Saint George’s Charm Against the Night-mare

George is the patron saint of England and his feast day is still celebrated on April 23 with the displaying of the English flag, which bears George’s red cross.

In medieval tradition, Saint George was the Virgin Mary’s champion knight; England itself was regarded as the Virgin’s dowry.

Saint George’s cult had both elitist and earthy aspects. On the one hand, he was the saint of nobility and monarchs. To join the Guild of Saint George, one had to own a horse, which made it exclusive indeed, because in the medieval and Early Modern period, as now, horses were expensive and only the wealthy could afford them. Poorer folk relied on oxen to pull their carts and ploughs.

On the other hand, the name George means farmer. In his more populist aspect, George was the patron of horses and the low born people who looked after them for their wealthy masters.

The following is a late medieval charm against the night-mare, which was believed to be a hag that entered the stable by night in spirit form and rode the horses until they were exhausted. This superstition was very long lived. Margaret Pearson, arrested in the Pendle Witch Trial of 1612, was accused of bewitching to death a mare in the village of Padiham, Lancashire.

 "Bewitched Groom" by Hans Baldung Grien

A Charm Against the Night-mare

Saint Jorge, our Lady Knight,
He walked day, he walked night,
Till that he founde that foule wight; (foul spirit)
And when that he her founde,
He her bete (beat) and he her bounde,
Till trewly ther her trowth she plight (till she finally made her vow)
That she sholde not come by night
Within seven rod of lande space
Theras Saint Jeorge y-named was.
St. Jeorge, St. Jeorge, St. Jeorge.

This rhyme was written on a piece of paper or parchment, then tied into the horse’s mane. To ensure full power, an amulet or piece of flint with a natural hole was also hung over the stable door. Earliest reference to this charm dates back to 1425-50, but it appeared in a book on witchcraft as late as 1584.

From C. and K. Sisan (eds.), The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse, Oxford, 1973.

What happened to Margaret Pearson after being convicted of bewitching a horse to death? Unlike the other Pendle Witches who were hanged at Lancaster, she was spared the noose since she had only supposedly killed a horse and not a human. Instead she was pilloried on four consecutive market days in Padiham, Whalley, Clitheroe, and Lancaster, and sentenced to a year in Lancaster prison.

17th-Century Medicine

A couple of months ago while visiting Trinity College in Dublin, I saw an exhibit in celebration of 400 years of medicine. I was intrigued by the display. It had an original copy of the classic John Gerard's Herbal, or Generall Historie of Plantes. The glass cases also contained tools used by surgeons throughout the years. Notably absent was any mention of the cunning folk. Without saying as much, the exhibit really meant 400 years of male history, namely doctors and physicians. Anyone who was not a learned physician was simply regarded as a "quack".

What many people don't realize is that during the 17th century there were few doctors. Even fewer people could afford the services of a doctor, and those who could often didn't trust them. Most healers were herbalists and/or users of magic. Anthropologists commonly refer to such healers as shamans.

In writing The Dreaming, I discovered that I needed guidance from the era I was writing about. I first looked to Gerard's Herbal, but it wasn't easy getting my hands on a copy. Instead, I turned to Nicholas Culpeper's Complete Herbal. Copies of this book are still easily available, and I was able to get a late 20th-century edition. Don't let a modern edition fool you. Culpeper's words were left intact. The book was, however, typeset in a modern font, making it a little easier to read.

Because my stories are set in Virginia, I also used medicinal guides that showed me what plants the Native Americans used. For instance, when I portrayed an outbreak of small pox, the Natives had no remedies. It was a new disease to the Americas and nearly wiped out the indigenous population. My cunning woman was all too familiar with the disease, and Culpeper let me know that saffron was a good herb of choice. But saffron was limited in Virginia because it had to be shipped from England. Thankfully, all was not lost. An African servant knew of another treatment called variolation.

In another scene, a teenager was bitten by a poisonous snake. In this case, my healer used a knife to make small incisions over the fang marks. She then sucked out the poison. I had been able to verify this treatment was indeed practiced by the Native people in the Virginia area for snake bites and thought it would make a good addition. It's only been within the last thirty to forty years that the method has fallen out of favor with modern emergency crews.

While these are only a couple of examples of 17th-century medicine, I think they give the general idea. There were gifted healers long before modern physicians.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net

The Cunning Folk

Cunning folk was a term used in English society. They were practitioners of many arts, but some of the more common ones were healing, treasure seeking, finding lost property, fortune telling, and love magic. They were also known as wise men/women, conjurers, and wizards. In Scotland, they were called the spae wife. Some notes I've come across say they were well regarded members of the community, and in many cases that respect likely bordered on fear.

A fine line separated cunning folk from witches because they often performed magic. Generally speaking, the cunning man/woman performed good magic, while a witch performed black magic associated with evil. Some cunning folk specialized in detecting witches.

Owen Davies is often considered to be the leading authority on the cunning folk, yet he narrowly defines the realm to popular magical practitioners, which excludes a number of specialists like the fortune tellers. He states there were at least one cunning person to every 2,500-3,000 English people, and that 2/3 of the cunning folk were male. Gender ratios, however, varied from area to area.

Cunning folk helped people's health, physically and spiritually. The people who opposed them the most were the doctors and clergy. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the cunning folks' magical acts were made illegal under the Conjuration and Witchcraft Acts. Even before the acts went into effect, many clergymen felt they should be weeded out and killed.

Few met that fate because in general people regarded them as valuable members of the community. In the cases where they received the death sentence, they were usually found guilty of performing maleficent magic.

Some historians, including Owen Davies, argue that Europe had no shamans. When the narrowest definition of shamanism relating to the Tungusic language of Siberia is used, it's not surprising to arrive at this conclusion. However, when the more accepted anthropological definition of healers who used magic for curing the sick, divining the hidden, and foretelling the future--often while traveling between the human and spirit worlds--it's easier to see that Europe did indeed have shamans in the cunning folk.

In England, Emma Wilby shows that the cunning folk had familiar spirits and claims that such spirits originate from animistic religion, common among indigenous tribal groups. Fairy folk were common entities with little distinction being made between a fairy and an angel, saint, ghost, or the devil. Generally, fairies were associated with the dead. Few people could see fairies, and it was a realm generally reserved for magical practitioners, such as the cunning folk.

Historians have differing opinions as to whether the cunning folk ever reached the North American shores. At least two of the witch trials in Virginia seem to have been of cunning women. In 1626, Joan Wright was a midwife and had been known for fortune telling people's deaths. Later in the century, the most famous witch trial was that of Grace Sherwood's. She was a known healer and a midwife.

Because of their commonness during the seventeenth century, I have no doubt the cunning folk did indeed reach Virginia.

Kim Murphy
www.KimMurphy.Net

On making the 17th Century Book Video

An increasing number of authors are creating video trailers to promote their books. Historical fiction gives an added depth and flavour to the process, a chance to show off your period garb or highlight the elements of history that your book draws out.

I was very fortunate that my publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, arranged for me to create such a trailer for my forthcoming novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill. The history of the Pendle Witches is so rich in its own right, it's just crying out to be filmed.

My marketing director arranged for me to work with London filmmaker Callum Macrae of Outsider Television. Callum is a seasoned veteran who has filmed in war zones, done documentaries, and worked for programmes such as Panorama. He has also recently started doing "Lit Vids"--literary videos. Here is a link to the trailer he did for Tom Levenson's nonfiction book, Newton and the Counterfeiter.

First, Callum and I worked out a draft script by email. Callum had many brilliant ideas. What we ended up aiming for was something quite ambitious--more like a mini-docudrama than the typical promotional video.

Callum drove up on a Thursday with his assistant camera woman, the beautiful and brilliant Livvy Haydock. The first day we discussed the script while driving around various locations in the Pendle region. The rugged landscape proved to be as indispensible for the filming as it was for the actual storytelling. You could just picture the characters emerging from the misty moorland.

We shot on location at my stables with scenes of me on horseback since riding my horse around the Pendle region was such an instrumental part of my creative process. I had considered riding in costume, but, alas, I never learned to ride side-saddle. Callum actually thought it was better that I just ride as Mary in the twenty-first-century, and so that's what I did, less-than-flattering-riding-helmet and all. Booshka, my Welsh Section D mare, was impeccably well-behaved, even though she couldn't understand why we wanted her to keep walking back and forth over and over again in front of the camera for over half an hour.

I had never realised how many "takes" you need to get a scene just right.

After Miss Boo got her treats and was turned out to play in the field with her friends, we drove on to Malkin Tower Farm, where the owners, Rachel and Andrew Turner, gave us a warm welcome and showed us what are believed to be the ruined foundations of what was once Malkin Tower, home to my protagonist Mother Demdike and three generations of her family.

Malkin Tower Farm has a number of lovely, inviting holiday cottages in an area of outstanding natural beauty. If you ever visit Pendle, it's the perfect place to stay. They welcome walkers and cyclists, and have two very friendly and engaging dogs.

I crouched down near the stones, explaining their significance to the camera, while camera assistant Livvy donned historical costume and did a sequence in the background, walking down the steep slope around the ruins, as Mother Demdike's granddaughter, Alizon Device. Callum filmed another sequence of Livvy as Alizon walking through gnarled winter trees. With her long blond hair and porcelain skin (she wore no make up for the filming), Livvy was hauntingly perfect as Alizon.

Since we were so pressed for time, having to do all the filming on one day in the fleeting winter daylight, we put the historical costumes on over our modern clothes. So, in the costume sequences, I was wearing a long skirt over my riding breeches and tall boots. In the non-costume sequences, I wore my 17th century bodice and chemise-like blouse and corset under my winter jacket. I spent the entire day in my corset, rode my horse in my corset, even mucked out in my corset. How is that for historical authenticity?

After Malkin Tower Farm, we drove on to the old quarry outside the village in Newchurch in Pendle. It was while walking past this quarry at daylight gate--twilight in the local dialect--that Mother Demdike, called Bess in my novel, first met Tibb, her familiar spirit. In traditional English folk magic, no cunning woman could work her spells without a familiar, or otherworldly ally. So the day she met Tibb was really the turning point of her life, when she first came into her powers. A fanciful Victorian stonemason carved a man's head on the quarry stone to commemorate the legends of Tibb.

In the quarry I discussed all this for the camera before changing into costume and reciting an excerpt from the novel, in character as Mother Demdike, describing the moment when she first met her familiar spirit, who appeared to her in the guise of a beautiful young man. Callum wanting me speaking, not reading, so I had to learn all the passages by heart.

The light in the quarry kept changing dramatically. At once point we were enveloped in dense fog before it lifted to dazzling evening sunlight. Then, off down the valley, mist lifted off the damp green fields like plumes of rising smoke.

By the time we finished the filming, daylight gate was closing. It was getting dark and we'd finished filming all the outdoor sequences just in the nick of time.

We drove back to the stable where we turned an empty stall into a witch's cottage with dried herbs hanging on the wall, an old fashioned willow broom, candles, and even sheep skulls for ambiance. Callum also had a smoke machine going to create an eerie atmosphere.

Our props included facsimile editions of the two historical books my novel draws on as primary sources, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witchcraft in the Countie of Lancaster, by Thomas Potts, the official transcripts of the 1612 Pendle Witch Trial, and Daemonologie, written by King James I, a witch-hunter's handbook that his magistrates were expected to read. I found jpegs of the original, historical title pages of these documents on the internet and then Callum printed them out at home and treated them with tea stains and coffee grounds until they resembled yellowing, crumbling old manuscript pages.

In our "witch's cottage," I discussed the significance of the historical documents and then recited some more passages from the novel, in costume and in character as Mother Demdike. My chosen excerpt was from the opening of the novel, when Mother Demdike, her daughter Liza, and granddaughter Alizon confront churchwarden Richard Baldwin who has refused to pay Liza for the work she's done carding wool for him. According to the primary sources, Baldwin tried to drive the women away with a horse whip, calling them whores and witches. He is recorded as saying, "I will burn the one of you and hang the other."

To punctuate these scenes of conflict between Mother Demdike and the authorities, we used a braided leather whip, purchased from a London joke shop. Callum cracked the whip on the floor while Livvy filmed close up shots.

I was worried that the noise might spook the horse in the next stall, so I went out to check. The horse in question merely nuzzled my pockets for treats, so he didn't seem too traumatised.

A dog club was meeting at the stable grounds that night, so our audio takes had the odd bark and howl in the background which added to the aura of mystery.

We weren't finished at the stable until nearly 9:00 at night, by which time the fog outside was so thick, it made the smoke machine redundant.

Back at my home, we finished the voiceover takes.

I can hardly wait to see the finished product, which Callum and Livvy will edit. After the publisher has approved it, the short film should go live on sites like Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. Watch this space.