This post failed to publish on the 7th November, so here it is:
As we are between Halloween, and Halloween Old Style the chances of bewitchment are high what with all those spirits being out and about on this – the most uncanny of all times. So, you might want to look at ‘Doctor Lilly’s Last Legacy’ of 1683 which gives a cure for those who have been bewitched at Halloween.
Take two horseshoes, beat them red-hot and nail one on the threshold of the door, but Quench the other in the Urine of the party bewitched: then set the urine over the fire in a pot or Pipkin and put the horseshoe into it. Make the urine boil with a little salt put onto it, and three horseshoe nails until it is almost all consumed: what is not boiled away cast into the fire. Keep then your horseshoes and nails in a clean paper or cloth and use the same manner three times. It will be the more effectual if is done at the change or full of the Moon.
Doctor Lilly’s Last Legacy, Online at the Wellcome Collection, although you will need a login to view it. I found it first in my favourite source, Perpetual Almanac of the Year by Charles Kightly.
Doctor Lilly’s Last legacy ‘Being the poor man’s physician, the sick man’s friend, and the country-man’s doctor’.
Items like this make me wonder about the gullibility of the human being, but I guess we are surrounded by examples of the lack of sense of a large proportion of our species. Perhaps I should rephrase this, I think most people make sensible decisions about their day-to-day life, but many do not have the critical thinking skills to evaluate the bigger issues.
For more on keeping witches away, witches’ marks etc. have a look at this post of mine.
From ‘The Wonderful Discoveries of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillip Flower’, London, 1618
As May Eve approached, which like Halloween, was considered a particularly uncanny time, people were warned to guard against witches stealing their babies:
He (the Devil) teacheth the witches to make ointments of the bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the air and accomplish all their desires. So as, if they be any children unbaptized, or not guarded with the sign of the cross or orisons: then the witches may and do catch them from their mother’s side at night, or out of their cradles. …. and after burial steal them out of the graves, then seethe them in a cauldron until their flesh been made possible.
Reginald Scott ‘The Discovery of Witchcraft’ 1594 (from ‘The perpetual Almanack of Folklore’ by Charles Kightley)
Ways to keep witches away were various, but baptising your children early was the best method. As you will have seen in previous posts, children were normally baptised as soon as three days after birth in the early modern period.) Saying prayers (orisons), hanging garlic, bread, rowan-leaves, around the cradle were among many other methods that could be used in those days of a homicidal fear of witchcraft.
In archaeological surveys of timber framed buildings increasing numbers of reports of ‘witches’ marks have been discovered. They are now so ubiquitous that it seems most people felt the need to deploy them to secure their houses. It was believed that witches gained entry where there was in inlet of wind, so doors, windows, chimneys, and anywhere there was a draft. These were be marked by pentagons which represent the five wounds of Christ, as well as a variety of other marks ‘chequerboards, mesh patterns, peltas (a type of knotwork design) and circle’. This quotation is from https://theartssociety.org/arts-news-features/ancient-symbols-once-used-ward-away-witches which is an excellent read and gives more detail.
Robert Burns poem ‘Tam O’Shanter’ gives a graphic, fictional, account of a witches’ coven presided over by the Devil (auld Nick) himself which features ‘wee, unchristen’d bairns‘:
And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance; Nae cotillion brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. A winnock-bunker in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast; A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge: He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.— Coffins stood round, like open presses, That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses; And by some devilish cantraip slight Each in its cauld hand held a light.— By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer’s banes in gibbet airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted; Five scymitars, wi’ murder crusted; A garter, which a babe had strangled; A knife, a father’s throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o’ life bereft, The grey hairs yet stack to the heft; Wi’ mair o’ horrible and awefu’, Which even to name wad be unlawfu’.
I talked more about Tam O’Shanter and the Cutty Sark here and to read the whole poem see below. Please do have a look and when you read it read it quick and don’t worry about how to pronounce it or understand it, just enjoy the ride!
