The Cunning-Man and the Hopping Pot
Even before the Statute of Secrecy, there was pressure from both the magical and Muggle worlds against being publicly known as a witch or wizard. However, lots of magical families probably made their livings by performing minor magics for their neighbors. They couldn’t all be re-trained at once even if the wizarding world could immediately create jobs for them. Which they couldn’t. Restructuring the economy to the point where fully separating from the Muggle world was remotely possible must have taken time. How were village practitioners to support themselves until then?
Well, probably many of them called themselves cunning-folk rather than witches. Cunning-folk were often considered different from witches, and in fact one of their main services was providing protection against witchcraft. They also helped find lost things, magically discovered the identities of thieves, healed injuries and illnesses, made love potions and charms, and other such services. Cunning-folk were often literate, and they could make pretty good money.
They key here is that they did magic, but not witchcraft. In the opinion of their Muggle neighbors. This might have been considered an acceptable intermediate stage of the separation process. First, encourage Muggles in their belief that this neighborly, domestic magic is totally different from the terrible witchcraft they fear. Then start convincing them that there’s no such thing as witches, even if there are cunning-folk. Then insist that what the cunning-folk do isn’t magic, but herbal medicine and shrewd guesses. By the time Muggles are ready to believe that magic doesn’t exist, the wizarding economy will (hopefully) have new jobs for the former cunning-folk. Then the only practicing cunning-folk will be Muggles, further reinforcing Muggles’ impression that magic is a sham.
Of course, there was a risk that Muggle-born witches and wizards might keep setting themselves up as cunning-folk if Hogwarts didn’t recruit them all young. They may have been more lackadaisical about recruiting Muggle-borns during the first centuries after Hogwarts was founded, and many students from both magical and Muggle families may have started later than the strict, modern age cutoff. (They really could have ranged from “old and bald” to “young with scabby knees.”) Children from poorer families might not have attended for more than a couple of years, because they needed to work to support their families. But the increasing pressure to separate from Muggles would provide an incentive to grab all magical kids early, keep them at school as long as possible, and absorb them into wizarding society. This might also be the reason for that fund for indigent students, whenever it was created.
How does this relate to the wizard, his son, and that annoying pot?
The wizard spent a year or two at a wizarding academy, or maybe learned his magical trade from someone else who had. This gave him the skills to set up as a cunning-man. He may also have practiced another trade (as was often the case), like brewing or stonemasonry, but being a cunning-man gave him extra income and status. When his neighbors lost treasured family heirlooms or donkeys and no ordinary search could find them, or when they were sick and didn’t get better on their own, they went to him. They paid him, though perhaps sometimes in eggs or bread or a new shirt rather than cash.
Either the wizard earned enough that his son could attend a wizarding academy for most of his adolescence, or the son was in the first generation to benefit from a new financial aid program. And so the son spent enough time surrounded by only other magical people that he grew to think of Muggles as different, and useless, rather than his community and customer base.
When the son came home, his village and his neighbors were strange to him. He couldn’t afford to Floo to see his friends every day. He couldn’t tell his neighbors about his life for the past few years or use his wand openly. It must have felt like an isolated, cramped existence compared to school. Plus, the idea of grubbing for his daily bread probably felt like a hardship after being served by house-elves. Maybe he hoped that one of his school connections would help him get a job in the wizarding world. So he didn’t want to take up his father’s profession, thank you very much.
The wizard was probably startled by the changes in his son. Being a cunning-man was a good job where he’d be respected and could use some magic, not back-breaking Muggle field labor-he should be grateful for such an opportunity! It wasn’t like he was asking his son to also take up brewing or stonemasonry or whatever. Just the magic job. What kind of spoiled brats was that school training?
Eventually, the wizard came up with the hopping-pot plan so the foolish boy would do some damn work and not starve. Or maybe he just left a letter advising the kid not to spurn such a good opportunity, and the hopping-pot is a metaphor for the son’s increasing difficulties without an income. (It wasn’t a pot with a foot clanging by his bed keeping him awake; it was his rumbling stomach and the knowledge that his cooking-pot was empty.) He finally broke down and became the village cunning-man once he realized his wizarding friends couldn’t or wouldn’t help him, and this was his best option.
In either case, the story’s end shows the precarious, in-between life of wizards in during the transition from full social integration with Muggles to complete separation: discouraged from magic openly, but left with no other way to earn a living after going to boarding school to learn magic instead of staying home to learn Muggle trades.
At least, that was how an older version of the story went. The version we read doesn’t mention payment. Maybe this was a deliberate omission, or maybe it just got lost when adapted from 15th-century English into modern because the adapters no longer understood how common it was for people to make a living performing magic for Muggles neighbors. They read it as a fable about being nice to helpless Muggles or about being hounded to fix the problems of inferior people, as their preferences dictated, because they didn’t realize that the wizard saw himself as part of Muggle society. The wizard kept the exact workings and full extent of his powers quiet, yes, but lots of other professions kept their details confidential too, for all sorts of reasons. He might have been thinking about safety, or he might have been thinking of magic as equivalent to a guild secret. The very idea of distinct magical and Muggle societies was so new, or at least limited to such a small group, that he didn’t realize there was a distinction until his son came home from Hogwarts spouting off about Muggle inferiority.
Now this would be radical if fully explained to modern audiences: not just a wizard quietly living among Muggles and helping them with magic, but a wizard as a full member of a Muggle community who uses his skills to earn a living just like the rest of them.
Well, probably many of them called themselves cunning-folk rather than witches. Cunning-folk were often considered different from witches, and in fact one of their main services was providing protection against witchcraft. They also helped find lost things, magically discovered the identities of thieves, healed injuries and illnesses, made love potions and charms, and other such services. Cunning-folk were often literate, and they could make pretty good money.
They key here is that they did magic, but not witchcraft. In the opinion of their Muggle neighbors. This might have been considered an acceptable intermediate stage of the separation process. First, encourage Muggles in their belief that this neighborly, domestic magic is totally different from the terrible witchcraft they fear. Then start convincing them that there’s no such thing as witches, even if there are cunning-folk. Then insist that what the cunning-folk do isn’t magic, but herbal medicine and shrewd guesses. By the time Muggles are ready to believe that magic doesn’t exist, the wizarding economy will (hopefully) have new jobs for the former cunning-folk. Then the only practicing cunning-folk will be Muggles, further reinforcing Muggles’ impression that magic is a sham.
Of course, there was a risk that Muggle-born witches and wizards might keep setting themselves up as cunning-folk if Hogwarts didn’t recruit them all young. They may have been more lackadaisical about recruiting Muggle-borns during the first centuries after Hogwarts was founded, and many students from both magical and Muggle families may have started later than the strict, modern age cutoff. (They really could have ranged from “old and bald” to “young with scabby knees.”) Children from poorer families might not have attended for more than a couple of years, because they needed to work to support their families. But the increasing pressure to separate from Muggles would provide an incentive to grab all magical kids early, keep them at school as long as possible, and absorb them into wizarding society. This might also be the reason for that fund for indigent students, whenever it was created.
How does this relate to the wizard, his son, and that annoying pot?
The wizard spent a year or two at a wizarding academy, or maybe learned his magical trade from someone else who had. This gave him the skills to set up as a cunning-man. He may also have practiced another trade (as was often the case), like brewing or stonemasonry, but being a cunning-man gave him extra income and status. When his neighbors lost treasured family heirlooms or donkeys and no ordinary search could find them, or when they were sick and didn’t get better on their own, they went to him. They paid him, though perhaps sometimes in eggs or bread or a new shirt rather than cash.
Either the wizard earned enough that his son could attend a wizarding academy for most of his adolescence, or the son was in the first generation to benefit from a new financial aid program. And so the son spent enough time surrounded by only other magical people that he grew to think of Muggles as different, and useless, rather than his community and customer base.
When the son came home, his village and his neighbors were strange to him. He couldn’t afford to Floo to see his friends every day. He couldn’t tell his neighbors about his life for the past few years or use his wand openly. It must have felt like an isolated, cramped existence compared to school. Plus, the idea of grubbing for his daily bread probably felt like a hardship after being served by house-elves. Maybe he hoped that one of his school connections would help him get a job in the wizarding world. So he didn’t want to take up his father’s profession, thank you very much.
The wizard was probably startled by the changes in his son. Being a cunning-man was a good job where he’d be respected and could use some magic, not back-breaking Muggle field labor-he should be grateful for such an opportunity! It wasn’t like he was asking his son to also take up brewing or stonemasonry or whatever. Just the magic job. What kind of spoiled brats was that school training?
Eventually, the wizard came up with the hopping-pot plan so the foolish boy would do some damn work and not starve. Or maybe he just left a letter advising the kid not to spurn such a good opportunity, and the hopping-pot is a metaphor for the son’s increasing difficulties without an income. (It wasn’t a pot with a foot clanging by his bed keeping him awake; it was his rumbling stomach and the knowledge that his cooking-pot was empty.) He finally broke down and became the village cunning-man once he realized his wizarding friends couldn’t or wouldn’t help him, and this was his best option.
In either case, the story’s end shows the precarious, in-between life of wizards in during the transition from full social integration with Muggles to complete separation: discouraged from magic openly, but left with no other way to earn a living after going to boarding school to learn magic instead of staying home to learn Muggle trades.
At least, that was how an older version of the story went. The version we read doesn’t mention payment. Maybe this was a deliberate omission, or maybe it just got lost when adapted from 15th-century English into modern because the adapters no longer understood how common it was for people to make a living performing magic for Muggles neighbors. They read it as a fable about being nice to helpless Muggles or about being hounded to fix the problems of inferior people, as their preferences dictated, because they didn’t realize that the wizard saw himself as part of Muggle society. The wizard kept the exact workings and full extent of his powers quiet, yes, but lots of other professions kept their details confidential too, for all sorts of reasons. He might have been thinking about safety, or he might have been thinking of magic as equivalent to a guild secret. The very idea of distinct magical and Muggle societies was so new, or at least limited to such a small group, that he didn’t realize there was a distinction until his son came home from Hogwarts spouting off about Muggle inferiority.
Now this would be radical if fully explained to modern audiences: not just a wizard quietly living among Muggles and helping them with magic, but a wizard as a full member of a Muggle community who uses his skills to earn a living just like the rest of them.