1488 – Ploughshare

Physical description:

Charm made from a ploughshare, together with a dried bull's penis and human hair.

Museum classification:

Protection

Information:

CWOLC document 8194 reads: "THE WITCH'S PLOUGH. To cast a spell upon a person's house and family some witches resort to the following practice. At night two witches go to the appointed place, taking with them this plough-share and whip made form a bull's penis and human hair. They strip naked. The one who is to be the horse places the green cord across her shoulders while the ploughwoman puts the white cord around her neck. Then off they go with the iron plough-share swinging in the air between them. It is vital that at no time during the operation the plough-share touch the ground. Throughout the circuit incantations are murmured and the whip of hair applied and other acts not worthy of mention done. From Suffolk."

Cursed places are a mainstay of British folklore and a common occurrence along the highways and byways of England.  Witches are often to blame, usually old crones from the sixteenth century, as at Mother Ivey’s Bay in Cornwall, or at Sturston in Norfolk.  The aim was usually to ‘blast’ crops or make the ground infertile and if anyone had the impudence to attempt cultivation, the curse would doubtless fall upon the first-born son of the landowner’s family.  With land-ownership and residency so tightly bound together, a cursed field also meant a cursed family…

But how did these curses come about?  Two physical components of one such spell in the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall illustrate how a curse upon a person’s family could be enacted by those with the will to do so.  The items were collected by Cecil Williamson, the Museums’ mercurial founder, in the 1950s, and consist of a fragment of an iron plough, strung on a knotted rope (with green and red markings), and a whip or scourge, made from a bull’s penis, and adorned with chestnut-brown human hair.[1]  They were collected from a practitioner in Suffolk, who plied their trade among the arable farming communities of the county.

The curse was elaborate and not without a dash of ‘folk horror’.  Two ‘witches’, united in their purpose, went to the appointed place in the dead of night and stripped naked.  The plough-share was strung between them over the shoulders – the one in the front took the cord with the green fleck, the ‘plough-woman’ brought up the rear holding to the red cord – the ‘iron plough-share swinging in the air between them’.  ‘It is vital’ Williamson states, that ‘at no time during the operation the plough-share touch the ground.’  The whip, a shrivelled and dried bovine phallus bound with lustrous hair (certainly a females), was wielded by the ‘plough-woman’ whilst ‘incantations’ were pronounced and, tantalizingly, ‘other acts not worthy of mention done’![2]

The idea was to circumnavigate the victims’ property, whilst they were sleeping in their beds.  The incantation is not recorded but variations of “Not one stone shall stand upon another, and the land shall bear no fruit”, are to be found up and down the country.[3]

How are we to interpret the curse and the cursing apparatus?  Other examples may shed some light on the matter. The famous ‘puddock-plough’ (puddock = a Scottish dialect word meaning frog or toad) was made by the Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie with her coven in the 1660s.  Gowdie shackled some ‘puddocks’ to a plough made of a ‘half-gelded’ ram’s horn in order to transfer the “fruit of the land” to the coven and to make “thistles and briars … grow there” instead.[4]  A ‘half-gelded’ animal is usually one that has been castrated but which has a lodged or trapped testicle within the abdomen.  Following early modern humoral theory, a half-gelded ram will likely be a beast of evil-intention, as its seed, essence or semen is trapped: doomed to waste, pollute and imbalance the blood.  A similar belief was held regarding post-menopausal or ‘menstruous’ women – when menstruation ceased the ‘unclean’ blood would instead gush through the body, distorting the spirit and ejecting a ‘venomous breath’ from the witch’s ‘evil eye’.[5]

Importantly, the castrated and humorally polluted ram was chosen to transfer the fertility or ‘fruit’ of the land to the witch; as a result the dried bull’s penis and the cut human hair – both symbols of curtailed fertility – could be interpreted as a means of capturing the spirit force of the land and transferring it to the two women enacting the curse.  The broken plough-share dangles ineffectually, broken perhaps, to render it magically efficacious, or to invert the idea of tilth and meaningful toil.

The ‘Witch’s Plough’ perhaps gives us an insight into the mind of a rural magical practitioner of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, but might well tell us more about Cecil Williamson and his interests!  More broadly, it indicates a deeper universal belief that the land itself contains energy that can be harnessed and transferred using complex magical rituals and material objects.

[1] MWM Objects 254 and 1440

[2] Cecil Williamson Object Label Collection (CWOLC) 8194, ‘The Witch’s Plough’, Museum of Witchcraft & Magic Archive

[3] ‘Vicars pray to free fields from curse’, Daily Herald, 15^th May, 1939

[4] An interesting account of Gowdie’s beliefs can be read in Emma Wilby, The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-century Scotland, (Sussex: SAP, 2010).

[5] John Heydon, A New Method of Rosie-Crucian Physick (London: 1658), p. 46

See also https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/object/scourge/

(This text appeared in Paranormal Review, Magazine for the Society of Psychical Research, 2018).

 

One of the items that was on loan to the 'Witchery' exhibition at the Royal Villa of Monza, Italy, Winter 2022-23.

Resource:

Object

Materials:

Metal

Copyright ownership:

Treetrunk Ltd.

CWOLC document 8194 reads: "THE WITCH'S PLOUGH. To cast a spell upon a person's house and family some witches resort to the following practice. At night two witches go to the appointed place, taking with them this plough-share and whip made form a bull's penis and human hair. They strip naked. The one who is to be the horse places the green cord across her shoulders while the ploughwoman puts the white cord around her neck. Then off they go with the iron plough-share swinging in the air between them. It is vital that at no time during the operation the plough-share touch the ground. Throughout the circuit incantations are murmured and the whip of hair applied and other acts not worthy of mention done. From Suffolk."

Cursed places are a mainstay of British folklore and a common occurrence along the highways and byways of England.  Witches are often to blame, usually old crones from the sixteenth century, as at Mother Ivey’s Bay in Cornwall, or at Sturston in Norfolk.  The aim was usually to ‘blast’ crops or make the ground infertile and if anyone had the impudence to attempt cultivation, the curse would doubtless fall upon the first-born son of the landowner’s family.  With land-ownership and residency so tightly bound together, a cursed field also meant a cursed family…

But how did these curses come about?  Two physical components of one such spell in the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall illustrate how a curse upon a person’s family could be enacted by those with the will to do so.  The items were collected by Cecil Williamson, the Museums’ mercurial founder, in the 1950s, and consist of a fragment of an iron plough, strung on a knotted rope (with green and red markings), and a whip or scourge, made from a bull’s penis, and adorned with chestnut-brown human hair.[1]  They were collected from a practitioner in Suffolk, who plied their trade among the arable farming communities of the county.

The curse was elaborate and not without a dash of ‘folk horror’.  Two ‘witches’, united in their purpose, went to the appointed place in the dead of night and stripped naked.  The plough-share was strung between them over the shoulders – the one in the front took the cord with the green fleck, the ‘plough-woman’ brought up the rear holding to the red cord – the ‘iron plough-share swinging in the air between them’.  ‘It is vital’ Williamson states, that ‘at no time during the operation the plough-share touch the ground.’  The whip, a shrivelled and dried bovine phallus bound with lustrous hair (certainly a females), was wielded by the ‘plough-woman’ whilst ‘incantations’ were pronounced and, tantalizingly, ‘other acts not worthy of mention done’![2]

The idea was to circumnavigate the victims’ property, whilst they were sleeping in their beds.  The incantation is not recorded but variations of “Not one stone shall stand upon another, and the land shall bear no fruit”, are to be found up and down the country.[3]

How are we to interpret the curse and the cursing apparatus?  Other examples may shed some light on the matter. The famous ‘puddock-plough’ (puddock = a Scottish dialect word meaning frog or toad) was made by the Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie with her coven in the 1660s.  Gowdie shackled some ‘puddocks’ to a plough made of a ‘half-gelded’ ram’s horn in order to transfer the “fruit of the land” to the coven and to make “thistles and briars … grow there” instead.[4]  A ‘half-gelded’ animal is usually one that has been castrated but which has a lodged or trapped testicle within the abdomen.  Following early modern humoral theory, a half-gelded ram will likely be a beast of evil-intention, as its seed, essence or semen is trapped: doomed to waste, pollute and imbalance the blood.  A similar belief was held regarding post-menopausal or ‘menstruous’ women – when menstruation ceased the ‘unclean’ blood would instead gush through the body, distorting the spirit and ejecting a ‘venomous breath’ from the witch’s ‘evil eye’.[5]

Importantly, the castrated and humorally polluted ram was chosen to transfer the fertility or ‘fruit’ of the land to the witch; as a result the dried bull’s penis and the cut human hair – both symbols of curtailed fertility – could be interpreted as a means of capturing the spirit force of the land and transferring it to the two women enacting the curse.  The broken plough-share dangles ineffectually, broken perhaps, to render it magically efficacious, or to invert the idea of tilth and meaningful toil.

The ‘Witch’s Plough’ perhaps gives us an insight into the mind of a rural magical practitioner of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, but might well tell us more about Cecil Williamson and his interests!  More broadly, it indicates a deeper universal belief that the land itself contains energy that can be harnessed and transferred using complex magical rituals and material objects.

[1] MWM Objects 254 and 1440

[2] Cecil Williamson Object Label Collection (CWOLC) 8194, ‘The Witch’s Plough’, Museum of Witchcraft & Magic Archive

[3] ‘Vicars pray to free fields from curse’, Daily Herald, 15^th May, 1939

[4] An interesting account of Gowdie’s beliefs can be read in Emma Wilby, The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-century Scotland, (Sussex: SAP, 2010).

[5] John Heydon, A New Method of Rosie-Crucian Physick (London: 1658), p. 46

See also https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/object/scourge/

(This text appeared in Paranormal Review, Magazine for the Society of Psychical Research, 2018).

 

One of the items that was on loan to the 'Witchery' exhibition at the Royal Villa of Monza, Italy, Winter 2022-23.