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When something went wrong in an English household four hundred years ago, there was no single door marked help. A sick child might be treated at home, taken to an apothecary, discussed with a midwife, shown to a physician if the family…
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For several centuries, an English person faced with a stolen purse, a mysteriously ill cow, an unexplained fever or the fear of witchcraft might turn not to a witchfinder, but to someone described as cunning. To understand cunning folk in England, it…
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There is something misleadingly tidy about the phrase folk magic. It sounds as though it ought to describe a single tradition: a body of old rules, perhaps handed down from one generation to another, with a recognisable set of tools and beliefs.…
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