Cunning folk

Cunning folk, also known as folk healers or (more rarely) as white witches, are practitioners of folk medicine, folk magic, and divination within the context of the various traditions of folklore in Christian Europe (from at least the 15th up until at least the early 20th century).

Names given to folk healers or magicians in parts of Europe include the French devins-guérisseurs and leveurs de sorts, the Italian benandanti ("good walkers"), the Dutch toverdokters or duivelbanners, the German Hexenmeister or Kräuterhexen, the Spanish curanderos, the Portuguese curandeiros/as, benzedeiros/as or mulheres de virtude (this last one applies only to females, translating as "women of virtue"), the Danish kloge folk, Swedish klok gumma ("wise old woman") or klok gubbe ("wise old man"), and the Slavic Vedmak. Some historians and folklorists have opted to apply the term "cunning folk" as an umbrella term for the entire range of the phenomenon.

In Scandinavia the klok gumma ("wise woman") or klok gubbe ("wise man"), and collectively De kloka ("The Wise ones"), as they were known in Swedish, were usually elder members of the community who acted as folk healers and midwives as well as using folk magic such as magic rhymes. In Denmark, they were called klog mand ("wise man") and klog kone ("wise woman") and collectively as kloge folk ("wise folk").

Many Norwegian and Danish practitioners of folk magic and medicine would have a copy of the "Svartebok" (or "black book"), a tome that, according to some, was written by Cyprianus, that is, Archbishop Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus of Antioch, and by others to have been the Sixth and Seventh books of the Bible (or "Books of Moses" as the Pentateuch is known in Denmark and Norway) that were left out of the official Old Testament by the learned so that the common folk would not learn the knowledge held within the text. A formulary found in a "black book" recovered from a farm near Elverum contains many formulas such as one for a toothache that commands the user of the charm to write the words "Agerin, Nagerin, Vagerin, Jagerin, Ipagerin, Sipia" on a piece of paper using a new pen, cut the paper into three small pieces, place the first piece onto the tooth in the evening and in the morning spit the piece into the fire. This should then be repeated with the other pieces. Another charm used for helping a woman who is having a difficult labour says to take two white lily roots and give them to the mother to eat.

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