable pelts, but to protect livestock.

In medieval times, Dartmoor in Devon was covered with man-made warrens. A warren was originally area set aside for breeding game such as pheasant, partridge and hares. But the word came to be used for a place where artificial rabbit burrows were created by piling stones and earth over trenches to form pillow mounds in which rabbits could be bred for meat and fur. The rabbits were kept in these warrens by walls and by diverting streams to form moats, but that did not deter stoats and weasels.

 

Medieval women use a net and ferret to take
rabbits from a man-made warren.

So on Dartmoor you will often see dry stone walls built in an X pattern, which often puzzles visitors as they don’t seem to enclose anything. These were stoat and weasel traps. In the center of the X was a hollow chamber formed by a stone slab set into the ground with long stones forming the sides and top. It had gap in the front, with flat piece of slate hanging above, suspended vertically from poles. In open moorland, the stoat or weasel would instinctively head for the wall and dive into the inviting hole. Once inside it would trip a cord or wire on the stone floor causing the slate to slide down between two stones, sealing the chamber and trapping the creature.

Rabbit warrening continued for centuries on Dartmoor and only started to decline after 1891, when terrible blizzard killed thousands of rabbits and in 1954 myxomatosis wiped out the rest. But you can still see the pillow mounds covered by a coarse grass and the remains of the stone-wall vermin traps all over the moor.

Pillow Mound - remains of ancient warren on Dartmoor
Photographer: Graham Horn

From medieval times, stoats and weasels were considered animals of ill-omen. Their bad press continued into modern times, not helped by Kenneth Graham in his wonderful story "The Wind in the Willows" where the delinquent stoats and weasels became squatters in Toad Hall and threw wild parties, thoroughly disturbing the neighborhood.

In Medieval and Tudor times, evil spirits and witches were said to transform themselves into weasels. In Dorset it was said you could never catch hold of a weasel, assuming you were foolish enough to try, because it would change into one of the faery folk and vanish. If a weasel crossed your path left to right, it was bad omen and even worse if it crossed right to left for then it foretold death. But in Wales, a weasel crossing right to left, was a warning that person had enemies in his own home.

If a weasel runs ahead in front of someone setting out on a journey, but then turns back, it is a warning the traveller should turn back. But in Wales if it runs ahead of the traveler, that is taken as a good omen, meaning he will conquer his enemies, so Welsh armies must have looked eagerly for that sign. But seeing a ghost weasel, especially a white one, was never a good sign anywhere.

Having stoat cross your path at the start of a journey was, like the weasel, a bad omen, but if you greeted the stoat as a friend, you could turn the bad luck to good. The Irish believed that stoats held funerals for their dead and they were thought collect and care for the souls of human infants who died before baptism.

In the Middle Ages, weasels and stoats were a symbol of cunning, as they were believed to hide their offspring in a different place each night. Before hunting a snake, they would eat the plant Rue, which was called “Herb of Grace”, if you collected it before 12 noon, because Herb of Grace was thought to be the antidote to the poison of any venomous creature. Stoats and weasels were said to be such skilful physicians, that if their own offspring were killed they could bring them to life again, if they could touch their bodies. But stoat saliva was thought to be lethal to humans.

The weasel was the only creature that could kill the mythical medieval beast the basilisk, whose stench alone could kill man. Medieval pilgrims en route to the Holy Land were advised to buy or hire a cage containing a weasel or cockerel (whose cry would drive away the basilisk) before venturing into the desert, which have a been a good way to fleece extra money from the pilgrims.

A weasel attacking the deadly basilisk.
The weasel appears to be wearing a garland of rue.

Stoats and weasels were thought to conceive through the mouth and give birth through the ear or vis versa depending on the source. This belief may have originated from the ancient Greeks, in a story recorded by Ovid. When Alcmena, mother of Hercules was having trouble giving birth to him, the goddess Juno sent Lucina, goddess of child-birth to impede the birth still further. Lucina, disguised as an old woman, sat in the front of the door holding her own knees closed with locked fingers. A maid, Galanthis, suspected what was happening and lied to the goddess saying the child had just been born. The goddess relaxed her grip, and as she did so, Hercules was born. In a fury, Lucina turned the maid into either a weasel or a stoat with the curse that she would give birth through her ear, because had deceived the goddess with false words through her ear. And, of course, we use the expression “weasel words” to mean deception.

In fact some medieval Christian theologians, such as St Augustine and St Thomas Becket maintained that the Virgin Mary had conceived through her ear, because that is where the words of the angel’s mouth had entered Mary. Therefore it was through her ear that the “word was made flesh”.

My favourite weasel story is about the shrine of St Cuthbert. In the 11th Century the saint appeared in

The discovery of the incorrupt
body of St Cuthbert.

a vision complaining that a weasel was disturbing his rest in Durham. The abbey was searched and eventually, they discovered a weasel had slipped through a tiny hole into the very tomb St Cuthbert, where she’d given birth to young inside the coffin. The shrine-keeper furious at this desecration, tried to kill the little family, but St Cuthbert’s spirit stopped him and the keeper discovered that the saint’s gentleness had rubbed off on the weasel, for she made no attempt to bite him, but nestled into his hand allowing all around to stroke her and marvel at the beauty of the little creature and her young.

I don’t know what my medieval forbears would have made of a pack of four baby stoats playing on my threshold, but for me it was a moment of pure joy and that has to be a good omen.