Lost Witcheries of Old England Part 2: Jack the Crack

[smokingboot]

I am still too ill to think. Time for more from Cecil:



'I am very conscious of the fact that everything has a spirit or a soul so the first thing I do with a piece is to put it in a room that I use quite a lot and I get to know it. So you look at a bottle and you think, is it a spirit bottle or not a spirit bottle?

And you look at the bottle and the bottle looks at you. Though you have only got my word for it, quite a lot of the exhibits can be unstable. Nothing dramatic really, it is only just that they will move. You will (say) clear a place; you range the stuff out to examine in detail what everything is. What are the herbs? Is that liquid human or does it come off a big dog? That sort of thing. And then you come in and you suddenly think, funny! That bottle was never there. So you start becoming very careful.

With things like that, you don't press it. If the bottle has got liquid in or if it's a hoofer, I don't destroy the things. I make a sort of little Valhalla or grave-place. I usually prefer a stone wall and this is like the ancient days when they also used to do it and there is the legend of Jack The Crack, or the spirit that lives in the stone wall. So what you do is to find a suitable stone wall in a remote place when the farmer is not looking. And you open up the wall and make a trough in there. Then you bring sacks of sand (which is the most laborious part, but I have a little trolley) and you fill the bottom of that and you stick your bottles in there like the Romans used to do and the bottles will stay standing up. And then you cover it with some slabs of stone and you put some turf on top and there you have got a little Valhalla which might hold twenty bottles.

You always leave a little opening so that there is air ventilation and the spirits can get in and out and you leave the bottles there and trust they will be happy.'



I have heard of bottle walls and spirit bottles before, though this is the first time Jack the Crack has come to my notice. But this is not the last we shall hear from Cecil...

Comments

[thru-her-lens.livejournal.com]

I hope you're feeling better soon!
Hugs
xx

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thank you, so do I!:-)

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

Reference: Sheri S Tepper, The Visitor