Throughout history, women have typically been the guardians of bodies of knowledge not recognised by the elite due to exclusion from education and learned culture. This includes what is called folklore, the knowledge of how to live and survive in a dangerous world governed by chance and by intended evil. In this talk we will explore one branch of that knowledge, which is still half consciously practised by many people today: folklore about how to guard and seal the house and the body against unwanted or evil powers.

We will begin by exploring our own household ‘rituals’ and the anxiety that can come with leaving the house, briefly discussing Tuppence Middleton’s book about obsessive compulsive disorder on leaving the house. We will then dive deep into centuries old folklore rituals, including witch marks, threshold rituals, cleansing rituals, especially around the fireplace and the chimney, Santa Claus, and the role of household spirits or brownies in safeguarding or in menacing the household. We will discuss the way this invisible work has always been done by women, often in secret and in the teeth of disapproval from male relatives and ecclesiastical hierarchies. We will learn about its relation to what is called ‘housework’ and the way our ancestors thought about the connections between the body and the house.

Speaker Bio:

Diane Purkiss is Professor of English at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of Keble College. She has published on witchcraft, fairies, and also on the English Civil War, the occasion of England’s biggest witchhunt. She has been in more than a dozen television documentaries; she even has an IMdb entry and a Wikipedia page… She has spoken to general audiences at numerous literary festivals and to many local history societies.