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Festival Programme 18th - 21st December Festival Programme Index Introduction: Welcome to the Festival of Folklore 1 2 Article: Witch Marks, a Folk Practice? Performer Biographies: Talks & Live Events 5 Performer Biographies: Music 9 13 Article: Prayers Carved in Stone Performer Biographies: Storytellers 15 21 Crafts With Creswell 23 Performance Time Table Welcome to Creswell Crags Witch Marks, a Folk Practice? Midwinter Festival of Folklore Taking inspiration from our Witch Marks discovery, the Festival of Folklore aims to explore themes around everyday beliefs, ritual, and superstition. Witch marks are commonly considered to be a Creswell Crags Midwinter Festival of little known folk practice, a type of Folklore began with an appeal in September protective practice that was part of a complex system of beliefs. The practice to some fabulous creative minds for help in could have stemmed from extreme putting together material for an online changes in the religious lives of everyday showcase. people during the Reformation, when the Roman Catholic church was gradually What started out as a simple Twitter interest dismantled and replaced by pole has blossomed into a creative Protestantism. partnership full of historians, storytellers, musicians and dream-weavers who together aim to bring some enchantment back into a During this period it is believed that the possessed by a devil or cursed. Protective world turned grey and dismal with the cares practice of creating Witch Marks emerged marks like the Witch Marks can be found on as a direct way of asking for divine of 2020. many buildings, including churches, barns protection from the threat of disease, evil and homes and are often gathered around spirits, witches and demons. There is little In the following pages are the details of a specific vulnerable or important points such evidence of the reasons for the practice in group of wonderfully generous individuals as doors, windows or fireplaces. This was to written sources from the time and we may and groups who have given their time to prevent spirits or witches’ familiars from never know the full story behind the entering the home, or to prevent harm being help out our charity:, and to you our intrepid creation of the Witch Marks at Creswell caused to people or livestock living or readers and watchers. Together over the Crags; however what we do know is that it working within. A Witches familiar was often next four days we will adventure into the was most likely an everyday act, carried believed to be an animal and not just cats out by lay-people as part of a community world of folklore, full of myths, morals and were cast in this role, animals such as toads, or grass roots belief system. Creswell legends. Perhaps for a little while we will be rats or even birds were considered to be just Crags is home to the largest collection of able to see a new landscape, full of magic as suspicious. Such animals could easily get witch marks discovered to date; the into a house, which was a recipe for a and wonder; forgotten perhaps but not yet largest number of these can be found in common and possibly frightening lost. Robin Hoods Cave. experience if you considered them to be Together let us take a moment to chase agents of the devil! away the darkness of Midwinter and Around the time when the Witch Marks encourage the light of the New Year into our are most likely to have been created, it However, just as people believed in the lives. was not unusual for sudden illness in power of such things as demons and witches humans or animals, failing harvests and to cause harm, they equally believed that The Creswell Team even sleep walking to be explained by there were powers available to them to some supernatural force such as being protect them from evil. For many the creswell-crags.org.uk Creswell Crags @CreswellCrags 2 @creswellcrags @creswellcrags Witch Marks, a Folk Practice? official religion and folk belief. Sometimes such practices were condemned by the church and linked to superstition or even witchcraft, others like the carving of protective marks seem to have been simply ignored. Over time it is possible that the meaning of the symbols changed, though there is some evidence that other protective practices continued well into the 19th century, many disappeared from use and faded from memory. Protective marks are peculiar in that their practice is not recorded in any written sources, if not for their survival on buildings and in caves we might never have known about them at all. ultimate power to perform miracles or to avert evil was firmly placed in the hands of Works Used the Christian faith. The Reformation Easton, T. (2018). "Scores on the Doors." SPAB changed the way people could interact (The Society for the Protection of Ancient with religion at an official level, it made Buildings)(Winter): 52-57. church services more accessible by changing the language used in services Hoggard, B. (2019). Magical house protection : the from Latin to English but at the same time archaeology of counter-witchcraft. New York ;, Berghahn. destroyed much of the imagery that church goers had grown used to. Owen Davies, e. and e. Willem de Blécourt (2004). Depictions and statues of saints were Beyond the witch trials : witchcraft and magic in often destroyed or sent abroad and Enlightenment Europe. Manchester, England, praying to specific saints was banned Manchester University Press. however, this did not immediately lead to Ralph, M. (1987). The archaeology of ritual and a change in everyday belief. People would magic. London, Batsford. still pray to specific saints to grant them safety, or protection; in particular prayers Ronald, H. (1995). "The English Reformation and the Evidence of Folklore." Past & present(148): 89- were often directed to the Virgin Mary. 116. The popularity of praying to the Virgin Mary for protection carries over into the Ronald, H. (2016). Physical evidence for ritual acts, witch marks discovery, as one of the most sorcery and witchcraft in Christian Britain : a common protection symbols (the feeling for magic. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan. intersecting VV) is considered to be a version of the Virgin's Monogram. Thomas, K. (1973). Religion and the decline of magic : studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Protective practices such as the inscribing of protective or witch marks emerged from this complicated intersection of 3 Performer Biographies: Talks & Live Events Performer Biographies: Talks & Live Events Ghost Tales and Midwinter- Live Talk and Q&A Session Alluvial Plains: Live Talk with Q&A and Live Role-Playing With renowned Folklorist Icy Sedgwick Gaming Session With Dr. Barnaby Dicker Alluvial Plains is a role-play game set Perhaps more than Halloween, Midwinter is often a time during the stone-age on and around the traditionally associated with ghost stories. But why do we region now submerged under the English tell ghost stories at this time of year? Why do ghosts Channel and the North Sea, often referred to continue to preoccupy us? And are there ways to keep as Doggerland. Playing the game provides troublesome ghosts at bay at Midwinter? This illustrated an imaginative and speculative opportunity talk will explore these ideas as we seek to get closer to the to explore the life and times of the people spirits... who lived on these ancient landscapes. Co- author, Barnaby Dicker, will discuss the is the host of the Fabulous Folklore Icy Sedgwick ongoing development of the game and podcast. She writes weekly folklore articles on her suggest that tabletop role-play games in website; as well as dark fantasy and Gothic horror tales! general, as a form of collective storytelling, can be seen as an embodiment of www.icysedgwick.com/ contemporary folkloric practice. Barnaby will @miss.icy.sedgwick @IcySedgwick also run a game of Alluvial Plains with a special winter scenario set around Creswell "Folklore is artistic communication @icysedgwick Fabulous Folklore Podcast Crags some 13,000 years ago. in small groups" - Photo by David Dibert on Unsplash Dan Ben-Amos Midwinter Folklore and Legendary Creatures of Malta Dr Barnaby Dicker is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, London. He is interested in graphic With Simon Cutajar technologies and arts, including cinematography and photography, with particular emphasis on Avant-guard practices. This has led to work on topics such as Simon Cutajar brings to life the midwinter animation, proto-cinematography, experimental film, folklore,customs and traditions of Malta in this graphic reproduction technologies, comic strips, short informative talk on the tales and pastimes of paleoart and the historiography of aesthetic theories and his homeland. practices of abstraction. He is also a tabletop game enthusiast, about which he has a podcast, Loco Ludus. Simon Cutajar is a games programmer from This year, he has been developing a stone-age setting for Malta and currently based in Sweden. He is a PhD his own role-play game system in collaboration with graduate in computing, and has recently taken an Spencer Game and David Surman. This talk unites his interest in Maltese folklore and history. academic and gaming interests in paleoart and folklore. www.simon.com.mt @scutajar Loco Ludus • A podcast on Anchor @loco.ludus 6 5 Performer Biographies: Talks & Live Events Performer Biographies: Talks & Live Events Short Documentary- Everyday Beliefs Creswell Crags Witch Marks- Live Talk and Q&A Session With Callum Roome Join Heritage Interpreter John Charlesworth for a fun informative talk about the Witch Mark discovery at In this short documentary, we will explore humanities past Creswell Crags. Followed by a short Q and A session, what folklore beliefs and methods of how to ward off evil entities.

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