This is one of the pictures Thomas Waters used to illustrate his talk on the history of witchcraft this afternoon. It's a curse doll with a note that was found in the wall of a house in Hereford, and is now in the possession of the Hereford Museum. I copied it from the Eat Sleep Live Herefordshire Facebook page. The writer of the note really didn't like someone called Mary Ann Ward!
It was a fascinating talk, with examples right around the world and up to the present day, though there were several stories from Victorian England. One of the conclusions Thomas Waters has drawn from his fifteen years of research for his book Cursed Britain is that, although some cunning men and witches were undoubtedly charlatans, others performed a valuable service to their clients not unlike counsellors and therapists today.
As in previous years, the tent in the Cattle Market has an annexe with bar, snacks and a few stalls, including the Festival Bookshop where I treated myself to the Mike Pitts book Digging for Britain. There were also some girls from Fairfield School, in uniform with Extinction Rebellion badges. They'd set up a tree, and were inviting people to write their wishes for the future on luggage labels, and tie them to the tree.
Outside the tent there's a big mobile burger bar set up, selling burgers with local Hereford beef, which I've heard good things about, though I didn't try any today.
And in the centre of town, the tents are going up for tonight's switching on of the Christmas Lights, tomorrow's Food Festival and the fair on Sunday.
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