A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Throughout the years that I have been writing this book, several people have crossed my path to who I am most indebted for having, in various ways, assisted in my research. Above all, I owe a special debt to Willem de Blécourt, who invited me to submit the book in the first place—a book which I first thought would be an English translation of a monograph I published in 2006 in Slovenian, but has since evolved into a brand new book—and throughout my research helped me by pointing my attention to the relevant literature, challenging my arguments, and identifying many opportunities for further improvement. His invaluable remarks helped me to make the book better than it would have been otherwise. Needless to say, any mistakes I may have made are entirely my own fault.
Several people have read and discussed one or several chapters of the book with me, and I am especially grateful to Edward Bever, Julian Goodare, Ágnes Hesz, and Kaarina Koski for all their shrewd comments and pertinent suggestions. Our discussions have been insightful and inspiring in many regards. Many people have contributed important information, material, comments, or suggestions for further reading. In this respect I am indebted to Alina Bezlaj, Mateja Habinc, Vito Hazler, Judit Kis-Halas, Lejla Kmetič, Matevž Košir, Slavko Kremenšek, Monika Kropej, Tanja Petrović, Ljubinko Radenković, Helena Rožman, Nataša Rus, Božo Sok, Jana Šimenc, Francisco Vaz da Silva, Ergo-Hart Västrik, Vesna Zakonjšek, and Lucija Zorenč. I am also thankful to Suzana Marjanić, who wrote a recommendation for the book to be accepted for consideration, to Nena Židov and Jana Milovanović, who accompanied me during some of my fieldwork, to Peter Altshul, who proofread the
manuscript at the last moment, to Merima and Leon Tončič for hosting me in their home in Kassel so I was able to write in peace, and to Mihaela Hudelja for helping me finding the cover photo. In addition, throughout the years, discussions with Hans-Jörg Uther over lunches in Göttingen as well as with other colleagues during my stays at the Institute Enzyklopädie des Märchens, with Emily Lyle, who kindly shared her apartment with me during my stay in Edinburgh, with Vitomir Belaj who introduced me to the world of folklore, with Svetlana M. Tolstaja, who welcomed me warmly at her institute in Moscow when I was still just a Ph.D. student, and with Zmago Šmitek and Andrej Pleterski in my hometown, have been a constant source of inspiration.
The research leading to the present book was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency under the programme Slovenian Identities in European and Global Context. The publication of this volume has also received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement № 324214), and I am grateful to Éva Pócs to have invited me to her project group and to all the members of the group for their stimulating and inspiring discussions. Part of the research was done during my stay in Edinburgh in 2014 with the fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and my gratitude goes to the staff of Celtic and Scottish Studies for their hospitality and to the wonderful library of the University in Edinburgh for letting me study there. Above all, however, my gratitude goes to the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, which financially supported my research in Germany from the time I first came to the Institute Enzyklopädie des Märchens in Göttingen in 2002–2003 to study for my book on witchcraft in Slovenian, up until 2015, when during my latest stay in Göttingen the present book on witchcraft was coming to its end. In many ways, the Humboldt fellowships throughout the years have been crucial for my research; without their help, it would be parochial at the very least.
Finally, I would also like to thank all the students who participated in the field research and all the interlocutors who shared their stories with us, particularly the grandson of the famous local fortune-telling family, whose identity I cannot reveal, but who always welcomed me in his home, whenever I had new questions that I needed to ask. Last but not least, my deepest gratitude goes to Jirˇi, whose love and support have been a constant rock in my life.
Ljubljana, 28 January 2016
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In summer 2000 I first arrived, together with a group of students, in a secluded rural region of eastern Slovenia to conduct field research. As part of a joint project between the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana and a regional institution, our aim was to record folklore that could serve the institution’s mission to promote the local heritage. What I hoped for were etiological legends about various features of the landscape and other legends related to particular places in the region, yet knowing that these tend to be rarer than the so-called “belief legends”, I also instructed my students to inquire about narratives on the dead, witchcraft, and the supernatural in general—just in case. However, when the groups met in the evening to share the results after the first day of fieldwork, as well as in the following evenings, one thing became clear: the topic in the region was witchcraft.1 Narratives on witchcraft were abundant and clearly predominated—one could say that witchcraft was the dominant tradition (cf. Honko 1962: 127–128) in the region.
After such a surprising and unexpected encounter with witchcraft, we further focused our research mainly on the topic that seemed so important to the local population. Throughout the following couple of years, that is, in 2000 and 2001, I continued the research in the region with many groups of students,2 and later on, in the period from 2013 to 2015, by myself. Altogether we conducted almost 170 extensive interviews involving 237
© The Author(s) 2017
M. Mencej, Styrian Witches in European Perspective, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-37250-5_1
interlocutors. The interviews we conducted were semistructured—we let our interlocutors speak freely but asked additional questions in order to get a more precise picture of witchcraft during the interviews; these lasted approximately from one to one and a half hours, with “good” informants often even up to three hours. The people we interviewed came from about 55 villages and settlements in a region about 300 km2 wide,3 mostly from the remote hinterland, that is, the hilly parts of the region. Most of them were elderly; of those about whom information on age was recorded,4 five persons, or 2.1 per cent, were born from 1900–1910; 27 persons, or 11.4 per cent, between 1911 and 1920; 76 persons, or 32 per cent, were born in the period between 1921 and 1930; 51 persons, or 21.5 per cent, in the period between 1931 and 1940; 24 informants, or 10.1 per cent, in the period between 1941 and 1950; 11 persons, or 4.6 per cent, between 1951 and 1960, three persons or 1.3 per cent were born between 1961 and 1970; one person, or 0.4 per cent, between 1971 and 1980; and four persons, or 1.7 per cent, between 1981 and 1990. Altogether then, most of our interlocutors were from 50 to 80 years old; the age of people that formed the most numerous group was 70 to 80, followed by those who were 60 to 70 years old at the time of our main field research in 2000–2001. While there was approximately the same number of those who were either 80 to 90 or 50 to 60 years old, there were very few who were either older or younger. In addition, women clearly predominated: they constituted 66.7 per cent (158) of our interlocutors, whereas only 33.3 per cent (79) of them were men.
Certainly, the narratives about witchcraft did not just crop up out of nowhere at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Documents from the early modern witchcraft trials testify that witchcraft has a long history in the region. Witch trials demanded their lot in the more or less Catholic Slovenia. Slovenian Styria (nowadays northeastern Slovenia, once the southern part of the Habsburgian county of Styria) was the very province where most of the trials against witchcraft took place: 319 persons or 64.4 per cent of all the victims of witch trials in Slovenia came from here. Moreover, in Slovenian Styria, there were several courts where witchcraft trials took place in the early modern period, two of them in the territory of our research (cf. tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 166).
While the earliest sorcery trial in the territory of modern-day Slovenia took place in 1427, and sporadic trials took place from the beginning to
the middle of sixteenth century, especially in the Habsburgian county of Styria, “typical” witchcraft trials mostly started in the middle of the sixteenth century. The first trial that involved diabolism took place in 1546 in Maribor, a town in the northern part of Slovenian Styria, in which several women were accused of raising storms and hail, or else preventing the rain, cooking dishes of toads, snakes, and lizards, poisoning people, destroying crops and vineyards, flying with the aid of an ointment, causing milk not to sour, gathering and consorting with the devil, causing themselves to become invisible by scratching Christ’s eyes from his image, forcing thieves to bring back the stolen goods and money, and so on (Pajek 1884: 18–23; Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 191; Košir 2001: 147; 2006a: 1052; 2006b). The first larger wave of witch trials in modern-day Slovenia took place at the end of the sixteenth century (1579–1586 in Styria) and was followed by a longer period of calm before the beginning of the second wave, which reached its peak between 1660 and 1700, in Styria mainly in 1660–1670. Due to the increasing scepticism of the Inner Austrian government towards witch trials after 1700, the persecution of witches slowly ceased in the eighteenth century, and the last witch trials took place in Metlika and Gornja Radgona, small towns in southeastern and northeastern Slovenia, respectively, in 1745–1746. Witch trials in Slovenia, therefore, lasted for approximately 250 years and involved at least 500 documented defendants, but many testimonials are unpreserved and a more realistic estimate is around 1000 victims of witch trials (Grafenauer 1961: 56; Košir 2001: 147).5
While there are a number of reasons for making accusations of witchcraft, which should be studied more thoroughly and along various parameters, according to Slovenian witchcraft historian Matevž Košir, one of the factors that influenced why they were so abundant in Styria could be that it was, and is, a wine-growing region (cf. Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 161–163). Additional reasons for the outbreak of witch trials in Styria, especially in the second part of the seventeenth century, which have been noted by other authors, were various misfortunes that affected the territory: floods in 1675–1684, poor harvests in 1649, 1660–1661, and 1690, grasshoppers that destroyed the crops, and plague epidemics (Radovanovič 1997: 46). While judges accused witches primarily of consorting with the devil at witches’ sabbaths, usually at the crossroads or at witches’ mountains, the majority of the accusations “from below” blamed them for causing hail and frost and raising storms. Not only were witches denounced to the court for causing storms and hail, in Styria in
1635, 1637 and 1675 six people were also lynched for that reason by furious peasants (Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 161; Košir 2006a: 1053). Accusations of witches causing illness, paralysis or death and stealing milk occasionally also crop up in the witch trial testimonials (Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 162, 192, 202, 204, 213, 222, 233), as do accusations of harm done to domestic animals, whereas accusations of poisoning, performing love magic, stealing hosts, and transformation into animals are rare (Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 161–163). In general, accusations of witches causing storms and hail clearly prevailed in witchcraft accusations throughout the witch trials in Styria.
The trials in Styria often seem to involve healers, soothsayers, scryers, and thief detectors, yet it is not always quite clear what the accused actually did and what they were forced to admit under torture. Such were the trials taking place in Maribor in 1578 against a man who allegedly predicted the future by crystal gazing and selling talismans, and in 1581 against a man who allegedly possessed a crystal and seemed to have worked as a healer. A trial was held in Gornja Radgona in 1650 against a woman who was able to expose thieves by gazing into a crystal glass, and in 1653 there was a trial against a female soothsayer who could retrieve lost or stolen objects. In 1660, a trial was held in Ljutomer against a woman who was said to be able to retrieve stolen things by magic, performed magic for luck, and gave weather advice; in 1675, against a healer; and in 1685, against a woman accused of healing as well as bewitching. In 1673, a trial was held in Sveta Trojica in Haloze against a charmer who under torture admitted to having healed with incantations. In 1677, a woman was accused in Ormož of bewitching illnesses and several suspicious objects were indeed found in her home—yet she denied that the objects were hers until she admitted under torture that she needed them to heal eye diseases. In 1677, in Zgornje Celje, a woman was accused of being a soothsayer, herbalist, and charmer, and in 1683, in the vicinity of Celje, another woman was accused of not only bewitching thieves by pricking a needle into impressions of their foot but also of paralysing people (Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 192–195, 200, 202, 209–216). In 1672 in Podčetrtek, a peasant named Jakob Križan was accused of saying incantations forward and backward, preventing and inducing conception, and curing various illnesses. To be successful in his procedures, he allegedly had to renounce “God, the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, angels, all saints, black mother earth, leaves and grass, sand in the water and sea” (Byloff 1929: 37–39; 1934: 109; Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 206–207; Radovanovič 1997: 47–48). In 1685 in
Laško, Ursula Turnuschiza6 from Sevnica (Liechtenwald) was accused of sooth-saying by scrying, i.e. gazing into a crystal ball (Valentinitsch 1987: 369; Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 216; Radovanovič 1997: 8). In Bizeljsko, a trial against a beggar named Jakob Krašovec, which started in 1689, also seems to point to a person who performed as a cunning man but had a somewhat ambiguous status: the community considered him a witch and feared him, and he was believed to have killed several people by magic. He was accused of having performed love magic, magic preventing a conception, and was accused of practicing magic with wax figures (pricking them with thorns in order to cause the victim to die due to a pierced heart). He denied the allegations but admitted to giving various persons a wax figure, a small purse, and some cotton fibres against conception and that he visited “a witch” who had given him a wax figure. Under torture he also admitted that he had renounced God, and that five years earlier a devil in a green jacket and red cap, called Hanzel, who he met at the crossroad on Pentecost, promised to help him in witchcraft in exchange for having his soul for two years. In addition, he denounced four women of being involved in witchcraft. The first denounced woman, Španzika, was supposed to be able to cause fever and summon sparrows to eat wheat, thus causing damage to the crops. She denied all of the allegations, admitting only to reciting the following incantation against an illness directed at the hearth: “In the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you evil apple order to God and to our dear Lady that you vanish from this Christian body and fly away from it so that it will be fresh and healthy. With this you give the illness up as lost” (Košir 1991: 31). The second woman Krašovec blamed for stealing milk from other people’s cows, as her two cows were giving more milk than all the other cows in the community put together. The third he accused of telling fortunes and making predictions about stolen items, dancing with witches, and talking to ghosts, and the fourth of cheating on her husband (Košir 1991, Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 219–221). Alleged magic specialists generally received much milder sentences than those accused of performing bewitchment, who were as a rule sentenced to death (Tratnik Volasko and Košir 1995: 161).7
Comparison of the types of deeds ascribed to witches in the period of witch trials in the region, that is, from the sixteenth to eighteenth century (not taking into account those of magic specialists), with the deeds ascribed to witches that we recorded during the fieldwork at the beginning of the twenty-first century, shows that some of these, like accusations of causing illness, paralysis, magically stealing milk, preventing milk from going
sour, poisoning, and even causing hail, pertain to witches in both periods, although there are differences in their frequency and significance. Yet, what was going on with witchcraft in Styria and in Slovenia in general between these periods, that is, after the decline of witch trials in approximately the mid-eighteenth up until the end of the twentieth century, remains more or less a mystery. The main source of information on witchcraft in this period is narratives that folklorists have been collecting since the second half of the nineteenth century.8 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Josip Pajek published a book of legends from northern Styria, which he partly recorded in the field, received from other collectors, or reprinted from various newspapers and even witch trial testimonials amongst which there are several dealing with witchcraft. These encompass internationally known legend types as well as motifs, narratives, and practices that we recorded in our region about a century later, such as the migratory legends The Witch Bridle Legend, Following the Witch, and The Witch that was Hurt; a narrative about a witch passing on the power of witchcraft to her eldest daughter; legends about witches’ practice of spreading dew over their neighbours’ fields before sunset on the Pentecost and on the first Sundays after the new moon in order to get their cows’ milk; a legend about a person who, after having followed his wife to a witches’ sabbath, finds himself at the top of an oak tree; and a legend about the identification of witches by a prayer performed during the midnight mass while kneeling on a special stool that one has to start making on St. Lucy’s day, or alternatively on St. Barbara’s day, and complete on Christmas (cf. Pajek 1884: 3, 5, 18–29). While several legends on witchcraft were recorded in the wider province of Styria during the twentieth century,9 the particular region of our research has mostly escaped the interest of folklorists. Apart from three legends on witchcraft which were recorded and published in a polished literary form in the 1950s (a legend about a witch dragging sheets on Pentecost on her neighbour’s field in order to steal their crops’ success; a legend about a witch milking neighbours’ cows using a rope made from three hairs taken from the tail of the neighbour’s cow; and a variant of the migratory legend Following the Witch—cf. Lekše and Terčak 1956: 140–141), and brief references to witchcraft legends being part of local folklore mentioned in two articles from the 1980s (Kuret 1983: 12; 1984: 158–159), no collection or discussion of witchcraft legends in the region has been published until recently. No folklorist, until very recently, has conducted extensive research on folklore, let alone witchcraft, in the region discussed in this book.
Several publications of folklore recorded in other Slovenian regions in the nineteenth and twentieth century also included legends about witchcraft; unfortunately, however, they are all more or less completely devoid of information about their social context. With the narrators’ identities usually concealed, and the context not mentioned, pieces of texts published in isolatation from their embeddedness in everyday reality, as “relicts from the past”, contributed to the romanticisation of the “old beliefs”. Folklore started to be considered a heritage, written down as a testimony about the past, legends turned into fiction, and “reliable witnesses of the supernatural (…) into anonymous representatives of the old folk” (Valk 2015: 150–158). Even those rare references to context that occasionally did crop up reveal more about the folklorists’ attitude towards witchcraft, as a rule informed by their enlightened, “rational” worldview (cf. Valk 2015: 149), than offering a reliable glimpse into the social dimension of witchcraft in their time. One of the first Slovenian collectors of prose narratives, Gašper Križnik, who recorded folklore in north-central Slovenia in the second half of the nineteenth century, thus introduced his report on what he had heard said about witchcraft by stating that “[b]ewitchments are seldom, and there are few people that believe in witchcraft. And those that are blamed for [being witches], don’t know how to bewitch” (ISN SaZU Archive, XI.9). Nevertheless, his own data clearly reflects the fact that more people must have narrated about their personal experiences with bewitchment than he was ready to admit, and that witchcraft as an explanation of misfortune was not as distinguished from people’s social reality as he might have wanted it to be:
“About witches they say that they cause people misfortune, that they milk cows; do something to make people crippled or otherwise ill; that they make hail in the air, and that the priests who most insist that there are no witches are in alliance with them. Witches often lead people astray from the path to the forest. If lights gather somewhere in the night, they say that these are witches. It is clear that people don’t believe in them anymore.” (Križnik 1875 : 146)
Such a devaluation of witchcraft to lore that has outlived its usefulness, growing outside the bounds of accepted views and incompatible with the modern rational mode of reasoning, was part of the enlightenment process of discrediting and displacing previous modes of thought and behaviour. Labelling them primitive and superstitious, which has been the practice
of those in positions of intellectual, political, and economic power, was a means of weakening their potential opposition to the scientific way of knowing (Motz 1998: 341–344).
Another profession that occasionally tackled witchcraft was newspaper reporters, who from time to time reported about fortune-tellers, performing as unwitchers, who were taken to court for fraud. In 1897, for instance, a certain Kantina Peetner, “the wife of a Gypsy buffoon”, was reported to have been caught by the police for having persuaded several women that they had been targets of bewitchment and consequently performed rituals to unwitch them (Slovenski narod, 10 August 1897, vol. 30, no. 180). In Maribor, the capital of Slovenian Styria, a newspaper article from 1934 reported on a dissatisfied client denouncing a fortune-teller who promised to provide her with a magic book which was supposed to help her against misfortune with the livestock, yet in exchange for money and food she only received a breviary (Nova doba, 30 january 1935, vol. 11, no. 5).
The attempt of “enlightened” newspaper reporters to distance themselves from the “naiveté” and “superstitions” of “backward people” is usually obvious in their writings. They often accompanied their reports from the court proceedings with mocking remarks and an overall pejorative attitude, or even revulsion, towards the credulity of the people (cf. also Davies 1998: 148; de Blécourt 2004: 89)—as clearly reflected in the following comment in a Styrian newspaper: “Oh, this stupidity! Uneducated people still believe in witchcraft and superstitions!” (Štajerc, 1912, vol. 13, no. 6; cf. also Štajerc, 1911, vol. 12, no. 6). Some even reprimanded the clergy for not participating in enlightening the uneducated people more actively: “How our good folk are limited! (…) how much Gypsies lure out from the people’s pockets in this or other way, yet the reverend clergy has no time to educate people that there is no witchcraft; instead it even strengthens their faith” (Slovenski narod, 16 October 1907, vol. 40, no. 240).
In general, this derisive attitude towards people believing in witchcraft continued throughout the twentieth century. After the Second World War, under the newly established socialist regime, their “backwardness” became problematic in the light of its incompatibility with the communist ideals about the future transformation of society, and was considered an obstacle to progress. As in other socialist countries, any sort of religiosity was, in accordance with the Marxist view, understood as the opiate of the people, and scientifi c knowledge became a
measure of establishing the hegemony of Communist doctrine (cf. Valk 2011: 855). The following is a very interesting report on an actual witchcraft dispute that occured in a certain village in the Dolenjska region in the southeastern part of Slovenia, at the beginning of the 1950s, which ended up in court due to the slander suit brought by the accused against the accuser, and in which the allegations of witchcraft strongly resemble those that we came across in our region about 50 years later:
The “witches” stood behind accidents and evil in Radulja. If one were to write a story that would at least in people’s imagination seem likely, one should probably put it like this: “It was 350 or even more years ago, when the witches in this or that village were bewitching livestock, riding on brooms at night and doing all sorts of pranks, arousing fear in peaceful believers ...” However, since we have to write some words about a similar event which happened in the twentieth century, in the period of the socialist transformation of the economy and people – several hundred years after the burning of the last witch, we have to start differently. A young housewife at number 18 in Radulja near Šmarjeta (where else?) noticed that her hens were hatching very few eggs between Advent and Easter. (But whose hens are hatching well in this period?). She had also other problems in her household which she and her husband couldn’t explain until the young lady uttered her suspicions: You know what, that woman there, she must be a “witch”, the one from number 55. She is behind all the troubles; she is even too ashamed to go to the church. That assumption was confirmed by a coincidence when she one morning found corn scattered around her house. None from the family scattered it, so the suspicion immediately fell on the “witch” neighbour who must have bewitched hens to hatch even less eggs. With great efforts and huge fear in her eyes, the housewife picked corn and threw it into the oven. This was supposed to destroy the magic power of the witch, as the village people believed that only fire could “neutralize” the malicious intent of the witch. (On one occasion, in the same village, women found an egg in the stubble while harvesting. The master immediately brought a pile of brushwood and burned it upon the egg, and—lo and behold, right at that moment, that witch came by—the same one who placed the egg there with evil intent – as the burning of his bewitching object allegedly caused her severe pain. This happened in Radulja this year, as well.) Under the influence of a strong belief (!) in witchcraft, the “impaired” housewife from number 18 snapped in the face of the housewife from number 55 that she was a “witch”, because she caused her harm everywhere. She expressed this belief at an earlier occasion to her mother-in-law, complaining that she had no luck in this house, as everything was bewitched by this witch who does not even attend mass, because she is so ashamed. The alleged “witch”, in reality Marija Pelko from number 55, sued Marija Pelko
from number 18. Both their husbands were drawn into this witchcraft dispute; although they were both activists from the Liberation War. The witch affair was first discussed at the municipal People’s Committee in Šmarjeta, and then at two more hearings in court. As the case involved a lawyer and several witnesses were questioned, the witchcraft incurred several thousand in costs. Marija Pelko from number 18 was sentenced to 200 dinars probation fine and her husband 500 dinars, because he slandered the husband of Marija Pelko from number 55. In addition, both had to pay all the judicial expenses and 200 dinars lump sum court fees.
The scornful conclusion of the article clearly emphasises the attitude of the newspaper reporter towards “backward” people who still believe in the reality of witchcraft:
We wonder if Pelko Marija and her husband from number 18 will also believe that this sentence was given to them as a result of witchcraft. When will these obscure medieval views in Radulja and the surroundings lose their power? When will people cease to believe such utter stupidities that cause fierce hatred among them and present a serious obstacle to progress, reflecting at the same time the incredible backwardness of these village people? (Dolenjski list, 11 December 1953, vol. 4, no. 49)
Another approach taken by the “enlightened” authors was adopting a patronising and romanticising attitude toward the holders of such “credulous beliefs”, emphasising their attachment to the past and to the elder population who “still” stick to superstitions, which, of course, are incompatible with the worldview of the younger, more advanced, progressive generation. Such an attitude is clearly expressed in the following article from another Styrian newspaper:
The winter nights are long and cold, and people like to sit near the stove. In the village, they take care of the livestock early and shortly after the first dusk crowd into a warm room to shell beans and husk corn and chat. Of course, now they have radio receivers almost everywhere and lively tunes are heard in the village on Thursdays. In Obsotelje, they listen to the Šmarje radio station, which has lately had a weak signal and was hard to find. Especially the educational programme on Wednesday afternoons had a poor sound. Even without the radio they talk about global, local and village politics. Our old men like peace and have their say, often hard, sharp and quite sarcastic. Some strong sips in a warm living-room at winter evenings stimulate their tongues and it is really interesting to listen to them. I did so, and I hope they won’t be cross if I steal some of the
words they uttered by the stove. “It was bloody true”, said old Pepe convincingly as he cleared his throat. “My late grandfather— may he rest in peace!—told me that witches existed. No, it was not in Brijov kot, but at Trobeješki graben. There they were sitting on young willow twigs and roasting. Yes, it’s true, my grandfather said so! Old Neža saw it with her own eyes, but she wouldn’t say it before she was lying on her deathbed. And, you know, my grandfather really wasn’t prone to lies! He even knew some of these witches. You see, some were from the families that you would find hard to believe. No wonder that they had everything!” Ančka and Franček, happy and young, smiled as if they wouldn’t believe what their uncle said. “Yeah, they knew how to make counterfeit money!” the uncle sighed. “Uncle, why don’t you go and find them, so they could make us a lot of money! You know, then you wouldn’t need to curse so much when you get a bill for the county tax and fees!” The uncle first looked at them in anger, but then he muttered: “Why, you young people are like doubting Thomas! You are already completely corrupt! But you know, witches do not show up for just anyone, and that’s that!” And everybody burst into merry laughter. (Celjski tednik: glasilo SZDL, 19 January 1962, vol. 15, no. 3)
The legends published in folklore collections and various journals, sensational cases that entered the daily newspapers through the courts, and the “enlightened” attitude reflected in the newspaper articles as well as in occasional folklorists’ commentaries, however, certainly don’t reflect the attitude of many other people towards witchcraft and the whole picture of the role that witchcraft played in the life of population after the decline of the witch trials. Due to a complete lack of information on the social context of witchcraft narratives or related practices, and the fact that field research on witchcraft paid no attention to its social context, it is unfortunately impossible to estimate to what extent and in what way witchcraft informed people’s everyday lives from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. While certainly not equally present everywhere in Slovenia, and in some parts perhaps not present at all, narratives published in fairly recent regional folklore collections occasionally reveal that (at least in some places) witchcraft has continued to provide a means to understand misfortune and to cope with it well into the twentieth and even twentyfirst century. However, thorough field research should be done before any firm conclusions about its role and significance for the population can be made.
At any rate, the research on witchcraft that my students and I conducted in the villages of a rural region of eastern Slovenia at the beginning of the twenty-first century proved that even if witchcraft was obviously in
decline as a social institution, and was for the most part preserved only in the form of narratives, many narrators still expressed a strong conviction in the power of witchcraft: some pointed to bewitchment practices as still being performed, some referred to women that still had a reputation of being witches, and several narratives even clearly reflected the social dimension of the allegations. Thirty-seven interlocutors out of 237 narrated about witchcraft accusations that referred to specific persons from their community and that affected their social relationships; of these, 22 talked about their own personal witchcraft disputes and 15 about those that happened to their close neighbours or family members. Although most of the narrators referred to past events, at least to some people witchcraft as a social institution, even at the time of our research, continued to offer a meaningful interpretation of everyday reality and provided them with effective means to cope with its perils.
In many respects, this book is conditioned by the methodology used in the fieldwork. Sporadic visits to the region, one or two interviews at the most conducted with the same interlocutor,10 i.e. research that was not based on prolonged participant observation in a chosen community, did not allow us to closely follow the development of the “life-stories” of witchcraft suspicions and accusations within the social milieu in which they emerged. Moreover, the sporadic visits to the region with students prevented a deep immersion in witchcraft discourse like that of Jeanne Favret-Saada during her research of witchcraft in northwestern France (1980), when she consciously decided to allow herself to be “caught”, i.e. affected by the effects of particular words or ritual acts, and during which period she personally experienced “the real effects of the particular network of human communication that is witchcraft” (Favret-Saada 2012: 440). While she initially oscillated between “participating” (whereby her fieldwork would become a personal activity) and “observing” (keeping herself at a distance), she soon realised that in the latter case she would have nothing to observe. As long as she did not become entangled in witchcraft discourse, assuming either a role of a victim or that of an unwitcher, people would not even speak with her on witchcraft, as “spoken words are power, and not knowledge or information” (Favret-Saada 1980: 9). The only choice left for her was, therefore, to become involved, making participation an “instrument of knowledge”. Instead of struggling against the state of being affected, she accepted it as an act of communication: “In
such instances,” she writes, “if I am able to forget that I am in the field, that I have my stockpile of questions to ask…, if I am able to tell myself that communication (ethnographic or not, that is no longer the problem) is taking place there and then, in this unbearable and incomprehensible fashion, then I can connect to a particular form of human experience—the state of being bewitched—because I am affected by it. When two people are affected, things pass between them that are inaccessible to the ethnographer; people speak of things that ethnographers do not address; or they hold their tongues, but this too is a form of communication” (FavretSaada 2012: 442).
However, is such deep immersion in the discourse the only option available to the serious witchcraft researcher? Gregor Dobler’s ethnographic experience in the same region about 30 years later (in 1998 and 2003) was quite different from that of Favret-Saada: even though his interlocutors were concerned about witchcraft, they were not all that reluctant to speak about it, and while they acknowledged the dangers of witchcraft, they did not seem to perceive the words spoken about it as dangerous, as Favret-Saada had described them. Moreover, Dobler pointed to some weak points of the methodological choices Favret-Saada had made—he argues that by separating witchcraft from its context, its embeddedness in everyday life, she extended her involvement into witchcraft alone, leaving aside the mundane everyday life of which witchcraft was a part: “Once we step outside the narrowly defined field,” Dobler argues, “we can again inscribe witchcraft into its social context, and words might lose their menace”. Finally, he believes that “[o]nly a combination of both, the specialist perspective and the one anchored in everyday life, can really grasp what witchcraft is about” (Dobler 2015).
If, therefore, immersion into witchcraft as only one, fairly restricted aspect of people’s experience, although a sincere and in many aspects fascinating approach, turns out to be too limited in its scope to be able to grasp the whole reality of witchcraft, is participant observation therefore the only method that enables the understanding of witchcraft in its entirety and imparts a narrowly focused perspective with a more realistic everyday counterpart? Without a doubt, staying with people for a longer period, living and working together, and—when the right context emerges— discussing witchcraft with them, is the best ethnographic method to get to know witchcraft as part of people’s everyday reality. Yet, when magic practices are never performed openly (if at all!), one can hardly hope to become a participant observer in their performance. The only field from
which the researcher can grasp the practices and the reality of witchcraft as such, is words. Staying with people for a longer period of time and becoming involved in their everyday lives would indeed facilitate the discussion on witchcraft and stimulate the right context to exchange words more easily than during short-term visits. Moreover, it would allow a researcher to witness many situations of social exchange, such as private discussions, gossip among neighbours, and various forms of shared work that may stimulate people to share their thoughts, opinions, personal experiences, and stories about witchcraft that we may have missed.
However, while a long-term stay in the community may enable the researcher to better grasp the social dimension of witchcraft, it could, on the other hand, just as well become an obstacle to the research. Where witchcraft is a vital social institution, the status of the family within the local network that one chooses to stay with inevitably affects the relationship of other members of the community vis-à-vis the researcher, and the information received is most probably strongly informed by this attitude. As the main fear of many of our interlocutors was that the information they shared with us would be repeated to other members of the same community, a prolonged involvement in people’s lives could even increase their fear and consequently their reluctance to talk to the researcher who, temporarily at least, had become a member of the community, acquainted with the intricacies of the relationships within it. Furthermore, a researcher interested in the social role o f witchcraft would probably get more information on witchcraft disputes from the friends of the family he or she was staying with than from other members of the community (cf. Dobler 2015). The information on witchcraft disputes, especially that involving the host family, would thus very likely emphasise only one side of the story—the one supporting the perspective of the host family and the network of the families linked with it. The competing interpretation by the opposite family, or a network of families, on the other hand, would very likely never even reach the “inculturated” researcher. If it did, however, it would most likely be cleansed and adapted in accordance with the assumption about the side the researcher is taking in the dispute, conditioned by the position of the family they are staying with in the dispute. Both options would thus necessarily render any conclusion about the effects of witchcraft accusations on the social relationships within the community biased, not necessarily reflecting the whole picture. Choosing to conduct research in another community, i.e., not in that of one’s temporary residence—like Favret-Saada, who only conducted her research in villages
more than ten kilometres away from her residence (1980: 20)—on the other hand, does not help the researcher understand the social role of witchcraft in a particular community any more than our sporadic visits allowed us to understand it.
Participant observation and a more intense involvement in the witchcraft process may still be a better choice for a researcher doing field research in an area where witchcraft as a social institution plays a vital role in people’s everyday reality, especially when one is interested in particular aspects of witchcraft such as the evolution of witchcraft disputes, the negotiation of their competing interpretations, the formation and transformation of bewitchment narratives, witchcraft accusations in relation to social relationships, power and social hierarchy, etc. However, where for most of the inhabitants witchcraft no longer has any vital social power to explain misfortunes and regulating social relationships, even though many people (still) believe in its power, and some may even (still) secretly perform magic practices, and others may still be reputed as witches—as was the case in our region—sporadic visits and interviews conducted with a relatively large amount of interlocutors seem to be at least no worse a choice of ethnographic method than any other in the attempt to understand witchcraft in its entirety, and the various roles it fulfilled in the everyday life of the population. The concern that narratives about witchcraft would be misunderstood and their meanings remain hidden to a researcher who did not stay in the region long enough can to a high degree be tempered by conducting a large amount of interviews. Analysis and comparison of the narratives of many interlocutors on the same topic allows the researcher to grasp the hidden connotations of the actions described (or their absence), and to get to understand messages underlying particular uses of the words, whereupon the picture of the social reality of witchcraft, even without the researcher being part of it, starts taking its contours.
When we started to research witchcraft in the field, my particular interest lay in stories about witches and their comparison with witchcraft legends from other places and other times. In this, I was relying on the work of folklorists who have, over the last two centuries, recorded witchcraft narratives in various parts of Europe, published them in collections of legends, and classified them according to types and motifs (cf. for instance Christiansen 1958: ML types no. 3030–3080, and also 3000–3025; af Klintberg 2010; Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature; ATU). These legends, however, were, as in
Slovenia, usually published devoid of their social context, mostly presented as polished stories (cf. de Blécourt 1999: 153, 160), revealing nothing of the social reality in which they were embedded. In fact, the social context of the narratives has long remained outside the scope of folklorists’ attention, and the focus of folklore studies of witchcraft was basically on the representations of the witch, rather than on the perspective of their “victims”, i.e. people who believed in witchcraft. As Favret-Saada laments, questions about the unwitchers who had played a crucial role in resolving tensions triggered by witchcraft were not even included in the questionnaires which were supposed to serve as aids for field researchers (1980: 227–233).
Many of the questions that I initially prepared my students to ask in the field were thus actually based on folklore notions about witches: what do witches look like? How does one recognise them? Where and when do they meet? How could one overpower them? … Such questions obviously referred to stereotypical folkloric witches and had nothing or only partially to do with people who were considered witches by their neighbours or the community as a whole. While we sometimes indeed received stereotypical answers that pertained to the badly put questions, for instance:
F 11: What do witches look like? What did people say?
I: They had a big nose, and a broom12 between their legs, and they lifted up and went … (56),
… many other interlocutors, on the other hand, soon showed us that a witch was not some quasi-mythological or supernatural being of folklore but a flesh-and-blood human being, usually from the same community:
F: What did the witches look like?
I: I beg your pardon?
F: How do they …?
I: Nothing, normal people.
F: Really?
I: Normal people.
F: Could you recognise them?
I: They were normal people. (93)
F: How could you distinguish witches from other people, was there a way to recognise them?
I: Well, it was not that …, they were here, they were peasant women, it is only that they knew, 13 they knew to do this. (2)
As witchcraft in our region turned out to be strongly intertwined with people’s everyday life in the community, it soon became obvious that the social context could clearly not be neglected. In this regard, the narrow folkloristic approach, focusing solely on texts, did not suffice and had to be supplemented by an anthropological perspective. Anthropological research on witchcraft, for a long time mostly conducted outside Europe, in contrast to (narrower) folkloristic research, primarily addressed questions regarding the social dimension of witchcraft, and directed the investigation into the social relations between the witch, her14 victim and the unwitcher, explored the social functions that witchcraft fulfilled in the community and society as a whole, and focused not so much on the (notions about the) witch as such, but on people who believe in witchcraft (cf. Henningsen 1989: 106).
While I soon learned to include additional questions that referred to the social dimension of witchcraft accusations, some questions that should have been posed during the fieldwork were still missed. One thing that we clearly did not pay enough attention to during our initial fieldwork was the unwitchers, and my own subsequent field research focused particularly on these specialists, especially the members of the fortune-telling family that played the most important role in providing the unwitching services to the inhabitants of the region in case they were assumed to have been bewitched. Another issue that we also often failed to touch during the interviews was an inquiry into potentially ongoing witchcraft disputes—the fact that we did not ask about them as often as we should have obviously reflects our initial conviction that witchcraft was still a thing of the past, and of folklore, rather than contemporaneity and everyday life. Thus, if our interlocutors did not bring the topic up by themselves, the ongoing witchcraft disputes may have remained hidden from us, and we may have missed many opportunities to penetrate the witchcraft discourse as deeply as we could have. Yet in spite of many missed and clearly nonsensical questions that we asked during the field research (some that the students asked without my instructions and some that they asked according to my poor instructions, which were a result of my poor knowledge of anthropological research done on witchcraft at the time of the fieldwork, as the topic had caught me quite by surprise), many interlocutors nevertheless did speak openly about witchcraft allegations, affecting their social relationships, and we were able
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
French Beans à la Française (Entremets)
An excellent receipt for French Beans à la Française
To boil Windsor Beans
Dressed Cucumbers
Mandrang, or Mandram (West Indian receipt)
321
322
322
322
323
Another receipt for Mandram 323
Dressed Cucumbers (Author’s receipt)
Stewed Cucumbers (English mode)
Cucumbers à la Poulette
Cucumbers à la Créme
Fried Cucumbers, to serve in common hashes and minces
Melon
To boil Cauliflowers
Cauliflowers (French receipt)
Cauliflowers with Parmesan Cheese
Cauliflowers à la Française
Brocoli
To boil Artichokes
Artichokes en Salade (see Chapter VI.)
Vegetable Marrow
Roast Tomatas (to serve with roast Mutton)
Stewed Tomatas
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325
325
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327
Forced Tomatas (English receipt)
Forced Tomatas (French receipt)
Purée of Tomatas
To boil Green Indian Corn
Mushrooms au Beurre
Potted Mushrooms
Mushroom-Toast, or Croule aux Champignons (excellent)
Truffles, and their uses
Truffles à la Serviette
Truffles à l’Italienne
To prepare Truffles for use
To boil Sprouts, Cabbages, Savoys, Lettuces, or Endive
Stewed Cabbage
To boil Turnips
To mash Turnips
Turnips in white Sauce (Entremets)
Turnips stewed in Butter (good)
Turnips in Gravy
To boil Carrots
Carrots (the Windsor receipt) (Entremets)
Sweet Carrots (Entremets)
Mashed (or Buttered) Carrots (a Dutch receipt)
Carrots au Beurre, or Buttered Carrots (French receipt)
Carrots
To
Jerusalem
To
Entremets)
Jerusalem
à la Reine
CHAPTER XVIII.
Almond Paste
Tartlets of Almond Paste
Fairy Fancies (Fantaisies des Fées)
Mincemeat (Author’s receipt)
Superlative Mincemeat
Mince Pies (Entremets)
Mince Pies Royal (Entremets)
The Monitor’s Tart, or Tourte à la Judd
Pudding Pies (Entremets)
Pudding Pies (a commoner kind)
Cocoa-Nut cheese-cakes (Entremets) (Jamaica receipt)
Madame Werner’s Rosenvik cheese-cakes
Apfel Krapfen (German receipt)
Créme Pâtissière, or Pastry
Small Vols-au-Vent, à la Parisienne (Entremets)
Pastry Sandwiches
Sandwiches
Fanchonnettes (Entremets)
Jelly-Tartlets, or Custards
Ramakins à l’Ude, or SeftonFancies
CHAPTER XIX.
SOUFFLÉS, OMLETS, ETC.
Louise Franks’ Citron Soufflé
A Fondu, or Cheese Souffle
Observations on Omlets, Fritters, &c.
(
of
Mincemeat Fritters
Venetian Fritters (very good)
Rhubarb Fritters
Apple, Peach, Apricot, or Orange Fritters
Brioche Fritters
Potato Fritters (Entremets)
Lemon Fritters (Entremets)
Cannelons (Entremets)
Cannelons of Brioche paste (Entremets)
Croquettes of Rice (Entremets)
Finer Croquettes of Rice (Entremets)
Savoury Croquettes of Rice (Entrée)
Rissoles (Entrée)
386
387
Very savoury Rissoles (Entrée) 387
Small fried Bread Patties, or Croustades of various kinds
Dresden Patties, or Croustades (very delicate)
To prepare Beef Marrow for frying Croustades, Savoury Toasts, &c.
Small Croustades, or Bread Patties, dressed in Marrow (Author’s receipt)
Small Croustades, à la Bonne Maman (the Grandmamma’s Patties)
Curried Toasts with Anchovies
To fillet Anchovies
Savoury Toasts
To choose Macaroni, and other Italian Pastes
387
387
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389
389
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390
390
To boil Macaroni 391
Ribbon Macaroni 391
Dressed Macaroni
392
Macaroni à la Reine 393
S P à l’Italienne (Good) (To serve instead of Macaroni) 393
CHAPTER XX.
BOILED PUDDINGS.
To steam a Pudding in a common stewpan or saucepan
Clear arrow-root-sauce (with receipt for Welcome Guest’s Pudding)
A German Custard Puddingsauce
A delicious German Puddingsauce
Red Currant or Raspberrysauce (good)
Common Raspberry-sauce
Superior Fruit Sauces for Sweet Puddings
Pine-apple Pudding-sauce
A very fine Pine-apple Sauce or Syrup for Puddings, or other Sweet Dishes
German Cherry-sauce
Common Batter Pudding
Another Batter Pudding
Black-cap Pudding
Batter Fruit Pudding
Kentish Suet Pudding
Another Suet Pudding
Apple, Currant, Cherry, or other Fresh Fruit Pudding
A common Apple Pudding
Herodotus’ Pudding (A genuine classical receipt)
The Publisher’s Pudding
Her Majesty’s Pudding
Common Custard Pudding
Prince Albert’s Pudding 411
German Pudding and Sauce (very good)
The Welcome Guest’s own Pudding (light and wholesome. Author’s receipt)
Sir Edwin Landseer’s Pudding 412
A Cabinet Pudding 413
A very fine Cabinet Pudding 414
Snowdon Pudding (a genuine receipt) 414
Very good Raisin Puddings 415
The Elegant Economist’s Pudding 415
Pudding à la Scoones
Ingoldsby Christmas Puddings
Small and very light Plum Pudding
Vegetable Plum Pudding (cheap and good)
The Author’s Christmas Pudding
A Kentish Well-Pudding
Rolled Pudding
A Bread Pudding
A Brown Bread Pudding
A good boiled Rice Pudding
Cheap Rice Pudding
Rice and Gooseberry Pudding
Fashionable Apple Dumplings
Orange Snow-balls
Apple Snow-balls
Light Currant Dumplings
Lemon Dumplings (light and good)
Suffolk, or hard Dumplings
Norfolk Dumplings
Sweet boiled Patties (good)
Boiled Rice, to be served with stewed Fruits, Preserves, or Raspberry Vinegar
CHAPTER XXI. BAKED PUDDINGS.
Wife’s
The Good Daughter’s Mincemeat Pudding (Author’s receipt)
Mrs. Howitt’s Pudding (Author’s receipt)
French Semoulina Pudding, or Gâteau de Semoule 430
Saxe-Gotha Pudding, or Tourte 431
Baden Baden Puddings 431
Sutherland, or Castle Puddings 432
Madeleine Puddings (to be served cold) 432
A good French Rice Pudding, or Gâteau de Riz 433
A common Rice Pudding 433
Quite cheap Rice Pudding 434
Richer Rice Pudding 434
Rich Pudding Meringué 434
Good ground Rice Pudding 435
Common ground Rice Pudding 435
Green Gooseberry Pudding 435
Potato Pudding 436
A Richer Potato Pudding 436
A good Sponge-cake Pudding 436
Cake and Custard, and various other inexpensive Puddings 437
Baked Apple Pudding, or Custard 437
Dutch Custard, or Baked Raspberry Pudding 438
Gabrielle’s Pudding, or sweet
Casserole of Rice 438
Vermicelli Pudding, with apples or without, and Puddings of Soujee and Semola 439
Rice à la Vathek, or Rice 440
Pudding à la Vathek (extremely good)
Good Yorkshire Pudding 440
Common Yorkshire Pudding 441
Normandy Pudding (good) 441
Common baked Raisin Pudding 441
A richer baked Raisin Pudding 442
The Poor Author’s Pudding 442
Pudding à la Paysanne (cheap and good) 442
The Curate’s Pudding 442
A light baked Batter Pudding 443
CHAPTER XXII.
EGGS AND MILK.
Page
To preserve Eggs fresh for many weeks 444
To cook Eggs in the shell without boiling them (an admirable receipt) 445
To boil Eggs in the shell 445
To dress the Eggs of the Guinea Fowl and Bantam 446
To dress Turkeys’ Eggs 447
Forced Turkeys’ Eggs (or Swans’), an excellent entremets 447
To boil a Swan’s Egg hard 448
Swan’s Egg en Salade 448
To poach Eggs of different kinds 449
Poached Eggs with Gravy (Œufs Pochés au Jus. Entremets.) 449
Œufs au Plat 450
Milk and Cream 450
Devonshire, or Clotted Cream 451
Du Lait a Madame 451
Curds and Whey 451
Devonshire Junket 452
CHAPTER XXIII.
SWEET DISHES, OR ENTREMETS.
To prepare Calf’s Feet Stock 453
To clarify Calf’s Feet Stock 454
To clarify Isinglass 454
Spinach Green, for colouring
Sweet Dishes, Confectionary, or Soups 455
Prepared Apple or Quince Juice 456
Cocoa-nut flavoured Milk (for Sweet Dishes, &c.)
Remarks upon Compotes of Fruit, or Fruit stewed in Syrup 456
Compote of Rhubarb
—— of Green Currants
—— of Green Gooseberries
—— of Green Apricots
—— of Red Currants
—— of Raspberries
—— of Kentish or Flemish Cherries
—— of Morella Cherries
—— of the green Magnum Bonum, or Mogul Plum
—— of Damsons
—— of ripe Magnum Bonums, or Mogul Plums
458
—— of the Shepherd’s and other Bullaces 458
—— of Siberian Crabs 458
—— of Peaches 459
Another receipt for stewed Peaches 459
Compote of Barberries for Dessert 459
Black Caps, par excellence (for the Second Course, or for Dessert) 460
Gâteau de Pommes 460
Gâteau of mixed Fruits (good) 461
Calf’s Feet Jelly (entremets) 461
Another receipt for Calf’s Feet Jelly 462
Modern varieties of Calf’s Feet Jelly 463
Apple Calf’s Feet Jelly 464
Orange Calf’s Feet Jelly (Author’s receipt) 464
Orange Isinglass Jelly 465
Very fine Orange Jelly (Sussex Place receipt) 465
Oranges filled with Jelly 466
Lemon Calf’s Feet Jelly 467
Constantia Jelly 467
Rhubarb Isinglass Jelly (Author’s original receipt) 468
