Occult lore
Cunning Folk
Direct answer
Cunning Folk: Cunning folk were practitioners of popular magic in England and elsewhere who, for a fee, found lost or stolen goods, told fortunes, made charms and claimed to remove bewitchment.
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At a glance
- Also called
- cunning man, cunning woman, wise woman, white witch
- Found in
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Related
- Witch Trials, Maleficium, Hoodoo, Witch Bottle
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Who were the cunning folk?
The cunning man or wise woman was a familiar figure in English towns and villages from the Middle Ages until the early twentieth century. Clients came with practical troubles: a stolen purse, a sick horse, a lover who had cooled, a run of bad luck put down to a witch. The cunning person might look in a mirror or a bowl of water to name a thief, write out a charm, or advise a counter-measure such as a witch bottle.
They were tradespeople, often with another occupation, and some owned astrological tables and printed books of magic from which they copied. Their neighbours did not think of them as witches. A witch harmed; a cunning person was hired to help.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Magic and protection.
What sets Cunning Folk apart
The cunning person's stock in trade was reputation. Much of the work was detection by suggestion: a client who came suspecting a neighbour was asked to look in a glass and say whom they saw, and went home confirmed. They kept impressive books in view, cast rough horoscopes and charged by result. Their social position was awkward and durable, condemned by clergy as close kin to witches, tolerated by magistrates, and relied on by the very people who feared witchcraft most.
- Other names: wise man, wise woman, conjuror, white witch
- Common services: thief finding, fortune telling, charms, unwitching
- Known device: the sieve and shears, turned to name a thief
- Laws against them: the Acts of 1542, 1563 and 1604
- Estimate: perhaps several thousand in England, up to about 1850
- Standard history: Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk, 2003
Often mistaken for something else: A witch, in village belief, harmed in secret and for malice; a cunning person worked openly, for a fee, and was hired to undo such harm.
The story behind Cunning Folk
Laws of 1542, 1563 and 1604 forbade their practices, but courts seldom pursued them and penalties were light. After 1736 they could be charged only with fraud. The historian Owen Davies has estimated that as many as several thousand may have been at work in England at any one time up to the mid nineteenth century. A well known example is James Murrell of Essex, who died in 1860. The trade faded with policing, medicine and schooling.
Why Cunning Folk matters
They show that most magic in history was a service bought for ordinary troubles, and that it stood apart from the witchcraft people feared.
How to read Cunning Folk
Readers meet the term in local and family history, and it helps to place an ancestor described as a wise woman or a conjuror.
Cunning Folk in practice: an example
A farmer who rides ten miles to ask a wise woman who stole his sheep, and comes home with a description and a written charm, has consulted one of the cunning folk.
Where readings of Cunning Folk go wrong
A cunning person's naming of a witch could ruin a neighbour. Nothing from the old charm books is to be taken or put on the skin.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
Recorded here as history and lore. No rite is taught on this page.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Aliases
- cunning man, cunning woman, wise woman, white witch, cunning folk meaning
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who were the cunning folk?
Local practitioners of magic in England and Wales who offered services for a fee: finding stolen goods, telling fortunes, making charms and countering supposed witchcraft.
Were cunning folk witches?
Not in the eyes of their neighbours. A witch was believed to do harm; cunning folk were paid to help, often by undoing what a witch was thought to have done.
When did the cunning folk disappear?
Gradually, between about 1850 and the 1930s, as policing, medicine and schooling spread. A few were still consulted in rural England in the early twentieth century.
