Sheffield Snow: a Frosty Pact

Clumber Park - Sheffield, South Yorkshire

 

 

The Undutiful Daughter  recounted the tale of how the daughter of a wealthy London gentleman was tempated by the Devil to poison her parents. She was spoilt and capricious and after one display of disobedience her father decided to punish her by confining her to her room. As she sat sulking one night:

 

The Devil to her appear did straight,

In human shape and manner like a man;

And then he seem’d to take her by the hand.

He said, fair creature, why do you lament?

What is it fills your heart with discontent?

She said my parents cruel are to me,

And keep me here to starve in misery.

He said then if you will be rul’d by me,

Revenged of them thou shall quickly be …

 

 

The Devil’s pact may have been portrayed primarily as a physical contract, a deliberate appeal to the Devil, but religious teaching implied that the committing of sin was in essence a tacit pact as well - a concept that was well embedded in eighteenth-century religious education, as evident in Anglican catechisms and the responses of child witnesses at the Old Bailey. Unlike the confessions of accused witches who said they were beaten by, married to, or slept with the Devil, people, primarily men, actually attempted to make written pacts with Satan in the tradition of Faust.

(Excerpt from Talk of the Devil: Crime and Satanic Inspiration in 18th Century England
by Owen Davies, Cunningfolk)

Image by Carlie167, stolen from Sheffield History Photo Gallery, Winter
.