PAST CRIMEScontents are usually urine, pins (often bent) and sometimes, pieces of cloth or
hair. An example found during excavations in Reigate in Surrey dates from the
early years of the eighteenth century. The corked bottle contained nine bent pins
and some urine. The belief seems to have been that the urine would either‘stop’
the urine of the witch, or fool the witch into believing that the bottle contained
the person being bewitched. The bent pins would then trap the witch inside the
bottle. Bending the pins seems to be an idea which harks back to prehistory–
swords were often bent or broken to accompany a funeral, so that the spirit of
the‘killed’weapon could travel along with its owner to the afterlife. In the same
way, the bent pins would be able to attack the witch in the spirit world.^6
Evidence of probable witchcraft practices has come from Cornwall, near
the home of archaeologist Jacqui Wood. During an excavation to construct an
experimental furnace, she came upon a buried clay floor from the Mesolithic
period. At a later date, some small pits had been dug through this platform,
and filled with strange items. The feathered skins of swans lay beneath piles of
pebbles and birds’claws. Another larger pit was also lined with swan feathers
and fiftyfive eggs, some close to hatching. The bodies of magpies had been
laid next to these. Carbon dating placed the pits in the period around 1640, a
time when there was strong persecution of witches in Cornwall. Jacqui Wood
has speculated that these pits were offering to St Brigid, the Christianised
Figure 23. A witch and her familiars from a 17th century woodcut