(1496). Wellcome Images
Healers are a type of Cunning-folk who focus their magic on tending and curing the sick. Healers possessed and used magic in different ways. Some used charms, such as this Anglo-Saxon charm for a cyst:
“May you be consumed as coal upon the hearth.
May you shrink as dung upon a wall.
And may you dry up as water in a pail.
May you become as small as a linseed grain,
and much smaller than the hipbone of an itch-mite,
and may you become so small that you become nothing.” Wilson, p.349
Healers and Animals
Some healers are said to have possessed their magic from living creatures. In North Wales, it was believed that anyone who drunk eagles’ blood or eaten its flesh had the power of the ‘ryri’, which cured shingles (a skin disease). The charm went like this:
“Male eagle, female eagle,
I send you
Over nine seas, and over nine mountains,
And over nine acres of unprofitable land,
Where no dog shall bark, and no cow shall low,
And where no eagle shall higher rise.” – Rev. Elias Owen.
Once uttered, the charmer would spit on the skin condition and rub it with his finger over the infected parts, breathing over it nine times. It sounds like a recipe for an infection to me! The healers that possessed the magic of the ryri were believed to pass it on to their ancestors; from here, the magic stayed in the bloodline. Animals were also used to cure illnesses. In Sussex, it was believed that if a man’s neck was swollen, all you needed to do was drag a snake along the neck, bottle up the snake, and wait for it to decay. As it decays, the swelling goes down.
In Suffolk, a folk-cure for a child’s whooping-cough entailed finding a fish and placing it on the child’s chest until the fish died. None of these remedies are to be trialled at home, for it will almost certainly be traumatising for everyone involved.
Diseases wished upon other people
Another way Healers cured diseases, were to wish them upon other people. This seems rather harsh, but there you go! In the Middle Ages, leprosy was believed to be caught from a leper who cursed another. In Dunbar in 1629, Isobel Youngs was put on trial for transferring her
husband’s sickness onto her nephew. In 1590, Agnes Sampson was tried for curing the disease of Robert Kerr. She put the illness on a cloth and attempted to transfer it to an animal. Instead, she ended up giving the disease to another man, who died, whilst Robert Kerr was healed!
Return to Sender
Some illnesses were detected to be sent from Witches. In this case, you would have to use a healer’s magic to counter the witch’s magic. Some people not only wanted to send the illness back to the witch but wanted them to receive a worse illness. A bottle was found in the south of England from the 1870s. In it was a charm that was buried upside down in the victim’s garden. It stated:
‘As long as the paper and thorns remain in the
bottle I hope Satan, the angel of darkness, will pour
out his wrath on the person who is the cause of the
illness, and will throw him on a bed of sickness
which nobody can cure; and as this water dries up
in the bottle, so might his flesh dry up on his bones,
and he shall not live over nineteen days, when he
shall be taken into hell by Satan and his angels.”
It sounds like they bewitched a formidable enemy!
Other ways healers cured diseases were by bewitching clothing, objects, and plants. If you’d like to learn more about Herbal Remedies, please read the sequel magazine: Bewitching Botany! It reveals the power behind flowers and the legacy of healers work which affects
medicine to this day!
Bewitching Britain 