Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic | Tabitha Stanmore

Imagine: the year is 1600 and you've lost your precious silver spoons - or perhaps your neighbour has stolen them. Or maybe you child has a fever. Or you're facing trial. Or you're looking for love. Or you're hoping to escape a husband... what do you do?

 In medieval and carly modern Europe, your first port of call might very well 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. For people from all walks of life, practical magic was a cherished resource with which to navigate life's many challenges.

In Tabitha Stanmore's beguiling account, we meet lovelorn widows and 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 who guard it. Much like us, pre-modern 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.

Told with warmth, wit and above all empathy, these stories take us deep into people's day-today lives: their hopes and desires; their fears and vulnerabilities. Charming in every sense of the word, Cunning Folk is an immersive construction of a bygone world and a thought-provoking commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.

Size: 160 X 242mm

Pages: 288

Publisher: Bodley Head