I wanted to let you know that we're running some research as an opportunity for you to give us feedback on our podcasts.

Plus if you're a UK resident and complete it, you can enter our prize draw for a chance to win a hundred pound marks and

Spencer's voucher. Find the link to take part in our podcast description.

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, Fascinating Historical Conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.

If you've lost something valuable or want to improve your marriage, have you considered consulting a cunning person? As Tabitha Stanmore explores in her new book, in medieval and Tudor

England these practitioners of everyday magic were not

but were well embedded in communities and consulted often.

I spoke to Tabitha to find out more about the spells, charms and magical potions that these cunning folk offered.

Thank you so much for joining me, Tabitha. Let's get right into it. Who were cunning folk and why might you visit them?

So cunning folk is a very, very broad term and it basically refers to people who had some kind of magical skill they could have maybe one

spell that they knew really well or they could have a whole range of magical

knowledge that they would use to affect change in the world normally something quite mundane or quite practical,

like finding lost or stolen spoons all the way up to love magic to healing,

and there were people who would just offer this service to people within their local community.

And just to clarify for listeners, before we go any further, what kind of time period are we looking at here?

So, cunning folk existed way back into the Anglo-Saxon period and probably earlier.

They weren't always called cunning folk, but they go back a really long way and you could say that they still survive today.

But the period that I look at is roughly the 14th to the 17th century so the late medieval kind of 14th

early 15th century up into the early modern period the 16th and 17th I bet there are a couple of

people listening who are thinking is this just another name for witches?

But you argue in the book that this is actually something very different. Can you explain that difference for us?

Yes, I can and yes, thank you for raising that.

...