Cunning Women: A feminist tale of forbidden love after the witch trials

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when men fear the heights and dangers of the road, when the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper loses its spring, and the caper berry shrivels--for then man goes to his eternal home and mourners walk the streets.

When printed books on the occult, particularly in the English language, had begun to be produced, some cunning folk obtained, and used, grimoires, or books of magic. In many cases they made a big show of the fact that they owned such tomes, which would have appeared impressive in the minds of many of their customers in a period where only a minority of people were able to read and write in Britain. [51] Indeed, some cunning folk appeared to own these grimoires purely for cosmetic reasons, to impress their clients, and did not actually make use of any of the magical rituals contained within them. [47] A news report from 1870 detailed a number of cases brought before authorities in the nineteenth century where claims of powers were made, but it ridiculed the belief, and closed with an example where 'the charge was settled down to the more definite one of obtaining a shilling under false pretenses'. [82] Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come; And send for the wailing women, that they may come! a b Remedies and rituals: folk medicine in Norway and the New Land by Kathleen Stokker, Minnesota Historical Society, 2007, ISBN 0-87351-576-5, ISBN 978-0-87351-576-4. p. 78 Chumbley, Andrew (2001). "The Leaper Between: An Historical Study of the Toad-bone Amulet; its forms, functions, and praxes in popular magic". The Cauldron.

the Portuguese curandeiros/as, benzedeiros/as ("blessers") or mulheres de virtude ("women of virtue") Smiddy, Richard (April 6, 1873). "An Essay on the Druids, the Ancient Churches and the Round Towers of Ireland". W.B. Kelly – via Google Books. One of the best known means by which the cunning folk opposed witchcraft was through the use of witch bottles; ceramic bottles containing such items as urine, nails, hair and nail clippings which it was believed, when put together, would cause harm to the malevolent witch. [25] Another commonly used method was to take the heart of an animal, and to pierce it with pins, to do harm to the witch, whilst other cunning folk preferred to make dolls of the witch out of rags and other materials and then pierce them with pins, again with the intention of inflicting physical harm on the witch, and breaking their bewitchment. [26] The British cunning folk were known by a variety of names in different regions of the country, including wise men and wise women, pellars, wizards, dyn hysbys, and sometimes white witches. Comparable figures were found in other parts of Western Europe: in France, such terms as devins-guérisseurs and leveurs de sorts were used for them, whilst in the Netherlands they were known as toverdokters or duivelbanners, in Germany as Hexenmeisters and in Denmark as kloge folk. In Spain they were curanderos whilst in Portugal they were known as saludadores. [5] It is widely agreed by historians and folklorists, such as Willem de Blécourt, [6] Robin Briggs [7] and Owen Davies, [5] that the term "cunning folk" could be applied to all of these figures as well to reflect a pan-European tradition. Meanwhile, the idea of the cunning folk began to appear in the literature of the period. In 1638, the playwright Thomas Heywood published his comedy, The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, whilst in 1684 another playwright, Edward Ravenscroft, published his own play about a cunning woman. With the decline in the witch trials in the latter part of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, partly due to the rise of the Enlightenment amongst the educated elite, a new law was introduced, the Witchcraft Act 1735. Unlike earlier laws, this did not accept the existence of magic, and was designed to be used to prosecute those who claimed magical powers as being fraudulent; it could therefore be very damaging to the cunning profession. [77] The new regulations imposed by the Witchcraft Act 1735 laid down a maximum penalty of a year's imprisonment for the crime of deceiving people by claiming magical powers, but in effect, during the rest of the eighteenth century, there were very few prosecutions, with most authorities not bothering to enforce this particular law. [78] Scotland [ edit ]

Although some twentieth and twenty-first century Neopagan authors, such as Rae Beth, [68] have claimed that the British cunning folk were followers of a surviving, pre-Christian " pagan" religion, this is something rejected by historians. As Ronald Hutton noted, whilst there was pagan influences in some folk magical charms and a possible connection through the belief in familiar spirits, there is "no known case of a cunning person or a charmer calling upon a pagan deity." [57] History [ edit ] Medieval period [ edit ]

Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820744-3. Wilby identified many similarities between the familiars recorded as serving cunning folk and those serving witches, with a general, though by no means universal, attribution of cunning folk's familiars with being benevolent and helping people, whilst those belonging to witches were more often thought of as being malevolent and causing harm. Again, in general the former were often referred to as " fairies" and the latter as " demons". [58] Wilby noted how both British cunning folk and witches often described similar scenarios for how they had first encountered their familiar: most prominent of these was the claim that the familiar had simply appeared spontaneously whilst they went about their everyday activities, whilst other claims held that the witch or cunning person had inherited it from another magical practitioner, who was usually a family member, or that they had been given it by a more powerful spirit. [59] The magical practitioner and the familiar then set about establishing a working relationship, sometimes solidified in a pact. [60] a b c d Remedies and rituals: folk medicine in Norway and the New Land by Kathleen Stokker, Minnesota Historical Society, 2007, ISBN 0-87351-576-5, ISBN 978-0-87351-576-4. pp. 75–76 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for skillful women, that they may come: Wilby, Emma (2005). Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-078-1.