The early modern period was a rocky time for religion across Europe, fundamental pinnings of everyday life were being questioned and changing, as the reformation shifted authority away from the church. Thoughts on death and the afterlife were turned upside down, and in villages across England, restless spirits were making a comeback. To confront these supernatural intruders, communities turned to their local clergy to carry out the practice of ghost-laying, an exorcism ritual that sought to bind and banish the dead. At least, that’s what Victorian authors would have liked to believe. Part religion, part folklore, and part fear, the subject of ghost-laying is fairly well complicated, and defining just how much of it is actually true, even more so.

SOURCES

Walsh, Brendan C. (2023) ‘He Could Raise and Lay Ghosts at His Will’: Victorian Folklorists and the Creation of Early Modern Clerical Ghost-Laying. Folklore, 134:3, 281-303, DOI: 10.1080/0015587X.2023.2187157

Bottrell, William (1870) Traditions & Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall. Beare & Son, Penzance, UK.

Hawker, Robert Steven (1870) Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. James C. Commin, Exeter, UK.

Andrews, William (1898) The Church Treasury of History, Custom, Folk-Lore, etc. London, UK.

Bond, Thomas (1823) Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West Looe, in the County of Cornwall. J. Nichols & Son, London, UK.

Hunt, Robert (1865) Popular Romances of the West of England, Or, The Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall. John Camden Hotten, London, UK.

Courtney, Margaret Anne (1973) Cornish Feasts & Folklore. EP Publishing Ltd. UK.

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