WITCH-BOTTLES

One response to illness, where its cause could be ascribed to witchcraft, was the so-called witch-bottle - a form of counter-magic that usually consisted of samples of the urine, hair and nail-clippings of the victim placed into a bottle that could reverse an ill-wish and so restore health to the afflicted.

The witch-bottle was an English innovation of sixteenth century date and owes something to the northern European practice of burying jugs and bottles beneath thresholds and hearthstones as a protective charm for houses. The earliest known witch-bottles that have been discovered were all found thus and consisted of decayed human remains within stoneware jugs, mostly the type known as Bellarmine Jars (so named after the face moulded on the neck of the Jugs that were said to resemble the features of the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine). The method by which a witch-bottle might be made was first described in print in Joseph Blagrave's Astrological Practice of Physick, in 1671. As one of several means to overcome a witch's curse, Blagrave advised that:

Another way is to stop the urine of the Patient, close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins or needles, with a little white Salt, keeping the urine always warm; if you let it remain long in the bottle it will endanger the witches life: for I have found by experience that they will be grievously tormented.

The reason for the witch's discomfort, and even her eventual demise, 'is because there is a part of the vital spirit of the Witch in it, for such is the subtlety of the Devil, that he will not suffer the Witch to infuse any poysonous matter into the body of man or beast, without some of the Witches blood mingled with it.' In other words, by cursing the witch establishes a magical link between herself and her victim: a conduit along which retaliation becomes possible. As well as burying the bottles, a more dramatic and immediate remedy was to heat the bottle over a fire, ensuring that the stopper did not pop out. A sufficiently hot bottle would burst and the witch was believed to endure a sudden, painful death - to the relief of her bewitched victim.

The witch-bottle became a favourite prescription of the cunning-folk, or conjurors, who were specialists in undoing the baleful effects of witchcraft, and the practice became widespread across much of England, especially in the South, and it is with Cornwall that we must now concern ourselves.

The earliest reference to the usage of a witch-bottle in the Duchy is a probably unique instruction for the manufacture of one that appears to have been given to a heavily pregnant Thomasine Leverton of St. Merryn in 1701 by a now unknown local conjuror to whom she had probably resorted after becoming ill, her pregnancy no doubt causing her anxiety. The instruction, written in a firm hand, is worth reproducing verbatim:

For Thamson Leverton on Saturday next being the 17th of this Instant September any time that day take about a pint of your owne Urine and make it almost scalding hot then Emtie it into a stone Jugg with a narrow Mouth then put into it so Much white Salt as you can take up with the Thumb and two forefingers of your lift hand and three new nails with their points down wards, their points being first made very sharp then stop the mouth of the Jugg very close with a piece of Tough cley and bind a piece of Leather firm over the stop then put the Jugg into warm Embers and keep him there 9 or 10 days and nights following so that it go not stone cold all that mean time day nor night and your private Enemies will never after have any power upon you either in Body or Goods, So be it.

This remarkable text, so like that of Blagrave's, was probably adapted from that work, and indicates that its author either owned, or at least had access to, the Astrological Practice. We do not know if Thomasine Leverton carried out the conjuror's instructions for her relief, although she did give birth to a daughter two months later. Physical evidence of witch-bottles is entirely lacking (to my knowledge) in Cornwall until the Victorian era when several were recovered from their hiding places. Many more buried bottles have undoubtedly been found over the years, but have gone unrecorded and been destroyed. Any that were heated and burst would have left no distinct traces archaeologically. Quite a number more witch-bottles have been discovered in Cornwall during the twentieth century, many of them provoking curiosity and even fear.