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Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History. By Owen Davies. London: Hambledon and London, 2002. 256 pp. Illus. £19.99 (hbk). ISBN 1-85285-297-6
This excellent study examines the liminal world of cunning folk in England. It follows a welcome trend begun by a number of studies in the 1970s, which examined the composite nature of the "witch" concept by moderating the notion of a witch rooted in demonological theology and its focus on demonic pact with elements drawn from a wider range of folk beliefs about weather magic, love charms, cures, and night-flying. As a result, the role of the magician in the community became clearer and certainly more complex, and the term "cunning folk" has become quite widely used in both popular and academic contexts as an accepted and all-embracing term for practitioners of popular magic in the pre-modern era. The focus has also shifted from the idea of a witch as a category to...