Continuing the old writing project, I am posting the last White Dragon article that I'm including in the blog.
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| The Last White Dragon |
It was, I think the crowning achievement of my White Dragon years, and the article I am most proud of. It is also the only article I did illustrations for:
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| My first illustration |
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| My second illustration |
Well, you don't have to be impressed by them, I was really proud of them. On to the article:
The Tools of the Trade
by Kate Aimson
February 2000
Witches practice a craft and revere their tools (no, seriously, I need to be able to say
tools without you sniggering). The tools we associate with witches are all ancient domestic objects. They have the oldest associations with human life, therefore have many customs and superstitions attached to them. Stories about witches detail their brooms, cauldrons, sickles, crystal balls, spinning wheels, even ovens. These are mentioned in passing in the stories, because they merely illustrate how witches used ordinary objects to weave their spells. it was the use they made of their tools that counted.
Domestic Tools
Spinning wheels appear in the stories of
Sleeping Beauty and
Rumpelstiltskin. The art of spinning has always been a big part of domestic life. Until about 1550 all thread was spun with a distaff and spindle. The distaff is a cleft stick, which holds the carded wool or plant fibres. The spindle is a straight stick weighted with a detachable whorl at the bottom. The spinner (or spinster?) pulls the fibres out with one hand, and twisting them between finger and thumb and winding the thread made onto the spindle. The spinning wheel, which was operated by a foot treadle, leaving both hands free to work the thread, appeared around 1550 in wealthy households. (There are versions of spinning wheels without the treadle, where the big wheel is spun by hand.) Of course, there was a crossover period as more and more people got spinning wheels, instead of spindles.
Archaeologists find spindle whorls buried in graves. Genealogists refer to the 'distaff' side of the family, meaning the female side, and the term 'spinster' is still the legal term for an unmarried woman. The tools of the spinner are deeply embedded in our language and folklore.
After the Black Death, life became more prosperous for ordinary people. Two of the most important new additions to a good farm were a dairy and an oven. These additions to the most basic life became part of myth and superstition. Stories which relate the involvement of fairies in the dairy, e.g. trying to stop the butter-making, go back to this age. The witch is often seen with her oven, e.g. trying to cook Hansel and Gretel, another indication of a very old story.
It seems to me in later stories people put in old tools, giving them an importance, in some way without knowing why. It was like they knew it was
old stuff, and old stuff was pretty much the same as
magic stuff. In this way, some objects have become imbued with magical significance, when there was not originally magic being done. For example, for some reason witches being measured, or measuring, with a witch's girdle (a simple length of cord) is magic. Actually the measuring of fabric was often done with a cord or stick, marked to an ell, a natural measurement relating to an arm's length, in older times. When re-telling stories the
old stuff bits were put it because they just were, because it was old; and then the old-ness became magical. People knew it was important, but they didn't know why.
Old was important and magical in itself.
But I digress, back to the ovens. In occult terms salamanders are fire elementals. However, there is also a domestic implement called a salamander. These were made in metal, often shaped like the lizard itself. They were heated in the kitchen fire, which was always burning, then carried into another room, where a fire was laid and ready to be lit. This is described in Alison Uttley's
The Country Child:
"On Christmas Eve fires blazed in the kitchen and parlour, even in the bedrooms. Becky ran from room to room with the red hot salamander which she stuck between the bars to make a blaze." What a tool that would be for a witch!
The Means of Production
Another tool for a witch as social outcast and rebel would be the quern. Quern-stones were shaped stones to grind grain to flour by simple but strenuous handwork. In Mediaeval times, querns were made illegal. Why? So that no-one could make their own flour, but had to take it to the mill and then pay a mill tax. This was paid by coin, or in kind, with a cut of the flour. To have this simple tool was literally "ownership of the means of production", not the sort of encouraged by the ruling class. Here we can see the importance of the ownership of a tool to a person's life. to own a tool was essential to a craft. Ownership of the correct tools was almost synonymous with a craft. So ownership of a broomstick, cauldron, crystal ball, pointy hat, black cat, etc. very nearly made you a witch by themselves.
Tools' Magical Links to Their Owners
Superstition illustrates the magical link between owner and tool. When a Northumbrian reaper cut his hand on a sickle, the tool was cleaned and polished to help mend the wound. Similarly, if an injury was caused by a rusty nail, it was taken to the blacksmith's for the rust to be removed. It was then carefully polished every day before sunrise and after sunset until the wound was healed. The link between the man and the tool was strong enough for contagious magic to be worked.
Craftsmen and their tools are also described in
The Country Child. The annual arrival of the Irish men to do the mowing is described. The barn is prepared fro them to live in and:
"Tom and Dan fetched all the rakes and two-pronged forks from the corner where they had been stacked for the winter... The long scythes were lifted down the barn walls, and honed until they gleamed...New teeth were made and fitted in the wooden rakes."
But when the Irishmen arrived:
"The most important of the men were Patrick and Corney and Andy, the mowers. ...They tied their corduroy trousers with twisted grass below the knee, ... and at the backs of their leather belts they carried sockets holding their whetstones. they brought their own scythes wrapped in sacking on their backs."
The mowers were craftsmen, not labourers and therefore owned and carried their own tools.
The link between the life of a person and their tools of the trade is seen everywhere. I have not deciphered what is behind this story from Derbyshire; is it perhaps an example of what I was talking about when I said
old stuff becomes
magic stuff? Ann Brightmore married at Wormhill church. She was working at Wormhill Hall, and when it was time for the ceremony she went to the church with her broom still in her hand. The groom had been mending the roof, and came down to be married with the trowel still in his hand. Why did they think it was necessary to be married with the tools of their respective trades in their hands? The punchline to the story was that they were always as devoted to each other as they were to their work.
At hiring fairs, where servants were contracted for a year of employment, people stood, in living memory, with a symbolic tool to advertise their willingness to work in that trade. These fairs were also known as "mop fairs" because of this. Another old story illustrated this relationship between a servant and their tool. A farmer's wife in North Derbyshire wanted to take on a servant, and had the choice of several girls. Each was coming at a different time for an interview. Her manservant suggested a test: a besom was laid across the front path, and they watched from the window. The first girl kicked the broom aside. They said "She's an idle slut, and can't bend her back". The second girl simply jumped over the broom. "She won't do, she'll skip her work", was the verdict. The third picked up the besom and put it away. She was given the job as she had shown herself to be careful, industrious, and tidy.
The Making of an Object in its Entirety
An example of a tool handmade to the purpose and very closely linked to the personality of the user is the
knitting sheath. Early knitting needles were made without knobs on the ends (I told you at the beginning not to snigger), and a special tool, the knitting sheath, was made to support one needle in the work. It was tucked under the arm or hooked on to the waistband of a skirt or apron to enable the knitter to work more quickly and easily. Many people augmented their incomes by knitting while they minded sheep or travelled by horse and cart. The sheaths were usually made of wood, have a hole in the top to take one end of the needle. There is a wide variety of shapes, mostly characteristic of a particular area. Many were made by a sweetheart as a love token, like the love spoons of Wales. If you want to see some of these wonderfully personal tools, the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes houses the
Agar Collection of Knitting Sheaths. If you could handle one, what an interesting exercise in psychometry it would be. The lives of the sweetheart making the sheath and the loved one knitting while she tended the sheep are totally entwined in this one object.
The link to the owner is also seen in the bobbins used to make pillow lace. In early times, this was called bone lace, because bone bobbins were used. Pillow lace production was centred in the South West and The East Midlands.
A striking difference between the two areas is that in the South West, the bobbins are all mass-produced to a uniform design, whereas in the East Midlands there are infinite varieties of bobbins. One lacemaker would rarely own two bobbins alike. Why this difference developed between the two traditions I do not know, but in the East Midlands the tools of the trade were an expression of the personality of the owner. Bobbins were made by specialist manufacturers or general woodturners. In the East Midlands each bobbin would be manufactured individually and often be highly decorated. they would also be customised by the owner. Lacemakers would sometimes put their own charms or mementos on the end instead of the ordinary "spangle" of beads: boot buttons, army buttons, shells, coins, in fact anything with a hole in it. Inscriptions were burnt in or added with pins or thorns. Messages might be "Kiss me quick" or "Forget me not", or even "I wants a husband". Again they be handcarved by a sweetheart as a love token. These tools illustrate the typical ways in which people made their possessions personal to them in folk art.
The Fewer Your Possessions, the Greater Their Value
Lacemakers also used a tool made famous by witches. The crystal ball is now only used for magical purposes, but was once a household tool. Lacemakers used to maximise the light available from a candle by putting it on a 'candle block' or 'flash stool'. An adjustable candlestick was fixed in the middle of a high-legged stool, and around it were placed up to six wooden sockets that held long-necked globes of water, the 'flashes' or flasks. These would concentrate the beams of light on the work. Objects like this were in widespread use to enable people to work in the darker hours. In a richer household they might be crystal balls. So the most mystical tool of the witch is again only a domestic tool used in a magical way - for scrying. Candles were also placed in front of mirrors to increase the light available for work. There is something very magical about working a spell in a mirror by candlelight, and many traditions use this. Mirrors were a domestic tool, for lighting purposes, before they were magic mirrors. The household books of Naworth Castle, near Carlisle, detail housekeeping between 1618-1633. There is included an item: nine shillings for 'a little looking glass' to be used to double the light of a candle. The books list needlework tools, payments for spinning and weaving, and buying items like pins from pedlars.
By the seventeenth century pedlars covered all the country and carried household items and, more specifically, threads, tools, dyes, needles and pins. Most people would only have the chance to buy such items from a pedlar (also known as a packman, jaggerman, or chapman, depending on the area covered and goods carried) or at fairs. Anything that was needed between these times of opportunity must be made. In early times everything was home-made and people could return to these methods if necessary. Thorns were used as pins, fish bones and carved bone for needles. Scissors were shears or 'snips' of iron, made by the blacksmith. there are references to needlework tools from Roman times, but they increase greatly through the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as they were increasingly manufactured as a product, rather than made at home by an individual.
The very few possessions that a person owned increased their importance by their scarcity. Inventories of an entire household could be written on a single sheet of parchment. A published example of this is the inventory of a blacksmith's household in 1643. The personal importance of a handmade tool, and the objects made with it, is something we should strive for in witchcraft.
Tools are Also Made
One way we could try this out is to make a pincushion for personal use. I think a pinchushion containing pins for use in magic deserves to be ranked with the besom, cauldron, pointy hat and crystal ball as an essential tool of the trade for a witch. Pins were such an essential household item that they completely saturate folklore, superstition and custom.
Pins were used for sewing, as fastenings for dress and household items. Originally they were manufactured in brass or copper alloy. In his
'Description of England' (1587), William Harrison noted that pin-making had begun in England in the 1570s, and that the English pin-makers
'excel all nations'. Pins were made by sharpening a straight piece of wire and winding a thinner gauge wire around the other end, which was hammered on to make the head. Not until 1824 was a soli pin invented.
Pins were also handmade and customised in various ways. Burrs were plucked from goosegrass, the outer skin scraped off, and stuck on the wire, As they dried, they would contract and forma brown pinhead. These were called burrheads or sweethearts. we cannot even contemplate making such trivial tools as pins these days, but imagine the people who did. then imagine the power of a magical working, where even the pin used is s handmade tool, made specifically for that occasion, and totally imbued with your spirit.
Pins and Magic
Pins were used in every way by witches. the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle has cases and cases of items where the spell was cast by sticking with pins. Here are two examples of spells by the wiseman William Dawson, who practised in County Durham in the early nineteenth century.
A wealthy man asked why he was losing so many of his stock. having ascertained witchcraft as the cause, Dawson told the farmer to remove the heart of one of the dead beasts and pierce it with nine new nails, nine new pins and nine needles. The heart was then to be ritually burned.
A young man was thought to be bewitched. So "clippings from every finger and toe nail of the patient, with hair from each temple, and the crown of his head, were stuffed into the throat of a pigeon which had previously been placed between the patient's feet, and there had died at once, thus attesting the witchery from which he was suffering. the bird's bill was riveted with three pins and then the wiseman thrust a pin into its breast, to reach the heart, everybody else in the room following his example".
Another way a witch used a pin is illustrated here in a story from Derbyshire. A young girl was engaged to a man with light hair. the girl met a witch who told her she must marry a dark haired man. The witch gave the girl a triangular shaped piece of paper, which she pricked three times (I think
gave means sold). The girl was to wear the paper next to her bosom and three weeks later the paper would have the name of her dark-haired husband-to-be.
Pins were used in folk custom. In Derbyshire they were dropped into wells. Some wells were known as pin-wells. for example in Bradwell on Easter Sunday the children used to drop pins in the five wells of the village. They said that a fairy lived at each well and knew whether a child had dropped a pin or not. On Easter Monday the children would walk around all day with bottles of sweetened and/or flavoured water. the bottles of the children who had dropped pins into the wells remained intact, whereas the bottles of the children who had not broke. Dropping pins in wells must be ancient and widespread, as the Roman Coventina's Well on Hadrian's Wall contained many pins when it was excavated.
Pins were so associated with domestic life that a married woman's money, which she could spend herself, with no reference to her husband, was called pin money.
There are two examples from The East Midlands of people with strange manias for pins. Pin Tommy walked the streets of Derby in the 1830s. Every pin he found or was given was added to his clothing until it was like a suit of armour. It was said that he would rather go hungry than swop one of his pins for food. Perhaps he was obsessed with the proverb:
"See a pin and pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck; see a pin and let it lie, all day long your luck will die."
Kitty Hudson (also called the human pincushion) was born in Arnold, near Nottingham, in 1765. She developed a habit of swallowing pins, and in fact could not get to sleep without pins in her mouth. she was finally admitted to hospital and over a long period of time pins, needles, and pieces of bone were removed from all over her body. On being discharged she married, had nineteen children who all died, was widowed, remarried and eventually settled in South Wingfield, Derbsyhire. For the rest of her life, pins would occasionally erupt from her skin.
In the nineteenth century rectangular-shaped pincushions were made for an event like a homecoming, a birth, or a marriage, with a message or wish spelt out it pins. Again, they were made as love tokens, especially by sailors and soldiers for their sweethearts at home.
Know Your Tools and How to Use Them
Other tools you may wish to have are needles, scissors, thimbles, r a chatelaine. Use them with a knowledge of their history. Needles could be home-made as we have seen, but they were imported in the sixteenth century. The Germans, and especially the Spanish, were highly skilled in steelworking. These gradually replaced needles made from iron wire, made in England, which easily bent ad broke. By Mary Tudor's time high-quality needles were being made and sold in London in a shop owned by a Spanish Moor. Steel needles were eventually produced industrially in England, and you may wish to visit The Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch. There is not as much superstition attached to needles as pins, but factory seamstresses used to say that they would never lend each other needles as it would 'prick' their friendship.
Scissors were available in this country from around 1550-1600, again being made by Spanish Moors in Toledo and Cordoba. Only these steel scissors were sharp and delicate enough for detailed sewing work. Superstitions attached to scissors are that if someone gives you a present of scissors, you must give them a coin, or 'cut' the friendship. Professional seamstresses used to say that they would never pick up scissors they had dropped themselves, but that they must let someone else do it.
They also considered it very unlucky to lose a thimble, perhaps because being so closely fitted to one finger, and always worn on that finger, it contained something of the essence of the owner. The link between owner and tool was close enough fro contagious magic, as we have seen. Thimbles have a very long history and were made as a result of the need to protect the finger when pushing unpolished needles through coarse cloth. Tailors and sail-makers have their own specialised forms of thimble. Maybe some older readers remember and old party game 'hunt the thimble'.
Chatelaines developed in mediaeval times from the necessity of the lady of the castle (the chatelaine) to carry all her keys on her person, attached to her belt. An eighteenth century or nineteenth century chatelaine had a number of chains suspended from a central clip, with a different item hanging at the end of each e.g. a thimble in a case (maybe acorn-shaped), scissors, penknife, pincushion, needlecase, pencil and pad. These became decorative objects, almost a piece of jewellery.
I will finish this version of the article with a great quotation.
Children were taught how to use and care for tools. They were also shown how they did their job, and the correct way to use them. In
Needlework for Student Teachers (c.1923), it was explained how to teach this:
"Teachers cannot be too particular in enforcing the proper use of thimble and needle. No child will ever become a skilful worker until it has a complete mastery over its tools; and to teach the correct position of needle, thread and thimble at the right time, viz., before material is used (i.e. work is started) must be the aim of every teacher. By neglecting this step progress is retarded ... and good results are next to impossible" and again
"Children must not be allowed to do as they please in the matter of holding their implements with the hope that eventually the best way will suggest itself to the child's mind."
You will be pleased to know that since the publication of this article, I have learned to use a thimble, and now always do. Eventually the right way of doing things just became the only way to do things.
