NEWS RELEASES
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
4 July 2008
Where did Harry Potter get his spells from? Britain has a rich store of charms and folk magic, and in the not so long ago most likely you would have gone to see a local folk-healer rather than a doctor if you had some problem that troubled you. Some healers could cure simple things from warts and cuts to skin diseases, while others offered charms against witchcraft and could find lost or stolen goods. Fortune tellers are still with us, of course, but the art of reading tea leaves or the cards is an old one. A new exhibition at Horsham Museum, ‘Double double, toil and trouble,’ explores the intriguing world of folk-magic and witchcraft, a world that was still familiar in our great-grandparents’ day though today is much less well known.
Like most places in England, Sussex had its share of witches and magic and its folklore tells of the use of magic in the lives of Sussex men and women. For example, did you know that the Horsham courts heard 3 cases of witchcraft during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that it once had its own ‘white witch’ or ‘cunning-woman’? Similarly Cuckfield was the scene of a case of witchery in the 1860s, and East Harting was home to ‘Old Mother Digby’ – a witch who was said to be able to turn herself into a hare.
Belief in witchcraft was once widely held, and almost every town or village had its ‘cunning-man’ or ‘conjuror,’ who could detect witchcraft where its influence was felt and suggest who might lie behind it. Cunning-folk supplied charms to break the power of witchcraft, often papers written with mystic signs or powders to sprinkle over the afflicted, and could also find lost or stolen goods, tell fortunes and dispense herbs. The exhibition gathers together a wealth of items used by these people gathered together from as far afield as Cornwall and East Anglia to show what folk-magic was like, including a ‘kenning’ stone, used to cure eye complaints; examples of witch-bottles, used to break the power of witches; a magic mirror, with the moon’s face etched upon it, used for scrying; and parchment talismans, used to ward off evil influences. There are also samples of ‘Dragon’s Blood,’ offered to the lovesick, used along with the following verse:
“Oh, Dragon’s Blood, Oh, Dragon’s Blood,
It is not your blood I wish to burn,
But my true loves heart I wish to turn,
May he/she no rest or pleasures see,
’till he/she returns to me.”
Sussex is still a home to witchcraft, and modern paganism embraces many practices of folk-magic and ritual now centuries old. The exhibition also features items from a modern witch’s altar as well as ritual robes worn by magicians and explores what being a witch means in today’s world.
‘Double double, toil and trouble’ opens on 8 July and closes on 30 August 2008.
For further information please contact Jason Semmens, Assistant Curator.
Jason Semmens M.A.,
Assistant Curator,
Horsham Museum,
9 The Causeway,
Horsham,
West Sussex. RH12 1HE.
Tel. 01403 254959
Email: leisure@horsham.gov.uk