Cunning folk

In English history, the cunning woman or cunning man is a professional or semi-professional folk magic user up until the twentieth century. Such people were also frequently known as wizards, wise men, wise women, witch doctors or conjurers. The term white witch was infrequently used for cunning folk until recent times, except in the county of Devon.

Related Topics:
English history - Magic - Twentieth century - Wizards - Witch doctors - Conjurers - Devon

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Cunning folk are frequently confused with witches. The key difference between the two is that cunning folk were real, whereas there is no evidence that witches existed outside the imagination of those who believed they had been afflicted by them. The magic of the cunning folk was preventative and curative and so did not require visible magical phenomena to occur for people to believe in it, while that of the alleged witches was clearly absurd (such as turning into a hare or flying through the air) and so was presumed to occur while nobody was looking.

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The remedy that a cunning man would prescribe might well involve identifying a suitable person as the witch responsible for the client's affliction, but it obviously does not follow from this that witches genuinely existed.

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The historical studies of Owen Davies have shown the extent to which cunning folk were a recognised part of British rural and urban life, and in the nineteenth century it is estimated there were several thousand at work across the country. They could be found operating openly in towns and villages across the nation and they were a valued part of the community. Some cunning folk were so successful that they began attracting clients from many miles away. Most offered more limited services to a smaller region. Cunning folk could make a good living from their talents, and there usually was a set monetary charge for their services. The money they earned meant they were often considered, especially by the better educated, as frauds and tricksters, whom got money out of the gullible for parlour tricks. By the nineteenth century when the threat of prosecution was slight they even advertised their services and wrote books. Whether Cunning folk actually did possess any supernatural power is open to debate; certainly some were caught in fraud such as spying on customers to help their predictions, repeatedly promising vast treasure which was never found, and falsely accusing the innocent of theft or witchcraft.

Related Topics:
Owen Davies - Nineteenth century - Supernatural

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