Customer Reviews

Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History

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This is a book about Cunning folk. Not witches, not wicca, cunning folk. The people who your ancestors relied on for amulets to protect their cattle, to protect them from witches and heal the gout they had in their feet. This is just the facts ma'am. There is no fancy talk about how they were the last dregs of a pagan religion, how they were smart and wiser than everyone else, just about what they did, the spells they cast and how they managed to LUCK out and not have the church or state hang them.
If you want to know the nuts and bolts of what the cunningfolk did and who they were without any romantic frills, this is the book for you. As far as I know, it's THE book on Cunningfolk for factual details.

This is a history of the popular magicians of England. It is a careful, historical look at how the fear of cunningfolk helped create witchcraft laws, how the cunningfolk avoided being persecuted in large numbers, and the interactions between cunningfolk and the people around them.

This is not an attempt to romanticize popular magic, but rather is a look at the historical record in search of a historical picture. The author hits this target, but the implications of this sort of work may yet to be felt elsewhere in the study of history.

Although the work is not about witchcraft per se, the author demonstrates a complex interaction between cunningfolk, the societies in which they lived, and the passage of laws against them. These laws were at the core of the witch craze in England, but were rarely applied against their intended target. For this reason, those interested in studying this area of history will find a new perspective here which is relevant to the study of the witch craze.

I would highly recommend this book to all interested in the topic.

Generally informative, and well written. Author has annoying elite/commoner, literate/'illiterate', high magic/low magic dualist mind set that interferes with my ability to thoroughly recommend it. Good place to start, but don't end here on cunning-folk. See Emma Wilby for further and better.

"Cunning-folk" was the uniquely-English term given to multi-faceted practitioners of magic who healed the sick, bewitched, told fortunes, identified thieves, and induced love. They could be either male or female, though two-thirds were male. They usually held another form of employment, generally as artisans or tradesmen, which provided them with a relatively prominent place in society and served to some extent as a protection against authorities who could overlook the cunning-trade if the person in question held a steady job.
Cunning-folk provided a wide range of services for their clients, though their specialty was bewitching. In regards to witchcraft, they offered a wide range of services. First, they diagnosed bewitching, often by examining a client's urine. If bewitching was suspected, they provided a variety of means to heal their client, and protect against future bewitching. Finally, they could determine if an accused person was a witch, often without even seeing them. Most often, cunning-men and women provided written charms as protection for their clients against witches. The shape these charms could take varied from a piece of animal uterus on which words or symbols had been drawn, to a stone, pebble or piece of glass that had been inscribed.
Davies' book is immensely useful in the study of English society, including its fears and a formerly un-studied aspect of the community and is enjoyable to read.