Rounding down ...

Oho ...

Those with a close eye on the Pagan Network unfolding will see the following post from Bill:

Re: George Pickingill's nine covens

« Reply #712 on: Today at 09:53:20 »

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Amberlady has forgotten the names of the Canewdon residents with whom she discussed George Pickingill.

She has also forgotten the statement on her own journal that she had heard George Pickingill was a witch!

See http://the-amberlady.livejournal.com/21188.html

Amberlady states:

"Occasionally a local would also tell the story of Old George, a farm labourer who lived to a great age and was thought of as a witch..."

It is also of vital significance that Eric Maple omitted to mention that George Pickingale, the Wizard of Canewdon, was once deemed the oldest man in England. I may have missed this reference when perusing Maple's writings, but I doubt it.

Maple's description of George Pickingill's physical appearance, his general demeanour, and his dwelling, totally contradicts the various newspaper accounts of "Old Daddy", the "George Pickingill" who was once believed to be the oldest man in England.

Regards,

Barbarosa

To which you may have seen Amberlady's response:

Re: George Pickingill's nine covens

« Reply #713 on: Today (January 20, 2009) at 10:15:47 »

Really Bill I am disapointed in you. Are you really scraping the barrel so low that you have to take a persons comments and try to twist them into a confession of gult?

and then Alistair's witty allusion,

(well it isn't really but far be it from me to point and say: "Implication because actual Accusation requires a conviction that is lacked!"):

Re: George Pickingill's nine covens

« Reply #714 on: Today (January 20, 2009) at 11:17:20 »

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Hmm... interesting sentence structure, phrasing and punctuation. It does seem tempting to draw conclusions.

Now I can only say what I thought upon reading this ....

First I said: "It is tempting indeed ... here are some temptations I had:

I begin by suggesting Amber MEANT to say:

Really Bill I am disapPointed in you. Are you really scraping the barrel so low that you have to take a person's comments and try to twist them into a confession of guilt?

I wonder what caused her to make that many errors in only two sentences?

Maybe she felt a little rattled for some reason.

I mean, with such obvious command of everything from England one might think that spelling might be amongst it.

She mentions "guilt" too - which is odd. I am sure Bill didn't mention "guilt" - what, (I wonder) does she feel other might think her "guilty" of?

As for "twisting her words" - well lets be honest there is none of that going on ... there is just quoting her words at what seems to be an inconvenient moment for her.

I mean I could go on at length about how it seems that some people on the Pagan Network seem to have a great amount of difficulty in living up to the standards they demand of everyone else:

Steve says Bill can't produce evidence so should be ignored ... and that famous letter is ... where again Steve?

(To say nothing of alleging he is a liar and should be ignored while telling people he has a letter that he doesn't actually have after all and basing most of his objection on it! Wow that must be embarrassing!

Cavalorn says Bill should research properly then promptly goes on to base most of his arguments on Crowley's works ... last I heard research involves more than one source! To be fair though at least Cavalorn actually gets "his finger out" to actually make and argue a stand point - it is more than most there manage!

Amberlady laughs at Bill for not producing the names of his informants and then ... who did you speak to again Amber!? What's that!? You DON'T HAVE any names ... wow - that must be embarrassing!

Then of course we have Alistair that harps on about being clear but can't ever actually seem to annunciate what his actual stance is ... oh the list goes on really doesn't it ... in fact so have I! Oops! lol

Ok I will just add right now for the benefit of those still reading (what gluttons for punishment you are! lol) the following:

The real problem above all is that the testimony of Amberlady's weblog is different to that which she states in Pagan Network. The former presents a view of differing opines of residents with what could be argued was a vested interest in shrugging off the superstitions of the past. This does not square with the following posts wherein she states most emphatically time and again that the locals knew nothing of any magical connection regarding Old George and as such Bill should be disregarded and/or ridiculed. This would further not be much of a problem were it not for the fact that she bases most of her objection to the Pickingill Corpus on the salient point of her expertise due to what she remembers of living in Canewdon and hearing from the locals!.

She consistently states that they never mentioned Old George as having any magical connections - this is in direct contradiction to what she says elsewhere.

Worse than this she uses the stance that old George had no magical connections whatsoever as the basis in much of her arguments - as a result her arguments are all riddled with this by implication. Again this would not be a problem if she hadn't said the complete opposite elsewhere. Make of it what you will.

For those of you who think I am exaggerating I have put together the following collection.

Enjoy.

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« Reply #592 on: 2008/Dec/09 @ 08:04:06 »

Quote:This claim, based on oral history, has difficulties

The biggest difficulty being that I lived in Canewdon, I heard the oral history and there is no mention of George being any sort of magical worker or even cunning person, he was simply a bad tempered old man who was thought to have lived to an exceptionally great age

Correction – Some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – so no, that is not accurate at all.

« Reply #533 on: 2008/Nov/25 @ 07:58:01 »

Quote: Amberlady, you are very certain that Bill L's claims are fabricated,

Mr Sock Puppet, I am absolutely, 100%, certain that it is all a fabrication

Quote: so there must be some other explanation why two non-stupid people can be so certain,

Speaking for myself the fact that I actually lived for several years in Old George's home village of Canewdon and hearing first hand the locals version of George's story beats hands down the selective cherry picking of myth and fiction carried out by someone based on the other side of the world.

Let us be clear about this.

Amberlady is 100% sure that all Bills claims are fabricated yet she states elsewhere that she HAS in fact heard at least one of them given credence from locals during her time there. Again; this would not be so bad if she hadn't based her opposition on the information she had gained from locals!

Amberlady states that the story she heard does corroborate at least some part of the claims of Bill L. so it is a bit hard to be 100% sure all his claims are fabricated.

« Reply #473 on: 2008/Nov/01 @ 09:35:28 »

Quote: I am remembering that Bill Liddell says he was descended from a male cousin of Old George

I am remembering that each time Bill Liddell contributed to this topic he was exposed as at best a fantasist and at worst an out and out liar.

Correction – Some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – so no that statement is not actually accurate either. It would be a bit hard for Bill to be giving out information that Amberlady is sure is fantasy and lies when her own information tends to support at least some of it!

Arguably « Reply #432 on: 2008/Oct/13 @ 07:19:24 »

Alistair, you are wasting your time and energy on this one - Jeremy is either a troll or a mad man, either way no matter what evidence you put forward he will put forward counter evidence conjured out of thin air. So far he has managed to argue about Ron Hutton "actually" meant, totally misinterpreted the folk traditions of an obscure group of Americans as remnants of Witchcraft and studiously ignored all the evidence that Lugh completed invented the image of Old George as being a leader of witches.

Perhaps not as a “leader of witches” but some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch”. It is arguable that where "there is one there could be more" and where there are several, one person in particular could be argued to be "first" - whether amongst equals or otherwise. This is not a "long bow" or "revision" (as some would have it) at all as it is simple logic and is so especially in the light of the fact that there seem to be earlier circulating stories of several witches being present in Canewdon before the public "outing" of Old George to the wider reading public. It is even more so only logical given the fact that, (as Amberlady points out elsewhere) she believes that the stories of Cunning Murrell, ("Master of Witches" - no matter how one takes that it still refers to be being more powerful than the witches subject to the owner of the title after all!) were applied to a mythological construct built around George Pickingill. In this light what Amberlady says here, it is quite easy to argue as not all together accurate and certainly not very well thought through.

When it is factored in that actually all the evidence ,(even from sources Amberlady herself lauds) does not show that "Lugh" "completely invented the image of Old George as being a leader of witches" it shows how important it is to read one's source material carefully and critically - to say nothing of remembering what one's own sources have said. When one does not do so the possibility easily exists to contradict ones self as here seen.

« Reply #375 on: 2008/Sep/12 @ 08:18:50 » (If taken in context)

Quote: Pickingill would have been an extremely unusual cunning man if he was illiterate

[sigh!] Old George never was a cunning man. George's only claim to fame was that he was mistakenly thought to have been of a great age, caused by his own confusion over when he was actually born (hardly a sign of an intelligent man). Later on he somehow became confused with Cunning Murrell who lived in the nearby village of Hadleigh and the Witchcraft / Wiccan fantasy history machine did the rest.

Correction – Some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – so no; to say that his great age was his only claim to fame is not accurate either.

It is also worth asking if those who said Old George was thought of as a witch were also subject to the “Wiccan fantasy machine”.

« Reply #364 on: 2008/May/19 @ 13:20:37 » Arguably - in depth and two parts.

Quote: could it be that the locals where actually so fearful of George, and when the reporters came, they wanted to help George by portraying him as a nice "old daddy" man, so that George would think better of these locals and therefore won't bother them ?

Since you are not from these shores I will forgive you that remark, but lets make one thing clear, At the time of the reporters visit even the most remote English villages were not populated by ignorant peasants, most residents would have been educated to a reasonable degree and will have traveled far beyond the boundaries of their village, only a few older residents such as Old George may have still been illiterate. Quite frankly the idea of an elderly man terrorising an entire village , even if was know as a cunning folk, is as laughable as every other claim about him

Once again Amberlady's arguments thorw out the baby with the bathwater. If she feels one part is silly it must all be so. Unfortunately this is a two edged sword. It is not all laughable because this is arguably not the case in several ways, not the least of which being due to the very existence of the testimony Amberlady received while in Canewdon wherein some referred to the fact that "Old George was thought of by some as a witch"! Furthermore, as a point of simple history - in the light of this text she seems to believe that one aged person could not be the focus of and play upon the fears of a small rural village to their advantage. I would argue initially that the very existence of the various witch manias and the rise of the cunning folk point otherwise but would further qualify this by making the point that the fact that Amberlady received testimony that still referred to old George being thought of by some as a witch even after nearly a century had passed amongst a community displaying a different and wider social experience stands as exemplary testimony to this tendency!

Arguably in context « Reply #364 on: 2008/May/19 @ 13:20:37 »

Continued Quote: The few villagers who had actually known "Old George" spoke of "Gypsy George".

Where in the name of Hades did this come from? In all the years I have been reading about Old George until recently I had never heard the slightest hint that he was of Rom heritage. Even if he had then the Rom of East Anglia were all Christian, (albeit with a Romany twist), the stories of Old George working with Romany witches is just another thread that has been added to the myth. Recent posts have simply added to the contradiction that surround the myth. It is possible that Old George had family in Norfolk, my own is spread throughout East Anglia and it is possible that he traveled to Norfolk, if he did how did he manage it? In many reports George is said to have told reporters that he had never seen a train or traveled in a car, in fact one reporter supposedly gave him his first ever car ride. Victorian times were the great days of train travel, the idea of anybody traveling from south Essex to Norfolk by anything but train is as ludicrous as everything else on this thread. If it is true, then how did he travel among the nine covens, by foot? Bearing in mind he was a farm labourer whose employer would have expected a six day week dawn to dusk work from him

In the first instance, this post tends to demonstrate one of two possibilities that are relevant to the acceptance of Amberlady's participation in the debate on this subject. One may be that Amberlady has not carefully read even the recent contents of the thread to which she was replying or indeed the Pickingill corpus as given in the Pickingill Papers for that matter as both relate this information several times over. Another may be that Amberlady's retention of such information is at best unreliable. In either case it seriously undermines her being considered as a serious participant in receipt of all the facts as one might expect from one who implies the level of expertise in this subject that she has.

Secondarily it demonstrates a tendency Amberlady has to take her own assumptions on what is presented, apply them to a related issue and re apply the resultant to the original issue as if they were what was being discussed or at least vital to it without any real explanation or investigation as to why. Unfortunately this results in huge holes of argument. To use this assertion from Amberlady as an example: if the Victorian era was the train era and therefore obviously anyone moving about would do so by train - why did the Romany not adopt it over the caravan? Further exemplary of both these concerns of mine in concert, (in many ways) could be said of her insistence that old George would have to move amongst the Nine Covens on foot even though this mistaken idea was dealt with earlier in the same thread. That this would be "ludicrous" Amberlady then takes further declaring everything else to be so as some sort of unexplained consequence.

That aside, the obvious correction here is to reassert that some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch”. If Amberlady has somehow of not noted this fact of her own retelling or somehow forgotten it and thereby got that much wrong; what may we say for her assertion that it is ludicrous that he was of Romany extraction because they were "all Christian"? Leaving aside the rather silly nature of this assertion, the basis for much of the argument that witches did not actually ever exist but rather were an outgrowth of certain societal fears filtered through the religious views of the time would not hold support this either. In fact that same would actually require the presence of a religious framework in order for the common views on witchcraft to be existent - thus nullifying the argument that one could not be a witch because one's background had adopted Christianity - irrelevant of what racial extraction one belonged to. So, once again no - what is presented here is not accurate either and given the testimony of the person concerned, not only should that be obvious to them so should the fact that it makes little in the way of sense.

« Reply #354 on: 2008/Mar/18 @ 09:02:28 »

Quote: Amberlady what is your feeling about him ?

My feeling are that Old George was nothing more then a farm worker who gained a reputation for being a bad tempered unsocial bugger who gained five minutes of fame after he was mistakenly thought to be over a hundred years old. Most of the myths about George are very similar to those about Cunning Murrell except Murrell was a real Cunning Person who in life deliberately maintained an image of being a magic worker, I would think that over the years the two stories have merged to create the character we know as Old George Master of the Nine Covens.

Arguable Correction – while Amberlady may think this to be the extent of the facts of the situation; that wouldn't actually, (per se) invalidate many of the ideas Bill has conveyed in the threads that Amberlady has railed against.

The fact remains that Amberlady consistently tries to put forward the idea that her views are based in what she was told by locals. Amberlady often further misrepresents this as being somehow congruent with what she believes.

To be clear, Amberlady states time and again, (both directly and by implication) that she disbelieves all of what Bill Liddell has to say based on what she knows from the locals of Canewdon - who told her the "real story" when she lived there. She consistently implies that they are all of the same opinion she is. This has continued until recently when it was shown that one of the respected local sources on the subject was someone she had never even heard of.

This is of course somewhat beside the point though, because this stance is invalidated by her own account elsewhere. (One cannot disbelieve it all because all the sources disbelieved it when they actually DIDN'T all disbelieve it!) If some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – once again we see great problems with her stated stance although by now surely we should be growing accustomed to this.

« Reply #290 on: 2007/Jun/05 @ 07:24:36 »

Quote: I'm not sure I follow how this relates to the
rest of the discussion in this thread. Care to elaborate?

Come on bgruagach this topic is all about Gardner's claims about the history of Wicca, George Pickingill is part of the mythology that has grown up to try and support his claims of the New Forest coven. Barbarosa can wax as eloquently as he likes about the Pickingill Ladies but those of us who study the subject know it is complete fantasy, now it seems that people are trying to suggest that Woodcraft was the origin of Wicca which personally I find hilarious.

Correction – Some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – so no this is not accurate either in several ways. This most certainly includes the Pickingill Corpus being a mythology to support Gardner’s New Forest Coven amongst others such as the existence of the Pickingill Ladies being complete fantasy and lastly that Amberlady knows this subject well.

« Reply #228 on: 2007/Apr/23 @ 18:02:56 »

Quote: but Barbarosa is actually trying to put Gardner down by saying that the New Forest Coven (which I have identified to some degree of satisfaction) was based on Murray

Thing with Barbarosa is that everything he says is flawed in some way, he either contradicts himself, offers unreliable witnesses and support evidence or make vague references to people such as "my elders" or "The Pickingill Ladies". If I had the patience to read through such drivel I could back over all his posts on this subject and shred them into confetti.

According to Amberlady, some of the stories she heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – so how is all of Bill's information vague fantasy that contradicts itself in a way that renders the source material unreliable? Some of his winesses say what Amberlady's did after all. Simple logic shows the real problems in Amberlady's stance and if it IS simply that she gets "tripped up" by attempts to sound "clever"; then perhaps she should stick to direct to the addressing of the issues "to hand" and think through both her stance and her arguments better if she wishes to be considered as playing a constructive and informed role in the proceedings.

« Reply #225 on: 2007/Apr/23 @ 11:52:25 »

Quote: The Pickingill Ladies

Who exactly were the Pickingill Ladies? Since I lived in Canewdon during the 1970s I must have known them

Quote: Margaret Murray’s books were pivotal to the practices of the New Forest
coven.

This comment hardly lends you support, Dr Murray's books have long been regarded as deluded fiction Not only do you quote Murray, but also Graves, who is described as:"being of a self-proclaimed "unscientific" mind and having a well-developed imagination. He approaches his subjects with a certain amount of "faith", or at least a desire to believe, and claims to unravel riddles based almost entirely on intuition and conjecture."Graves was without doubt a great poet, but his historical writing was flawed to put it mildly, bear in mind that he suffered all his life from the shell shock caused by his experiences in WWI, he lost his son in WWII and shortly after completing The Goddess in 1948 was diagnosed with a "Disease of the Brain" that caused him to die senile

Quote: My informants often listed the source books on which they relied

Are all your informants as unreliable as Murray and Graves?

Correction – Amberlady claims all Bill’s claims are bogus fantasy; yet here she claims that she must have known the Ladies! The Pickingill Ladies would need to have been real in order for that to be true surely. True it would seem that this is not much more than a problem caused by an attempt to sound clever; but the problem with that argument is that Amberlady then goes on to query the validity of the words of informants that,(by her stated views) should not have even existed!

And of course if the stories that Bill relayed are all fantasy ... well again we return to the fact that some of the stories Amberlady heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” which confirm some of teh things Bill has said – so no - again; that would not be accurate either. In fact it would simply highlight the whole of this argument as being problematic at best.

« Reply #180 on: 2007/Feb/02 @ 17:12:14 »

Quote: that is of course depending on whether they (the Pickingill Ladies) existed at all...

I will quite happily bet everything that I own that they never existed

Arguable Correction – Some of the stories you heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch”. Therefore in this case, while Amberlady may be betting on her belief - she would not be doing so with the "backing" of some of the locals upon which she has based the implication of her expertise. The testimony Amberlady has said she had been given states that not everyone would have been so eager to bet everything they owned on such a wager. She must have placed some stock in what they said to her or else why would she include it elsewhere?

« Reply #148 on: 2006/Nov/30 @ 14:52:19 »

Re:
George Pickingill's nine covens

Strange thing - I lived in Canewdon for a few years in the late seventies (my parents owned one of the shops beside the garage). As far as the locals are concerned Old George was simply a local character, he had no connection with witchcraft or cunning people. I have also been told that the photographs supposedly of him were in fact taken years after his death and are another local resident. It seems that George like my Great Grandfather was a horse whisperer, something that was held in great esteem in rural Essex until the coming of the tractor, nobody considered him an occultist and the general feeling was that he was very poorly educated, certainly not capable of setting up nine covens. It is doubtful if he ever traveled any further then Southend, let alone the New Forest. The locals found most of the stories about their village a joke and generally found the influx of ghost hunters laughable and those that invaded the churchyard every Sahmain a nuisance, only the local pubs were pleased to see them. My pub, the Chequers used to put his prices up for visitors at this time

Correction – Some of the stories you heard involved Old George “who was thought of as a witch” – so no that is not accurate either.

You may have been wondering why I have been dealing with Amberlady's posts in descending order from the present to the first post she put it on the thread we are concerned with. I will now explain.

We have seen how time and time again the posts that have been put in to the Pagan Network are not congruent with what Amberlady has said on her own Weblog. It has been claimed that bringing up this quote is somehow "twisting her words" and that this is being done so to obviate some sort of "guilt" Amberlady believes we are attempting to hang on her.

The views Amberlady has offered publicly and has publicly implied were those that Bill holds are indeed often quite unbelievable. To be blunt they are often as unbelievable as they are accurately what Bill or myself for that matter believes. There is further more a substrata of her argument that rather relies heavily on the idea that Bill Liddell made up the Pickingill Papers and wrote it himself - which is not the case.

I sympathise with Amberlady in that what she believes to be being presented seems unrelated, unbelievable etc but that is largely due to her own shortcomings - not due to our ignorance or misrepresentation!

I further belief that an upshot or perhaps result of having acted upon incomplete and incorrectly ascribed and comprehended material for so long by her has resulted in the present circumstance - one wherein her own arguments have become recursive and now rather rely on selectivity and not looking to closely allied with outbursts of overbearing tactics simply to remain coherent.

All this brings me to why I put these quotes as I have.

The last quote I have examined was the first Amberlady put up on Pagan Network in the thread on George Pickingill's Nine Covens. She made those comments on November 30, 2006 at 14:52:19.

The quote wherein Amberlady states she heard old George having been thought of as a witch was made on her weblog on January 18, 2008 at 01:19 pm.

What this shows is that her note on her weblog where she states that old George was by some, "thought of as a witch" was written after several posts on the Pagan Network Thread wherein she says otherwise. Indeed that would put it after « Reply #290 on: 2007/Jun/05 @ 07:24:36 » where in she says that:

"Barbarosa can wax as eloquently as he likes about the Pickingill Ladies but those of us who study the subject know it is complete fantasy".

In essence she is saying one thing of the Pagan Network Thread and something quite different on her own journal.

I feel certain that there may well be some reasoning tendered as to why or; (more probably) how that phrase does not mean what we may think it means.

As per usual each must make up their own minds as to what to believe likely.