Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My regular co host Joe
Speaker 1: is out on parental leave. But today I'm going to
Speaker 1: be chatting with independent researcher into the archaeology of folk magic,
Speaker 1: Brian Hoggart. He's the author of the excellent book Magical
Speaker 1: House Protection The Archaeology of counter Witchcraft, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's jump right into the interview. Hi, Brian,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on the show. So much of your work,
Speaker 1: and certainly your twenty nineteen book, Magical House Protections, revolves
Speaker 1: around the archaeology of counter witchcraft artifacts secreted uh in
Speaker 1: many cases within historic homes. So before we get into
Speaker 1: the varieties and the particulars, what parts of the world
Speaker 1: and what time periods are we predominantly dealing with here, Well,
Speaker 1: it's actually worldwide, and I think it's been going on forever,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, because humans seem to innately
Speaker 1: believe in the power of some kind of supernatural evil
Speaker 1: and they fear it wherever they exist, whether it's sort
Speaker 1: of tribal society, is all up to sort of quite
Speaker 1: sophisticated societies, and so it's been happening for as long
Speaker 1: as humans have been around. I think I want to
Speaker 1: come back to specifics in detail later, but but what generally,
Speaker 1: what sorts of objects are we talking about and where
Speaker 1: do we tend to find them positioned in? Okay, so
Speaker 1: I normally work with Western Europe, but also receive reports
Speaker 1: of objects from much further afield as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: within the home, we're talking mainly about hearts and thresholds.
Speaker 1: So wherever there's a fireplace or a chimney, that tends
Speaker 1: to be the aime point of focus for a lot
Speaker 1: of this a lot of these objects and practices. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's because the chimney is always open to the
Speaker 1: sky because it kind of has to be, and so
Speaker 1: it's also the most vulnerable point in the building for
Speaker 1: that reason, so at night people fear things coming down
Speaker 1: the chimney and also thresholds. So windows and doors obviously
Speaker 1: are also points where the house could kind of leak essentially,
Speaker 1: and they would often be protected. And yeah, but literally
Speaker 1: any boundary point within a house, any precious object or
Speaker 1: precious person or precious artifact, can you know you can
Speaker 1: find that people have gone to some efforts to protect them.
Speaker 1: I hadn't connected the darts and this stil just now
Speaker 1: about mentioning the hearth as being an entry point. I
Speaker 1: guess we see this reflected at least distantly in traditions
Speaker 1: of Santa Claus entering a home through the hearth. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: um in indeed, that goes even further than that, really,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it is the idea of some energy coming
Speaker 1: down the chimney. But but one of the types of
Speaker 1: objects that we often find in homes is concealed shoes.
Speaker 1: And obviously at Christmas you you hanging stocking by the
Speaker 1: by the mantelpiece, which is a similar kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of trying to trap some good energy
Speaker 1: instead of some bad energy. Now, early in the book,
Speaker 1: you do a tremendous and uh and seasonally appropriate, I
Speaker 1: think job of describing what the experience of church may
Speaker 1: have been like, Especially to a pre Reformation English commoner.
Speaker 1: It sounds incredibly spooky and and really and really not
Speaker 1: at all that comforting. I was wondering if you might
Speaker 1: sort of summarize just a little bit of the energy here. YEA,
Speaker 1: So when in the medieval Britain, when churches were still
Speaker 1: essentially Catholic before the Protestant Reformation, um church rituals were
Speaker 1: usually conducted in Latin, so most commoners or most parishioners
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily understand the language that was being spoken. And
Speaker 1: in fact, it's quite widely assested that a lot of
Speaker 1: priests didn't understand the words of the Latin rituals either.
Speaker 1: Then they learned a lot of them by rote, so
Speaker 1: they just they knew the sounds, they knew how to
Speaker 1: emulate a Latin ritual rather than perform one. And those
Speaker 1: rituals would take place behind a screen which was called
Speaker 1: the rude screen, which is basically a wooden screen that's
Speaker 1: been pierced in a decorative manner so you could see behind,
Speaker 1: you can see through it, but not really clearly, a
Speaker 1: little bit gauzy and um. And there would also be
Speaker 1: incense being burned as well, and candle light, so you've
Speaker 1: got a sort of spooky language that you don't understand
Speaker 1: Latin conducted in a kind of foggy, candlelit misty environment,
Speaker 1: which is quite spooky, as you say. And on top
Speaker 1: of the rude screen, which was called a rude screen,
Speaker 1: because it would have the rude on top of it,
Speaker 1: which is the image of Christ that judgment day quite foreboding.
Speaker 1: And of course a medieval church would often be decorated
Speaker 1: with art, sometimes relating to the devil, sometimes relating to saints,
Speaker 1: So they all kinds of supernatural imagery all around you,
Speaker 1: as well as the candle lighte the incense, the slightly
Speaker 1: opaque view of the ritual. Yeah, it's it's really quite
Speaker 1: a magical environment, and I think that that's how a
Speaker 1: lot of people felt about it. Yeah. You mentioned in
Speaker 1: this section that, for instance, one might not have like
Speaker 1: a clear idea of how the figure of Jesus factors
Speaker 1: into everything, which of course is very easy to take
Speaker 1: for granted today, especially with among modern Christians and people
Speaker 1: in Western society. But it's the idea here that you
Speaker 1: would have sort of the vague structure of the Christian religion,
Speaker 1: and then just the common individual is then having to
Speaker 1: sort of fill in the gaps with other supernatural ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to an extent, I think it would vary quite a
Speaker 1: lot depending on how literate someone was or wasn't, and
Speaker 1: how inquiring mind was as to whether they were actually
Speaker 1: asking their priests the answer to any of these questions
Speaker 1: or not. But yeah, I think there's sort of overarching
Speaker 1: feeling that a God exists, and they would hear about Jesus,
Speaker 1: and they would hear about Mary, etcetera, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know what their relationship was. So I'm sure I've
Speaker 1: read an account before where was someone was asked, you know,
Speaker 1: do you know who God and Jesus are? And they
Speaker 1: would think that isn't Jesus, God's uncle, And they would
Speaker 1: be really unclear about the familiar relationships that that we
Speaker 1: might now think exists between them. So how does the
Speaker 1: Reformation change this scenario? Well, technically it's the reformations because
Speaker 1: there was like several attempts to kind of move it along.
Speaker 1: But yeah, essentially it was about trying to dispel some
Speaker 1: of the superstitions that might have aggregated around belief in
Speaker 1: God and Jesus over the years. I think there was
Speaker 1: about a thousand years worth of people sort of augmenting
Speaker 1: what was going on in churches with their own ideas,
Speaker 1: and the Reformation were supposed to be about stripping all
Speaker 1: that away and getting back to the actual text of
Speaker 1: the Bible, particularly the New Testament, not the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: and trying to worship Jesus principally um, and also God
Speaker 1: that you know, with the whole Trinity, the Holy Ghost,
Speaker 1: and pretty much getting rid of Mary um, and getting
Speaker 1: rid of all the saints and all these other things
Speaker 1: that have kind of grown in importance over the thousand
Speaker 1: or tho years before. So how does the period of
Speaker 1: witchcraft persecution factor into all of this, um, Because I'm
Speaker 1: to understanding that much of this takes place in post
Speaker 1: medieval times, no matter how much we might want to
Speaker 1: shove it back into prior centuries. That's a that's an
Speaker 1: interesting one because I think that belief in witchcraft and
Speaker 1: beliefs about witchcraft actually didn't really change very much during
Speaker 1: the period of witchcraft persecution. There were some new ones
Speaker 1: brought in, but essentially the core beliefs about witchcraft were
Speaker 1: essentially the same, in my opinion, They just became magnified.
Speaker 1: And that was partly through the popularity of new pamphlets
Speaker 1: and literature and the printing press, you know, the advent
Speaker 1: of the printing press um, and partly through I guess
Speaker 1: um in a way, I think the stripping away of
Speaker 1: some of the superstitious aspects or the saintly aspects as well,
Speaker 1: you know, where you could appeal for help as particular saints,
Speaker 1: and all of that being stripped away post Reformation, I
Speaker 1: think meant that people had a bit more of a
Speaker 1: need to address supernatural feelings in their lives almost, And
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that witchcraft beliefs and worry about it,
Speaker 1: we're almost they sort of came into the vacuum, if
Speaker 1: you like, created by the absence of a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that people used to do pre Reformation. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a fairly contentious argument. It's not that simple. You know.
Speaker 1: It's probably more to do with the printing press than
Speaker 1: anything else. And the fact that sort of very salacious
Speaker 1: and exciting story reads about witches and devils were being
Speaker 1: circulated in pamphlet form and then literate people, people who
Speaker 1: could read with then uh, you know, regurgitate these two
Speaker 1: people who couldn't and in this kind of heightened awareness
Speaker 1: of the fact that there could be more danger around
Speaker 1: than there was before concerning witchcraft. So you discuss some
Speaker 1: of this in the book as being like the elite
Speaker 1: understanding of witchcraft, and I guess ultimately demonology right, that's
Speaker 1: that's again coming down through printed material. And then is
Speaker 1: it kind of like bumping heads and then meshing with
Speaker 1: ideas that would have been more commonly held among more
Speaker 1: common and and and less literate people. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of, Um, we get we get this kind of
Speaker 1: very much. History gives this more of a top down
Speaker 1: look at what went on, whereas archaology tends us to
Speaker 1: give us a bottom up kind of look at what
Speaker 1: went on. And and really, other than Ralph Merrifield before
Speaker 1: before me Um and some of his colleagues have been
Speaker 1: doing work but not published. Um, there wasn't really an
Speaker 1: awful lot of people looking at witchcraft from the archaeology angle.
Speaker 1: So it's all we've ever seen really is from the
Speaker 1: history side, top down, and I think an awful lot
Speaker 1: has been neglected or missed for that reason. And so
Speaker 1: you know, these ideas like like for example, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about concealed shoes. Again, some of our earliest examples of
Speaker 1: that from the fourteenth century, but we've also got examples
Speaker 1: of it from the nineteen seventies, you know, and so
Speaker 1: so it's been a it's been a complete continuum, you know,
Speaker 1: the which the period of the Witch Trials, as people
Speaker 1: think of it, came and went, but this practice has
Speaker 1: steadily been carrying on the whole time. You know. It's
Speaker 1: you know, you can say that it had a period
Speaker 1: of magnification during the witch Trials, Yeah, but it's hasn't
Speaker 1: gone away and it didn't leave, you know, and it's um,
Speaker 1: it's always been there. So the common people, if you like,
Speaker 1: the sort of illiterate people, maybe continue doing what they
Speaker 1: were doing. And then they started to hear about these
Speaker 1: apparently new dangers or more powerful witches, or that there
Speaker 1: was some kind of panic going on, and it just
Speaker 1: raised everybody's fears. So there was always some fear. You know,
Speaker 1: there was general fear of the dark, general fear of
Speaker 1: the supernatural, especially particularly about around sleep, you know, because
Speaker 1: how could you protect your house when you're asleep. So
Speaker 1: that's one of the big worries that people had. But
Speaker 1: but you know, during the period of the some people
Speaker 1: call it the witch craze. I don't really like that term,
Speaker 1: but you know, the kind of excitement about which is
Speaker 1: obviously fear was heightened, so people did more things to
Speaker 1: try and keep them away. And that's when you know,
Speaker 1: for example, witch bottles were a direct, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: a direct response to to the witch trials, to the
Speaker 1: period of heightened fear. But but the rest that all
Speaker 1: the other things seemed to have just become magnified, if
Speaker 1: you're like more important during that time. But they've always
Speaker 1: been there. Now you've you've mentioned which Bible, so that
Speaker 1: this might be a good time to to to ask
Speaker 1: what is a witch bottle? What would it contain? And
Speaker 1: where were they found? Okay, so witch bottles were there's
Speaker 1: a there's an awful lot of detail here. They were
Speaker 1: essentially German stoneware bottles, which in Germany were known as
Speaker 1: Bartman's stoneware, nothing to do with the Simpsons. And basically
Speaker 1: Germans had this the ability to make stoneware, which is
Speaker 1: this non porous, really hard bottle, which in Britain we
Speaker 1: couldn't make. We only had an earthenware. So so basically
Speaker 1: when we found out about stoneware, we wanted these bottles,
Speaker 1: and so they were shipped over by hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: usually filled with beer or wine, and that beer or
Speaker 1: wine would be consumed, then the bottle will be cast away.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, because these bottles were so good
Speaker 1: that often be reused again and again and again. But
Speaker 1: the significant thing about them is that they have a
Speaker 1: really evil looking mask of a man on it, so
Speaker 1: they look quite anthropomorphic. So these bottles are the salt
Speaker 1: glaze which gives some a kind of leathery skin like appearance.
Speaker 1: Then they have this beastly looking face on the neck,
Speaker 1: and then they have a big ground belly which often
Speaker 1: has a kind of armorial shield on it, which sometimes
Speaker 1: looks a little bit occult or a little bit kind
Speaker 1: of a spooky and sometimes as well they're quite sort
Speaker 1: of petal like, quite flower like, which is which resembles
Speaker 1: another one of the marks that often crop up in
Speaker 1: this area of study as well. And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were going to do anything magical,
Speaker 1: you would want to use this bottle because it looks anthropomorphic.
Speaker 1: It's quite spooky looking bottle. You couldn't imagine a better
Speaker 1: bottle for doing magic with. Put it that way if
Speaker 1: you want, if you're seeing at home and you wanted
Speaker 1: to do something, so anyway, these bottles we quite often
Speaker 1: find them underneath the floor, sometimes up to a meter deep,
Speaker 1: underneath them flags there in front of a hearth, or
Speaker 1: directly underneath half sometimes integrated into an ingle nook into
Speaker 1: the wall, and they're often upside down in the ground.
Speaker 1: We're not entirely sure why the upside down thing happens.
Speaker 1: But inside the boss ors this is when we x
Speaker 1: ray them, they often show evidence of lots of pins
Speaker 1: and nails that have a created or aggregated and coagulated
Speaker 1: around the neck, whether whether the gravity has just taking
Speaker 1: them down towards the neck. And then when we open
Speaker 1: them and have a look inside, they've often got some liquid,
Speaker 1: a big lock of hair, sometimes of thorns or other pins. Importantly,
Speaker 1: the pins and nails which are found inside are usually
Speaker 1: deliberately bent as well. And when I say deliberately, we
Speaker 1: have assessed the angle of the bend, and it seems
Speaker 1: like in many cases these nails and pins all been
Speaker 1: bent around the same iron pole. So someone's deliberately sat
Speaker 1: there and gone around lots of pins and nails before
Speaker 1: adding them into the bottle. So there's clearly an element
Speaker 1: of sort of ritual or like a quite a lot
Speaker 1: of effort goes into putting it together, and then of
Speaker 1: course you have to dig this really deep hole to
Speaker 1: to put it down there. And so essentially what we've
Speaker 1: got is an anthropomorphic bottle, so it looks like a
Speaker 1: human and inside it we have the liquid, it turns
Speaker 1: out through analysis is human urine, and so we've got
Speaker 1: a humans urine in there. We often also have nail clippings,
Speaker 1: nail pairings in there, a big lock of hair, and
Speaker 1: then all these pins and nails that have been deliberately
Speaker 1: and meticulously bent before being added into the bottle, which
Speaker 1: has then been sealed with a bung or a cork
Speaker 1: and then buried upside down under the earth, covered over
Speaker 1: and a big flagstone put on top of it. So
Speaker 1: it's quite an effort, isn't it Quite a lot of effort, right,
Speaker 1: And what what what I think is happening here is
Speaker 1: that because of all of these bottles are found by
Speaker 1: the hearth, or in the immediate vicinity of the hearth,
Speaker 1: so that we again we've got this focus on the hearth.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is, if something bad like a
Speaker 1: spell or an energy or maybe a demon or something
Speaker 1: like that is potentially traveling down your chimney trying to
Speaker 1: attack you, it's plunging down the chimney trying to find you,
Speaker 1: it detects this human like figure that smells like you.
Speaker 1: It's got your hair and it, it's got your finger
Speaker 1: nail clippings in it, it's got your urine in it,
Speaker 1: and it dives down to attack you. And when it
Speaker 1: gets inside the bottle, it then gets impaled on all
Speaker 1: these dead pins, which you've deliberately killed one by one
Speaker 1: before putting them into the bottles. So there's kind of
Speaker 1: like the ghosts of pins there to work against the
Speaker 1: ghosts that's trying to attack you. And so there are
Speaker 1: some some bits of folklore that suggests that spirits and
Speaker 1: which is aren't very good at traveling backwards, so once
Speaker 1: they get into a spot, they find it difficult to
Speaker 1: get out. So maybe there's an element of that like
Speaker 1: a kind of trap as well. So like a trap
Speaker 1: slash impaling people, you know, a decoy that has a
Speaker 1: trap within it. That seems to be what's going on,
Speaker 1: but confusingly there is there are some texts that relate
Speaker 1: that talk about witch bottles that describe something different, right,
Speaker 1: So there are several texts in the late seventeenth century
Speaker 1: that talk about this idea of boiling a witch bottle
Speaker 1: that if you think you're being bewitched or if you
Speaker 1: know someone who's been bewitched. You can take a bottle
Speaker 1: and you can get them to urinate into it, and
Speaker 1: you can add some and nails to it and boil
Speaker 1: it on a fire. You've got to bug it up
Speaker 1: and boil it on a fire. And the idea is
Speaker 1: that this will that the bottle will act as kind
Speaker 1: of a substitute bladder for the you know, and by
Speaker 1: boiling it, you're causing pain to the witch. Because they
Speaker 1: had this belief that if you're bomber witched, there's something
Speaker 1: of the essence of the witch inside you as well.
Speaker 1: So so if you then urinate into this bottle and
Speaker 1: do something to it, it's going to have an effect
Speaker 1: on the witch. And so the the thinking is in
Speaker 1: these texts um that excruciating pain is course to the witch,
Speaker 1: who will then come seeking you out and will come
Speaker 1: knocking on your door begging for you to stop boiling
Speaker 1: the bottle, and in return you can barter your freedom
Speaker 1: from the spell, whatever spell has been put on you.
Speaker 1: And generally speaking, it says that if that fails, you
Speaker 1: should then bury the bottle. So that's interesting, but it's
Speaker 1: different to what we find in the buried bottles. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the buried bottles obviously have hair, which isn't meant
Speaker 1: and in any of these texts. The texts also don't
Speaker 1: mention bending the pins to kill them if you like,
Speaker 1: you know. So what we've got is two separate ways
Speaker 1: of working that are thought to be behind these two practices.
Speaker 1: The boiling things seems to be depending on the idea
Speaker 1: that you can cause pain to the witch is bladder
Speaker 1: by sort of acting upon a substance that might be
Speaker 1: infused partly with the witch, whereas the ones that are
Speaker 1: buried seemed to be acting as a decoy in a trap.
Speaker 1: And I think that that practice, the one where the
Speaker 1: bottles are buried, actually resembles and has a lot in
Speaker 1: common with other practices like shoes and like some of
Speaker 1: the marks and all sorts, whereas the one with the
Speaker 1: boiling seems to be well. One of my friends who
Speaker 1: was studying that called dr Annie Swaite. She was studying
Speaker 1: it for a long time, and she called it the
Speaker 1: urinary experiment and saw it as a kind of pseudo
Speaker 1: medical practice that people at the time thought that supernatural
Speaker 1: energies were real, and that this was a way of
Speaker 1: potentially removing them from someone you know, they were sort
Speaker 1: of using medical theory, if you like, to try and
Speaker 1: remove the presence of a witch, whereas the one where
Speaker 1: you bury them seems to have more in common with
Speaker 1: folk practices that are going on for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure, you know, they certainly both use
Speaker 1: the same type of bottle. They both emerge about the
Speaker 1: same time, which is the third quarter of the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century or there about, um, but two separate practices. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if you know that you have the written
Speaker 1: one that's more about medicine and science, and you have
Speaker 1: the the other one that buried one that's like more
Speaker 1: going with the the real old school kind of folk
Speaker 1: magic to how how do you get rid of a witch? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just just so so amazing and and and so
Speaker 1: like very roughly speaking, like what what sort of numbers
Speaker 1: are we talking about in terms of surviving witch bottles
Speaker 1: that have been recovered since I last started counting? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think when I published there was about a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty odd Bella means, which is the German German
Speaker 1: type ones, and there was probably another eighty or ninety
Speaker 1: of glass ones that I had on the file, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if the German stoneware ones was
Speaker 1: easily an access of two hundred by out with the
Speaker 1: amount of reports. But but you have to bear in
Speaker 1: mind that these things are only ever found when someone
Speaker 1: demolishes an old building or excavates under an old building.
Speaker 1: So there's probably a vast amount more that have been
Speaker 1: discovered that just weren't reported. Because these bottles are actually
Speaker 1: quite valuable, so you know, you can sell you can
Speaker 1: sell one that wasn't used as a witch bottle for
Speaker 1: potentially four or five dred pounds on an eBay, and
Speaker 1: if it was used as a witch bottle, I've seen
Speaker 1: people selling them for up to fifteen hundred pounds, so
Speaker 1: you know, so, yeah, they're reasonably valuable when it comes
Speaker 1: to the black market. So I think a lot of
Speaker 1: builders and homeowners when they find these they're they're curious,
Speaker 1: but they also see an opportunity for making a bit
Speaker 1: of money. And and so we don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: many there were, but I wouldn't be surprised if they
Speaker 1: were maybe fifty times more common than my figures suggest, No,
Speaker 1: maybe even more than that. Yeah, thank now we've twice
Speaker 1: mentioned shoes so if you, if you would explain how
Speaker 1: to shoes factor in office, because on one hand, we
Speaker 1: have the witch bottle here, which you know, once once explained,
Speaker 1: has all of these obvious occult and supernatural aspects to it.
Speaker 1: But but but shoes, So we we take for granted
Speaker 1: any number of us just have shoes probably piled towards
Speaker 1: the front of our house, and we don't attach any
Speaker 1: any kind of special importance to them, that's right, And
Speaker 1: that's because we have an amazing factory production system that
Speaker 1: makes them cheap and easy to buy. But once upon
Speaker 1: a time they were you know, artisan made things. And
Speaker 1: of course we do actually still have a culture of
Speaker 1: the professional artisan shoemaker still exists, and there's still people
Speaker 1: who care about the history of shoes and and still
Speaker 1: make very expensive made shoes. But of course, once upon
Speaker 1: a time that was the only kind of shoe you
Speaker 1: could get would be a handmade shoe, and they were
Speaker 1: quite expensive, and so they were repaired and repaired and
Speaker 1: repaired until you eventually could wouldn't you couldn't use them anymore, basically,
Speaker 1: so they were quite valuable in more ways than you
Speaker 1: can imagine now. But but yeah, they are that probably
Speaker 1: The most common object that's found in buildings is concealed shoes.
Speaker 1: They're usually concealed on their own. It's usually just one shoe.
Speaker 1: In the old days, shoes weren't made to fit a
Speaker 1: left foot and the right foot. They were just the same,
Speaker 1: and they would take the shape of the wearer's feet
Speaker 1: gradually over time. But these ones that we find, they
Speaker 1: are as I say, they're almost always an odd shoe.
Speaker 1: I think there's slightly less than ten percent I found
Speaker 1: as pairs, and they're almost always extremely well worn, because
Speaker 1: who would get rid of a brand new shoe with
Speaker 1: them being so expensive, like like I said before, And
Speaker 1: also they then wouldn't be able to if they hadn't
Speaker 1: taken the shape of the wearer's foot, they couldn't perform
Speaker 1: the function which I give which I suggest that they have,
Speaker 1: which is and not just me, other people too, but
Speaker 1: that they act as a kind of decoy, a bit
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with the witch bottle, that
Speaker 1: it's got some hair and some urine in it, so
Speaker 1: it kind of fools any evil energies that are looking
Speaker 1: for you into thinking that you're there. Um, it's the
Speaker 1: same idea with shoes that an evil entity or a
Speaker 1: spell or something negative trying to get into your house.
Speaker 1: It's seeking you to cause you harm. And it finds
Speaker 1: your shoe, which might have been on your foot for
Speaker 1: many years and has taken every you know, it's uniquely
Speaker 1: or shoe it wouldn't have anywhere anyone else. Coincidentally, this
Speaker 1: is also where the Cinderella myth comes from, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that she has become a unique thing to
Speaker 1: someone's foot. And and yeah, so it's so it then
Speaker 1: plunges down to attack the shoe as a decoy in it,
Speaker 1: and it attacks it instead of you. So it's essentially
Speaker 1: acting as a kind of lightning conductor. It's drawing negative
Speaker 1: energy away from you, which is great, isn't it. And
Speaker 1: the idea that it's kind of trap, trapping the energy
Speaker 1: inside it. Now, the idea that the shoe can act
Speaker 1: as a trap is weird, okay, but there is some
Speaker 1: kind of historical evidence for it. So there was a
Speaker 1: fourteenth century priest from England, from a little village called
Speaker 1: North Marston in Buckinghamshire, and he was when I say
Speaker 1: he was an unofficial saint, I mean he was never
Speaker 1: ever canonized by the Catholic Church. So people regarded him
Speaker 1: as a saint even though he wasn't actually one, and
Speaker 1: he has reputed to have cast the devil into a boot,
Speaker 1: which is a remarkable thing to do, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can imagine. But the interesting thing about John Shawan
Speaker 1: is that, even though he wasn't officially a saint, pilgrimages
Speaker 1: to his shrine. For a period of about two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years, was the second most popular shrine in Britain,
Speaker 1: and second only to Thomas A. Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was so popular that the monarchy in
Speaker 1: Britain stole his relics from the Church of North Marston
Speaker 1: and moved them to Windsor so that they could benefit
Speaker 1: from the money that the pilgrims brought to come and
Speaker 1: visit his shrine, and then those remains and relics of
Speaker 1: them been returned to Northomaston when his popularity waned. But
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is that the little pilgrim badges that
Speaker 1: people would pick up when they went to visit his shrine,
Speaker 1: all of them showing him holding a big boot with
Speaker 1: a little devil poking out of the top. And and
Speaker 1: we're talking hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions
Speaker 1: of people would have had a badge that showed a
Speaker 1: devil trapped in a boot. Yeah, and not just that,
Speaker 1: but an awful lot of churches had imagery obviously to
Speaker 1: do with all of the saints. He was an incredibly
Speaker 1: popular saint, and so many many churches would have had
Speaker 1: an image of john Shaw and holding a boot with
Speaker 1: a devil trapped in it. Um. So from the fourteenth
Speaker 1: century onwards, this was a really popular idea that you
Speaker 1: could trap a devil in a boot, and and and
Speaker 1: funny enough that some of our earliest examples come from
Speaker 1: that time. So back to the shoes themselves, As I say,
Speaker 1: sometimes you find them singly, sometimes you find find them
Speaker 1: in large groups. Sometimes you'll find they'll be a void
Speaker 1: in a house just through through some sort of quirk
Speaker 1: of instruction that people can drop a shoe down. And
Speaker 1: for example that plow sitting born in Kent, there was
Speaker 1: over a hundred shoes I believe collected from that building
Speaker 1: from four different deposition points, and those shoes have been
Speaker 1: dropped into those voids over generations. So subsequent owners of
Speaker 1: the building all carried on the same practice of putting
Speaker 1: old one shoes down the same holes and you end
Speaker 1: up with this record of footwear over over the ages,
Speaker 1: as well as evidence of people's desire to draw evil
Speaker 1: away from the people in the house. Now, what about
Speaker 1: dried cats, wide dried cats? Oh, the poor little cats.
Speaker 1: I love cats, So I would never do this to
Speaker 1: a cat, and I would never advocate anyone ever does
Speaker 1: this to a cat. This is a tradition from the past.
Speaker 1: We don't do it these days. So please don't go
Speaker 1: hiding cats in your houses people. But but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's really really common throughout the whole of Europe and
Speaker 1: Britain and Australia actually, and the USA, so we have
Speaker 1: examples from from all over. There's also an example that
Speaker 1: I have on record from Canada, but I don't have
Speaker 1: so many records from Canada. I've also got a record
Speaker 1: from Chili actually, So it's a very, very widespread and
Speaker 1: it seems to be. Earlier on I mentioned about people
Speaker 1: having been very concerned with who was or how was
Speaker 1: the house being protected while they slept, and so there's
Speaker 1: an element of this going on with cats. Because there
Speaker 1: semi nocturnal, they are quite mysterious in their behavior in
Speaker 1: certainly in British Isles, there was a belief about the
Speaker 1: which is familiar that was often focused on cats as well.
Speaker 1: So it's that kind of leans towards how mysteriously people
Speaker 1: thought about them. But yeah, essentially they're benevolent little creatures
Speaker 1: that are in our lives. They helped control pests and
Speaker 1: but also we must also consider the fact that they
Speaker 1: breed like wildfire if they're not new to it in
Speaker 1: spade as we do in the modern world. Um So, basically,
Speaker 1: there were too many cats, and they were semi nocturnal,
Speaker 1: generally helpful, and so people started to they fell naturally
Speaker 1: into a helpful role essentially, So a lot of these practices.
Speaker 1: One of the things you'll find in common with them
Speaker 1: is that people were thinking about how do we how
Speaker 1: do we affect something that's happening on the supernatural plane
Speaker 1: as it were. Okay, so most people weren't able to
Speaker 1: be supernatural. They weren't, which is all wizards, But there
Speaker 1: were these things happening to them that were coming from
Speaker 1: the supernatural plane, or they believed were happening to them
Speaker 1: from the supernatural plane, and so they had to find
Speaker 1: ways of affecting it, and they had to find special
Speaker 1: little recipes and special little practices that would have an
Speaker 1: impact on those things. So, for example, these old shoes
Speaker 1: that are no longer worth using, no longer longer worth
Speaker 1: keeping on your foot, are essentially dead shoes. So they've died,
Speaker 1: they've flipped over to the other side, so they're now
Speaker 1: effective against the other side, against the supernatural realm. If
Speaker 1: you're like and then with the witch bottles, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got a big lock of hair removed from your
Speaker 1: hair or nail pairings clipped off. These are parts of
Speaker 1: you that we're attached to you and we're considered to
Speaker 1: be alive, which are now dead because you're and so
Speaker 1: they're now on the other side, acting as a kind
Speaker 1: of allure or bait on the other side. And then
Speaker 1: the same thing with these nails. And then we come
Speaker 1: to the point where, in that way of thinking, here's
Speaker 1: a cat that's alive but friendly and can control pests.
Speaker 1: If we make it dead, if we flip it into
Speaker 1: the other side, we can hope that it continues that
Speaker 1: role on that side as a presence in the house.
Speaker 1: And so what I think is going on is that
Speaker 1: these cats are being essentially kind of sacrificed if you like,
Speaker 1: to the house to act as little protectors of the
Speaker 1: house while you sleep, because they're awake while you're asleep,
Speaker 1: and they're catching vermin and they're looking out for things
Speaker 1: that might come in that might harm you, like, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of pests, you know, exchange the word pests for spells,
Speaker 1: you know, and they' itt of energies coming in, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what people were doing. And there's
Speaker 1: also there's a little bit of I see. I think
Speaker 1: that the idea that I've just expressed you is probably
Speaker 1: the main one. But people have often thought about where
Speaker 1: the cats were killed as a foundation sacrifice, that you
Speaker 1: give a life to the house so that it went
Speaker 1: then take a life later by falling down on you.
Speaker 1: And I once had a very brief discussion with Terry
Speaker 1: Pratchett about dried cats, and that was that was his idea,
Speaker 1: was that he thought that was what was going on. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think it's more to do with this, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the role of a cat in death. I
Speaker 1: think it's more to do with what I said to
Speaker 1: you earlier about how, you know, you take some of
Speaker 1: the qualities of the cat and by essentially killing it
Speaker 1: but keeping it within the house. You've hopefully got a
Speaker 1: helper within your house who's going to even why would
Speaker 1: it want to help you if you've just taken its life, right,
Speaker 1: But I think that that was thinking that was going
Speaker 1: on there. And we find them in all sorts of
Speaker 1: places find them, Like the first one I ever came
Speaker 1: a cus was actually in a village I used to
Speaker 1: live in, which is weird because I've moved away. And
Speaker 1: then the first report that came through my website was
Speaker 1: of just a few streets away from where I used
Speaker 1: to live, and a dried cat was found but sandwiched
Speaker 1: in between some layers of thatch in a house. There
Speaker 1: was basically a sixteenth century cottage, but they think that
Speaker 1: the cat dates from a hundred years later. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was squashed quite flat, you know, the way, quite
Speaker 1: serious pressure have been put on it. There's no way
Speaker 1: it could have got there by itself. It had been
Speaker 1: placed there quite deliberately. And but yeah, we find others
Speaker 1: that are sometimes strapped to floor joists, you know, they
Speaker 1: literally could not have got their by accident. And there
Speaker 1: were others that I found, not not mere personally, but
Speaker 1: there was another one found sandwich between titles and plaster
Speaker 1: in the roof of a church clearly had been placed
Speaker 1: there by the builders. You know. That's another thing we're
Speaker 1: thinking about. Some of these some of these methods and
Speaker 1: practices were put there by the builders, and some were
Speaker 1: put there by the homeowners. So we sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're looking at an old I was looking at
Speaker 1: all the fines to get from an old house, which
Speaker 1: tried to discern, you know, which of them were put
Speaker 1: there by the builders and which were added later. So
Speaker 1: was there generally an idea that the builders were sort
Speaker 1: of on the side of the house and on the
Speaker 1: side of the occupants. Because I'm I'm reminded of something
Speaker 1: I was reading about in in Chinese traditions. I believe
Speaker 1: this was from a book by Philip A. kN about
Speaker 1: the Chinese Sorcery Scare of seventeen sixty eight, And in
Speaker 1: this one, a lot of it had to do with
Speaker 1: with written magical protections that were used during a during
Speaker 1: a home's construction to protect against potential curses leveled by
Speaker 1: the actual laborers against like the the owners or future
Speaker 1: occupants of the house. That's that's that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1: I quite you consern me that reference later, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read that one. But yeah, but yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: generally speaking in England for sure, because as far And
Speaker 1: tends to know the most about it. But in England
Speaker 1: it seems like it was an additional service that the
Speaker 1: builders could provide. Look it off that So, say you
Speaker 1: got two builders and you're trying to assess which ones
Speaker 1: do you want to pay to give them a contract
Speaker 1: to build your house. You know, one of them has
Speaker 1: clear expertise in marking the timbers in such a way
Speaker 1: that it will actors and you know that it will
Speaker 1: repel evil just through the timbers that have been put
Speaker 1: up there, you know. And so you're going to You're
Speaker 1: going to go with the builders that can help protect
Speaker 1: you in a supernatural way slightly more than you would
Speaker 1: another company that wasn't so good at doing that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's a it's another service that some builders offered,
Speaker 1: and but it's a bit more nuanced than that, because
Speaker 1: I think that you know, you might have somebody who
Speaker 1: is the principal builder might employ a cockplenter and a stonemason,
Speaker 1: and they might both have individual practices that they could do,
Speaker 1: and whether they would do them on that project or
Speaker 1: might depend on whether they liked you or not, or
Speaker 1: you know, how skilled they were in that in that field.
Speaker 1: So there's quite a few different, you know, elements at
Speaker 1: play here. I wouldn't say it's necessarily as simple as
Speaker 1: one builder would give you the all round service. You know,
Speaker 1: they give you their cat the marks that hell, this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And I think some of these practices
Speaker 1: were a direct response to people feeling that they've been
Speaker 1: bewitched as well, so that would have definitely come after
Speaker 1: the building have been put up. But there were certain
Speaker 1: things that certain marks in particular, and you know, I
Speaker 1: do I do think that builders leave shoes, for example,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they include glass bottles, sometimes empty ones in
Speaker 1: buildings as well as part of you in addition to
Speaker 1: some of the other mason's kind of traditions like the
Speaker 1: topping out ceremonies and things like that. But in terms
Speaker 1: of specific counter witchcraft, there was quite a few things
Speaker 1: builders and their trains people can do. Thank thank Now
Speaker 1: this is too big of a question, we can we
Speaker 1: can skip this one. But I was also fascinated by
Speaker 1: the whole topic of horse calls being included in foundations
Speaker 1: and in floors, because on one hand, it makes sense
Speaker 1: that it would line up with some of the things
Speaker 1: we've already talked about here, like the horses as an
Speaker 1: important animal and having an important role and for for
Speaker 1: for the humans that are doing this. But then there's
Speaker 1: this whole potential acoustic angle, right, Yeah, it's I've been
Speaker 1: grappling with the whole notion of horse skulls and the
Speaker 1: different theories that play for quite some time. I don't
Speaker 1: think I haven't quite finished thinking about it all yet,
Speaker 1: but but I think I've got more answers than I
Speaker 1: had before. Um So, when we were talking about cats
Speaker 1: earlier being nocturnal and people worried about who was looking
Speaker 1: after their house and they were asleep, I think that
Speaker 1: the horses play a role in that. And it's at
Speaker 1: me awhile to realize this, but basically, horses can or
Speaker 1: that they don't always choose to. They can sleep standing
Speaker 1: up and with their eyes open, so they can be
Speaker 1: there in a sleep state but look like they're awake,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're and they are basically in a
Speaker 1: shallow sleep. They're ready, ready for action and ready to
Speaker 1: be alert for the benefit of the other horses that
Speaker 1: they are with who might just be um, literally falling
Speaker 1: asleep on their back with their hoofs in the air.
Speaker 1: You know, some of them are like that, but there
Speaker 1: there'll be one or two of them that can be
Speaker 1: awaken this kind of light sleep with their eyes open.
Speaker 1: And I think that people knew that. So this idea
Speaker 1: of horses as incredibly vigilant creatures was I think part
Speaker 1: of what's going on. And then we also have the
Speaker 1: fact that if you take a horse's head and you
Speaker 1: d flesh it, to use a horrible word, U a
Speaker 1: d fleshed horse skull is a really dramatic looking thing.
Speaker 1: Presume you've the big tradition of using horses in the States. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I presume you're seene a horse skull. You know they are.
Speaker 1: They're they're quite quite impressive looking beasts. And I think
Speaker 1: that when when they're in that state, you know, when
Speaker 1: it's just a horse skull, they seems to have almost
Speaker 1: a supernatural power out them. Um, you know, they take
Speaker 1: on a different persona. It's not like, you know, a
Speaker 1: dead cat is a dead cat, you know, whereas a
Speaker 1: horse skull as opposed to a living horse, is a
Speaker 1: kind of supernatural thing. It looks different and it's regarded differently,
Speaker 1: I think as well. And then some of the ideas
Speaker 1: that play in counter witchcraft are about basically being scarier
Speaker 1: than something else. So you know, so if you've got
Speaker 1: something that's really scary, a lesser scary thing might be
Speaker 1: scared away by it, you know, like there's um there's
Speaker 1: one tradition, for example, with rug working that I've heard
Speaker 1: about where certain rugs that are put in front of
Speaker 1: the fire would often have a red diamond pattern on
Speaker 1: them also like just a red diamond in the middle
Speaker 1: or in the corners or something. And some of the
Speaker 1: folklore around this is that a devil poking his head
Speaker 1: down the chimney would poke his head down the chimney
Speaker 1: and think, oh my goodness, there's already a devil in
Speaker 1: the house. I won't go interfering with this, and would
Speaker 1: go scar forget the other way it's going to find
Speaker 1: a house that doesn't have a devil in it, because
Speaker 1: the men just meant to represent this devil's eye. And
Speaker 1: I think in a way this idea with the horse
Speaker 1: skull is that they are particularly frightening and quite large,
Speaker 1: so they could actually intimidate and frighten away, um, other things.
Speaker 1: And I think that the sort of proof of that
Speaker 1: is that horse skulls are used in some of these
Speaker 1: folk dance traditions which appears to be about scaring away
Speaker 1: spirits like the mary Lewd and you know the certain
Speaker 1: other ones that like the abbios and what's the other
Speaker 1: one called the hood and horse as well. You know,
Speaker 1: these kind of dances and rituals that have these kind
Speaker 1: of horselike figures that go dancing around and convorting around
Speaker 1: the countryside. And you know, with with the mary leud
Speaker 1: for example, there's there's also a custom in that of
Speaker 1: sweeping the hearth and cleaning the hearth away with this
Speaker 1: figure that's a horse skull and a big cape, and
Speaker 1: and that again seems to sort of tune in with
Speaker 1: this idea of protecting the hearth as well. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the horse skulls, you know, and on
Speaker 1: top of that, there's all this ancient myth about horses
Speaker 1: as well, you know, and the idea that horses were
Speaker 1: thought to literally tow the sun up, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: at sunrise, and and chariots of the gods almost you know,
Speaker 1: and and they were also the way that people access
Speaker 1: to the underworld sometimes as well as they you know,
Speaker 1: you would ride your horse to Valhalla or it would
Speaker 1: take you to the underworld. There's all these really old
Speaker 1: ideas about horses as um supernatural beings that had access
Speaker 1: to other worlds. Almost yeah, at the same time, therefore
Speaker 1: this really multi sort of sort of multi functional role
Speaker 1: almost on a mythic level in human life, you know.
Speaker 1: And but ultimately, when we're talking about the period, this
Speaker 1: period of the Witch Trials, if if you want to
Speaker 1: look at that period, for example, we're talking about animals
Speaker 1: that are broadly benevolent to humans. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: see them simply as eating animals, you know, although they
Speaker 1: were eating and still are in some countries. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they were you know, kind of a benevolent role in
Speaker 1: our lives. But also this kind of incredible vigilance about them,
Speaker 1: and also there's kind of fierce some aspect to them
Speaker 1: when they are in the shape of a horse skull.
Speaker 1: And in my book, I do site one example from
Speaker 1: I think it's eighteen where this is actually reported in
Speaker 1: a really good book about folklore in Cambridge, where this
Speaker 1: building company we're essentially laying the foundations for a new
Speaker 1: chapel in Cambridgeshire, and they sent the builder's lad off
Speaker 1: to get a horse's head from the knacker's yard because
Speaker 1: they had a very strong tradition of placing a horse's
Speaker 1: head in the base of the foundations, which at first
Speaker 1: you think this is a foundation sacrifice, but it's not
Speaker 1: that simple, because after they've poured some beer over it,
Speaker 1: and they've all shoveled various bits of stonework and everything
Speaker 1: and earth over the top of it, they then said
Speaker 1: that they were they were doing this quite clearly to
Speaker 1: ward off evil and witchcraft, you know, So it's not
Speaker 1: it's not as simple as thinking foundation sacrifice appeasing local spirits.
Speaker 1: They very clearly believe this was for warding off evil
Speaker 1: and witchcraft. This idea of including a horse's head in
Speaker 1: the base of a foundation trench in which you know,
Speaker 1: is well into the industrial era. And and we know
Speaker 1: that there are many examples of horse skulls and horse
Speaker 1: bones found underneath nonconformist chapels throughout all of Whales and
Speaker 1: probably much of much of England as well. UM, and
Speaker 1: these many of these chapels were built well into the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, you know, Um, and yet we also know
Speaker 1: that horse skulls were concealed under under dwellings in the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century because we've got archaeological records of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the whole idea of horse skulls being concealed
Speaker 1: instead of the whole horse. I'm not sure exactly when
Speaker 1: that happened, you know, because the Viking has used to
Speaker 1: conceal whole horses, or not conceal them but bury them
Speaker 1: and have lots of rituals to do with them. But
Speaker 1: at some point between that period and the fifteenth century
Speaker 1: it became much more about the horse's head or the
Speaker 1: horse's skull. But I'm not sure exactly when. It's fascinating
Speaker 1: and confusing, No, no, now is there is there also
Speaker 1: an idea that there might have been an acoustic benefit
Speaker 1: in some of these cases to having the horse skull
Speaker 1: under there. I'm glad you brought me back to that
Speaker 1: because I clearly wandered away from that topic. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so there there is this idea that somehow horses act
Speaker 1: as natural amplifiers or acoustic enhancers in buildings. So when
Speaker 1: people first started looking at the practice of concealed horse skulls,
Speaker 1: and particularly in Ireland actually papered by Shawn O'Sullivan. I
Speaker 1: think it was in nine um, but the references in
Speaker 1: my book if I got that wrong. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: was asking, you know what, what was the reason for
Speaker 1: them conceiving these horse skulls underneath them stones in front
Speaker 1: of the hearth in many of these cottages. And the
Speaker 1: answer he got from any of these people was that
Speaker 1: it made the dancing sound better in the evening, you know,
Speaker 1: so when they were gathered together in the evening around
Speaker 1: the fire and they were doing some Irish dancing, it
Speaker 1: sounded an isa by having a horse skull underneath the stone.
Speaker 1: And then similarly in England when they found twenty four
Speaker 1: horse skulls beneath the floor of the ports way in
Speaker 1: in Herfordshire, which is in Staunton on why this village um,
Speaker 1: they said it made the fiddle go better, made the
Speaker 1: fiddles sound better. And then in Sweden, for example, when
Speaker 1: Albert Sandcleff was researching horse skulls beneath barnes threshing barns
Speaker 1: in Sweden, you know, he came to the conclusion mostly
Speaker 1: through what people told him, that it made the flails
Speaker 1: sound better when they were threshing wheat and uh, but
Speaker 1: you know, I find it. I struggle with it a
Speaker 1: little bit because you know, I'm when I'm not doing
Speaker 1: this kind of research, I am also a musician. I've
Speaker 1: been playing guitar for over thirty years. I think I'm
Speaker 1: quite good at it. And actually, but but yeah, I
Speaker 1: have a horse skull on top of the bookshelf behind
Speaker 1: my head right now. And I also played guitar in
Speaker 1: this room quite a lot. And I've so and you
Speaker 1: not noticed any kind of ringing or pleasant harmonious sound
Speaker 1: because of it. Um. It may be that I need
Speaker 1: to attach the horse skull to a floorboard with a
Speaker 1: big screw in order to to notice any benefit. Um,
Speaker 1: I haven't yet tested that. Let's let's just say that
Speaker 1: I'm dubious about the acoustic benefits of horse skulls, especially
Speaker 1: because i'd say about the examples I am aware of
Speaker 1: in locations where a lot of the sound that they
Speaker 1: could produce is absorbed by the earth that they're setting,
Speaker 1: or they're in a part of the building that wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know, sound wouldn't reach that part of the building,
Speaker 1: you know, So you know, um, so I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit dubious about that. And I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of the reasons why people gave this explanation is because
Speaker 1: it was a way of saying that you weren't doing
Speaker 1: something heretical or superstitious. You know, if you said, you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're walking down the street with a pair
Speaker 1: of horse skulls under each arm, and the local vicar
Speaker 1: comes up to you and said, what on earth are
Speaker 1: you doing? Oh, it's to improve the acoustics when we're
Speaker 1: dancing in the evening. Of course it is, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and I would say that probably a big clay bowl
Speaker 1: or something would be better at it. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: it's more expensive. Obviously we used to have. You know,
Speaker 1: our transport culture was completely dominated by the horse for centuries,
Speaker 1: so there was an awful lot of available horse skulls,
Speaker 1: you know. They maybe this was a use people found
Speaker 1: for them, and maybe people really believe that there was
Speaker 1: Maybe there is some marginal acoustic benefit that I'm not
Speaker 1: aware of, but but yeah, I personally I think that
Speaker 1: it be that explanation began as an excuse for why
Speaker 1: someone is walking around with a horse skull trying to
Speaker 1: dig a hole into their house, rather than because they
Speaker 1: thought I desperately need to improve the acoustics in my house,
Speaker 1: and a horse skull must be the way I do that. Now,
Speaker 1: if we mentioned already these artifacts tend to emerge during
Speaker 1: cases of demolition or renovation, digging up the ground beneath
Speaker 1: the old dwellings and on buildings, it's etcetera. And you
Speaker 1: also mentioned like the black market and so forth. What
Speaker 1: what is the appropriate court of action? Uh, you would
Speaker 1: recommend if anyone out there is engaged in construction, renovation, demolition, etcetera,
Speaker 1: if they find something that that that could conceivably be
Speaker 1: part of one of these traditions, what what should they do?
Speaker 1: The perfect thing to do is, first of all, as
Speaker 1: soon as you see something emerge from the ground or
Speaker 1: emerge from a wall, it's just pause and take loads
Speaker 1: of photographs from every angle, just sort of really really
Speaker 1: record it as well as you can maybe do a
Speaker 1: bit of video as well, you know, write down when
Speaker 1: you found it, what you found, before you even touch it,
Speaker 1: you know, and then ideally then contact someone who is
Speaker 1: interested in it or as an expert in that field. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I would like you to consider me if you find
Speaker 1: those things, you know, and I would like to give
Speaker 1: you some advisor, maybe look at some photos and have
Speaker 1: some input about what you found. And then the ideal thing,
Speaker 1: because obviously I live a long way away from any
Speaker 1: of your listeners, you know, the ideal thing is that
Speaker 1: you find some way of keeping it in the house
Speaker 1: after you've recorded it, as well as you can keep
Speaker 1: it in the house and keep it where it where
Speaker 1: where you found it, if you can. Some people find solutions,
Speaker 1: like they'll put a little window so you can still
Speaker 1: see it and appreciate it, and it's a kind of
Speaker 1: fun talking point in the house. Um. I know lots
Speaker 1: of houses where they've done that with dried cats as well. Actually,
Speaker 1: even though they're a bit gruesome to look at, lots
Speaker 1: of people still like to keep them. Obviously, it's something
Speaker 1: like a dry cat. It's um, it's organic, and it's
Speaker 1: it could rot if it becomes damp, so you've got
Speaker 1: to think more carefully about what you do with that,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people do end up disposing of
Speaker 1: them for that reason. But you know, if you can
Speaker 1: keep it dry and keep it visible, or just just
Speaker 1: just conceal it again, just put it back in and
Speaker 1: forget all about it. Like the first one I ever
Speaker 1: came across, went straight back in the thatch after I'd
Speaker 1: recorded it, and it's still there as far as I know.
Speaker 1: So that is the best thing to do. That's very
Speaker 1: by far the best thing to do. Um wherever you live,
Speaker 1: that's the best thing to do. The shoes, by and large,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be worth anything, so you know,
Speaker 1: record them and put them back. You're not going to
Speaker 1: lose any any money. You're not denying yourself some kind
Speaker 1: of riches by reconcealing a shoe or a cat, you know,
Speaker 1: the ones that people assign more monetary value to. The
Speaker 1: witch bottles, because pottery, you know, nice old pottery with
Speaker 1: clear witchcraft, you know connections is very interesting. But what
Speaker 1: I would say to you is sell it to your
Speaker 1: local museum. You know, your local museum will love to
Speaker 1: own it, and I'm sure would make you an offer
Speaker 1: if you have a history, local history museum, and just
Speaker 1: make sure you offer it to local historians or archaeologists
Speaker 1: after you've recorded it, and let them buy it off.
Speaker 1: You don't put it. Don't just put it on the
Speaker 1: black market, because someone will buy it and its provenance
Speaker 1: will be lost and no one will know where it
Speaker 1: is forever after so that's my only request is just
Speaker 1: record it as well as you can share that information.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to sell anything, said it responsibly,
Speaker 1: said it to someone who's going to care about that
Speaker 1: objects and care about it's relevance and its contexts in
Speaker 1: your local historical environment. Now, in some cases, they think
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the book, the individuals who find these
Speaker 1: these objects then kind of maybe buy into the supernatural
Speaker 1: ideas around them, even as as modern um you know,
Speaker 1: there's residents of the modern world. Yeah, in in modern parlance,
Speaker 1: you could say that people kind of freak out a
Speaker 1: bit where they find when they find these things in
Speaker 1: there in their houses. Um So, in England, most of
Speaker 1: the houses where these objects like this are found are
Speaker 1: usually very historic houses, usually quite desirable, usually quite expensive houses.
Speaker 1: See so in modern times, usually the people that live
Speaker 1: in these houses are quite wealthy or professional, you know,
Speaker 1: and usually consider themselves to be quite serious professional individuals.
Speaker 1: So we've got to kind of called a lot of lawyers, academicians,
Speaker 1: you know, people like that. And these are people who
Speaker 1: often don't even don't think they're superstitious or have any
Speaker 1: super rua believes at all, and yet when they find
Speaker 1: these objects in their houses. They want to know what
Speaker 1: they are, first of all, and they'll contact someone like
Speaker 1: me and they start to learn more about it, not
Speaker 1: just from me, but from other literature online or from
Speaker 1: friends or whatever. And then they start to get really, really,
Speaker 1: really really worried that they are, that they're disturbing some
Speaker 1: form of protection, and that whatever evil that these things
Speaker 1: were protecting against might come back into their houses. And
Speaker 1: they're often really frightened of for example, a shoe being
Speaker 1: taken away from the house, or a cat being moved,
Speaker 1: or a bottle being broken or something like that. They
Speaker 1: feel that, um, some dark energy that was being held
Speaker 1: at bay by this thing might suddenly re emerge. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: when you when you look at the way people used
Speaker 1: to use these things, it was usually in a specific
Speaker 1: response to them feeling the witched. So the chances of
Speaker 1: that same cause of the harmful energy, the same witch
Speaker 1: still being alive and transferring that harmful energy onto you,
Speaker 1: it's almost zero. But people, for some reason, I feel
Speaker 1: that this is going to happen to them, and they
Speaker 1: get incredibly worried. Um. I remember one one house where
Speaker 1: a witch bottle was found. We persuaded the guys that
Speaker 1: let us analyze the witch bottles. So we were going
Speaker 1: to take it to university, have it X rays and
Speaker 1: have all the contents analyzed. And it took a lot
Speaker 1: of persuading to get him to do it. And this
Speaker 1: was for an English TV program on BBC two called
Speaker 1: History Detectives. Um he he reported the fine because he
Speaker 1: found it really interesting and as part of the research,
Speaker 1: you know, myself and my colleague Dr Alan Massey, we
Speaker 1: we often would investigate bottles like this, and the production
Speaker 1: team and us we had to work on him for ages,
Speaker 1: so allow us to take it away. The whole time
Speaker 1: it was away, he was ringing every day as the
Speaker 1: bottle Okay, when's it coming back? Was it coming back?
Speaker 1: I need it back in the house. Really really felt
Speaker 1: desperately worried about it. And when it did come back
Speaker 1: to the house eventually after the analysis, he wanted it
Speaker 1: to be reinterred and he wanted me to do it
Speaker 1: because I was the first person he was reported it too,
Speaker 1: and so I agreed. But when I got there, what
Speaker 1: I didn't know was that he and the production team
Speaker 1: had employed a group of nuns to pray around me
Speaker 1: while I was lowering it into the hole. Um so
Speaker 1: that was a startling end to that little bit of
Speaker 1: TV work. But then but yeah, it just shows how
Speaker 1: strongly this guy felt about it. He really wanted the
Speaker 1: thing to go back where it comes from, and he
Speaker 1: felt that it needed some kind of religious blessing in
Speaker 1: the process as well to make it safe. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: It really makes me think about you know, early on
Speaker 1: in the book, you also you mentioned like the different
Speaker 1: since world of being in a house, you know, in
Speaker 1: historic times and everything's quieter, and I guess maybe you
Speaker 1: hear all the sounds or potential sounds a bit more.
Speaker 1: But then also just thinking about our modern relationship with
Speaker 1: like the spaces between our walls or the spaces underneath
Speaker 1: the floor. It's there's the things we know, like we
Speaker 1: we tend to know or assume they are not spirits
Speaker 1: or demons under there, but we we don't know for
Speaker 1: sure that there's not a mouse. Uh. We we know
Speaker 1: there are wires and uh and pipes under and through
Speaker 1: our house, and we have at least some level of
Speaker 1: understanding of how those things work. But then also maybe
Speaker 1: some some some empty spots and our understanding concerning say
Speaker 1: electrical wiring. Yeah, it's it's it's really interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say that that people in the past often
Speaker 1: used to feel a bit like our our children do now.
Speaker 1: You know, so you know, you've got a child going
Speaker 1: to sleep that the fears there's something under the bed
Speaker 1: or something you know, hiding behind the cupboard or something
Speaker 1: like that. You know, I think that it's not quite
Speaker 1: the same. I mean, I don't. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: people have beliefs that were just like children. But if
Speaker 1: you imagine a more mature version of those beliefs, you
Speaker 1: know that there there's there's still is a belief in magic.
Speaker 1: There still is a belief that there are some entities
Speaker 1: and some things around you that can harm you, but
Speaker 1: you can't see them, and you haven't got the powers
Speaker 1: to do anything about them unless you learn some of
Speaker 1: these practices you know, only, which is can maybe do
Speaker 1: something about these things, or white, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: the village cunning person, for example, who's got control over
Speaker 1: some supernatural powers, could maybe manipulate some of these things.
Speaker 1: But but you can't. But all these things are around you.
Speaker 1: And so I think that some of those fears that
Speaker 1: we you might remember from being a child basically carry
Speaker 1: over into adulthood as as a legitimate belief that everybody shared.
Speaker 1: You know, I really do think that even as recently
Speaker 1: as the early twentieth century and some rural areas, beliefs
Speaker 1: like this were absolutely normal and and people have very
Speaker 1: sophisticated responses to them, including the practices I've mentioned plus others. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not an example that I think has any
Speaker 1: supernatural aspects to it, but I was wondering, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if this is a feature of homes in the
Speaker 1: uk Orna, if this is just a thing in the States,
Speaker 1: or if this is found throughout the world. But you
Speaker 1: look at older medicine cabinets sometimes and there'll be a
Speaker 1: slot in the back to dispose razors down, like shaving
Speaker 1: razors um and uh, I couldn't help but think of
Speaker 1: that now and again whilst whilst reading the book, as
Speaker 1: being like, you know, a place where we we put
Speaker 1: things that maybe have some sort of connection to our
Speaker 1: physical body. And they also reminded me of the bent
Speaker 1: nails a bit, the bent pins as being these you know,
Speaker 1: these these bits of iron or metal that are they're
Speaker 1: no longer useful. Yeah, I've seen I've seen some lots
Speaker 1: of examples of those. I can't remember the name of
Speaker 1: the Facebook group, but there's a group about things found
Speaker 1: hidden in walls and everything, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: examples from the States are where people have bought a
Speaker 1: really old house and it's been like a medicine cabinet,
Speaker 1: and they've found this great, big, massive razor blades all
Speaker 1: behind the plaster board, you know, that will be pushed
Speaker 1: through this slot and just been allowed to just sit
Speaker 1: there and rush the way behind the behind the wall.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's very similar, isn't it. You know, you
Speaker 1: can see why it's it's it's a similar idea, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You've got this this thing, like you say, closely associated
Speaker 1: with the body. It's then been disposed of behind the wall.
Speaker 1: It's very sharp, you know, it's a sharp thing where
Speaker 1: supernatural mark. You know, he's not going to look there anymore,
Speaker 1: is it? Because you've got all these dead sharp things.
Speaker 1: And it's very reminiscent of the belief in knife blades
Speaker 1: and things that used to be found underneath window sills
Speaker 1: and sometimes under door lintels where there's there's a you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about this idea that things can
Speaker 1: be sort of killed in order to be activated on
Speaker 1: the supernatural plane, and that would the same would apply
Speaker 1: to well, you're hitching utensils, you know, if you've got
Speaker 1: a broken knife, it now is activated if you're like
Speaker 1: and it is now a useful form of supernatural events
Speaker 1: if you were to secrete it beneath a window sill
Speaker 1: or pop it above a door lintel. And so it's
Speaker 1: very similar. There's kind of there's definitely a resonance there
Speaker 1: isn't that. Finally, as as both a witchcraft archaeologist and
Speaker 1: a musician, do you think there's a shortage of witch
Speaker 1: bottle mentions in songs about witchcraft and wizardry or there
Speaker 1: are there some great examples out there that I just
Speaker 1: don't know about. Are you also a musician that are
Speaker 1: you going to rectify this situation? I have no ability
Speaker 1: to to directify it. If there is a lacking, I
Speaker 1: don't think though I don't, I don't know of any
Speaker 1: I'm sure that there are some little folk poems that
Speaker 1: reference the idea of predicting against witchcrash, but I'm not
Speaker 1: aware of a good song, especially a rock song, which
Speaker 1: is my my world about witch bustles. But but I
Speaker 1: do I do know there is there is a metal
Speaker 1: band called Coast or Ghost, but with a cane in
Speaker 1: the front instead of a G and I know that
Speaker 1: they've started writing some crazy songs about counter witchcraft, so
Speaker 1: there may be a witch bustle song coming from them soon. Excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: but before we close out here, I imagine that we
Speaker 1: have perked a number of listeners curiosities about this whole topic.
Speaker 1: Can you tell our listeners how they can follow you
Speaker 1: the website so or social media accounts they can go
Speaker 1: to uh to to to learn more about this study. Sure,
Speaker 1: so on Twitter and Instagram, I'm there as folk magic
Speaker 1: Man as one word, But on Facebook and on my
Speaker 1: website it's a little bit more difficult to convey without
Speaker 1: seeing it. But the the domain is aperture pious, which
Speaker 1: is you can probably share a link, can't you in
Speaker 1: your podcast? But yeah, that's probably the best way to
Speaker 1: do it. But it's apple sture pious, dot co, dot
Speaker 1: uk or dot com and the same thing on Facebook
Speaker 1: it would be forward slash aperture pious. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. It all is excellent. Well, thanks for taking
Speaker 1: time out of your day to chat with me here.
Speaker 1: This has been I've enjoyed it tremendously and I am
Speaker 1: sure that our listeners are going to enjoy it as well.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it very much too. Thanks again to Brian
Speaker 1: for coming on the show to chat again. The book
Speaker 1: is Magical House Protection the Archaeology of counter Witchcraft, and
Speaker 1: it's available in physical, cool and digital forms wherever you
Speaker 1: get your books. We only have time to discuss really
Speaker 1: a fraction of what is explored in the book, So
Speaker 1: if this topic fascinates you as it does me, pick
Speaker 1: it up. Thanks as always to Seth Nicholas Johnson for
Speaker 1: producing the show, and if you want to reach out,
Speaker 1: simply email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows.