ABSTRACT
Up until the early twentieth century, in parts of western and southern England, the dialect terms ‘hag-riding’ and ‘nagging’ were popularly used to describe a terrifying nocturnal assault by a witch. In Somerset and Dorset between 1852 and 1875, at least six court cases resulted from assaults upon suspected witches accused of hag-riding, and the testimonies given in court provide a fascinating insight into the way a sleep disturbance phenomenon was interpreted as a physical manifestation of witchcraft. For those suffering from hag-riding the experience was incontrovertible proof of the reality of witchcraft: it was maleficium in its most personal form, a direct physical assault on the body of the victim. Although the term ‘hag-riding’ is culturally specific, the core features of the experience itself transcend cultural boundaries. The same term and variants of it are still in use in Newfoundland today, where the experience has been the subject of two studies from a ‘biocultural’ and phenomenological perspective. 1 This research, and other work on sleep disturbance phenomena, help us to understand the terrifying experiences of people who, because they attributed a supernatural origin to their experience, were often derided or condemned by the educated classes of the period.
