Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs

Ralph Merrifield

Folklore, Vol. 66, No. 1. (Mar., 1955), pp. 195-207.

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 WITCH BOTTLES AND MAGICAL JUGS
BY RALPH MERRIFIELD

A COMMON counter-measure against witchcraft, which has survived as a

rustic superstition until recent times, is the preparation by the supposed
victim of a " witch-bottle ". The usual contents are a sample of the
victim's urine, together with a few nails, pins, or thorns. Sometimes
other ingredients, also intimately connected with the person of the victim,
may be included-such as clippings of his hair or finger-nails. The
bottle is securely corked or stoppered, and is then either concealed and
left, or else heated until it explodes-with dire results to the witch who
has cast the spell. In the former case, it is believed that the witch will
suffer from a strangury, and will be doomed to a slow and painful death,
unless the bottle is uncorked. In the latter more drastic method, the
death of the witch and the subsequent relief of her victim are believed
to take immediate effect, provided that the bottle actually bursts. If
the cork merely flies out, the witch will escape. The urine, hair-clippings,
etc., of bewitched cattle or horses, likewise may be enclosed in a bottle
as a counter-measure against the witch responsible for their sufferings.
According to one local legend, " Cunning " Murrell, the famous witch-
finder of Hadleigh in Essex, met his death in this way as recently as
1860, through the agency of a witch-bottle containing the hair of a donkey
which he had bewitched, in an unfortunate lapse from the "white"
magic which he normally professed to practise.l An even more recent
example of this belief may be quoted from an adjoining county. I t
is reported in a newspaper of 1903 that the customer of a barber's shop
in Bishops Stortford asked that a clipping of hair from the nape of his
neck should be saved, as he wanted to put it in a bottle with nail-parings,
water, and other ingredients. He intended to put the bottle on his fire
a t night, so that it would burst as near midnight as possible, in order to
bring sickness to an enemy who had injured him-no doubt by witch-
craft, although this is not explicitly ~ t a t e d . ~
The difficulty, not unaccompanied by danger, of bursting a bottle by
heat, made the slower but less alarming method of using the witch-bottle
considerably more popular, and from time to time, in many different
Harold Adshead, " Canewdon and its Witches ", in The Essex Countryside.
vol.2, No. 6, pp. 4 6 7 .
Quoted from the " East London Advertiser " of August, 1903, in A. Clifton
Kelway, Memovials of Old Essex, London, 1908, p. 251.
'95
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
parts of the country, bottles are found containing pins, nails, and less
frequently hair or nail-parings, where they had been deposited as witch-
charms many years before. Sometimes they still contain liquid-almost
certainly urine-but usually this has evaporated. Bottles which ori-
ginally contained urine alone are of course less easily recognized as witch
charms, and must often have escaped n ~ t i c e . ~
Finds of witch-bottles have been recorded from churchyards in Devon-
shire4 ; from the grave of an animal (no doubt believed to be the victim
of witchcraft) and from house foundations in Lincolnshire5 ; and beneath
the floor of an old farm-house in northern Stafford~hire.~ I will content
myself with a more detailed description of two fairly typical finds of this
kind, which have not, I believe, yet been published. A bottle of nineteenth
century date, which apparently formerly contained a tooth-ache specific,
was found in 1895 in St. Baruch's Well, Barry Island, Glamorganshire,
and is now in the Welsh Folk Museum. It was corked, and contained
three black enamel pins, all bent. The other is a late nineteenth century
codliver oil bottle, still with its original label. It was found, about
twenty years ago, in the kitchen chimney of an old house in Padstow,
Cornwall, while repairs were being carried out. It is more than half
filled with a dark liquid, and has a number of rusty pins actually stuck
into the top of the cork, outside the bottle-a variant of the usual
custom, which may be the result of the introduction of the witch-bottle
tradition into an area already familiar with the common West Country
practice of hanging in the chimney the heart of a bewitched animal, stuck
full of pins, as a counter-measure against witchcraft. The liquid has been
analysed, and found to be urine in a state of decomposition.
At this point I must mention two witch-bottles of a much more unusual
character. One of these was found near Padstow, during repairs to
another old cottage. Several layers of old wall-paper were stripped
revealing a small cupboard in a recess under the stairs. This contained
nothing but a nineteenth century wine-bottle, corked and sealed, filled
with liquid, and containing a mounted group of carefully carved wooden
" Instruments of the Passion " in miniature, comprising a cross, two

3 That urine alone was sometimes used is suggested by the Cornish anecdote in
Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, London, 1923, p. 319.
There is also little doubt that James ITowler is correct in identifying bottles found
a t South Kilworth and Lutterworth as eighteenth century witch-bottles contain-
ing urine alone. (Archaeologia, vol. 46, pt. I, pp. 133-4, footnote.)
Transactions of the Devonshire Association, XXVIII, pp. 98-9. Ibid.,
XXXII, pp. 89-90.
6 Notes and Queries, 2nd series, I (1856), p. 415.
6 Reliquary, 1st series, VII (1866-7), p. 101.
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
spades, two axes, a pair of pincers, two stakes, and a ladder. I t seems
likely that it was the work of a pious sailor, who was perhaps weary of
making the usual " ship in a bottle ". It may therefore have been made
simply as an ornament, or as a display of skill, but it certainly seems t o
have been used as a charm. Unfortunately, the nature of the liquid is
unknown, but local people, evidently still familiar with the witch-bottle
tradition, have told the present owner that it is likely to be urine. If so,
this would appear to be an interesting late development of the charm,
perhaps resulting from a mistaken interpretation of the traditional nails
and thorns as symbols of the Passion of Christ.
The other witch-bottle follows quite a different tradition. In this case
a stoneware bottle was found just over twenty years ago beneath the
feeding trough in a cow-house, on a farm a t Sarn, Montgomeryshire. I t
contained merely a written charm, the general purport of which is clear,
although I have not yet succeeded in deciphering the whole of the
document. It is intended to give protection against witchcraft to the
farmer, and to his " cows, calves, milk, butter, cattle of all ages, mares,
suckers (foals), horses of all ages, sheep, ewes, lambs, sheep of all ages,
pigs, sows", etc. It is written on an ordinary piece of note-paper, of a
kind which was made in the latter part of the nineteenth and early
twentieth century. An interesting feature is the survival for magical
purposes in Nonconformist Wales of the formulae " Pater Noster " and
" Ave Maria ", which occur towards the end of the charm. I t is perhaps
doubtful whether this example should be included in the present paper,
as the bottle was simply the container of a much older type of written
charm, and has little in common with the ordinary " witch-bottle ".
The distribution of the custom in the nineteenth century was wide-
spread, ranging from Cornwall to Essex, and from Sussex to the north
of Lincolnshire. It quite certainly also extended much further north,
for there is a record of the discovery of witch-bottles in the north of
Scotland, but unfortunately the exact locality is not given.' This wide
distribution in recent times might appear to suggest that the custom is
of some antiquity, but in actual fact there is no evidence that it is more
than about three hundred years old.
There are a number of references to the practice in the latter part of
the seventeenth century. John Aubrey, for example, in his Miscellanies,
published in 1696, has the following account :
" Mr. Sp. told me that his horse which was bewitched, would break
7The discovery of witch-bottles in the north of Scotland is mentioned by E. D.
Longman and S. Lock, Pins and Pincushions, 1911, p p . 37-8.
198 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
bridles and strong halters, like a Sampson. They filled a bottle of the
horses urine, stopped it with a cork, and bound it fast in, and then
buried it under ground : and the party suspected to be the witch fell ill,
that he could not make water, of which he died. When they took up
the bottle, the urine was almost gone ; so that they did believe that if
the fellow could have lived a little longer, he had recovered."B
The practice of " putting Urin into a Bottle " to free people from
witchcraft was denounced, together with other practices of "white "
magic, as unlawful, by Increase Mather in 1 6 8 4 . ~
The earliest published reference to the bottling of nails with urine
seems to be that made by Joseph Blagrave of Reading, in his Astrological
Practice of Physick, published in I 67 I , where it is described as one of a
number of " experimental Rules, whereby to afflict the Witch, causing
the evil to return back upon them ". An account of the preparation of
a witch-bottle is given as follows :
" Another way is to stop the urine of the Patient, close up in a bottle,
and put into it three nails, pins, or needles, with a little white Salt,
keeping the urine always warm : if you let it remain long in the bottle
it will endanger the witches life : for I have found by experience that
they will be grievously tormented making their water with great diffi-
culty, if any at all, and the more if the Moon be in Scorpio in Square or
Opposition to his Significator when its done."
He goes on to explain why the witch can be tormented through the
medium of the victim's urine.
.
"The reason . . is because there is part of the vital spirit of the
Witch in it, for such is the subtlety of the Devil, that he will not suffer
the Witch to infuse any poysonous matter into the body of man or beast,
without some of the Witches blood mingled with it . . ."lo
In other words, the witch can best be attacked by means of the magical
link of sympathy which she has established between herself and her
victim.
The earliest recorded instance of the use of a witch-bottle, however,
seems to be an account given by William Brearley, once a Fellow of
Christ's College, Cambridge, who died in 1667. It is quoted by Joseph
Glanvill in his Sadducismus Triumphatus.ll Brearley was told the story
by his landlord, while he was lodging in Suffolk, probably during the
period after his ordination in 1635, and before his appointment as Rector
John Aubrey. Miscellanies, 4th edition (1857). p. 140.

Increase Mather, A n Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, 1684,

269.

l o Joseph Blagrave, Astrological Practice of Physick, London, 1671, pp. 154-5.

l1 Joseph Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, London, 1681, pp. 205-8.

 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs I99

of Clipstone in Northants in 1644. The events described had evidently
happened a few years earlier, and may be tentatively attributed to the
period 1620-40.
The story concerns the curing of Brearley's landlady, who had been
afflicted by witchcraft, and is worth quoting in full, as it is related in
Sadducismus Triumphatus.
" For an old Man that travelled up and down the Country, and had
some acquaintance a t that house, calling in and asking the Man of the
house how he did and his Wife ; He told him that himself was well,
but his Wife had been a long time in a languishing condition, and that
she was haunted with a thing in the shape of a Bird that would flurr
near to her face, and that she could not enjoy her natural rest well.
The old Man bid him and his Wife be of good courage. It was but a
dead Spright, he said, and he would put him in a course to rid his
Wife of this languishment and trouble. He therefore advised him to
take a Bottle, and put his Wife's Urine into it, together with Pins
and Needles and Nails, and Cork them up, and set the Bottle to the
Fire, but be sure the Cork be fast in it, that it fly not out. The Man
followed the Prescription and set the Bottle to the fire well corkt,
which, when it had felt a while the heat of the Fire, began to move
and joggle a little, but he for sureness took the Fire shovel and held
it hard upon the Cork. And as he thought, he felt something one
while on this side, another while on that, shove the Fire shovel off,
which he quickly put on again, but at last a t one shoving the Cork
bounced out, and the Urine, Pins, Nails and Needles all flew up, and
gave a report like a Pistol, and his Wife continued in the same trouble
and languishment still.
" Not long after, the Old Man came to the house again, and inquired
of the Man of the house how his Wife did. Who answered, as ill as
ever, if not worse. He asked him if he had followed his direction.
Yes, says he, and told him the event as is abovesaid. Ha, quoth he,
it seems it was too nimble for you. But now I will put you in a way
that will make the business sure. Take your Wife's Urine as before,
and cork it in a Bottle with Nails, Pins and Needles, and bury it in
the Earth ; and that will do the feat. The Man did accordingly. And
his Wife began to mend sensibly, and in a competent time was finely
well recovered. But there came a Woman from a town some miles off
to their house, with a lamentable outcry, that they had killed her
Husband. . . . But a t last they understood by her that Husband was
a Wizard and had bewitched this Man's Wife, and that this counter-
practice prescribed by the Old Man, which saved the Man's Wife from
languishment, was the death of that Wizard that had bewitched her.
This story did Mr. Brearley hear from the Man and Woman's own
mouth who were concerned, and a t whose House he for a time
Boarded, nor is there any doubt thereof."
There seems to be the implication here that the woman was afflicted
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
by means of an evil spirit sent by the wizard, and that this was somehow
trapped in the bottle. The writer himself expresses some doubt as to
whether the effectiveness of the witch-bottle is due entirely to sympath-
etic magic, and is inclined to think that the problem is complicated by
the witches' use of familiar spirits.
Now there are several points of interest in Brearley's story, not the
least of these being its location in Suffolk a t a relatively early date.
Moreover, it is clear that the people concerned knew nothing of the
practice until they learned it from the old man who was travelling about
in that part of the country. I t was not one of their traditional folk-
customs, but apparently something quite new to them. This story does
in fact seem to be an actual record of the introduction of the custom into
a Suffolk village in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, or a
little earlier, and there is some reason to suppose that this event is not
far removed in space or time from the invention of the witch-bottle, or
a t any rate its first appearance in the form which was to become familiar
throughout the country.
This idea is supported by the archaeological evidence. I t has been
possible to find fifteen records of witch-bottles that are definitely of
seventeenth century date, and have a known provenance.12 Six of these
were found in London, and nine in various parts of the eastern counties,
ranging
- - from Essex in the south to Lincolnshire in the north, as is shown
by the distribution map. All are stoneware vessels with bearded human
masks, of the type usually known as " greybeards " or " bellarmines ".
These jugs or bottles were imported in great quantities from the Lower
Rhineland in the latter part of the sixteenth century and throughout the
seventeenth, and fortunately can be approximately dated within this
period by their shape and by the type of mask they bear. I have been
able to trace five of the London examples, and five from East Anglia,
and all of these are of late date, and were probably made in the second
half of the seventeenth century. The earliest, a bellarmine found in an
inverted position beneath the hearthstone of a cottage in Stradbroke,
Suffolk, cannot be much earlier than the middle of the century, and some
l1 A detailed account of ten of these is given in the writer's article " The Use
of Bellarmines as Witch-Bottles ", published by the Library Committee of the
Corporation of London in The Guildhall Miscellany, No. 3, pp. 3-14. To these
must be added a bellarmine found recently in Pennington Street, Stepney :
another found beneath the threshold of a house in Saffron Waldon, Essex (A.
Clifton Kelway, Memovials of OM Essex, 1908, p. 252) : another found under a
hearth in Wennington, Hunts (Transactions of Cambs and Hunts Archaeological
Society, vol. IV, pt, IV, p. 125): two found together beneath a floor in Church
Farm, Great Dunham, Norfolk : and another, containing pins and nails, buried
under the threshold of a cottage a t Litcham, near Dereham, Norfolk.
IRONNAILSAND FELT"HEART"PIERCED WITH BRASSP I N S , FOUND INSIDE BELLARMINE
FROM
THE THAMESMUD AT PAUL'SPIERW H A R F , LONDON
By courtesy of the Curator, Guildhall Museum
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
of the others could probably be attributed fairly safely to its last quarter.
It seems reasonable to suppose that the idea of putting nails and pins
into these jugs for the purpose of counter-witchcraft, was partly inspired
by their human masks. The magical significance of such a charm, by
no means obvious in the case of a nineteenth century medicine or wine
bottle, becomes much more evident when we see the original witch-
bottles of the seventeenth century, with their malevolent bearded faces.
These surely became magical symbols of the witch, and underlying the
learned theories of such men as Blagrave, we may detect the re-emergence
of the primitive idea of image magic. I t is perhaps significant that in
addition to such ingredients as nails or human hair, commonly found in
later witch-bottles, a t least two of the London bellarmines contained a
recognizable representation of a human heart, carefully cut from a piece
of cloth or felt, and pierced with bent pins. In the case of a bellarmine
found beneath the threshold of the old " Plough Inn ", in King Street,
King's Lynn, the only contents were a cloth " heart " stuck with pins.
I t seems likely that similar " hearts " were originally included in other
examples which appeared to contain only rusty nails and a few pins, for
in the state of extreme corrosion that is often found, the presence of
decayed cloth cannot easily be detected. In the case of the latest witch-
bellarmine that has been found-an interesting example excavated a few
months ago in Pennington Street, Stepney-the contents were examined
with great care by Mr. F. J. Collins of the Architect's Department of the
L.C.C. Here he found all the contents which have been recognized and
preserved in other bellarmines. None of the other examples now contains
all these ingredients, but one wonders how often this incompleteness is
due to the fact that the missing materials were unnoticed, and therefore
were not preserved. The Stepney bellarmine contained nearly a score of
rusty iron nails, some human hair, human nail-parings, some pieces
of wire, and some pins, several of which were still stuck into a very much
decayed piece of cloth, no longer recognizable as a heart, as almost
certainly it had been originally. No obvious trace of urine survives in
this or in any other seventeenth century witch-bottle.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these anthropomorphic jugs,
with their human "hearts " stuck with pins, and containing other
" Nails and Pins, and such instruments as carry a shew of Torture with
them ", as a late seventeenth century writer describes the ingredients of
a witch-bottle,13 are in fact the prototype of our familiar charms of later
la Cotton Mather, Late Memorable Providences, London, 1691, quoted b y G. L.
Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, Cambridge (Mass.), 1928, p. 102.
202 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
times. I know of only two more recent instances retaining the heart-
symbol, which probably lost its obvious significance when the bellar-
mines passed out of use. One of these is of uncertain date-a record of
a bottle found about a hundred years ago beneath a foundation of an old
house in northern Lincolnshire, and containing the heart of a small
animal, perhaps a hare, pierced with pins.14 It is unlikely that this
charm was deposited later than the eighteenth century, and it is possible
that it was of even earlier date. The other is a nineteenth century recipe
against witchcraft from Devonshire, which directs that the liver of a frog
stuck full of pins, and the heart of a toad stuck full of thorns, shall be
placed in a bottle and buried in a churchyard path.15 This, of course,
may be an innovation rather than a survival-the result of the introduc-
tion of the witch-bottle into a region where the heart pierced with pins
was already familiar as a separate charm. On the other hand, it is
perhaps significant that a small-necked stone jar is recommended. Is
this a memory of the bellarmine tradition? In both of these examples,
however, the heart of an actual animal is used, and the imitation cloth
heart has as yet been found only in the seventeenth century bellarmines.
If the " grey-beard " inspired the witch-bottle superstition, as we now
know it, however, there is a t present no evidence that it did so until it
had been a familiar domestic vessel in eastern England for more than
fifty years. The present indications are that the practice appeared quite
suddenly somewhere in East Anglia, not long before the middle of the
seventeenth century, and then spread rapidly through the country,
helped considerably, not doubt, by the publication of such books as
Blagrave's Astrological Practice of Physick in 1671, and Glanvill's
Sadducismus Triumphatus in I 68 I.
The evidence of the distribution map, indicating the eastern counties
as the primary centre of origin of the witch-bottle, may be questioned on
the grounds that all these vessels are bellarmines, and that these imported
jugs are much more common in London and East Anglia than elsewhere
in England. In other words, it may be suggested that the map indicates
the distribution of bellarmines, rather than of seventeenth century witch-
bottles. The answer to this is that a t present I know of no other
witch-bottles of any kind that are as early as these greybeard jugs, and
can definitely be attributed to the seventeenth century. I have, how-
ever, plotted on the map another small group of probable witch-bottles
that are the next earliest known to me. These are small steeple-shaped
'-I Notes and Queries, 2nd series, I (1856),p. 415.
16 S. Hewett, Nummzts and Crumrnits, 1900,p. 74.
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs 203

"Bellarmine" witch-bottles, 17th century

"Steeple" witch-bottles, 18th century X

glass phials, which used to be considered mediaeval, because they have

been found buried in the foundations of old church walls, although the
finders made it clear that the circumstances in which they were dis-
covered did not preclude their burial a t a later date.16 I t was in fact
suggested as long ago as 1876, by James Fowler in an article in Archaeo-
logia, that they had been buried in much more recent times as witch-
bottles, and that the mysterious liquid which they contained was not
holy oil, as was a t first thought, but merely urine .17 There seems little
reason to doubt this, for recent archaeological evidence has shown that
this type of bottle was in use in the eighteenth century, and i t is unlikely
that it originated earlier than the latter part of the seventeenth century.
Two of these steeple phials, containing only a liquid, were found buried
upside down in the rubble foundations of the church walls a t Kilworth
and Lutterworth in Leicestershire16 ; and a third, now in the Cambridge
l a Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. IV, pp. 284-6.
Ibid., vol. V, pp. I 14-21.
1 7 Archaeologia, vol. 46, pt. I , pp. 133-4 and footnote.
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
Folk Museum, was found in the church wall a t Swaffham Bulbeck, in
Cambridgeshire. An example from Whitstable is more doubtful, owing
to the lack of definite information, but as it is said to have been found,
like the others, containing liquid, and buried beneath an old wall, it
seems likely that this is another example of the same variant of the
witch-bottle custom.18 Four specimens do not of course make a dis-
tribution pattern, but taken in conjunction with the bellarmines, which
are probably of slightly earlier date, they give some confirmation to the
idea that the superstition spread over the country from the eastern
counties.
The sudden appearance of the practice, just before the middle of the
seventeenth century, in a region in close contact with the Continent,
suggested the possibility of foreign influence, and accordingly enquiries
were made among archaeologists, museum curators, and folklorists in
the Netherlands and Western Germany. The " witch-bottle " of urine,
nails, etc., seemed however to be completely unknown there. Neverthe-
less, an old superstitious practice, found both in Holland and Germany,
was brought to my attention, and it seems likely that this con-
tributed something towards the development of our English witch-bottle
tradition.
The seventeenth century witch-bellarmines of East Anglia have mostly
been found buried beneath the threshold or the hearth-stone of old
buildings. The example from King's Lynn was found under a threshold,
and an account of another, found a t Saffron Waldon, implies that it also
was buried under the entrance door of an old house. The bellarmines
from Stradbroke, in Suffolk, and from Crowland, Lincolnshire, were
both buried beneath the hearthstone. One of the two examples from
Norwich was found beneath the partition wall of two late seventeenth
century properties, and this again might well have been buried beneath a
fire-place.
The contemporary witch-bellarmines of London, on the other hand,
seem to have been, for the most part, either thrown into water, or buried
in open ground on the outskirts of the town. One example, containing
nails and a felt heart pierced with pins, was found in the mud of the
Thames a t low water, near the steps a t Paul's Pier Wharf ; and another,
still with its original cork, and containing a cloth heart with pins, human
hair and nail-parings, was found in the course of an old mill-stream,
under the corner of Tufton Street and Great College Street, Westminster.
Is W. A. Thorpe, English Glass, 1949, p. 85, where these bottles are incorrectly
attributed to the fifteenth century.
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
Another, containing pins and nails, was found in Rathbone Place, where
it was probably either buried in open ground, or thrown into a ditch,
for a seventeenth century field boundary ran along the line of the modern
street. The recently discovered example from Stepney may either have
been buried in a garden or orchard, or beneath one of the first cottages
built in Pennington Street at the end of the seventeenth century.lg
Now in the Low Countries and Germany, pots of various kinds are not
infrequently found buried beneath the threshold or hearth of old houses,
where they have obviously been deliberately buried in accordance with
some superstitious practice. These are mostly simple jugs of Siegburg
stoneware or of earthenware, but sometimes cooking-pots or other vessels
have been found. At Culemborg, near Utrecht, they were buried under
the new houses which were built after a great fire in 1422, perhaps as a
safeguard against a similar disaster.20 Usually they appear to be empty,
but sometimes they contain peat-ash, bones, or egg-shells. At Waalwijk,
many years ago, a jug filled with oats was found beneath a t h r e s h ~ l d , ~ ~
and a t Deventer, an earthenware tripod-pitcher containing egg-shells was
found beneath a house of fifteenth or sixteenth century date.z0 At
Mottlingen, in Germany, a pot was found buried with other charms
behind the oven. I t contained powder, coins, earth, and the bones of
birds.zz Sometimes, like our English witch-bottles, these vessels were
buried upside down.
That the custom continued as recently as the seventeenth century in
the Netherlands, is shown by two recent finds a t Baardwijkz3 and a t
Loon op Zand, where jugs of a kind represented in seventeenth century
paintings were found buried near the threshold of old houses. The latter
example is said to resemble closely a vessel shown in Vermeer's picture,
" The Milkmaid ". Generally no signs of a cover have been detected,
but the jug from Loon op Zand had a small leather thong around its neck,
and this had evidently been used to tie on a cover, probably of cloth, no
traces of which remained.24
The problem of this custom was discussed many years ago by Ludwig
l o For a detailed account of the circumstances in which these bellarmines were
deposited, see " The Use of Bellarmines as Witch-Bottles ", in T h e Guildhall
Miscellany, No. 3, pp. 3-14.
2 0 Information given by J. G. N. Renaud of the State Service for Archaeological
Investigations in the Netherlands.
51 Information given by Dr. H. B. M. Essink, of ~'Hertogenbosch.
e z Carl Kiesewetter, Faust in der Geschichte u n d Tradition. Leipzig, 1893, pp.
254-5.
H. B. M. Essink," Een bouwoffer t e Baardwijk ", in Buabatzts Heem, V
(19.53). pp. 109-10.
*& Information given by A. van der Lee, of Loon op Zand.
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
H ~ n s e l m a n nwho
, ~ ~ suggested that it was a survival of foundation sacri-
fice, and that the buried vessel was the repository of the " Luck " of the
house. He quoted as a parallel the fourth canto of Ariosto's " Orlando
Furioso ", in which a magic castle is destroyed when the pots buried
beneath the door-step are broken.
A somewhat different idea was suggested by A. G. de Bruyn, in
discussing the discovery of a fifteenth or early sixteenth century Siegburg
jug beneath the threshold of a house in O l d e n ~ a a l . H~~e believed that
the buried pots were intended to trap evil spirits, and that the traces of
food which have sometimes been found were the remains of the bait used
to lure them into the pots, rather than any kind of offering. In support
of this idea, he quoted a tradition still surviving in Oldenzaal, that an
evil spirit can be conjured into a box, which is then thrown into water,
where the contents burn. Bronze tripod-pitchers have been found in the
marshes of Drente, in northern Holland, and there is a legend that the
exorcist used to banish the evil spirits of a bewitched house into a jug,
and bring this with horse and cart to the marsh to sink it there.27
These two theories are not incompatible, for the transition could easily
be made from the idea of a vessel containing the beneficent genius of
the house, whose release by the breaking of the pot would bring disaster,
to the idea that it was the prison into which an evil spirit had been
banished and rendered harmless. I t can also be appreciated how readily
the use of similar methods, based on the latter belief, might be adopted
as a counter-measure against witchcraft, especially as it was believed
that the witches acted through the agency of familiar spirits.
I t seems very probable that there is in fact a close relationship between
our English witch-bottles and these magical jugs of the Continent. I t
can hardly be a coincidence that our seventeenth century ancestors
disposed of their witch-bottles in exactly the same way-by burying
them beneath the threshold or the hearth, or by throwing them away
into water.
Nevertheless, the contents of the English witch-bottle are quite
different, and the composition of the charm can probably be attributed
to the fusion of two distinct practices. A closely related counter-measure
against witchcraft is the custom of boiling the urine of the victim with
*6 Ludwig Hsnselmann, " Die vergrabenen und eingemauerten Thongeschirre
des Mittelalters ", in Westermanns Jahrbuch der Illustrierten Deutschen Monat-
shefte, vol. 4 1 (1876-7). pp. 393-405.
g6 A. G. de Bruyn. Geesten en Goden i n Oud Oldenzaal, Oldenzaal, 1gz9, pp.
12-16.
*' Information given by J. G. N. Renaud of the State Service for Archaeological
Investigations in the Netherlands.
 Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs
nails in a pan. By this means it is believed t h a t the witch can be detected,
either by her sudden appearance while the liquid is boiling, or by the
scratches which appear on her face a few days later. This practice seems
to be older than the use of the witch-bottle, for a reference is made to it
by George Gifford in A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft,
published in 1593, a date considerably older than any witch-bottle yet
known.28 The introduction of the charm of the magical jug, imperfectly
understood, into a region where this practice was already familiar, might
well have led to the development of the typical witch-bottle. A further
factor, already discussed, was the common use in the eastern counties of
the bellarmine jug with its human face. This probably suggested the
idea of " image magic ", so that the charm came to be regarded as a
magical symbol of the witch or wizard, rather than a trap for an evil spirit.
An attempt has been made in this paper to trace the history of the
witch-bottle back to its origins, both by documentary and archaeological
evidence, and the trail leads quite clearly back as far as the witch-
bellarmines of the eastern counties. From that point, however, fixed
chronologically just before the middle of the seventeenth century, it is
lost in obscurity. On the Continent, however, we find a t this period
another custom, somewhat similar in its methods, and believed to have
much the same purpose-viz. the trapping of evil in a vessel of some
kind. This can be traced back to the later Middle Ages, and seems to be
the final degenerate phase of the ancient custom of the foundation sacri-
fice. If we can link these two lines of development, therefore, we can
give the witch-bottle a very lengthy pedigree indeed. The evidence a t
present is still inconclusive. Dutch influence was strong in East Anglia
in the first half of the seventeenth century, and the introduction of a
foreign custom about this time is by no means unlikely. On the other
hand it is possible that an analogous custom was already in existence in
England before this date. Further finds may yet throw some light on
this problem, and attention is drawn to the importance of recording, not
only obvious " witch-bottles ", but any discovery of pottery vessels that
appear to have been buried beneath old houses, or are found in other
circumstances which suggest that they were deliberately deposited, rather
than merely lost or thrown away.
In conclusion, I must express my indebtedness to the numerous folk-
lorists, museum curators, archaeologists, and others, both in this country,
and in the Netherlands and Germany, who have contributed valuable
information during the preparation of this paper.
George Gifford, A Dialogue concerning Watches and Witchcvaft, 1593, sig. G . 2 v.