Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Under a spell
The nineteenth century in Britain was deemed to be an era of great progress in all spheres of life. In terms of industry and technology the country led the world. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a proud showcase of British success and innovation for the rest of the world to admire and envy. Britain could boast of a great empire, and considered itself the most enlightened and civilised nation on earth. By contrast, many of the empire's colonial subjects were considered to be ignorant, backward, and barbarous even. Moved by the spirit of supposed superiority and condescension, missionaries were sent out to these far-flung corners of the empire to enlighten those who were deemed to be thus benighted. But away from the Houses of Parliament and the mansions of the upper classes, far from the sound of the self-congratulatory back-slapping of the privileged and wealthy, in the back streets of Somerset's provincial towns, and in the farmyards and insanitary cottages of the countryside, magical beliefs and practices continued in a fashion not far removed from those held by other members of the empire who were treated as uncivilised savages.
For those who took little interest in the lives of Somerset's lower classes, and so had little understanding of their mentalities and concerns, the realisation that witchcraft and magic was still strongly believed in came as something of a nasty shock. Ignorance of the situation was widespread. Even magistrates, who had closer contact with the lives of the labouring classes than many of their peers, were amazed to find that people still felt threatened by witches and resorted to magic and practitioners of magic. In 1852, for instance, the Chard magistrates "expressed their sorrow that in this age persons could be found entertaining such old-world notions". Two decades later, magistrates presiding over a case of assault against a witch opined that "they should not have though any person in the world would be so foolish as to believe these things."
It was generally assumed that the growing prosperity of the nation, better educational provision, and the spread of religion had vanquished the popular belief in witchcraft and magic from all but a few remote and backward corners of the country. In Somerset much confidence had been invested in the influence of Hannah More's evangelical educational achievements. More, who died in 1833, was one of the most respected "blue-stockings" of her time. She was born in Gloucestershire, became a teacher in Bristol, and subsequently spent some years in London. In 1784 she moved to Cowslip Green near Wrington, in northern Somerset, and set up numerous schools in and around the Mendips to educate and instil children with Christian values. Her schools were undoubtedly successful in that by 1800 they were teaching as many as 3000 pupils, but More had rather restrictive ideas about popular education. Pupils were taught how to read and count but not write. She had no wish to foster an independent minded work force. Her stated aim was to reform the "lower class to habits of industry and virtue". More also sought to reform the popular mind through the production and dissemination of large numbers of cheap moralising tales for popular consumption, a number of which were set in Somerset. Tawney Rachel, for example, concerned the nefarious activities of a fortune-teller of the same name. At the end of the tale Rachel is "justly" punished for her practices. She is at first sent to Taunton gaol and then transported to Botany Bay - "and a happy day it was for the county of Somerset, when such a nuisance was sent out of it."
Elsewhere in the county the number of schools was also increasing. "The schoolmaster is abroad" was the confident cry. By 1818 there were already 487 day schools, 253 Sunday schools, and 109 endowed schools in existence. But it was one thing to improve access to schooling and another to ensure that children attended. Absenteeism was still widespread at the end of the century, despite legislation that had made it compulsory for children to attend school until the age of ten and thereafter to fourteen unless officially exempted. As a result many parents found themselves fined before the petty sessions for their children's non-attendance. The dictates of life at the time meant that parents often preferred their children to be out earning a few shillings or aiding them in their labours rather than gaining an education.
So entrenched was the rather naive confidence in the programme of education and popular enlightenment, that despite plenty of proof to the contrary, the same shocked statements of surprise concerning the inefficacy of education and religion continued to be expressed over and over again throughout the century. Each published example of the continued belief in witchcraft and magic raised an astonished exclamation and a sorry shake of the head. In 1811 the editor of the Taunton Courier observed sadly that "the influence arising from the increased wealth and proportionate improvement of the intellectual character of this county has not been of sufficient power to dissipate the fogs of superstitious ignorance." Over fifty years later, the Somerset County Herald expressed its dismay that the "fogs" persisted notwithstanding "the spread of education and religion, and the general increase of intelligence". Not long after, the same newspaper was surprised to find that the belief in witchcraft and cunning-folk was "as rife as ever" in the area of Langport, despite the "increase of schools and the multiplication of teachers of religion". Moving on another thirty years, the belief in witchcraft was still widespread, and the middle-classes still could not quite comprehend why. A Somerset correspondent to The Spectator found it "especially sad" that "not only the old people, but also the young ones who have been to a Board-School, still hold to these wretched legacies of unnumbered generations. I fear if a company of strolling players were to act Macbeth in the village school-room, a large number of the audience would look upon the witches in it as anything but symbolical." What the authors of such comments failed to realise was that elementary education did not necessarily engender rational thought. It was a certain way of life and standard of living rather than ignorance and illiteracy that supported popular magical beliefs.
Bound by the supernatural
For the majority of working people in Somerset, whether they were labourers, farmers, craftsmen, glovers, miners, weavers, or fishermen, life was a precarious, constant struggle against poverty and misfortune. One of the most widespread manifestations of misfortune, and the cause and result of much poverty, was illness. From cradle to grave people were constantly threatened by a host of serious diseases that thrived in the insanitary living conditions of the period and in the absence of effective medicine. A look at the annual sanitary reports for the rural villages around Taunton highlights this all too well. Of the 280 deaths recorded in the district in 1880 only 34 were attributed to "old age". Amongst the rest twenty-seven died from tuberculosis, twenty from bronchitis, fifteen from pneumonia, five from scarlet fever, two from enteric fever (typhoid), six from diphtheria, five from whooping cough, and thirty-one from digestive diseases. The following year a serious epidemic of scarlet fever swept through North Curry, and there was a diphtheria outbreak at Corfe. Disease spread easily due to the open sewers and cesspools that still existed in some villages even by the closing decades of the century. This is what sanitary inspectors found when they visited Lydeard St Lawrence in 1881:
The village is composed of one street, which forms a steep incline on either side of a stream which flows along the bottom. This stream has in the past been freely used for sewage disposal. Not merely have drains and the overflow of cesspools entered it, but we found closets situated over it and discharging directly into it, and that not far from an open shallow well much used for drinking purposes, into which at times the water from the stream entered.
In the same year two other wells in the district were so polluted by sewage that court orders were issued to have them closed. Those who avoided or survived fatal or crippling diseases, were likely to suffer from rheumatic problems due to hard physical labour, long hours, and damp housing, and there were no anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve the pain. Livestock, on which many Somerset folk depended for their livelihood, were equally vulnerable. Swine fever was a continual problem for pig-keepers large and small, while periodic outbreaks of rinder pest, otherwise known as the cattle plague, spelt ruin for many dairy and cattle farmers. Other frequent complaints like red water and brucellosis also threatened their tenuous security.
Illness, whether human or animal, was a great drain on people's meagre resources. Medical men had to be paid, and shillings soon added up to pounds. The poorest could obtain some free medicine under the Poor Law, but for many, medical fees exhausted hard earned savings. When working adults fell ill, of course, there was also an instant loss of income. Villages had mutual support clubs to help each other out in times of need, but without a proper state welfare system and cheap personal insurance - things we take for granted now - when sickness struck extreme economic and emotional hardship was often the result.
The precarious nature of health and the lack of any "scientific" means of curing most ailments meant that the people of Somerset possessed a large store of traditional folk remedies. Many were simple herbal medicines. Lily leaves in brandy to relieve bruising, tea made from black currant leaves to cleanse the blood, the juice of greater celandine for warts, alder blossom tea for boils. Others were more unusual and often counter-productive. In 1861 a medical officer of the Sherborne district reported that a woman suffering from jaundice nearly died after taking a remedy, advised by her neighbour, consisting of drinking a pot of strong beer in which an old horseshoe had been boiled. Another cure for jaundice was to place roasted worms in the sufferers' food without their knowledge. Goitre sufferers tried rubbing mole's blood over the swelling. Those suffering from whooping-cough were placed on the ground where sheep had lain. Weakly children and those suffering from swellings could be cured by being drawn along dew-laden grass three times running on the first, second and third of May.
The touch of a corpse's hand was thought efficacious against goitre. Many cures were based on the magic of sympathetic relationships. Thus children with congenital hernias were passed naked through the split trunk of a maiden ash tree. A virgin had to introduce the child and a boy take him out the other side. The trunk was then bound up and plastered with mud to help it heal. As the split trunk grew together again so the child's rupture would mend. Even the process of prescribing medicine had its ritual elements. In 1834, for example, a woman stopped and asked a Taunton gentleman riding on a white horse to give her a remedy for her child who suffered from whooping-cough. When told to consult a doctor, she replied that no prescription would be of any use unless it was given by the first person she met on a white horse. Healing wells were still resorted to for curing a host of medical conditions. The Taunton Courier reported in 1837, for instance, that on Sunday mornings people could be found visiting Skipram Well near Ashill to cure scrofula, diseased eyes, and benumbed limbs. The water was considered most efficacious when applied just before sun rise.
While people obviously strove to find cures for their medical misfortunes, they also sought to explain why they had occurred. Many illnesses and ailments such as whooping-cough and jaundice were easily diagnosable by sufferers and their families, and could be put down to natural causes, but other conditions, well-known today, evaded popular diagnosis. As one old man observed early this century, "Pendycitus wurn't known when I wur young, but I s'pose doctors have found 'en out from port martels [post mortems] on poor folk as died."
When faced by the unknown people sometimes sought to explain their condition in terms of the supernatural. Not only did this help them come to terms with the misfortunes they faced, but it also opened up a new avenue of possible salvation, since supernaturally inspired ailments could only be cured by magical means. Those to blame for causing such magical misery were usually witches. If for the reform minded middle-classes the belief in witches posed a social problem, for many of the lower classes witches presented a major social problem. One Somerset man spoke for many in 1894 when he complained "as zure as thee zits in thick chair, it be true theus witches have the power ter kill our animals, an' ter make our loives mizerubble." There were several local terms to describe the act of bewitchment. One was "overlooked" which derived from the fear of the evil eye. Otherwise, those who were under a spell were said to be "wisht" or "ill-wished". In fact any unusual event that brought misfortune was described as "a very wisht thing." Numerous charms and rituals were employed to counter acts of witchcraft, and those fascinating magical practitioners known as cunning-folk drove a thriving trade in curing the ill-wished and detecting those responsible.
While the actual experience of misfortune led people to interpret their problems in terms of witchcraft, and encouraged them to resort to magical solutions, uncertainty as to future prospects led people to try and anticipate or avoid misfortune. There were numerous sources of divinatory knowledge. People could pay to see fortune-tellers, astrologers and cunning-folk of course. But the environment provided a free and ever-present guide to futurity. The night sky, for example, not only acted as an advanced warning system as to forthcoming weather, but also provided keys to the most propitious moments to perform all sorts of everyday activities relating to agriculture, gardening, fishing, medicine, and travel. Thus the success of crops could be secured by planting in conjunction with certain phases of the moon. Spreading manure in a field in the form of rams' horns at midnight under a full moon would ensure a good crop, while hedges were best cut when the moon was waxing. The potency of healing herbs was also considered greater during specific lunar phases. Bad luck would follow, though, if one chanced to point at the moon. The observance of plant and animal behaviour also provided portents. A bird tapping at a window foretold a death in the house, as did the sight of bees pitching on dry wood during swarming. The attempted crowing of a hen was more than just harsh on the ears - it forecast serious ill-fortune. In 1889 a correspondent to the Somerset County Herald recounted how he had recently entered a farmhouse where he found the farmer's wife preparing a trussed chicken. She explained that her husband had heard it trying to crow that morning, and so he had immediately killed it to avoid any misfortune. The innocent act of finding a white leaf on a beanstalk portended death for the finder. A woman of Watchet told John Warden Page how her father had died shortly after find one such leaf. Many local omens were born out of the popular preoccupation with coincidences. In one Exmoor village, for instance, it was observed that whenever the parson concluded his sermon at four o'clock someone in the village would experience misfortune in the course of the week. This belief became such a distraction that the parson felt it necessary to speak to his parishioners on the subject. These are just a few of the many omens which helped people create some sort of order out of the vagaries of the world around them, a world over which they otherwise had little control and little understanding. To be forewarned was to be forearmed in the struggle against misfortune.
The landscape too contributed to the sensation of omnipresent occult forces, and provided physical testimony of the power of supernatural beings. In every neighbourhood there were distinctive or peculiar natural features, rocks, streams, trees, springs and hills, which were associated with fairies and ghosts. The visible remains of man's ancient manipulation of the landscape, barrows, hillforts and standing stones, were particularly intriguing sites. They were often attributed not to human endeavour but to fairies, giants or the Devil. The White Stones of Porlock parish were thought to have landed there after a rock throwing competition between the Devil and a giant. At Beckington the remains of a chambered long barrow were thought to be one of the Devil's sleeping places. A large Bronze Age barrow on Wick Moor in the Quantocks region was reckoned to be a fairy dwelling. Beautiful music was sometimes heard emanating from the mound. In the folk conception of the world it would seem that the supernatural offered a more comprehensible interpretation of ancient, artificial landscape features than did the notion that mere humans were responsible.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A People Bewitched"
by .
Copyright © 2012 F&W Media International, Ltd.
Excerpted by permission of F+W Media, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
