Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,329
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
See:
https://www.archaeology.org/news/8151-191031-england-witch-bottle
"NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND—A witch bottle dating to the middle of the nineteenth century has been discovered at the site of a former pub near the village of Watford, BBC News reports. The so-called "torpedo" bottle is of a type that came into use in the 1830s, primarily as a vessel for carbonated beverages. It contains fishhooks, human teeth, glass fragments, and an undetermined liquid, and is a late example of a centuries-old folk magic tradition used to ward off harmful spells and curses. More than a hundred witch bottles, most of which date to the seventeenth century, have been unearthed at archaeological sites or found hidden in historic structures across Britain. The find adds another magical chapter to the history of the pub, once called the Star and Garter Inn, which is also recorded to have been the birthplace of an accused witch named Angeline Tubbs around 1761. Tubbs emigrated to North America as a teenager, settling in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she is said to have been a fortune teller and is still the subject of ghost tours."
I've been on that tour. It's fun. It's fun visiting Salem, Massachusetts too for a week-end.
It seems as if the whole craze with finding and killing witches was a sort of mass hysteria which eventually subsided.
I'd have to look it up, but I don't think this happened in Southern Europe. In Italy, at least, streghe were rather admired, I think.
I was wrong. It did.
Maybe there's something to this paper's assertion that it was connected to the Religious Wars between Protestants and Catholics, which were particularly severe in Germany and Switzerland.
.
https://www.peterleeson.com/Witch_Trials.pdf
https://www.archaeology.org/news/8151-191031-england-witch-bottle
"NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND—A witch bottle dating to the middle of the nineteenth century has been discovered at the site of a former pub near the village of Watford, BBC News reports. The so-called "torpedo" bottle is of a type that came into use in the 1830s, primarily as a vessel for carbonated beverages. It contains fishhooks, human teeth, glass fragments, and an undetermined liquid, and is a late example of a centuries-old folk magic tradition used to ward off harmful spells and curses. More than a hundred witch bottles, most of which date to the seventeenth century, have been unearthed at archaeological sites or found hidden in historic structures across Britain. The find adds another magical chapter to the history of the pub, once called the Star and Garter Inn, which is also recorded to have been the birthplace of an accused witch named Angeline Tubbs around 1761. Tubbs emigrated to North America as a teenager, settling in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she is said to have been a fortune teller and is still the subject of ghost tours."
I've been on that tour. It's fun. It's fun visiting Salem, Massachusetts too for a week-end.
It seems as if the whole craze with finding and killing witches was a sort of mass hysteria which eventually subsided.
I'd have to look it up, but I don't think this happened in Southern Europe. In Italy, at least, streghe were rather admired, I think.
I was wrong. It did.
Maybe there's something to this paper's assertion that it was connected to the Religious Wars between Protestants and Catholics, which were particularly severe in Germany and Switzerland.
https://www.peterleeson.com/Witch_Trials.pdf