Folk Artist, Singer-Songwriter

Character Profile...

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Edith Grimshaw has become known as ‘The Witch of Melling’ or even more cruelly as ‘Grimshaw and the Fingerclaw,’ due to her witch-like appearance and rude, yet mysterious manner. She grew up as the only child, cared for by her eccentric father, after her mother died when Edith was very young.

Her few, hazy memories of her soft and gentle mother, are marred by a life of hardship. She remembered that once her father used to call her, ‘My beautiful Edith,’ but since the death of her mother, her father’s heart was hardened and he only found her company to be irritating.

An awkward child, she was uncomfortably tall and self-conscious and tried to reduce herself at every opportunity, blending into the background, skulking alone, except for when she was approached or challenged, when she would suddenly snap and speak rudely, only making herself seem even more prickly and misunderstood. Inside, however, she longed for love, to belong, to be held gently.

The one friend who showed her kindness and compassion was a boy, also an outsider. They found solace in each other’s company until eventually, at the tender age of eighteen, he asked for her hand in marriage. Her father, only too glad to be rid of the responsibility, agreed to the union.

What happened next, we will never know.

Only that Edith never found her much desired wedded bliss. We don’t know if she ever wore her bridal gown, or said her vows, if her betrothed left her, or was killed in mysterious circumstances. What we do know is that now she is an old spinster, older than her real years, and still trying to reduce herself and live as invisibly as possible.

She resides on the edge of town, in a lonely little cottage, where she only receives occasional, mostly unwelcome, visitors. Once a week she walks to the train station but no one knows where she goes. Only that she can be seen, still awkwardly tall, wearing dark clothes and a shawl, her long hair trailing in the wind and walking with a stick.

Children mutter, ‘There goes the Witch of Melling,’ and whisper stories of secrets, strange things hidden in furniture, claws instead of fingernails and of a woman whose wooden heart has made her turn her back on love and friendship.

If you were brave enough to knock on Edith’s door and lucky enough to be invited into her strange little abode, you would find that she has found comfort in little things like finepoint needlework, tenderly growing plants for her garden and reading. Her books are her real escape. She loves stories and lives vicariously through the lives of young princesses, flower girls, magical animals and mythical beasts.

If, with a gentle presence, you managed to convince her that you were no threat, she might even open up to you and tell you a little about her book collection. And once she knew you were genuine in your interest, she might even tell you a story.

It would only be then that you would begin to see her face soften, her eyes light up, her painful memories fade and her voice grow strong as she is carried away with the lives of the characters she knows so well, who have become her friends.

She would become animated, filling the space around her with her gestures and rising simultaneously with the story’s crescendo, confidently proclaiming the wisdom told herein.

But when the tale was done, she would suddenly remember, like a painful stab in a broken heart, and she would turn, her prickles reappearing, as she told you that that was enough and that you must go away.

If, on your way down her garden path, you hid behind a tree and looked back, you might catch her, staring wistfully into space, the happier memories of her parents and her young love, entwining with a deep, deep desire to break free of the knarled vines she has twisted around herself and sing her song to the skies.

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