The Lay of the Land: Agricultural Magic in Traditional English Cunning-Craft with Dr Alexander Cummins

Agriculture formed an essential basis of the pre-modern economy, and while the early modern period in Britain saw increasing urbanisation, it was in the fields and country lanes that many cunning-folk remained – both in actuality and in the popular public imagination – tending animals, crops, and the humans that farmed them: from folk magical means of the cultivation of soil to the cunning husbandries of raising and caring for beasts, trees, and crops; and from astrologically-based almanac instructions on gelding lambs and coppicing woodlands to wise cattle-keeping and the talismans and techniques of making.