Fanfare for the Cunning Man
"He met with one Cantle, or Cantlow, a Person noted in those Days for a Wizard; and he tells him how the Vicar had serv'd him, and begs his help to be even with him. The reply Cantel made him was this; Does he not Love Ringing? He shall have enough of it: And from that time, a Bell began to toll in his House, and continued so to do till Cantel's Death." - Beaumont, Treatise of Spirits (1705), p.185

The cunning man, village wizard, or cantel is an intriguing character. In early modern England Keith Thomas quotes Reginald Scot as saying that 'every parish had its miracle-worker, and that some had seventeen or eighteen' and further notes that 'at the turn of the sixteenth century well-informed contemporaries […] thought the wizards roughly comparable in numbers to the parochial clergy.' (Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), p.245) Although their numbers declined over the centuries which followed, the cunning man was still a vital part of village life into the early 19th century and remained a colourful part of local folklore even when a widespread belief in magic had waned, as is shown in the articles recently reprinted by Caduceus Books under the title Marsh Wizards, Witches & Cunning Men of Essex.

In her thought-provoking book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits, Emma Wilby has examined what she believes to be evidence of visionary or 'shamanic' experience in the confessions of witches and cunning men who were part of the illiterate masses of early modern England. As such the practices of these cunning people represent a strange mix of inherited 'folk' wisdom and more elite concepts - the belief in fairies and tutelary spirits meets a shaky grasp of Christian theology, imitation of church ritual, astronomical and medical concepts. With the influence of Protestantism and the increasing availability of the printed word in broadsides and chapbooks it seems that a more literate breed of village wizard replaced this generation of cunning folk. Political and theological circumstance also stimulated the printing of magical works in the mid-17th century, with the works of the English astrologers such as William Lilly, Robert Turner's translations of magical literature and a whole host of popular books on chiromancy, physiognomy and dream divination entering circulation. Most notorious are the magical portions of Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, which seem to have become core texts in the cunning 'tradition' (as previously mentioned on this blog). Owen Davies' thesis on the The Decline in the Popular Belief in Witchcaft and Magic catalogues the libraries of several cunning persons (this information doesn't seem to be reproduced in the published version Witchcraft Magic and Culture: 1736-1951 (1999)). Manuscript copies of material from Scot and the English translations of Agrippa are common along with the more rare material like Heydon's Theomagia or Porta's Natural Magick.

Regardless of their level of literacy the stock and trade of the cunning man remained the same throughout the ages: finding lost items, casting horoscopes and geomantic charts, divination by shears (coscinomancy), healing people and livestock, writing charms and so on.

Tales of the village wizard James 'Cunning' Murrell (1780-1860) persisted for almost a century after his death according to the article reprinted in Marsh Wizards, Witches & Cunning Men of Essex. The first of these items concerns a meeting with Murrell's son which appeared in The Strand magazine, 1900. It was written by Arthur Morrison, who also wrote a fictionalised account of Murrell's life entitled Cunning Murrell: A Tale of Witchcraft and Smuggling along with a number of adventure and mystery stories - most famously Tales of Mean Streets. This is a charming and amusingly written account of country life at the start of the 20th century and the legacy of a cunning man. It seems that Murrell was a 'self-made cunning man' - possibly becoming acquainted with texts like Francis Barrett's The Magus while working for a chemist in London. Returning to rural Hadleigh he set up as a cobbler and cunning man - one of the last of that generation of cunning men whose knowledge had been augmented, if not completely derived from the printed word. Forty years later, discovering the wizard's chest, filled with the books and tools of his trade, Morrison finds a heavily annotated edition of Culpeper's Herbal, books of astrology and ephemeredes and three manuscript books in Murrell's hand. One concerning conjurations, probably derived from The Magus and the other two consisting of astrological and geomantic forecasts respectively. The first of these items is interesting in that it shows Cunning Murrell continued the tradition of the wizard's book, or Liber Spirituum. One of the most famous engravings from The Magus shows the magic book with angelic seals and conjurations written in it, and it appears that Murrell imitated this in the production of his own book, a page of which Morrison reproduces in his article.

As with his precursors in the art of village sorcery, Murrell possessed not only cunning in the sense of a seeming belief in his own supernatural powers, but also a more down to earth variety. He had spies and informers and undoubtedly a pair of sharp ears himself, with which he would gather gossip that he could use to his own ends, astonishing his clients by revealing personal information, in much the same way as the 17th century cunning woman Alice West would eavesdrop on her customers, later recounting the information as though it has been delivered to her by the Queen of the Fairies (Wilby, p.211). This doesn't necessarily indicate that the cunning people were frauds, but as Wilby points out, anthropological research into shamanism shows that such seemingly contradictory elements - a belief in one's own supernatural power, combined with more obvious methods of manipulation and coercion - are all part of the wizard's toolkit.

Morrison's account of Murrell also sheds some interesting light on the tradition of the witch-bottle. Merrifield's Archaeology of Ritual and Magic discusses the findings of several of these often found buried in riverbeds or beneath houses and believed to be anti-witchcraft charms. Such bottles were often filled with bent pins, nails and human hair, nail pairings and urine of a bewitched party. Murrell apparently used his bottles on the fire, causing, as his hapless son found out, an explosion, which Merrifield associates with indicating the death of the witch who cursed the afflicted party (Merrifield, pp.171-2). Merrifield also gives an instance of a witch who came to the house screaming having been afflicted by the cunning man's use of a witch-bottle and a very similar anecdote occurs in relation to Murrell in one of the essays by Eric Maple that comprise the second half of Marsh Wizards, Witches & Cunning Men of Essex. As Merrifield notes, Murrell's particular innovation in the use of the heating method was to have his witch-bottles cast in iron, reducing the danger of flying glass shards and ensuring the bottles could be used again and again (ibid, pp.178-9). Interestingly Merrifield also mentions an article in The Times, 15 Dec, 1960 entitled Death of a Wizard which apparently mentions that rumour had it Murrell's death was itself caused by a witch-bottle (ibid.).

The essays by Eric Maple have, unlike Morrison's article, previously been easily available to people with access to either JSTOR or membership of the Folklore Society, whose journal originally published the works. Maple presents a lot of interesting oral traditions collected from the elderly residents from 'the ague-ridden Essex Hundreds.' As well as providing additional information about Murrell, Maple also briefly discusses the intriguing George Pickingill of Canewdon (1816 -1909) who lived until the age of 93, was allegedly served by imps in the form or white mice (the keeping of which by witches seems to have been a widespread in the folk tradition in Essex), was not above the use of 'black magic' and possessed the power to 'whistle up witches'.

Interesting fragments of oral lore abound in Maple's investigations. These range from the surreal tales of bewitched concertinas and washtub boats to legends with a universal persistence that I remember from my childhood in 1980s Yorkshire. Among these fragments of childhood lore I recall that to dance around the oldest grave in a churchyard would have result in abduction by the devil, while walking around the church at night was a sure way of meeting witches. I hope that children share the same traditions with each other even today.

Limited to 100 copies (now sold out), Caduceus Books' edition of these articles makes for a handsome volume bound in black cloth and stamped with designs from Murrell's book of conjuration/The Magus in 22-carat gold. Nicely bound and produced, it was a joy to read and, although it has since sold out, is worth tracking down for Morrisson's colourful narrative alone, which is augmented by some beautifully evocative engravings from the period.

See also Dan Harm's review.