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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope, Halloween Special, 欢迎回来《闲话英伦·万圣节特辑》。

Hello，安澜。

Hello everyone. Hello and Happy Halloween.

Basically, one of my favorite festivals, last year we were doing superstition in the UK, so we're gonna talk about today.

Well, I thought for Halloween it would be nice to do something a little bit historical and also a little bit creepy. So I thought today we can talk about witches.

Oh, witches 就是女巫, ok, actually I have a quite a lot of background knowledge in this.

I know, so that's why I thought it would be good if we can talk about witchcraft in Britain.

Do you know that in university I actually wrote a paper on Witch Hunt.

Really

Yeah, always been a fascinating topic, like 安澜 was saying it's not just a fantasy or supernatural topic, it has a lot of history behind it.

First things first, when you talk about witches in British culture in British history, were they always evil? Were they always like an evil presence?

Not really, no, back in medieval times, and also early, they've always been witches and a lot of them were generally seen as good.

They were seen as good? So what did they actually do?

Well, they were known as cunning folk.

Cunning folk.

Yeah, a man could be a witch back then, they would help to cure people, help the crops to grow, woman to have children. It was a type of folk belief.

It's a little bit like 巫医 that sort of ideas, like witch doctor almost.

Type of thing.

But obviously if you read a lot of stories in the West, in Britain which they were hunted, they were seen as really, really evil.

That was from around the 15th century.

15th century.

Yeah.

How did they turn from the cunning folk which is harmless helpful neighborhood people to this evil presence?

Basically, it was caused by two kings, so Henry the 8th actually made witchcraft a Capital Offense.

Capital Offense, 就是要杀头的罪。

Yeah.

But why?

Because he was worried about the influence of these witches on society, it was also about the church as well, but it was actually another king, a Scottish king who then became king of England, James the First.

So King James the First was someone who was really scared of witches.

Yes, that's because he believed that witches were attacking his family.

That paranoid?

A little bit, but he was kind of educated king, so what he did was he wrote a book about finding witches.

Finding witches so that they can kill them.

Pretty much, and this actually started a witch hysteria when ordinary people started to believe that witches were dangerous.

‘Witch Hysteria’就是这种群体性的恐慌, and people were scared of witches.

Yes.

Because they were convinced by their king, of course, it's interesting that you talk about that he wrote an entire book about how to find witches.

So how to find witches, what were witches like, you said they were men and women?

You could have some male witches, but generally they were older women.