WITCHCRAFT AND CHARMS IN THE 1920’s
Arthur Robinson Wright was a prominent member of the Folk-Lore Society who championed the idea of recording modern folk-beliefs alongside those from the past. In 1928 he published a popular little book on “English Folklore” which included many folk-beliefs and practices that still existed in those days.
Today I thought I'd share some of the accounts in the book about contemporary witchcraft and charms:
“In 1915 the St. Albans Diocesan Gazette gave an account of a reputed witch in Essex, recently dead, whose ghost was laid in the traditional manner. A lady told the exorciser that before her death a neighbour had called and found her feeding her niggets, "those creepy-crawly things that witches keep all over them."
In November, 1922, the Kingston county justices had before them a quarrel between neighbours at Cobham. The complainant's daughter said that the defendant had tried to stop her wedding by accusing the betrothed couple of practising witchcraft.
In 1923, at the Yarmouth Police Court, in a case of trouble between two women, a woman gave evidence that ten shillings had been paid to a witch for a spell on her sister, and her brother had to pay a pound to have it taken off.
In 1924 a smallholder was charged at the Petty Sessions at Cullompton, Devon, with scratching a woman's arm so that it bled profusely, and with threatening to shoot her; the defence was that the woman had "ill-wished" him and bewitched his pig.
In 1926, at Glastonbury Police Court, an application was made by an almsman for a summons for witch- craft against another almsman, who was said to have bewitched the former and his clock.
In 1926 it was reported that a woman in Norfolk, who found her husband was attracted by another woman, was given, by a friend whom she consulted, the Lord's Prayer written backward, which she had to fasten under her blouse and keep there for three days each week until the husband changed; after a fortnight he would not recognize the other woman.
At Tipton in 1926 two men were bound over for threatening an old woman who lived in a van, against whom several witnesses appeared, to say that they were terrified when in her presence and believed her capable of putting a curse upon them. The men said that she had put a spell over the wife of one and the sister of the other, who had had to be removed to a lunatic asylum.
In September, 1926, a man was charged at Newton Abbot Police Court with wife desertion, and replied that he objected to her "witchcraft business." She had charged him with laying something on the rug to make his son ill, and when he went to sit in his chair he found it ringed by salt i.e., a precaution against witchcraft. She had put articles belonging to him near her photograph, so that she might work spells with him.
Finally, in 1927 a gipsy was charged at the Cornwall Assizes at Bodmin with obtaining £500 over a period of some years from a St. Mawes gardener to remove the effect of "ill-wishing,"
East Anglia and the West Country, from which come the majority of the above cases, may be looked on as the main strongholds of the faith witchcraft.”
At Nottingham Shire Hall in 1927 a sentence of imprisonment was avoided by the refund of £97 which had been paid for a love philtre (consisting of a mixture of boracic acid and baking powder) to be used to "cure" a husband of un-faithfulness which was only alleged by a fortune-teller.
Many charms involve spitting. The coster spits on his first takings of the day, and in Devonshire it is very lucky, if you find a piece of coal, to spit on it and throw it over your right shoulder. But the magical qualities of saliva are outside our present range.
Charming, especially for serious ailments, is generally the work of the white witch (most often a man) or wise-woman, who in a town would probably be called a "herbalist."
“The Times of 1920 tells us that in the East End of London a charm for scalds is for the herbalist to blow three times on the blisters, repeating the words:
Here come I to cure a burnt sore.
If the dead knew what the living endure,
The burnt sore would burn no more.
But there is also a great deal of family and private practice, for medical and other purposes. For toothache you should sit under an ash-tree and cut your toe-nails.
The Crediton Chronicle reported in 1914 that, when a Dorset auctioneer was on his way to have a tooth drawn by a dentist, a farmer friend begged him not to go, but to put his arms round a young ash-tree, make a slit in the bark where his fingers met, and then pull out some hair from the back of his head and put it in the slit.”
“In place of charming by a formula or by a symbolic or magical act, the end desired may be attained, more particularly if it is protection or the warding off of some sickness or other evil, by carrying on the person, or putting in the place to be affected, an amulet.
The amulet may be something supposedly powerful in itself or made so by magical art. Few people have any conception of the extent to which amulets are now worn. It is, perhaps, as great as it was a century or two ago, though the purpose may be a little more vague, being in many cases for luck in general rather than for anything specific.
Undoubtedly, if there is faith in them, they give the confidence which helps to success, and so strengthen belief. An East End doctor has estimated that 40 per cent, of the children at the schools which he attended wear some sort of amulet under their clothes - i.e., not as an ornament, but as a protection.
It is very difficult, however, to get direct information from the wearers, or even an admission of their presence. A very common amulet is a string of special blue beads worn as a preventive of chest ailments, both in London and in the country, and never under any circumstances removed.
My wife showed such a string to a charwoman and asked if she knew anything about it, to which the woman replied, "No," after the suspicious fashion of those who think that you are "getting at them" in some way. But later in the day she said, "My Gladys wears a string like that you showed me," and, when questioned further - "Do you ever take it off, say, when you wash her?" - replied, very promptly, "Oh no! Then she'd catch cold."
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