Cunning folk in Britain

[1] Primarily using spells and charms as a part of their profession, they were most commonly employed to use their magic to combat malevolent witchcraft, to locate criminals, missing persons or stolen property, for fortune telling, for healing, for treasure hunting and to influence people to fall in love.

[4] 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.

[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.

Nevertheless historian Owen Davies has speculated that, based on his own research into English cunning folk (which excluded those in Scotland and Wales), that "Up until the mid nineteenth century there may have been as many as several thousand working in England at any given time.

Around two-thirds of recorded cunning folk in Britain were male,[12] although their female counterparts were "every bit as popular and commercially successful as the men, and indeed this was one of the few means by which ordinary women could achieve a respected and independent position" in the British society of the time.

Next, I undertake to cure madd folkes; then I keepe gentlewomen lodgers, to furnish such chambers as I let out by the night: Then I am provided for bringing young wenches to bed; and, for a need, you see I can play the match-maker."

"[22] British cunning folk were known to use a variety of methods to cure someone of malevolent sorcery, including tackling the witch either physically or through the law courts, breaking the spell over the individual by magical means, and by using charms and potions to remove the witchcraft from the afflicted person's body.

[23] As historian Owen Davies noted, "Most cunning-folk employed a multi-pronged approach to curing witchcraft, using a combination of written charms, magic rituals, prayers and herbal medicines, thereby appealing to the physical, psychological and spiritual needs of the sick.

[27] Some theologians and figures of Church authority nonetheless believed that the cunning-folk, in practising magic, were also, like the witches, following the Devil, a malevolent supernatural entity in Christian mythology.

Some early Quakers, a Protestant denomination founded in the seventeenth century, were particularly vocal against the cunning folk, perhaps because they themselves were accused by their critics of using sorcery to attract new members, and so wanted to heavily distance themselves from such practices.

[28] The cunning folk were also commonly employed to locate missing or stolen property and uncover the perpetrator: this was of particular importance throughout the Early Modern period, when peoples' possessions were far more valued than in later centuries as they were expensive to replace, particularly for the poor.

[35] The cunning folk were widely visited for aid in healing various ailments for both humans and their livestock, particularly from poorer members of the community who could not afford the fees charged by apothecaries and physicians.

"[36] In 1846, the Chelmsford Chronicle reported that an ill young man, that physians had been unable to help, followed the advice of a cunning woman who resided between the Epping Forest and Ongar, Essex to cure his illness:[37] That a small nut should be cut in twain, the kernel extracted, and a live spider placed in the shell, which was to be sewn up in a bag and worn round his neck, and as the spider wasted, so would the fever leave him.At times, they would use various herbs and plants to develop medicines and folk cures that they believed would help.

On occasion, live animals would be used as a part of the treatment, for instance in 1604, the Northumberland cunning women Katherine Thompson and Anne Nevelson were convicted by a court for placing a duck's beak to a woman's mouth whilst reciting charms as a form of healing.

Originally based upon an ancient southern European magical practice documented by Pliny, it had later been purported[clarification needed] in the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Reginald Scot, which were read by several literate cunning folk.

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.

Another significant grimoire to be published in English was James Freake's translation of Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which "must have generated a good deal of interest among [the cunning folk] and other less well-educated magical practitioners at the time.

This book was subsequently republished on several occasions, and copies were obtained by a wide variety of cunning craft practitioners who used the information in the work to enhance their own magical praxes.

[66] This was illustrated by historian James Obelkevitch in his examination of nineteenth-century popular religion in the southern part of the Lincolnshire chalk hills, when he note that the three main cunning people of the area, whilst each holding to a Christian worldview, each had different particular religious attachment.

One of these, "Fiddler" Fynes, regularly attended church services and was an essentially conventional Christian for that period, whilst the second, John Worsdale of Lincoln, was similarly devout but was unconventional in that he rejected the need for a professional clergy.

[67] 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.

"[70] Such a claim has subsequently been challenged by Emma Wilby, who has put forward the case that the belief in familiar spirits, and the visionary journeys into Fairyland that sometimes accompanied them, were survivals from "pre-Christian animism".

This changed with the Witchcraft Act 1541, enacted under the reign of Henry VIII, which targeted both witches and cunning folk, and which prescribed the death penalty for such crimes as using invocations and conjurations to locate treasure or to cast a love spell.

In 1563, after the return of power to the Anglican Church of England, a bill was passed by parliament designed to illegalise "Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts", again being aimed at both the alleged witches and the cunning folk.

[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.

[79] Spence argued that a native tradition had "flourished" in Scotland, and elsewhere in Britain, and, while it maintained many differences, had been greatly influenced by French practices from the mid-fifteenth century and this saw the introduction of the word 'witch'.

[79] While still associating folk tradition with 'witchcraft' he suggested it was "a widespread cult of pagan origin, having a well-digested system of medical and magical lore of its own, a distant ritual, and with affiliations throughout the whole of the Lowlands and a certain part of the Highlands".

[50] At the start of the 19th century, the popularity of cunning folk continued, and there was still a large and lucrative market for their services, for instance in 1816, there were eight different wise women working independently in the English coastal town of Whitby.

[81] 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'.

[89]Historian Ronald Hutton noted that the low magic of the cunning folk was one of the lesser influences upon the development of the Neopagan religion of Wicca and related witchcraft-based groups in the early twentieth century.