The Horsingdon Transmissions No.328: Mother Croake

Marjorie Kenton - also known as 'Mother Croake' on account of her toad familiars, and depicted in the woodcut above - occupies a unique place in Horsingdon's witchlore on account of her being an ancestor of Joseph Boreham - and also because of her own speculated ancestry: it is claimed that Kenton's mother called up something akin to a monstrous toad from some black zone of abysmal horror, which she subsequently took as a lover - with Marjorie as the hybrid product of that strange union. If true, this points to a probable origin of the weirdly alien heritage evident amongst members of the latter-day Boreham bloodline.

Fortunately, Mother Croake managed to avoid the fate of so many of Horsingdon's witches. Even so, at a time when women were not only considered chattel but, in the context of a rigidly patriarchal, patrilineal and patrifocal kinship system, also as strangers or even enemies by their husbands, it is unsurprising that her own husband, John Boreham, levelled an allegation of witchery. The irony of one of the Boreham family accusing someone of witchcraft has not been lost on those present-day residents of Horsingdon who still remember the old tales.

In any case, Marjorie was found guilty and sentenced to death on the pyre; however, as she stood bound to the stake awaiting her fate, the proceedings were, so it is told, suddenly and violently interrupted by a thunderclap the like of which those present had never before heard - one which filled the bystanders with a nameless dread; after which it was discovered that a large crack had appeared in the earth near to Marjorie's place of execution. From this there was seen to issue forth a great black cloud of sulpherous smoke within which could be discerned the outline of something monstrous - something akin to a great black toad...

Marjorie is then said to have joyously cried out something - the utterance of which caused the ropes binding her to miraculously unravel, allowing her to to perform avmonstrous toad-like leap - right into the centre of the stinking cloud, which then began dissipating as quickly as it had appeared. Thereafter, no sign of Mother Croake was to be found, and she was never again seen in the region.

Her husband, on the other hand - who was in attendance at his wife's anticipated immolation - was found to have been mysteriouly struck dead. On close inspection, it was discovered that he had been eaten alive from within - his innards crawling with members of an unnatural species of three-eyed toad.

There is one final epilogue to the tale: records of events do not recount what it was that Marjorie Kenton cried out before her unexpected escape; however, rumour persists that the final exclamation which she let fly before fleeing into that toad-shaped cloud of dense black smoke was a single word: 'Father!'.