evidence of witchcults

Subject: Evidence of Witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 20 - 12:59 AM

Traditional songs and customs had their origins in the rituals of witchcults, can anbody provide any evidence of this?

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 May 20 - 02:45 AM

Interesting question, Dick. Modern witches seem to have only limited ties to witchcraft of past centuries. I haven't found much information about the practices of witchcraft in the past, and no mention of music. I wonder....

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 May 20 - 03:29 AM

There are lots of folk rhymes and songs which derive from magical incantations, and if you used them that might have counted against you in a witch trial. But the idea of a "witch cult", a sort of shadow religion mirroring the structures of the established one, is a fantasy.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 20 - 03:42 AM

Lloyd proposed that some traditional songs and customs had their origins in the rituals of witchcults. Jolly Old Hawk, John Barleycorn, The Derby Ram and - since 'the witch songs and the rebel songs were often much the same' - The Cutty Wren were among those he cited as once having 'deep magical meaning'. There is no historical evidence to support any of these contentions
Quote. G Boyes in a review of the Singing Englishman, by ALLoyd.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 20 - 04:14 AM

but how about The BroomField Hill
A wager, a wager with you, pretty maid,
My one hundred pound to your ten"
That a maid you shall go into yonder green broom
But a maid you shall never return"

or she makes a tryst and realizes she can either stay and be foresworn, or go and lose her virginity. After, in some versions advice from a witch-wife, or after persuading him to drink "a glass of something so strong" in one version she goes to the broom field and finds him in a deep sleep. She leaves tokens to show she has been there, and in many versions carries out what seems to be a ritual:

"Then three times she went from the crown of his head
And three times from the soles of his feet,
And three times she kissed his red ruby lips
As he lay fast in a sleep."

then, after leaving tokens to show she had been there, either leaves quickly or hides in the bushes to watch what happens.

He wakes and in some variants taxes those with him — his goshawk, his servingmen, his horse, or his hound — that they did not wake him, but they answer it was impossible. He is angry that he did not manage to take her virginity and, in many variants, murder her afterwards, though in others he says he would have murdered her if she had resisted his intentions:

"Had I been awake when my true love was here
Of her I would have had my will
If not, the pretty birds in this merry green broom
Of her blood they should all had her fill."

In some variants, she hears this and leaves glad:

"Be cheerful, be cheerful, and do not repine.
For now 'tis as clear as the sun.
The money, the money, the money is mine,
And the wager I fairly have won".

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 20 - 04:24 AM

G Boyes mentions historical evidence , of course she is talking about establishment historical evidence, the ordinary peoples history was in those times not recorded or hardly at all ..recorded.
Historical evidence is written by the winners.
I shall never forget my nephew telling me that when he moved from england to france as a school child he discovered that wars the english had won in their history books had been won by the french in their history books , so there can be doubts about historical evidence and lack of historical evidence may not necessarily be of consequence

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 May 20 - 05:04 AM

In Merry Broomfield the belief system lies in the power of broom to put you into a deep sleep, but with talking animals you have a cartoon ballad anyway! No real witchcraft, and witch cults are modern constructs practised by silly cults (but no sillier than other belief systems based on thin air and the desire to manipulate the gullible).

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: GUEST,Dogflower
Date: 12 May 20 - 05:51 AM

You should check out Fay Hield's latest project (Modern Fairies)....it's looking at Fairies, ghosts, kelpies etc. Think her soon to be released album will incorporate a lot of it!

http://modernfairies.co.uk/artists/fay-hield

P

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 12 May 20 - 07:24 AM

My comments about witchcraft weren't based on history written by 'the winners' but on detailed historical research about the socio-economic background of the accusers and the accused.

The first study of this kind, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's "Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft", (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1974) on this and is still worth reading, though there have been many subsequent studies.

And as for lack of evidence, the same authors'"The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak" (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977) provides a three volume transcript of the contemporary proceedings.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 20 - 11:09 AM

What is history but a fable agreed upon. napoleon bonaparte
For me, Romanticism is the most recent and the most current expression of beauty.
quote   

Charles Baudelaire
All history is based upon the patronage of the establishment, Georgina, without being able to interview ordinary people who witnessed events in the past, historical research has to rely upon the literate classes,
in centuries in the past this would mean a tiny proportionof the population , this does not make histrical research entirely worthless but it does illustrate that it is not the be all and end of all, it shows that it represents the views of a tiny proportion of literate people

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 May 20 - 12:07 PM

I dot mean to cause you any offence or to diminish your hard work, it is just that i have a different view of history [i think ] to you , i am not prepared to just accept that which i am told by the establishment. an example is some of the historical plays of shakespeare, which in my opinion are well written tudor propoganda

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 May 20 - 12:42 PM

Before Ian Bostridge, a lifelong Londoner,
became a classical tenor specializing in the German Lied [art song],
he read history at Oxford and became a Ph. D.
To this day there are historians who quote Bostridge,
not regarding classical music which he has performed for years,
but for his scholarship as a published historian.

He is the author of
Witchcraft and its Transformations, c. 1650 -- c. 1750, Oxford, 1997.
This study, with its focus on a particular century,
details the repeal of the Witchcraft Act
and analyzes the documentation of the witch hunts in Scotland, for starters.
Much of the emphasis in this book is on politics.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 May 20 - 01:22 PM

'witchcraft' and witch hunts are at the opposite ends of a spectrum (IMHO). Like any similar belief system they are there so that the few can manipulate the masses. The last word written by keberoxu above is the critical one.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 May 20 - 02:11 PM

The "establishment" sources can be used in anti-establishment ways. Carlo Ginzburg does this ingeniously in his books. Obviously the witch- and heretic-hunters were looking for a hierarchical cult of Satan-worshippers (and the present-day neopagans are after the same thing with an inverted value system) - but the trial evidence they wrote down told a very different story, which Ginzburg traces explicitly over a very long route in space and time (some of it paralleling what Lloyd wrote about The Outlandish Knight). The trick is to look at the stuff the witch-hunters wrote down when reporting interrogations and confessions but couldn't make sense of within their dualistic framework.

But the story is about folk beliefs clustering in different ways in different contexts, not a doctrinal history of a unified anti-Christian religion.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 12 May 20 - 02:56 PM

Interesting link to Mainly Norfolk:

https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/records/songsofwitchcraftandmagic.html

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 May 20 - 04:26 AM

Well now. In the 70s, from what I remember, there was a Radio 4 programme that looked into strange tales. The one bit I remember was some folklore that said a particular field was never used to graze cattle because they became sick from it.

The old tale was that a farmer had had an altercation with a lady who was thought to be a witch. She then cursed his cattle and said his cows would sicken and die.

The researchers decided to inspect the field and probably with a bit of intuition found a plant that was somewhat toxic. It couldn't have been a prominent one like ragwort, because that (according to GF who is a gardener & farmer) is still a notifiable weed in the UK.

Was that witchcraft, or use of knowledge? IMNSHO it all depends on your knowledge base. All technology that is beyond understanding looks like magic.
Had the witch cursed his field, maybe he would have looked for clues!

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: GUEST
Date: 13 May 20 - 05:10 AM

Lowry Charles Wimberly has a book entitled ‘Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads’ which looks at evidence of magical beliefs in the ‘Child ballads’. Also Ronald Hutton has written on documentary historical evidence for witchcraft etc. in his ‘Triumph of the Moon’ (though that book would not meet Sandman’s criteria of not being written by a literate author!)

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 May 20 - 06:49 AM

Lloyd proposed that some traditional songs and customs had their origins in the rituals of witchcults.

Where did he suggest the existence of cults?

There is an enormous difference between such a claim and simply describing magical folklore.

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Mo the caller
Date: 13 May 20 - 07:37 AM

The 'witch' in Mr Red's story maybe was a witch / wise woman, and cursed the field by scattering seeds at night.
Once a belief is around there will be some who will gain a reputation, based on their knowledge and may build on that reputation through good or ill will or economic necessity.
Just finished reading Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy. He says that the people of Mellstock were losing their belief in witches since the new vicar had taken over. Fancy Day shelters from a storm in the cottage of a reclusive woman*, who seems to read her mind and gives her advice about how to persuade her father to let her marry Dick. She give 2 explanations for her advice - "Witchery of course... Didn't you ever hear I was a witch?...the charm is worked by common sense"


Part 3 ch3 The book was first published in 1872 and set "within living memory2

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Mo the caller
Date: 13 May 20 - 07:42 AM

But as for tellers of tales and singers of songs, who can say what they believe and what they include for artistic reasons.

And as for the general public there are some things, even now that we don't believe in but... Like a child who only believes in Father Christmas on Dec 24th

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: GUEST,LynnH
Date: 13 May 20 - 01:24 PM

"Over thick and over thin
Now Devil, to the cellar in London!"

The Bakewell Witches - an unfounded but naturally successful denunciation out of revenge.

Then there were the 'wise women' or 'white witches' whose 'crime' was too much to know about herbs and their properties, not just medicinally but particularly with regard to womens fertility......

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 May 20 - 04:27 PM

I live near Dalkeith, which had more witch trials per capita than any other place in Scotland, and perhaps the world. They have been well investigated by historians, and it looks like, on the whole, they were guilty as charged. There was a prevalent pattern where somebody ended up alienated from the community, and adopted the "neighbour from hell" role. Since they didn't have social media to use for anonymized malicious rumour spreading, it would have seemed that witchcraft was the obvious technology to use to get back at your fellow villagers - the knowledge was no great secret. Except if you let it be known you'd cursed someone, and it happened that they really did suffer something horrible, you might have to answer for it. There was never a suggestion of an overarching satanic organization, it was all individual small-town nastiness.

Maybe we might have something to learn from the witchfinders? OK, burning Facebook rumour-mongers at the stake might be a bit over the top, but maybe we could think about the pillory and tongue boring?

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 May 20 - 04:55 PM

(though that book would not meet Sandman’s criteria of not being written by a literate author!) quote
that is not the case
my criteria was something different it was that centuries ago eg shakespeares time, plays passed off as history and history was written by literates such as shakespeare who was an establishment servant of the Tudors, AND WROTE FICTION THAT WAS NOT ALWAYS HISTRICALLY ACCURATE BUT WAS PASSED OFF AS SUCH. .

Subject: RE: evidence of witchcults
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 May 20 - 04:58 PM

Then there were the 'wise women' or 'white witches' whose 'crime' was too much to know about herbs and their properties

Not a female preserve. Look at mediaeval medical texts and it's all herbal until Paracelsus came along. We have the gardening diary of the guy who ran Glasgow University's physic garden in the 16th century and he was mainly interested in herbs with gynaecological uses, including some heavy-duty abortifacients.