Witchcraft

For Sathan contenteth not himselfe, to have manifested his malice in afflicting mens persons, but he also enlargeth the same to the molestation of the places where they dwell, by infecting the ayre, and such like. The onely effectuall meanes to remedie this evill, is the Sanctification of the places of our habitation ... [to] avoid many curses and dangers, which otherwise would fall upon us.

Perkins 1618, A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft.

Primary sources explaining ritual protection marks are almost absent. To hypothesise why servants protected themselves and their charges against witchcraft or bad luck, we need to examine firstly, horse cost and care, then secondly folkloric belief about witchcraft and horses.

Figure 1 What the stable-boy wore circa 1767

Figure 2 Gibson 1754 A New Treatise on the Treatment of Horses. A quart is two pints or 1.13L. Loss of 8 pints of blood in a horse will lead to shock.

Figure 3 Bill from Henry Boulton, surgeon farrier attending Lord Brownlow's horses 1800. Click to enlarge.

Horse Cost and Care

Horses are and were an expensive means of transport. In the 18th century a head groom earned around £12 pa, but his horses and livery cost many fold more than that salary. The arduous duties of a groom are detailed here.

The Labour Value is used here to measure the cost of stabling in today's money. This calculates the value of a commodity in relation to the average wage that a worker would need to use to buy that commodity. It uses one of the wage indices (e.g. the earnings of unskilled labor).

Following Sir John Brownlow's death in 1697, his 59 horses sold for an average of £6 each, £14,000 in today's money* (Roworth 2015a).

Viscount Tyrconnel's 1737 Belton Stables comprised 8 coach horses along with 18 other horses (Roworth 2015b). Oats, pollard, chaff and straw for Belton cost £36 each month (£69,000)* (Spring 2015). Alternatively, renting a carriage and pair (two horses) with a coachman cost £200–£300 a year (£300,000)*. Hence, in Regency times, two-wheeled carriages with one horse were called ‘bankrupt carts’.

Farriers shod horses, but also cared for the sick ones. Surgeon-Farriers had often defected from human medicine bringing their inadequate knowledge with them. One such, William Gibson writing in his 1754 textbook recommended prophylactic bleeding for horses 3 to 4 times a year. Additionally, plentiful bleeding for just about any ailment, 3 pints of blood at a time (figure 2).

“The Spring is always a proper season for bleeding, because their Blood is then more luxuriant…” (Gibson 1754)

Purging and enemas composed of poisons such as cinnabar of antimony (antimony, mercury and sulphur) along with cautery of the skin must have killed many an ailing horse. The sudden onset of sweats, recumbency and death within 3 days inexplicable then, is now recognised as atypical myopathy in horses caused by a poison from eating sycamore seeds ("helicopters").

Henry Boulton, surgeon-farrier attending Belton in 1800, charged an average of £5,310 per month* (figure 3). He prescribed numerous fever balls, fomented the glands for the Strangles (a contagious infection transmissible by the farrier or grooms) and charged £136 for bleeding* (Spring 2015).

"Most of the disorders to which horses are subject, are produced by negligence" (Wise 1762)

Any negligence,

"You are forthwith to inform my Lord or his Chief Servant thereof"

Tyrconnel's instructions to his Stables' overseer (Roworth 2015b) . So was the death of a valuable horse the failure of either the grooms or farrier, or down to Satan and the evil eye?

"A horse falling lame was a snare of the Devil, to keep the good clergyman from preaching; the arrival of a skillful farrier was accounted a special providence, to defeat the purpose of Satan." (Scott 1830)

*Labour Value

Witchcraft and horses

2017 1,460 cases across England where child abuse related to witchcraft or similar.
2012, 92 cases of either sightings of witches or witchcraft activity reported to the Lincolnshire Police over the preceding 3 years.
2012, the Scottish Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals claims that a spate of horse attacks relate to satanic rituals and black magic.
2009, Dorset equestrians believe that wind plaiting of their horses’ manes is a ritual performed by witches to cast a spell. PC Tim Poole of Avon and Somerset Police comments,

“…we have some very good information from a warlock [male practicing witchcraft] that this is part of a white magic ritual and is to do with 'knot magick'".

Figure 4 The Bewitched Groom. The witch enters through the window.

The connection between horses and witchcraft stretches back centuries. Shakespeare mentions Queen Mab, an ancient Celtic fairy, in Romeo and Juliet. A malevolent hag, who “…plats the manes of horses in the night…” and worse. Superstition had it that witches and malignant sprites inhabited woodlands and gardens. At nightfall, they would enter the stables with lighted taper and drip wax to tangle the horses’ manes (Rider 1923). Hans Baldung depicts this act in a woodcut known as the Bewitched Groom (figure 4).

The Spectator for July 14, 1711 reports one Moll White, a witch; “If a Horse sweats in the Stable, Moll White has been upon his Back.”, “If a Hare makes an unexpected escape from the Hounds, the Huntsman curses Moll White.” Moll was arraigned for making children spit pins and giving maids the Night-Mare. Witches could shapeshift. Janet Horne the last witch burnt alive in Scotland in 1727 allegedly transformed her daughter into a pony shod by the Devil.

One of several 19th century witchcraft cases includes a defendant at Retford Petty Sessions, Nottinghamshire in 1866. He claimed he had attacked his fellow servant for bewitching the horses in the stable. Said defendant used charms such as dragon’s blood to keep the witches out of the stables and a Latin incantation, translated: “All spirits praise the Lord, God have mercy, Resist the enemy Lord willing” (The Times, 27 October 1866, bottom of column 5).

Bewitched horses by Adolph van der Venne 1875

Evans (1979) describes how the horsemen in rural Suffolk in the years leading up to WWI believed in blackmagic. They would gain power over their charges through rituals involving toad bones and spores of bracken. A witch- or hag-stone, a holed flint, hung above the horse's back at night. This talisman would prevent a witch from mounting the horse to ride it. Such talisman were still in use in nearby Gonerby, Grantham during WWII. There a Land Girl relates how her farmer believed without the talisman, the cow's' milk would not 'come down' where it should be. Others say that a sweaty hag ridden horse was a subterfuge for illegal horse use, e.g. smuggling.

"You must always have brasses on a horse's harness to keep away the devil" (Radford & Radford 2013).

Parliament repealed the Witchcraft Act 1735 only in 1951. The Act was last used to imprison Helen Duncan and to convict Jane Yorke both in in 1944 on the grounds that they had claimed to summon spirits. The Scottish Parliament refused to pardon Helen Duncan's witchcraft conviction.

A 2014 YouGov poll for The Sun found that one third of British people still believe in the supernatural. Witchcraft beliefs are a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon.

November 2019: two dead sheep were found with pentagrams spray-painted on their wool and faces, a cow was stabbed in the neck and the number 666 was daubed on the doors of the church in the village of Bramshaw in Hampshire.

It is no surprise that such fears echo through the fabric of Belton's Stables.

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