Witch Mother/doctor

[ashton_albright]

In my story I have a witch that in effect took care of a village right around the turn of the first century in England (1000 a.d. or c.e.).  I have been trying to find if there was any honorifics entitled to that position.  I found the term witch mother once, but it was in reference to another time period.

Was that even something they would

Comments

[sushidog]

Not just the North of England; Long houses, with the cattle at the lower end and humans at the higher, were certainly used in Devon (in the South-West of England) too, and I think were widespread throughout the country.

Obviously in 1000 AD, they're not going to be speaking English, but it's worth bearing in mind that throughout the Mediaeval and Early Modern period, a Witch wasn't simply someone who used magic or charms or herbal medicine; it was specifically someone who did harm by magic. As another commenter has said, pretty much everyone used charms of one sort or another (these days, medicine, religion, and magic are three separate things; back then, they weren't, and diseases were generally considered to be the result of curses or of punishment for sins, and were cured by prayer or by turning back the curse), but you could look into Cunning Folk; there's no record of them that far back, but from the late mediaeval or early modern, you do get stuff about Cunning Folk who are basically herbalists/expert charm-makers.

[teithiwr]

Obviously in 1000 AD, they're not going to be speaking English

Well, it was English, just Old English instead of Present-day English. :) Obviously a vastly different stage of the language, but the same language nevertheless.

/linguist nitpick

[sushidog]

*heh* Yes, there should really be a "modern" in there!

[syntinen_laulu]

The notion of witches as a specific class of people in league with the Devil to do harm is actually a product of the very >i>late Middle Ages, and witch-hunting is actually a phenomenon of the early modern era, not characteristically medieval at all. Around 1000 the general concept of charms or spells was something that everyone could do, for good or ill ends, though of course some people were more versed in it than others.

And no, the Anglo-Saxons did not share living space with their livestock. There have been a large number of Saxon domestic sites excavated and in all of them the farm animals were being housed separately.

[sushidog]

Someone above you agreed with the notion of livestock sharing space with the household.
It's possible that this turned up later though; it may be early Mediaeval rather than Anglo-Saxon, and this suggests that longhouses are a Norse introduction, rather than Saxon.

[syntinen_laulu]

I know about longhouses, but if you have a single long building, with the animals in one 'room' and the humans in another, would you call that 'sharing living space'? I wouldn't say so, although they're under the same roof they're no more mixed together than they would be if the animals were in a separate byre.

[sushidog]

Fair enough; I think to the modern eye, having them in the same room with just a door between them (and making use of their body heat as central heating!) is at least rather closer quarters than we're used to.

[marycatelli]

Technically (or pedantically), belief in witchcraft -- malific magic, that is -- is common to all cultures except modern industrialized ones (modern as in both France and Great Britain had attacks on purported witches quite late in the nineteenth century) and hunting-and-gathering ones. And many cultures have had witch hunts -- the biggest two on record, for instance, were in the Roman Republic.

But the Middle Ages prior to the Black Death were, as you observe, not noted for witch hunts. Various laws were passed to suppress witch-hunts on the grounds that the crimes were, in fact, impossible.

Also, Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Kieckhefer might prove useful in part. (I reviewed it here)