It's 1600 and you've lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they've been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you're facing trial. Maybe you're looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do?
In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might have been cunning folk: practitioners of 'service magic'. Neither feared (like witches), nor venerated (like saints), they were essential to everyday life, a ubiquitous presence in a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane and a cherished everyday resource.
We meet lovelorn widows, dissolute nobles, selfless healers and renegade monks. We listen in on Queen Elizabeth I's astrology readings and track treasure hunters trying to unearth buried gold without upsetting the fairies that guard it. Much like us, premodern people lived in bewildering times, buffeted by forces beyond their control; and as Stanmore reveals, their faith in magic has much to teach us about how we accommodate ourselves to the irrational in our allegedly enlightened lives today.
Charming in every sense of the word, Cunning Folk is at once an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world and a thought-provoking commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.
This is a brilliant book, written with wit and vigour, in which Tabitha Stanmore explores the pre-modern places where magic was real, offering not only practical solutions for ordinary problems but a way of feeling about the world, an emotional relationship between anxious humans, cosmic forces, and the mundane mysteries of their lives ― Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin of All Witches
Absolutely fascinating. Cunning Folk is a much-needed book that draws attention to a little-known but important aspect of daily life. Like all good history books, it tells us about ourselves as well as the past. It will both inform and inspire readers ― Ian Mortimer, author of Medieval Horizons
The best introduction to late medieval and early modern popular magic yet written ... Comprehensive, humane, lively, and a great read ― Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch
A fascinating and intricately researched book that opens a window into another world ― Tracy Borman, author of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I
This isn't just a book: it's a window on the hopes, passions and lives of Europe five centuries ago. We know the horror film version of magic. Tabitha Stanmore - uncovering a whole treasure house of long-lost private lives - adds the rich, fresh, human version ― Michael Pye, author of The Edge of the World