My huge thanks to Jason Semmens - the acknowledged expert on Cornish witchcraft - for writing this page.

Contact him at by email or visit his website.

A witch by Goya

Cornwall has long had a reputation for witchcraft.

Behind the witch stories collected by folklorists lay a widely held set of beliefs about the malevolent power of the witch and her ability to ill-wish people and cattle, to blast crops and cause sickness and misery to those that displeased her. The period from 1550 to 1736 was the great age of the witch-trials in England when many thousands found themselves before judges accused of witchcraft. The trial records and pamphlets describe the fear of witchcraft and point to the anxieties felt in local communities that led to witch accusations. Most fears about witchcraft centered on the hearth and home, of child-rearing and domesticated animals, and the written records show that most accusations of witchcraft were made by women against other women, usually by young women against their seniors. The older woman, past child-bearing years, could find herself at the centre of a younger person’s anxieties about motherhood and illness. A readiness to resort to folk magic to help in cases of sickness could easily be construed as something altogether darker. In all cases, the witch was known to her accusers.

At least 24 individuals are known to have found themselves before the Assize court at Launceston, some of whom were hanged. Perhaps most sensational was the 1686 case of John Tonkin, who claimed to be bewitched by a local women and who vomited pins and other sharp items that he said she placed by enchantment into his stomach. Although the witchcraft act of 1604 was repealed in 1736, after which suspected witches could not be put on trial for witchcraft, but rather for pretended witchcraft, the idea of the malevolent witch refused to go away, and there are accounts of witch-scratching and assault into the early twentieth century, after which time such beliefs declined.

Ranged against the witch and her curses were the magical practitioners known variously as cunning-folk, conjurors, Wise-man and women and, from the mid nineteenth century onwards, as Pellers. The term ‘white witch’ was also applied to them, although mainly by the clergy and by folklorists. Cunning-folk were the multi-faceted practitioners of the occult arts who were consulted by those who thought themselves bewitched, and the conjuror offered services of witch-detection, spell-breaking, theft detection, fortune telling and sometimes simple charming. As they operated a business, cunning-folk charged for their services. Cunning-folk were found across Cornwall, mostly in the South and West, and whereas the majority of those accused of witchcraft were women, the majority of cunning-folk were men.

Cunning-folk were sought out for their power to unmask a witch, which they did mostly by offering the bewitched person means to name the witch themselves, usually by using reflective surfaces. Other times the conjuror would describe the ill-wisher in sufficient detail for the client to feel sure that he or she knew who it was. The cunning-person would then offer some charm to break the power of witchcraft, or suggest some means whereby the client to break the curse him or herself.

Cunning-folk sold charms written on paper, which were to be hung around the neck of the afflicted, or in the case of cattle offered powers (usually salt) which had to be sprinkled around the farmer’s fields and over the backs of the animals while certain verses where chanted. The most popular charm was the word ‘Abracadabra’ written in the form of a pyramid, with the last letter missed off on each line. Charms and signs copied from various magical books also proved popular, such as Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), which incorporated medieval traditions of angel magic.

In the days before a police force, cunning-folk performed a vital function in their communities for reinforcing neighbourly behaviour and their consulting rooms were nerve centres for local gossip and intrigues. Aside from witch-detection, theft detection was the most important service they offered. Burglaries were no less common in the past and people went to cunning-folk to discover who had robbed them, which they did by the oracle of the Sieve and Shears. Quite often it was the merest threat of a visit to a conjuror, spread abroad by the neighbourhood gossips, that induced thieves to return the stolen loot to the rightful owner.

As cunning-folk were supported by witch-beliefs, when these began to decline in the early twentieth century, so too did the practices of cunning-folk. When he began his folklore collecting in the 1920s, the Cornish folklorist William Paynter took an especially interest in cunning-folk, but it is noticeable that he last wrote about them in 1932, which coincides with their disappearance nationally, as the last practicing conjuror Owen Davies was able to find in his survey of English cunning-folk was in 1936.

Another group of magical practitioners met with in the folklore records are charmers, those people who could cure cuts and sprains and simple skin diseases. Charmers are still to be met with in the country districts of Cornwall and they offer quite different services to those of the cunning-folk, despite often being confused with them. Unlike conjurors, charmers do not diagnose and their charms are used solely for healing. Moreover, whereas conjurors learned their stock-in-trade from books or from what they could pick up from other cunning-folk, charmers practise a tradition of handing down their store of charms contra-sexually – that is from male to female to male to female and so on. The charms are never meant to be revealed but rather spoken over the patient in a whisper. Also unlike cunning-folk, charmers are never meant to take payment for their healing.

In our own day we have the modern pagan witch, practicing a nature-based religion. Even though the malevolent witch has largely disappeared, magic lives on.

Some historical cunning-folk and witches of Cornwall

Thomasine Blight (1793-1856) was Cornwall’s greatest conjuror, well known for her skills in detecting witches and combating ill-wishing. She was also a fortune teller and regarded as an Oracle of the age. The Cornish folklorists Robert Hunt and William Bottrell recorded stories about Blight, with several more reported in the 1920s by William Paynter. “Tammy Blee,” as she was known, began her practice as a cunning-woman at Redruth in the 1820s before moving to Helston in the 1840s. It is from her time at Helston that most of the stories about her derive. Perhaps the most amusing was the time when Tammy offered to raise the spirit of a dead woman to discover the whereabouts of some lost money. Tammy and the client turned up at Stithians graveyard one night at midnight and began her incantations, using herbs as incense to please the spirit as directed in the manual of necromancy, when at last behind a headstone a wailing began and a shrouded figure began to move towards the pair. The young man stood his ground against the approaching apparition, though it was when it laid its hand upon the young man’s shoulder that he reacted and punched the figure to the ground. The game was up when it was discovered that the ‘ghost’ was Tammy’s husband James Thomas dressed in a sheet and stinking of alcohol! It was reported that Blight and Thomas begged the young man not to reveal their conniving and he agreed to say that the spirit had been raised and that it would haunt the thief for the rest of his days, which was spread by the local gossips, and he was surprised to find pockets of money outside his door the next morning by those with guilty consciences!

James Thomas (1814-1874) was probably Cornwall’s most notorious cunning-man, as much as for his personal habits as for the accusations of witchery he made. Born at Wendron, Thomas began his practice as a cunning-man in his 20s while working at the mines around Redruth. He married Thomasine Blight in 1835 and the two of them formed something of a magical double act until his predilection for men got the better of him and he was reported to the authorities, at which he fled Cornwall for a while. There are a number of tales of Thomas’s practices of unbewitching, including taking a group of clients to Phillack church one night where the images of those who ill-wished them were said to appear.

The Trebullet Witch: In the late 1800s a witch and his wife lived at Trebullet. This witch ill-wished S_____ of Wooda Bridge, to be always covered with lice. Mr S. would come home and call for clean clothes, and in fifteen minutes would be covered with lice again. At last he went to see the cunning-man Snow at Plymouth, and was shown the witch in a glass of water, and asked what should be done to the witch. “Oh, break the legs of him!” said S. The witch was working at carrying wood at Ruses Mill, when the witch, for no apparent reason, slipped with his legs crossed, and the wagon went over both legs and snapped them, at the very moment, that S. had wished they might be broken. The witch’s leg was set, but he moved one and it had to be broken again and reset, and even then the bone would not knit, and there was great trouble. At last Mrs. S. begged her husband to go to the witch and speak to him as he was not likely to do him any more harm. So S. went and spoke, and the leg healed, and the witch could walk again.

Granny Boswell (1817-1909) was originally from Ireland, of Romany gypsy stock and married Ephraim Boswell, known as the “King of the Gypsies.” She came into Cornwall in the 1860s and spent most of her time in the Lizard area. In his account of her, Kelvin Jones made much of her as a ‘white witch’ or healer, yet the contemporary accounts suggest the opposite to be true. To the civic authorities at Helston she was a nuisance, as she ‘annoys people by begging but acts as a pedlar and has no certificate and so evades the law but no one cares to interfere with her.’ She was often met with abroad on the streets of Helston inebriated and incapable, and indeed in February 1902 she was ‘fined 2s. 6d. and 2s. 6d. costs for being helplessly drunk in Lady Street … and for inability to pay was sent to Bodmin for seven days, without hard labour.’ She frequently strayed to nearby towns, yet as the parish guardians confirmed with weary resignation, she always managed to find her way back to Helston. To the people of Helston she was an ambivalent presence in their midst, whom many feared lest her fiery temper and sharp tongue might fall upon them. It appears that people were in the habit of giving her alms to ensure that her evil eye might not fall upon them, and she had a malevolent reputation for ill-wishing those who fell foul of her. At no time was this reputation more powerfully confirmed than in 1906. Captain Taylor related his encounter with her:

'It was in the 1906 election, when we were ferrying voters to the poll; I remember that the polished brass paraffin headlights were adorned with large blue bows. My father had reversed the car across the street outside our house, and was about to go forward in the other direction, when the local witch walked in front. She stood there, a ragged and grimy old hag, apparently fascinated by the shining and throbbing machine; and swaying slightly, as on election day she was more drunk than usual. My father, to make her move, first shouted, then roared the engine and tooted the horn. This nettled her, and she shrieked in her broad Cornish and with much foul language that the qualified wagon wasn’t going to get as far as the other end of the qualified street; she turned her back, and stalked off in fury. We started; before the car was half-way down the street there was a loud snap, and one of the one-inch steel tension-rods broke clean in two. A horse towed us home. It had long been said that Granny B[oswell] could ill-wish cattle and fowls, and she lived largely on the gifts of those who desired to ensure that her eye should be averted from theirs; but to be able to ill-wish a motor-car in public was a most startling confirmation of her art, and on the strength of that, I have no doubt, she was able to live in comparative luxury for the rest of her life.'

In fact Granny Boswell lived in comparative poverty in her last decade. For reasons unknown she was abandoned by her family and was forced to seek parish relief in the Union Workhouse on Meneage Street, where she died.

At Boscastle there is the Museum of Witchcraft, with displays of witchcraft past and present. You can even buy tools there to cast your own spells.

Visit their site here.

Some Witches' Cures (and anti-Witch charms)

Whooping Cough - pass the child under the belly of a piebald horse.

Smallpox & Measles - Live fowl hung upside-down from a beam in patient's bedroom, with its feathers plucked. Within twenty-four hours spots/rash will transfer to the fowl, the bird will turn black and congested and die in final struggle, leaving the patient free of infection. (This was still used up to the 1960's.)

Hernia - the child should crawl through an ash sapling before breakfast, fasting.

Thrush - one born without father (i.e. posthumous) should blow into the infected mouth.

Warts - a) soak nine bramble leaves in spring water, or b) rub meat into wart, then bury the meat to decay it.

Ill-Wishing - to be avoided at all costs. Pass witch on right-hand side of the road, don't catch her eye. Otherwise this will lead to a) months of sickness, b) cattle fall sick, c) fish refuse to bite, d) plants wither. REMEDY - draw blood from witch, then her power will cease.

Death or Ox or other Animal - take out creature's heart, stick it with nails and pins, and roast it before fire until pins drop out. The witch will suffer in sympathy with the roasting heart and be forced to confess.

Lunacy - pushed in pond and forced up and down.

Pillows - stuff with feathers of wild birds to make dying painful/prolonged. Death also waited on the ebb of the tide.

Animal Lore

Owls were seen as birds of ill-omen. So were Ravens if they croaked over your house.

A Toad on the doorstep was also an ill omen. The cure was to give the toad a 'barbarous death'.

The Hare was hated more than anything. A person injured before death could never rest in peace, and so took the form of a white hare with burning eyes, from which dogs and beasts ran away howling. Another story says that white hares are the souls of lovers who died of grief after being deserted. It is in this form that such maltreated girls return to haunt their betrayers. Hares or rabbits must not be mentioned while at sea or no fish will be caught.