The cunning folk were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic in Europe from the medieval period to the early 20th century. In Britain they were known by a variety of names in different regions of the country, including wise men and wise women, pellars, wizards, dyn hysbys, and sometimes white witches.
Cunning folk practised folk and low magic – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial magic – which they learned through the study of grimoires.Davies 2003. p. x. Primarily using spells and charms as a part of their profession, they were most commonly employed to use their magic to combat malevolent witchcraft, to locate criminals, missing persons or stolen property, for fortune telling, for healing, for treasure hunting and to influence people to fall in love. Belonging "to the world of popular belief and custom", the cunning folk's magic has been defined as being "concerned not with the mysteries of the universe and the empowerment of the magus [as ceremonial magic usually is], so much as with practical remedies for specific problems."Hutton 1999. p. 84. However, other historians have noted that in some cases, there was apparently an "experimental or 'spiritual' dimension" to their magical practices, something which was possibly shamanic in nature.Wilby 2005. p. 05.
Although the British cunning folk were in almost all cases Christian themselves, certain Christian theologians and Church authorities believed that, being practitioners of magic, the cunning folk were in league with the Devil and as such were akin to the more overtly Satanic and malevolent witches. Partly because of this, laws were enacted across England, Scotland and Wales that often condemned cunning folk and their magical practices, but there was no widespread persecution of them akin to the witch hunt, largely because most common people firmly distinguished between the two: witches were seen as being harmful and cunning folk as useful.Davies 2003. pp. 7–13.
Comparable figures were found in other parts of Western Europe: in France, such terms as and were used for them, whilst in the Netherlands they were known as or , in Germany as and in Denmark as . In Spain they were curanderos whilst in Portugal they were known as .Davies 2003. p. 163. It is widely agreed by historians and folklorists, such as Willem de Blécourt,De Blécourt 1994. Robin BriggsBriggs 1996. and Owen Davies, that the term "cunning folk" could be applied to all of these figures as well to reflect a pan-European tradition.
Societal role In Britain in the late medieval and Early Modern periods, folk magic was widely popular. Many individuals knew of some magical charms and spells, but there were also professionals who dealt in magic, including charmers, fortune tellers, astrologers and cunning folk, the last of whom were said to "possess a broader and deeper knowledge of such techniques and more experience in using them" than the average person; it was also believed that they "embodied or could work with supernatural power which greatly increased the effectiveness of the operations concerned."Hutton 1999. p. 86.
The terms "cunning man" and "cunning woman" were most widely used in southern England, the Midlands, and in Wales.Hutton 1999. p. 85. Such people were also frequently known across England as "wizards", "wise men" or "wise women", or in southern England and Wales as "conjurers" or as "" in the Welsh language.Davies 2003. p. 184. In Cornwall they were sometimes referred to as "pellars", which some etymologists suggest originated from the term "expellers", referring to the practice of expelling evil spirits. Nineteenth-century folklorists often used the term "white witch" to refer to cunning folk, although this was infrequently used amongst the ordinary people themselves, as for them the term "witch" had general connotations of malevolence and evil.
Demographics The number of cunning folk in Britain at any one time is uncertain. Nevertheless historian Owen Davies has speculated that, based on his own research into English cunning folk (which excluded those in Scotland and Wales), that "Up until the mid nineteenth century there may have been as many as several thousand working in England at any given time."Davies 2003. pp. 67–68. Although there was a twentieth-century stereotype that cunning folk usually lived and worked in rural areas of Britain, evidence shows that there were also many in towns and cities. Around two-thirds of recorded cunning folk in Britain were male,Davies 2003. pp. 68–69. although their female counterparts were "every bit as popular and commercially successful as the men, and indeed this was one of the few means by which ordinary women could achieve a respected and independent position" in the British society of the time.
The cunning folk of Britain were often from the societal class that included artisans, tradesmen, and farmers, and as such were commonly at least semi-literate and of a higher social position than common labourers. In many cases they continued in their ordinary line of work alongside earning money as a professional cunning man or woman. In almost all cases, cunning folk worked either alone, as a solitary magical practitioner, or with one other person, such as a spouse or sibling. The only known exception was in early nineteenth-century Manchester, where several cunning men used to meet in a group, centred around the most prominent of their members, a cunning fellow called Rawlinson.Hutton 1999. p. 98. This method of working alone was one factor that separated the cunning folk from the stereotype of witches then prevalent in Britain, which often held that these witches met together in groups, sometimes known as covens, and at times flew through the air to get to their meeting points.
Becoming a cunning person
In most cases, it seems that individuals set themselves up as cunning folk with no former practice or training, although others came from a family background of professional magical practitioners. One of the most prominent examples of a family dynasty of cunning people was the Harries family from Cwrt y Cadno in Wales: Henry Harries (1739–1805) was a yeoman farmer who had interests in astrology and medicine but did not practice as a cunning man, whilst his son John (1785–1839) and two grandsons Henry and John instead became professionals in the field.Hutton 1999. p. 103. As Owen Davies remarked, "There are a number of reasons why people may have wanted to become cunning-folk. The desire for money, power or social prestige, and even to do good, all undoubtedly played their part."Davies 2003. p. 84. Some practitioners genuinely believed they had magical powers, while some later admitted in court that they had no such powers but were simply pretending that they did to fool people for their money.Davies 2003. p. 90. Indeed, there was a great deal of variability amongst the British cunning folk, with historian Ronald Hutton remarking that "they appear as a remarkably heterogeneous collection of individuals, divided by at least as many characteristics as those which they had in common."Hutton 1999. p. 90.
"Cunning-folk operated in a competitive market where reputations and first impressions were very important", and as such often worked on their personal promotion. Some were known to travel relatively large distances to visit their clients as well as making calls during the night if requested.Davies 2003. pp. 112–113. Some, though by no means all, were also known to wear "striking costume or home decorations" to enhance their reputations as magical individuals--Hutton 1999. p. 89. a nineteenth-century cunning woman, for instance, might wear a conical hat and a robe with mystical signs on it, as well as hanging herbs and papers from the ceiling of her home. Similarly, James "Cunning" Murrell, the nineteenth-century cunning man of Hadleigh in south-east Essex, wore iron goggles and carried a whalebone umbrella whenever he went out, whilst Mother Merne, the late 19th and early 20th-century wise woman of Milborne Down in Dorset, kept guinea pigs, black hens, a black goat and a black cat; the cat would sit on her shoulder during consultations with clients.Hutton 1999. pp. 87–89.
Services The cunning folk typically performed several different services in their local communities, using what they claimed to be their own magical powers.
Opposing witchcraft
One of the most common services that the cunning folk provided was in combating the effects of malevolent witchcraft and the curses which these witches had allegedly placed upon people. Alongside this, they were also known at times for identifying witches, and in this manner they were "the only healers to offer a comprehensive package of anti-witch measures."Davies 2003. p. 103. British cunning folk were known to use a variety of methods to cure someone of malevolent sorcery, including tackling the witch either physically or through the law courts, breaking the spell over the individual by magical means, and by using charms and potions to remove the witchcraft from the afflicted person's body.Davies 2003. p. 106. As historian Owen Davies noted, "Most cunning-folk employed a multi-pronged approach to curing witchcraft, using a combination of written charms, magic rituals, prayers and herbal medicines, thereby appealing to the physical, psychological and spiritual needs of the sick."Davies 2003. p. 109.
One of the best known means by which the cunning folk opposed witchcraft was through the use of witch bottles; ceramic bottles containing such items as urine, nails, hair and nail clippings which it was believed, when put together, would cause harm to the malevolent witch.Davies 2003. pp. 108–109. Another commonly used method was to take the heart of an animal, and to pierce it with pins, to do harm to the witch, whilst other cunning folk preferred to make dolls of the witch out of rags and other materials and then pierce them with pins, again with the intention of inflicting physical harm on the witch, and breaking their bewitchment.Hutton 1999. p. 96.
Amongst the common people who often went to the cunning folk for aid, these magical practitioners were seen as being very much distinct from witches; as Davies noted, to the average person "witches were evil but cunning-folk were useful".Davies 2003. p. 13. Some theologians and figures of Church authority nonetheless believed that the cunning-folk, in practising magic, were also, like the witches, following the Devil, a malevolent supernatural entity in Christian mythology. Such a viewpoint was not constrained to any one particular form of Christianity in this period, but was found amongst the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church of England and also various forms of Protestantism. Some early Quakers, a Protestant denomination founded in the seventeenth century, were particularly vocal against the cunning folk, perhaps because they themselves were accused by their critics of using sorcery to attract new members, and so wanted to heavily distance themselves from such practices.Davies 2003. pp. 36–37.
Locating property and criminals