Cornish Cunning-folk

CORNISH CUNNING-FOLK

Witchcraft beliefs both supported and were sustained by the group of folk-magic practitioners called cunning-folk, who thrived in Cornwall into the early twentieth century.

Cunning-folk were the multi-faceted practitioners of the occult arts, who, from as early as the sixteenth century, were to be found living in or around towns and villages across the country. Most of them specialised in detecting and removing the malevolent effects of witchcraft. In this role people turned to them when they became sick of mysterious, untreatable illnesses, or had animals ill, demanding some idea of who had bewitched them and what they might do to break the spell. Cunning-folk were popularly known variously as conjurors, cunning-men and women, witch-detectors, wise-men and women, and wizards. In Cornwall, from the 1850s onwards, the word Peller was also used to describe them, which was a Cornish dialect word, mostly restricted to the far west. They also offered a wider occult service besides witch-detection, such as fortune telling, divination in its various forms for the finding of lost or stolen goods, reading palms, and they also dabbled a little in the charming of common skin diseases. Some offered skills as herbalists. As they were offering a service, using the skills and powers that they had learned and acquired, conjurors charged for their expertise, usually anything from a few shillings to a few pounds, depending on the service provided.

While many people visited cunning-folk in search of cures, some conjurors also visited neighbourhoods offering prophylactics for the coming year, in effect running protection rackets and threatened ruination if the charms were refused. A conjuror's clientele was fairly varied but consisted mainly of farmers whose livelihoods, then as now, depended upon the continued welfare of their animals. While farmers had access to veterinary medicine, undefined persistent illness amongst their cattle led to suspicions of witchcraft and took them to their local conjuror for a cure. Most consultations resulted in the farmer being given powders or salt to sprinkle over their animals and fields, at the same time repeating verses given by the conjuror. The powders were usually prescribed for use at specific hours of the day, when the ill-wish was said to take effect.

Conjurors also provided written charms to their clients that drew upon magic books published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft of 1584 was a particular favourite as it contained a range of magical symbols and incantations that conjurors could copy onto paper or parchment to sell to clients during a consultation. In this respect 'cunning-craft' was very much a textual tradition.The most commonly prescribed charm was the word 'Abracadabra,' which was regarded as a potent weapon against bewitchment and usually written as a kind of inverted pyramid, leaving out a letter on each line:

The Cornish folklorist William Bottrell (1816-1881) also reckoned that cunning-folk collected earth from graves, which they bagged up and offered as charms to be worn around people's necks.