The Witch of the Westmereland/Westmoreland is a piece from the 20th century written by Archie Fisher and has been performed and recorded by any number of artists, including Stan Rogers, Barbara Dickson, and Kate Rusby. The song features a knight who has been wounded in the field seeking healing. The knight is noted as bearing “the rowan shield” and it is called out as such every time it is mentioned in the song. There’s a few interesting symbols within that – the rowan tree is traditionally associated as a wood that protects its wielder from magical attacks. In Celtic lore, it is a tree that is sacred to the goddess Brigidh and was known to the early Celts as “the tree of life” and associated with purity. Bearers of such a shield would have been considered heralds and potentially as someone on a spiritual quest.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAKhuIavxw0[/embedyt]
The knight is visited by several animal guides that tell him the only chance he has to heal his wounds is to seek out the maiden known as the Witch of the Westmoreland, as the “water cold and clear will never clean your wound.” He journeys into the forest with his mare, his hunting hawk, and his hounds, all symbols of status, skill, and strength for the knight, meeting an owl along the way who asks him why he is in the woods. He tells the owl that he is seeking out the maiden that is said to live within. He eventually reaches the lake where this maiden is said to dwell and leaving his animals behind, but ready to come at the sound of his horn, he casts goldenrod into the lake to summon the maiden. When she appears, it is in the form of a centaur – “one half the form of a maiden fair with a jet black mare’s body” and she flees at the sight of the knight.
He summons his own animals with a blast from his horn and gives chase before she is eventually apprehended by his hounds and hawk. It is then she notices that the knight is wounded. She commands him to sheathe his sword and put away his shield, turning completely into a maiden clothed in blue and held with silver chain. Once he has done so, she kisses him three times and then wraps goldenrod around his wounds, healing him. He lays with her that night, rising hale and hearty and she bids him farewell, letting him know of another gift that was bestowed upon him by her embrace – invincibility. “She said ‘Ride with your brindled hound at heel, and your good grey hawk in hand/There’s none can harm the knight who’s lain with the Witch of the Westmoreland.’”
There is a lot of symbolism packed into the song, and it is a favorite of mine, because on the surface, it is a simple story, but when you look into the symbolism behind the lyrics, a much deeper story of spirituality and the supernatural, and even many ways to interpret the ending of the song – I have also seen theories that his miraculous healing and invincibility are actually an allusion to him having passed in his sleep; though I personally do not subscribe to that thought, I can see the logic in it.
For this adventure, I’m seeing the Witch of the Westmoreland as a more villainous figure, or at least one that is divorced from mortal morals and ethics. She is a fey shapeshifter that keeps a domain in a forest lake, which is a portal between the Material Realm and the Feywild. Her knight was a warrior that struck down several of her defenders, though he was grievously wounded himself. She was impressed by his abilities and used her shapeshifting abilities to speak to him as several animals, telling him about the magics of the Witch in the forest and that the wounds dealt him were supernatural in origin and would require something beyond mortal or even divine healing. She continued to urge the warrior as he rode through the forest and eventually found her lake. Here, she ensorcelled the warrior with her charms and once he was in her power, gifted him with powerful abilities so that he would be able to protect her material domain. He was gifted with the ability to change shape, into that of a mare, a grey hawk, and a hunting hound. He was also granted with otherworldly resistance, which meant that most weapons were turned away from him harmlessly. He has since stood guard over her domain. There are a number of ways that the PCs could encounter this figure. Here are only a few examples to get you started.
The Queen’s Guard
The fey witch desires to expand her domain, but to do that she needs more people under her command and in her thrall. The PCs are journeying through her forest for an entirely unconnected reason and she becomes impressed with one or more of them, desiring to add them to her personal guard. She sends her knight after them, confident that he can defeat the group and bring her back new champions that she can add to her retinue.
Kill the Witch!
The PCs might simply be tasked with destroying the fey within the woods and closing the portal to the Feywild. Perhaps the nearby inhabitants have finally had enough of dealing with and paying tribute to the creature and so have hired the PCs to destroy her. In this case, the knight becomes an obstacle that they must overcome to reach their ultimate goal. And even if they defeat him and are successful in dispatching the fey, is the knight really dead? Or could he pursue them afterwards, spurred on by his devotion to his mistress even in her death?
The Missing Soldier
The knight was actually a soldier that had been separated from the rest of his unit when he was set upon by the forest’s protectors. Now there are rumors that he has been spotted within the forest and the PCs have been sent to bring him back to his unit and his home. However, he has no desire to go back to his previous life, if indeed he even has a memory of it at all. How do the PCs break the control that the fey has over the soldier? Will killing her restore his sense of mind or will it break it entirely? Can he survive without her? Is there a way to unbind him from her power? The PCs will have to investigate the situation and possibly enter into the feywild to learn more about the “witch of the Westmoreland.”
Ben Erickson
Cool adventure seed.