'The Secret lies in the Thimble' by Karen Maitland

17th Century silver thimble
Photo: Llangefni

In my Jacobean novel Traitor in the Ice, one of my characters passes a secret note to another folded into a band and hidden inside a thimble. This method of passing secret or coded messages was frequently used in times of religious persecution during the Tudor period and probably for centuries before that, and was still being used during the 17th century English Civil War. A band of folded paper was easily concealed in a thimble, which, even in a room crowded with people, a woman could causally set on table for the recipient to pick up, or it could be slipped into a work basket. Even the decoration on the thimble itself could be used as a coded message.

But the practising of concealing things in thimbles has a much older origin and is linked to what the thimble has come to symbolise. 

Thimbles have been excavated from ancient Chinese sites dating as far back as the 206BC to 220CE, as well as from Roman sites, such as Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried when Vesuvius erupted in 79CE. 

Copper-alloy thimble ring c. 1400-1600
Found in East Sussex
Photo: Andy Stanley
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

In the Middle Ages, most thimbles made from brass or copper alloy and were used by men, women and children. For sewing coarse cloth, they used topless thimble rings, pressing the needle with the side of the finger, and for finer cloth and embroidery, they used bee-hive shaped thimbles. 

By Tudor times, the giving of elaborately decorated thimbles as a lover’s token or an occasion gift was well established. These were often engraved with initials, coats of arms, and mottos, or decorated with emblems in the forms of birds, flowers and animals. Queen Elizabeth bestowed thimbles studded with precious stones on her favoured ladies-in-waiting.

C. 1708, a child's silver  thimble
with machine made circular punch marks
Photo: Kult Adams, Bristol City Museum
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

In 1693, John Lofting, a Dutch thimble manufacturer set up a thimble factory in Islington, in London, England, before moving his production to Buckinghamshire to take advantage of water-power. He was able to turn out two million thimbles per year, such was the demand. 

But thimbles had become far more than tools for sewing, they had taken on symbolic meanings too. Traditionally, a ring, a coin and a thimble are baked into a wedding cake for guests to share. The person who gets a ring will find happiness. The one who gets the coin will become wealthy, but the one who gets the thimble with remain unwed, a ‘spinster.’ The same applied, if a girl was gifted three thimbles, presumably because that meant she’d had three suitors and had not settled for any of them. 

'First Sun' by Camille Martin (1861-1898)
Photo: Vassil
Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy

The more important meaning of thimble, though, was protection and good fortune. A thimble is one of the most common objects metal detectorists unearth in fields and gardens. Many were simply lost there. At harvest time, field hands often wore thimbles to protect their hands when binding straw, and women and children would join menfolk for the harvest, and continued to sew or mend while resting from the heat of the day. So many thimbles were probably mislaid. But some seemed to have been deliberately placed in the earth, and contain scrolls of paper, grains of cereals, hazelnuts, crystals, and pebbles, many found with scraps of cloth inside. Some of these clothes, of course, would have been rags used as padding to keep the thimble snug to the finger, but not all. 

Since thimbles symbolised protection, if a woman was anxious about a son going off to war, a daughter giving birth, or a lover on a sea voyage, she’d write their name on a piece of paper and tuck it into a thimble, which she’d then bury in the earth to protect them. If she couldn’t write, she’d use some scrap belonging to the person, such as a strip cut from a garment or a fragment of something they'd used, even a piece of a consecrated wafer from Mass.

Copper- alloy thimble c.1400-1600
Found on the Isle of Wight
Photo: Frank Basford, Isle of White Council
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

The thimble could also be used to protect the whole household from the plague, or as a prayer for a good harvest. So, while thimbles unearthed with a grain of wheat or corn in them can simply be the result of them being lost during harvesting, sometimes a grain of corn might have been put inside deliberately. 

Often too something red would be added – a red bead, rowan berry or red thread to keep what was inside safe, and ensure it couldn’t be taken by evil spirits to cause harm. In a curious blending of the two superstitions, some years ago, I was thrilled to be given two Victorian silver thimbles by an elderly lady, which were tied together by a red cord. But I was warned never to cut or untie the red cord or tie a third thimble to the cord, for fear of bad luck.

Right up until the 1940’s, the tradition was that if a wife of a famer or farmworker died, a strip of cloth cut from her dress would be stuffed into her thimble and thrown out on to the field where she had worked. If a corpse of a woman was proving difficult to get inside a coffin because of stiffness or size, it was said that if her thimble was cast into the coffin first, her body would follow easily.

A Nürnberg thimble
Cast brass 14th Century
Photo: Llangefni

So if you are lucky enough to dig up an old thimble in your garden, do check carefully inside it before you wash the mud out.

If want to discover more, a good starting point is thimbles (colchestertreasurehunting.co.uk). It has a fascinating piece on the history of European thimbles, including why ‘Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. sent spies to Nürnberg to steal the secret of the thimble making,’ together with some excellent photographs of thimbles found in fields and gardens, dating from 12th century onwards to help you date yours.

ROTAS SATOR: the Magical Square - Katherine Langrish

 

In Lady Wilde’s ‘Ancient Legends of Ireland’ there’s a story about a young man, a poet, who attempts to seduce a farmer’s daughter. He’s used to having his wicked way with girls, for we're told that Irish poets were known for possessing ‘the power of fascination by the glance … so that they could make themselves loved and followed by any girl they liked.’

 

 

With this particular girl, however, the power doesn’t seem to work very well at first. The poet arrives at her farm and begs for a drink of milk, but the young woman happens to be on her own in the house – the maids are busy churning in the dairy – so she refuses to let him in. Annoyed by this, the poet takes action. Lady Wilde continues:

 

The young poet fixed his eyes earnestly on her face for some time in silence, then slowly turning round left the house and walked towards a small grove of trees just opposite. There he stood for a few moments resting against a tree, and facing the house as if to take one more vengeful or admiring glance, then went his way without once turning round. 

 

 

The young girl had been watching him from the window, and the moment he moved she passed out of the door like one in a dream, and followed him slowly, step by step, down the avenue.

 

 

As the girl passes through the farmyard, the dairymaids notice her entranced state. They raise the alarm and her father comes running from his work, shouting for her to stop, but his daughter doesn’t seem able to hear. The poet does, though,

 

…and seeing the whole family in pursuit, quickened his pace, first glancing fixedly at the girl for a moment. Immediately she sprang towards him, and they were both almost out of sight, when one of the maids espied a piece of paper tied to a branch of the tree where the poet had rested.  From curiosity she took it down, and the moment the knot was untied, the farmer’s daughter suddenly stopped, became quite still, and when her father came up she allowed him to lead her back to the house.

 

 

Recovering, the girl tells her family how she’d felt impelled to follow the young man ‘wherever he might lead’, only coming to her senses when the spell was broken. But what was the spell?

 

 

The paper, on being opened, was found to contain five mysterious words written in blood, and in this order:

 

Sator

Arepo

Tenet

Opera

Rotas

 

These letters are so arranged that read in any way, right to left, left to right, up or down, the same words are produced; and when written in blood with a pen made of an eagle’s feather, they form a charm which no woman (it is said) can resist…

 

 

(In a sceptical aside, Lady Gregory adds, ‘but the incredulous reader can easily test the truth of this assertion for himself.’)

 

 

 

 

The Sator, Rotas, or Rotas Sator Square as this acrostic is called, is both very old and tantalisingly obscure; at any rate, no one has yet succeeded in explaining to everyone else’s satisfaction exactly what it means. Carved in stone or painted on walls, it crops up all over the place, at sites in Italy, Britain, Sweden and even Syria, ranging in date from Roman to medieval to near-modern. The words are obscure in themselves and have given rise to various tortuous interpretations (explored in this interesting article by Duncan Fishwick MA, "An Early Christian Cryptogram?"), which range from the reassuringly rural though still opaque, ‘The sower Arepo works the wheels with care’ – to Satanic invocations. AREPO is a nonsense word, and it seems that the rest, though they may resemble Latin words, are so ungrammatical as to be pretty much nonsense too. 

 

 

 

 

However, back in the 1920s two German scholars discovered (or re-discovered) that the Square hides an anagram: it can be arranged as the word PATERNOSTER written twice in a cruciform order which uses the N only once, and leaves four letters over: two As and two Os – Alpha and Omega.  

 

 

 

 

There’s really no chance that this is not deliberate, but to assume a Christian solution is problematic. The earliest known examples of the SATOR square are two graffiti from Pompeii which predate the Vesuvian eruption of AD 79.  Duncan Fishwick summarises the difficulties thus: there's no convincing evidence of any Christians in Pompeii before it was destroyed; the Cross is not found as a Christian symbol before about AD 130; Christians of the First Century used Greek not Latin for teaching and liturgy; the Christian use of Alpha and Omega as symbols for God was inspired by verses of the Apocalypse, which by AD 79 had not yet been written; finally, ‘cryptic’ Christian symbols first appear only ‘during the persecutions of the third century’ when overt Christianity had become politically unsafe. 

 

 

But as various graffitti testify, there a Jewish population living in and around Pompeii, and Fishwick suggests that rather than Christian, the Sator Square may have been Jewish in origin. The Alpha and Omega may derive their significance from Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 44, 6 in which God declares, ‘I am the first and the last’, while as for the Paternoster anagram, Fishwick explains that, ‘Far from being a Christian innovation this form of address [eg: 'Our Father'] has its roots in Judaism’, citing various Judaic prayers. He concludes that the Square may likely have been a charm constructed by Latin-speaking Jews, the magic of which resides in its satisfying symmetry and the concealed invocation which, revolving around the single letter N, hints at the unspoken nomen or name of God. Another scholar, Rebecca Benefiel, points out in a fascinating article, "Magic Squares, Alphabet Jumbles, Riddles and more: The culture of word-games among the graffiti of Pompeii," that the Sator Square is only one of many different word-squares found at Pompeii.

 

 

Even if not Christian in origin, the Square was soon adopted as a Christian charm and invested with more specifically Christian symbolism: a belief arose that the five 'words' of the palindrome were the names of the five nails which fastened Christ to the cross.  And it went on from there to enjoy a long subsequent history as a potent magical spell. It was used in the 12th century, according to medieval scholar Monica Green (quoted by Sarah E. Bond in a post, 'Power of the Palindrome', in her blog History from Below), as a charm which could be written on butter and eaten, to help women who had miscarried. At some time in the 18th century the Sator Square was brought from Germany to America: in the Pennsylvanian Dutch example shown below, dated circa 1790, you can see that mistakes have been made in the lettering, so that it becomes simply a piece of magical gibberish. One wonders how early any awareness of the Paternoster anagram had vanished. 

 

 

 

 

In 1820 printer and chapbook seller, Pennsylvanian John or Johann Hohman published German and English versions of a book of spells, charms and remedies called 'The Long Lost Friend' or 'The Long Hidden Friend'. On the page reproduced below, we find in charm number 121 the Sator Square, used 'To Quench Fire Without Water':

 

 

 

 

 

It's clear that people tried it. The photo above, from the Oberhausmuseum in Passau, Bavaria, shows 'a plate with magic inscription, used as a fire fighting device to expel the evil spirits of fire.'  Perhaps people prepared them in advance? I suppose it might even have worked to damp out a very small fire, but one hopes those who tried this charm were busy stamping out the flames at the same time. (At least it's fairly brief, unlike the elaborate spell Hohman provides for 'Preventing Conflagration' which involved throwing into the fire a bundled-up sheet stained either with the menstrual blood of a chaste virgin, or the blood from child-birth.)

 

 

A charm written on wood, intended to put out fires

In fact 'The Long-Hidden Friend' itself had a long history as a popular folk-magic text: as late as 1904, Carlton F. Brown wrote in The Journal of American Folk-lore (Vol. 17, No. 65, Apr. - Jun., 1904, pp 89-152) that 'in eastern Pennsylvania whole communities, even whole counties, firmly believe in the realities of "hexing", and protect themselves from its influence by the charms and incantations of witch doctors.' Subsequent investigation by the Berks County Medical Society into the practices of the witch doctors showed that 'the principal source of the charms which they were using was this very book of Hohman's.'  And they charged high prices for their services.



Who would have thought that a word puzzle dating from at least as early as first century Pompeii would still be in use as a popular charm in 19th century America, and appear in a 19th century Irish folk tale? Whether Judaic or Christian, Roman or medieval, European or American – whether religious symbol, magical aid for women in childbirth, a charm to put out fires or a spell to lure young Irishwomen away – the Sator Square will surely continue to puzzle and intrigue.



 

Picture credits

Fair Rosamund, by Arthur Hughes, 1854. (So no real connection with Lady Wilde's story, but a sweet young woman in a summer garden with something doomful looming.)

Rotas square from St Peter ad Orotarium, Capestrano, photo by Poecus, at Wikimedia Commons

Rotas square from Cirencester,  photo by ThrowawayHack, at Wikimedia Commons

Pennsylvania Dutch talisman c. 1790, Wikimedia Commons

Plate from Passau, Bavaria, with Sator charm against fire, photo by Wolfgang Sauber at Wikimedia Commons

Sator square from Freistadt, Austria: Mühlviertler Schlossmuseum: Magic formula against fire, photo by Wolfgang Sauber, Wikimedia Commons

'Rain, Rain, Go Away ...' by Karen Maitland

Norman priest's door at Church of St. Medard & St Gildard

Little Bytham, Lincolnshire. The two birds on either side of

the niche are probably the eagle of St Medard whose image

may once have occupied the niche.

Photographer: Simon Garbutt

"Raine, raine go away, 

Come againe a Saterday."

A children's rhyme, which I remember chanting in the playground, but which was recorded as early as 1687 by John Aubrey, who commented then that it was probably a charm of 'Great Antiquity.'

Today, 8th June, is one of those days of the year when we should all pay close attention to whether the rain stays or goes, especially those of us who live in France or England, because this is St Medardus or St Medard’s Day, and similar weather lore is connected to this saint as to St Swithin’s Day which falls on 15th July.

"Quand il pleut à la Saint-Médard, il pleut quarante jours plus tard."

(If it rains on St Medard’s' Day, it rains for forty days more.)

In England the saying was - "St Medard drops drop for forty days." But another version ran - "On St Medard’s day it rains six weeks before or six weeks after."

St Medard (456–545) was the Bishop of Vermandois. He was invoked for protection against bad weather, but he was also a saint that medieval people prayed to when they needed rain. He was a particularly pious child and legend has it that Medard was shielded from the rain by an eagle who spread its wings to shelter him, so the saint is also protector of those who work outdoors. A useful saint for the farmers and gardeners amongst us.

Martyrdom of St Barnabas

Medard was often depicted laughing with his mouth open, and for this reason was invoked against toothache. But he did seem to be regarded in the Middle Ages as a saint with a slightly malicious sense of humour, for another old piece of weather lore concerns him and St Faustus whose feast day falls tomorrow, 9th June.
“St Faustus said to St Medard, Barnabas and Vitus are my neighbours and together we will give the country folk a good washing till Frederick the Hollander comes and closes the doors of heaven.”

St Barnabas’ feast was celebrated on the 11th June and St Vitus on 15th June. But the feast day ‘Frederick the Hollander’, who would bring an end to the deluge, wasn’t until 18th July.

Better known as St Frederick, patron saint of the deaf, Frederick was born in 780, and became Bishop of Utrecht. He was stabbed to death by two assassins after mass on 18th July around the year 838, though sources are not agreed about the precise year. It was claimed by his hagiographers that his murderers were in the pay of Empress Judith of Bavaria, because he accused her of immorality, though there is no evidence that she was particularly immoral, or that he had accused of such. Others claim his killers were hired by the citizens of Walcheren who hated missionaries.

Frederick of Utrecht impaled by two daggers.

1650, Cornelius Visscher

There seems no obvious link in his hagiography to closing the door of heaven and stopping it raining, except that the bishop composed a popular prayer to the Holy Trinity, which was widely used through the Middle Ages, and the Holy Trinity was frequently invoked in Saxon and medieval weather charms. But more likely it was simply an observation that the weather usually improved around the middle of the July and St Frederick’s feast day was one ordinary people could remember.

But if the thought of six weeks of rain depresses you, there is one ray of sunshine - it was said that if the weather changes on the feast of St Barnabas (11th June), then it will be fair for 40 days.
“On St Barnabas put the scythe to the grass. Barnabas bright – the longest day and shortest night.”

Of course, in the Middle Ages, as now, rain could be both welcome or dreaded depending on how much had or hadn’t fallen. But if any rain fell on Ascension Day it was always considered a 'blessing from heaven.' Clean bowls and pails would be put out in the open to collect any rain which fell straight from the sky, rather than trickling from a roof or tree. It would then be stored to be used as a cure for many ailments, especially for eye problems. Sometimes parsley would be added to Ascension water which would be used to washed a baby’s eyes daily to strengthen its sight. As late as 1927, Ascension rain was caught and bottled in the village of Elmley Castle, Worcestershire. In Lincolnshire these healing properties were ascribed to rain that fell anytime in June, and while in Wales, babies washed in this water would be early talkers.

Village of Elmley Castle, painted in 1912

Rain was considered a bad omen at a wedding and a good omen at the funeral.
"Happy is the bride that the sun shines on.
Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on." 

Mourners believed that if rain fell on the coffin or the corpse, it was sign the decease's soul would soon be received into heaven.

In the Middle Ages, if there was a drought various charms were used to try to call rain down. Most have an origin in sympathetic magic or perhaps vestiges of offerings once made to local deities or spirits, such as sprinkling water on certain stones. In Tarn Dulyn, Mount Snowdon, water was thrown at the furthest stepping stone, which known as the 'Red Altar'. Hurling flour into a spring then stirring the water with a hazel-rod was said to produce a mist that would rise and form a cloud. Ferns of all kinds were associated with thunder and lightning and so widely-held was the belief that burning ferns would make it rain that in 1636, Lord Pembroke is reputed to have asked the High Sherriff of Staffordshire to ensure that no fern should be burnt during the visit of Charles I, so that the king would not be inconvenienced by a down-pour.

Snowdon from Capel Curig 

Phillip James de Loutherbourg, 1787

Yale Centre for British Art

But I’ll end with one of my favourite weather sayings that if it rains on the feast day of St Mary Magdalen on the 22nd July it is said she is washing her kerchief so that she can dance at the fair of her cousin St James on 25th July.

'A frog he would a-wooing go ...' by Karen Maitland

'The Love Potion' by 

Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919)

February is the month when supermarkets and florists try to make us fall 'in love with love' again. But if you are looking for an alternative to chocolate hearts and a cute card to win someone’s affection, you might want to take advice from our medieval forebears, who had numerous ways of enticing a lover and, perhaps more importantly, useful methods of ridding themselves of annoying suitors.

Love-philtres were lucrative money-spinners from the time of the ancient Greeks onwards, though as physicians consistently warned, drinking one was like drinking a cup of poison, for in addition to ingredients such as mandrake root, menstrual blood and the pizzle of an animal, formulae often called for ingredients which were likely contain lethal bacteria, such as cat’s brains, the hair around a wolf’s anus and young swallows, which were buried in the earth and dug up when they were beginning to decompose. If these dead swallows were unearthed with their beaks open were they added to love-philtres, while those with their beaks closed were used in potions intended to destroy love.

Common Valerian, Valeriana officinalis

Photo: AnRo000

More palatable and benign love-philtres contained herbs such as anemone, wild carrot, cumin, periwinkle and purslane, and it was said that if a girl wore valerian she’d never lack lovers. In his herbal of 1597, John Gerard tells us that if cyclamen (sowbread) is baked into little cakes it makes a ‘good amorous medicine to make one in love.’ This may have been in part due to one of its other properties, that ‘it loves the vine’ and ‘hates all sobering plants’, so that if added to a drinker’s cup it would increase the potency of the wine and quickly intoxicate the drinker.

Cyclamen or Sowbread, Cyclamen hederifolium.

Photo: H.Zell

But by the 16th century love philtres were regarded as witchcraft and it was recognised that many could be lethal or cause irreversible brain damage. Nevertheless, the Flemish chemist and physician Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1580-1644) claimed to know of a ‘common’ herb which, if you rubbed it into your hand until it was warm, then held the hand of the person you desired until their hand was hot in yours, they’d fall in love with you and the effect would last several days. Presumably though, they’d already have to be fond of you to be willing to hold your hand that long, unless, of course, Helmont was attempting to seduce one of his patients whilst taking their pulse.

Before the days of internet dating, you could always use the services of a local hermit. On Dartmoor it was the tradition on Palm Sunday for unwed girls and lads to drink honey-sweetened water from Ashwell spring at Bovey Tracey, in the hope of discovering their future spouse. According to legend, a hermit discovered that a wounded knight and ailing girl, secretly loved one another, but neither believed their love was reciprocated. So, he sent each to bathe in Ashwell spring, telling them it would heal them, in the hope that they would meet and start talking. His plan worked and they married.

Photo: Hannes Grobe

Frogs are perhaps not the most popular valentine's symbol, except if the suitor is trying to convince someone of his hidden potential, but because they appeared to ‘regenerate’ in great numbers after the spring floods which brought fertility to the lands, frogs were symbols of the ancient goddesses of fertility in many early cultures. As the goddesses were demonised by the monotheistic religions, the frog also became a symbol of sin and heresy. This irresistible combination of fecundity and sin meant that throughout the Middle Ages and up until the last century, these unfortunate creatures were used in many love-charms and in love-repelling charms too.

If a girl thought her lover’s affections had strayed, she would stick pins into a living frog until it died and bury it. From that moment, her faithless lover would feel as if he was being mercilessly stabbed with red-hot needles, which only stopped when he returned to her. Then she would covertly remove the pins from the frog and her lover would find himself strangely compelled to propose marriage. In some versions of this charm, she was instructed to secretly attach a bone from the frog to the man’s clothing to ensure his return.

Mummified Frog from the Malcom Lidbury

Witchcraft Collection. Photo: Malcom Lidbury

But men could be equally ruthless. If a man wanted a woman to fall in love with him, he would bury a frog in an anthill, until the ants had reduced it to bones. He’d remove two of the bones, one shaped like a hook and the other like a spade. He’d conceal the hook bone on girl’s clothing, where upon she would become infatuated with him. When he became bored with her, he would touch the spade-bone to the hook-bone and she would instantly fall out of love, leaving him free to pursue the next woman. Ants eggs, poppies, water-lilies and hemlock were also said to induce someone to fall out of love. The only problem being that you had to get the victim to swallow them without them knowing, if you wanted to cool his or her ardour.

A husband who suspected his wife was being unfaithful and who wanted to make her reveal her secrets might have followed the advice given by Giambattista Della Porta in ‘Magiae naturalis’ 1558, (translated as ‘Natural Magic’ in 1658) who instructed the husband to put the tongue of a frog over his wife’s heart at night as she slept, because this animal ‘gives tongue’ at night. Then the husband could ask the wife anything he wanted. She would talk in her sleep and answer him truthfully.

If a woman wanted to ensure the faithfulness of her spouse or lover she was advised to secretly dig up the earth from his footprints, put it in a pot and sow marigold seeds in it. That would bind her lover to her and ward off any attempt to steal his affections from her by charms or witchcraft.

Advertisement circa 1900

Miami University Digital Collection

Finally, should a lover need some ‘encouragement to passion’, the Anglo-Saxon leech books prescribed an ointment which could be rubbed onto the reluctant member consisting of nettle seeds, goat’s gall and goat’s dung mixed with incense. Perhaps the incense helped to counteract the stench of goat.

Perhaps after all, it would be safer to opt for the chocolate heart or an over-priced rose this Valentine's Day. They’d certainly smell sweeter.

"I Conjure the Blood" by Karen Maitland

Spider's web. Photographer: Per Palmkvist Knudsen

Our village has recently seen the installation of a defibrillator, thanks to the amazing fundraising efforts of one young schoolboy. Living out in the country has its delights, but one downside is the life-threatening length of time it takes to get professional help in a medical emergency. This has always been a problem for rural communities, and farms have always been dangerous places, with many lethal implements like scythes, pitchforks, axes and ploughshares just lying in wait to cut deep into legs and hands. When faced with a bleeding wound, our medieval ancestors used a number of traditional remedies to try to staunch bleeding including cobwebs, wood ash, puffball spores, comfrey roots or a translucent, glass-like stone known as a kitkat. And many people today still advocate putting a cold iron key down the back to stop a nose bleed.

But though substances like cobwebs worked by aiding the blood’s natural clotting mechanism, they weren’t effective for heavy bleeding or where a wound kept re-opening and bleeding. So, that is when our forbears might have turned to a local blood-charmer. These were men or women who had the power to stop humans and animals bleeding, even at a distance, simply by holding a blood-stained bandage and reciting a charm over it. Some blood charmers required the blood-stained cloth to be taken back to the victim and tied over the wound which would stop it. But others could seemingly stop the blood as soon as they blessed the cloth.

'The Healing of the Bleeding Woman'

Catacombs of Marcellinus & Peter,

Rome. 4th Century CE

Writing in 1899, Baring-Gould claims that one of his own tenants had just such gift and that on one occasion a young farmhand slashed his leg with a scythe. The farmer dipped a handkerchief in the lad’s blood and sent a man galloping off on horseback four miles to the blood charmer who blessed it. The farmhand immediately stopped bleeding. Since, this blood-charmer could also heal other ailments, the local postman earned a few extra pennies by carrying rags blessed by her to sufferers in other villages on his rounds, but he was always careful to hold the handkerchief at arm’s length between finger and thumb, because if it was folded or put in his pocket the power would be drawn from it.

The museum in the infamous Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor, has an account of Jack Henry Cooper, aged 3, who on 11th May 1914, fell asleep in a meadow and lost his leg to a grass cutter. The child was rushed first to the blood-charmer to stop the bleeding before being taken on the bumpy and lengthy journey to Liskeard Hospital to have the wound dressed.

Throughout the Saxon period and the Middle Ages, healers and physicians, including monks and nuns, would apply a remedy to a patient such as a poultice of herbs, but as they were doing so they would sing or recite a charm or prayer. Doing the two together was thought to be vital in effecting a cure. In some cases, the remedy would be the laying on of hands or holding a smooth black toadstone over the person in order to direct or concentrate the power of the spoken charm or prayer.

 But with the blood-charmers, it was the spoken charm itself that took on the greater significance.

Common puffball or Devil's Snuff-Box

Photographer:  H.Krisp

During the Anglo-Saxon period, charms initially referred to both the pagan gods such as Woden and to figures from the Christianity. The names of the old gods gradually faded from the charms as the Middle Ages progressed. But what they all had in common was a reference to some miraculous event which the healer and patient would know well and which mirrored the magical effect the charmer wanted to achieve. Saxon or Norse blood-staunching charms might refer to some event in their mythology when a mighty river dried up or froze, or there was great drought, or a hero's horse had been healed, and the charm often ended with the promise that ‘blood shall not flow again from the wound till milk flows from a stone’.

This medieval charm which was used by blood-charmers from at least the 13th century right up until the 1900’s, creates this same kind of parallel –

'Christ was born in Bethlehem
Baptised in the River Jordan
The River stood
So shall thy blood (inserting the name of the victim). In the name, of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.'

The Baptism of Jesus from Hortus deliciarum. 1167-1185

This charm is based on an early medieval legend that when Jesus was baptised, the River Jordon miraculous stopped flowing.

Another medieval blood-charm which continued to be used long after the Reformation refers to the Roman solider, who by the Middle Ages had been come to be called St Longinus.

'Our Lord hung on the cross. Longinus struck him with the lance. Blood and water issued forth. Longinus raised his eyes and saw clearly. By the power which God showed Longinus, I conjure the veins and the blood that they flow no more.'

The full charm tells the story in more detail, and it is the recounting of this miracle, together with the clearly spoken statement of intent of the blood-charmer, that produces the second miracle –the staunching of the blood in the patient. Words and stories have great power.

Susannah Avery, writing in 1688, suggested that bleeding could be stopped by writing the name Veronica on the ball of the left thumb. This was linked to a 14th century legend that St Veronica, who wiped Christ’s face with a cloth, is the same woman who Jesus had early cured of an ‘issue of blood’. If that failed, Susannah suggested another charm that could be sung over the wound. 

St Veronica

'When I was going to Jordan Wood
There was the blood and there it stood
So shall thy blood stay in thy body (here the patient was named)
I do bless thee in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.'

 One charm recorded in 1928 in the Scottish Highlands had to be said by a woman to a man, and then repeated by a man to a woman, alternating until the patient’s bleeding stopped. The person reciting the charm had to hold their arms out as they spoke it.

'The charm of God the Great.
The free gift of Mary.
The free gift of God.
The free gift of every priest and churchman
The free gift of Michael the strong
That would put strength in the sun.'

In this last line there is lovely echo of the old gods who might originally be invoked in the blood-charm. And given the current crisis in our health service, it looks as if we will have to hope that blood-charmers among us still retain their powers.

Witch Marks and Curses: The Rituals of Protection by Catherine Hokin

In the midst of all the Halloween madness around crazed-clown sightings (surely a PR stunt for the forthcoming Stephen King movie) and poor-taste celebrity costumes, my eye was caught this year by a request from Historic England for help with searching out some rather specialist graffiti. The patterns they are looking for date from between the the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, can be found on both homes and churches and may be marks made by the builders or occupants to deter witches.

 The Norfolk and Suffolk Medieval Graffiti Survey

We are a superstitious lot when it comes to guarding home and hearth.These marks (known as apotropaic from the Greek word for turning evil spirits away) are part of a long tradition of charms and curses stretching across cultures and centuries designed to keep homes and places of religious significance safe. The Japanese ofuda, charms written on paper and blessed at a Shinto shrine, date back to at least the seventeenth century Edo period. A nazar, a blue and white teardrop-shaped amulet, is a common sight outside homes across Turkey and Greece and is a legacy of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Chinese door gods, or menshen, have been displayed on the entrances to temples and homes since the pre-AD Han Dynasty and any self-respecting house in Ancient Egypt would be guarded by the goddess Bast, depicted as a black cat.

 Daisy Wheels in Stratford, Nicholas Molyneau

Apotropaic witch marks seems to be an English phenomenon and Historic England's treasure hunt request is directed particularly at secular buildings: although witch marks have been discovered on homes, these have, to date, been far less catalogued than those discovered at churches. So where do you look and what are you looking for if you decide to try and wean the teenagers of hunting for Pokemon? Witch marks of the type Historic England are hoping to catalogue are usually concentrated around entrance points such as doors, fireplaces and windows which are deemed as vulnerable to malevolent incursions. Marks can be in the shape of pentacles (sometimes lying on top of demons), inter-twined Vs and Ms for the Virgin Mary or, most commonly, compass-drawn hexfoils or 'daisy-wheels'. Whatever the shape, they do appear to share the characteristic of being formed from endless lines: apparently demons follow the lines and then get trapped, a plot device which a lot of films seem to have over-looked. Sites where marks have been found include Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford, in roof beams at the Tower of London and carved into the timbers of a room prepared for a visit by King James I (a man obsessed with witches to an unhealthy degree) at Knole House in Kent. 

The scratchings are certainly intriguing although their association with deliberate attempts to ward off evil spirits is not a given: they could simply be marks made by masons to show how and where stones or timbers should be fitted or the product of apprentices learning the geometry needed for their craft. Perhaps, as with many superstitions, they started as one thing and became another. Whatever the truth of these marks, a belief has grown up around them that they exist as a protective measure, a belief it is not hard to understand in the context of communities living in genuine fear of witchcraft and in homes far darker than anything we can imagine in these days of instant light.  

The urge to guard against danger or ill-luck is part of the fabric of our buildings and some superstitions of the past still linger. Few of us, for example, would raise an eyebrow at a horseshoe nailed above a door, even if we no longer believe iron has the power to repel witches. Niels Bohr, the Danish scientist who basically sorted out quantum physics for the rest of us, had one on his house and, when asked if he believed it brought luck allegedly replied: of course not but I have been reliably informed it will bring me luck whether I believe it or not. It's a line of thinking many are probably still happy to follow, although I imagine most would draw the line at a horseshoe rather than employing the full range of charms available to our ancestors.

 Witch Bottle, Portable Antiquities Scheme

A fear of magic implies a belief in its power. While witch marks and horseshoes are visible signs that a house is protected, some of the other methods used were far more secretive, perhaps because they had 'magic' in their creation. Repelling a witch is one thing, to be accused of being one yourself in the doing would be rather unfortunate. The stoppered vessels known as witch bottles for example, which have been discovered bricked inside walls particularly in houses in East Anglia, could be classed as a form of magic fly trap. The bottles were intended to trap the witch who threatened the home-owner and contained mixtures of pins (to catch the evil), red wine (to drown it) and rosemary (to cleanse it away). If the identity of the witch was known, adding a personal touch, such as their urine or finger parings, made the magic doubly strong. Other, perhaps less dangerous, charms included fashioning the lintels over windows and doors from rowan wood and concealing shoes in the rafters and the hearth - this latter superstition apparently stemmed from the story of a priest in the thirteenth century who once trapped the devil in a boot. For the finishing touch, a mummified cat could be placed in the chimney breast - possibly an inversion of witchcraft as it uses the traditional witch's familiar to repel the danger.

Inverted name -  Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey

Protection is one thing but sometimes a stronger response to danger was required and charms gave way to curses. Examples of curses, essentially an inversion of magic/evil, have also been found in and around both church and domestic buildings. Curses which may be intended to direct the evil back at its perpetrator rather than merely block it do not need to be complex: witch marks have been discovered which are, apparently deliberately, incomplete, for example with a missing petal. Some curses, however, are very specifically directed: Roman-style curses in which the targeted person's name and the details of the damage to be inflicted have been found on church walls, including at Norwich Cathedral. The writing is corrupted, being inverted with the letters jumbled, hence the assumption that these are curses.

Many of us feel like we are currently living in dark days. Whatever the truth of these marks, and no matter how difficult it is to really 'read' their intentions, they offer a fascinating insight into a world where fear of external dangers was just as real and the need to guard against them perhaps no different to our gated communities and lives lived under the shadow of CCTV. If this has wetted your appetite, Matthew Champion's wonderful book Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England's Churches is a really good read.

Happy hunting...

Curing Charms and Killing Kings by Karen Maitland

I love old dialect words and one of my favourites from the West Country is bless-vore meaning a spell or charm intended to do good. I was suddenly reminded of bless-vores when I heard the news that, in future, Acts of Parliament will only be printed on paper and not on vellum.

Up to 1850, any Bill being presented before parliament was written on a parchment roll. This roll was then sent through various stages in the Commons and the House of Lords, but however much the Bill changed, it was never re-written on a new roll. They simply scratched out words to be removed from the parchment and wrote the amendments over the top. The longest Act of Parliament still preserved in the form of a scroll is an 1821 Act concerning, as you might guess, taxes. It’s almost a quarter of a mile long. Imagine re-rolling that! But in 1849/1850, parchment rolls were replaced by parchment codices or booklets, and from then on, two copies of each Act were printed on vellum, one for the House of Lords and the other to be stored in the Public Record Office.

Halesowen Abbey Scroll of the Magna Carta
on 3 sections of joined parchment.
Photographer: Jacklee

What has that to do with bless-vores, you might ask? The link is that long after paper had become commonplace and cheaper than parchment, written charms or bless-vores were thought to be most effective if they were written on scraps of vellum or parchment rather than paper. In fact for the best results, charms had to written on virgin parchment, that is parchment made from the hide of an animal that had not yet mated, or even more gruesomely on unborn parchment which was made from a calf or kid cut from the womb or aborted. According to Robert Turner, writing in mid-1600's, a London shop called the Lamb and Inkbottle, not only sold inks and parchments, but also potions that would produce animal abortions for customers wishing to produce their own unborn parchment.

Written charms were usually worn round the neck in little bags, sewn into clothes or rolled up and pushed into holes in the walls of barns and cottages to protect the inhabitants from sickness and witchcraft. Buyers were warned that if these charms touched the ground, the power would drain out of them. On the other hand, charms intended to protect livestock or lift a curse from land would often be buried in boxes or bottles in the corners of fields, at a point where the rising sun first touched the field.

12th or 13th century instructions for making a charm (shown on the right)
to be hung round the neck of a woman who wanted to conceive.

The words of the written charms themselves often included biblical phrases, so when you come across one, it’s sometimes hard to tell if this is a scrap of a prayer intended for devotional use or a charm written by a cunning-woman or man, especially as many were written in Latin or cod-Latin with some Hebrew thrown in. A typical example from the 19th century reads -

"Omnes spiritus laudent Dominum.
Misericordiam habe Deus
Desinetur Inimicus. Fiat. Fiat. Fiat."

It is likely that many of these would have been copied or miscopied from prayer books or church inscriptions by the charm-writer who had only a vague idea what the words meant. Often these were sealed with wax or sewn into a bag, so that they could not be read aloud for fear of them losing their power or calling down something worse.

Other charms were intended to read out, like the one sold to a Devon couple who feared their horse had been cursed. The charm-writer told them to read the charm aloud three times. It calls upon the names of three angels and the Holy Trinity and includes the line -

‘I do this to torture and torment that man or woman who has injured us.’

During the Middle Ages, the wearing of charms was not condemned by the Church. Thomas Aquinas said there was nothing unlawful about attaching holy words to the neck. In Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches, 1486) there were seven rules to tell if a charm was holy or evil, amongst them was that the words of a holy charm should not suggest a pact with the devil and should only use phrases that were Biblical in origin. Unfortunately , just a century later, ‘witches’ could be punished or even sentenced to death for possessing any kind of charm, holy or not, especially during the centuries of Protestant rule. But this certainly did not stamp out the practise.

As the Members of Parliament found, one of the advantages of using parchment is that the words can be scratched off and this property was used in some charms intended to cure illness. The charm would be written in full on parchment then every day or every week one line or word of the charm would be scraped off while the owner said ‘As these words are destroyed, so may the sickness be destroyed.’ Such charms were frequently used if a long-distance cure was required.

Another property of parchment is the ability to pour water on it without it disintegrating, so the patient might be advised to pour wine or spirits across the words written on the parchment to dissolve them then drink the dissolved words to produce a cure.

In medieval times this could also be used as test of innocence or guilt. Words from a psalm would be written on parchment then the ink was dissolved in wine and holy water. The suspect would be forced to drink the mixture. If he was guilty the words would choke him and he would cough, vomit, or in some cases even die. It must have been only too easy to condemn an innocent man using this method, by adding an irritant or even poison to the ink or wine.

But times are changing and no longer keeping the Acts of Parliament on vellum, may hopefully save the lives of some animals and money for the taxpayer, but as MP Tory Gerald Howarth remarked,

‘The death warrant of Charles I was recorded on vellum.’

"Whereas Charles Stuart King of England is and standeth convicted attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high crimes, And sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this by this Court to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body of which sentence execution yet remaineth to be done, these are therefore to will and require you to see the said sentence executed in the open street before Whitehall upon the morrow being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of January between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in the afternoon of the same day with full effect and for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant." 

And somehow, all these centuries later, I don’t think I would feel so quite so moved when I look at this momentous document, if the king’s death warrant had been issued on an A4 sheet of copy paper.