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Jun 11Liked by WEIRD WALK

Fascinating stuff - just reading Keith Thomas' 1970 book Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (which I assume Tabitha Stanmore cites), and there is just so much about the beliefs of people in this period that we today would be surprised about

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You’re right - Thomas is cited within, and what a classic tome that is!

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I also highly recommend

Davies, Owen (1999). A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth-Century Somerset. Bruton. ISBN 978-0-9536390-0-7. OCLC 44989636.

for a very thorough and detailed look at cunning folk in my own county in the 1800s, where he particularly focuses on newspaper reports and court cases. Owen Davies is now currently Professor in History at the University of Hertfordshire, where he has instigated a Folklore Studies

MA, and he provides an original research and a facinating insight into local beliefs and practices.

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