feeding her familiars. the use of the familiar was something that witches and cunning folk were believed to have in common. wilby identified many similarities between the familiars recorded as serving cunning folk and those serving witches, with a general, though by no means universal, attribution of cunning folk's familiars with being benevolent and helping people, whilst those belonging to witches were more often thought of as being malevolent and causing harm. again, in general the former were often referred to as "fairies" and the latter as "demons". wilby noted how both british cunning folk and witches often described similar scenarios for how they had first encountered their familiar: most prominent of these was the claim that the familiar had simply appeared spontaneously whilst they went about their everyday activities, whilst other claims held that the witch or cunning person had inherited it from another magical practitioner, who was usually a family member, or that they had been given it by a more powerful spirit. the magical practitioner and the familiar then set about on a working relationship, sometimes solidified in a pact. at times, the familiar spirit was believed to take the cunning person on a visionary journey to a place called elfhame (literally meaning "elf-home"), which is now often referred to as fairyland. in these trips, the cunning folk's soul was typically believed to go with their familiar on a journey into a hill, within which they would find a great subterranean fairy hall. in the hall, they would find a company of fairies, led by a king and queen, and would take part in feasting, drinking and dancing. wilby connected the cunning folk's trip to fairyland with the witches' believed trip to the sabbat meeting, which she also believed was a visionary journey. she accepted the theory, based upon the ideas of earlier historians such as carlo ginzburg and éva pócs, that the concept of the witches' sabbath was developed through the christian demonizing of earlier pre-christian concepts of the visit to fairyland. historian ronald hutton remarked that "it is quite possible that pre-christian mythology lies behind this tradition" of a belief in familiar spirits. such an idea was supported by wilby, who compared the accounts of familiar spirits in britain with anthropological and ethnographic accounts of helper spirits given by shamans in both siberia and north america. noting a wide range of similarities between the two, she came to the conclusion that british belief in familiars must have been a surviving remnant of earlier animistic and shamanic beliefs in the pre-christian religions of the island. christian elements "i do conjure, constrain, adjure, and command you spirits. analaya, analla, anacar, in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost, by alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, by the general resurrection, and by him who shall come to judge the quick and the dead, and the world by fire, and, by the general resurrection at the last day, and by that name that is called tetragrammaton, that you cause the person who stole the goods in question to bring back the same." a conjuration found in the papers of joseph railey in 1857, displaying the overt christian content of much of the cunning folk's work. britain throughout the late medieval and early modern periods was an almost entirely christian society (with the only exception being a small jewish population), although during this period there was a gradual shift from adherence to roman catholicism to forms of anglicanism and protestantism following the english reformation in the sixteenth century. it was because of this that the cunning folk operating in this era typically worked within a christian framework and world view. this christian influence was evident in much of their magical praxes. for instance, the historian owen davies believed that the written charms supplied by cunning folk displayed the "intrinsic christian content of magic" and the influence of mystical and magical words taken from the bible. historian ronald hutton concurred with this assessment, remarking that "looking at the recorded charms dispensed by magical practitioners, it is obvious that many – perhaps the majority – are christian in character. they quote from the bible, or appeal to the trinity, or to jesus, or to saints. in most cases, to be sure, they are using the trappings and symbols of christianity with little regard to what the churchmen would have regarded as its essence; the bible ... this is, however, a large part of what popular christianity had always been about, and something that had caused learned and devout members of the faith to tear their hair at intervals ever since the time of the church fathers." in keeping with the general population of the time, there were those cunning folk who were little more than nominal in their christian belief as well as those that were devout. this was illustrated by historian james obelkevitch in his examination of nineteenth-century popular religion in the southern part of the lincolnshire chalk hills, when he note that the three main cunning people of the area, whilst each holding to a christian worldview, each had different particular religious attachment. one of these, "fiddler" fynes, regularly attended church services and was an essentially conventional christian for that period, whilst the second, john worsdale of lincoln, was similarly devout but was unconventional in that he rejected the need for a professional clergy. the third, stainton of louth, believed in a christian theology and cosmology, but saw little point in worshipping the christian god because he felt that in working with magic, "the devil has hold" of him. although some twentieth and twenty-first century neopagan authors, such as rae beth, have claimed that the british cunning folk were followers of a surviving, pre-christian "pagan" religion, this is something rejected by historians. as ronald hutton noted, whilst there was pagan influences in some folk magical charms and a possible connection through the belief in familiar spirits, there is "no known case of a cunning person or a charmer calling upon a pagan deity." history medieval period in england during the early medieval period, various forms of folk magic could be found amongst the anglo-saxons, who referred to such practitioners as wicca (male) or wicce (female), or at times also as dry, practitioners of drycraeft, the latter of which have been speculated as being anglicised terms for the irish drai, a term referring to druids, who appeared as anti-christian sorcerers in much irish literature of the period. some of the spells and charms that had been used in the anglo-saxon pagan era continued to be used following christianization. however, as historian owen davies noted, "although some such pre-christian magic continued, to label it pagan is to misrepresent the people who used it and the context in which it was used." the extent to which elements from pre-christian pagan religions influenced the cunning folk is debatable. owen davies believed that "few historical insights are to be gained from seeking an archaic or shamanic lineage for cunning-folk." such a claim has subsequently been challenged by emma wilby, who has put forward the case that the belief in familiar spirits, and the visionary journeys into fairyland that sometimes accompanied them, were survivals from "pre-christian animism". england and wales in england and wales, which were politically united by the laws in wales acts 1535 and 1542, cunning folk had operated throughout the latter part of the medieval and into the early modern period. in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there had been no attempt to illegalise the cunning craft, although private lawsuits had been brought against some of them by those clients who felt that they had been cheated out of their money. this changed with the witchcraft act of 1542, enacted under the reign of henry viii, which targeted both witches and cunning folk, and which prescribed the death penalty for such crimes as using invocations and conjurations to locate treasure or to cast a love spell. this law was repealed no later than 1547, under the reign of henry's son edward vi, something that the historian owen davies believed was due to those in power changing their opinion on the law: they believed that either the death penalty was too harsh for such crimes or that the practice of the cunning craft was a moral issue that was better for the church to deal with in ecclesiastic courts rather than a problem that had to be sorted out by the state. for the following few decades, the magical practices of the cunning folk remained legal, despite opposition from certain religious authorities. it was a time of great religious upheaval in the country as edward's successor, his sister mary i, reintroduced roman catholicism, before anglicanism was once again reimposed under elizabeth i. in 1563, after the return of power to the anglican church of england, a bill was passed by parliament designed to illegalise "conjurations, enchantments and witchcrafts", again being aimed at both the alleged witches and the cunning folk. however, this law was not as harsh as its earlier predecessor, with the death penalty being reserved for those who were believed to have conjured an evil spirit or murdered someone through magical means, whilst those for whom the use of magic was a first offence faced a year's imprisonment and four stints in the pillory. nonetheless, this law would have little effect on the cunning folk, as "the attention and focus of the courts shifted away from the activities of cunning-folk and towards the maleficium of supposed witches" – the witch hunt that had been raging in scotland and in many parts of continental europe had finally arrived in england. whilst across england, many people were accused of witchcraft by members of their local communities and put on trial, the cunning folk very rarely suffered a similar fate. it was unusual for a cunning man or woman to actually be accused of witchcraft; in the county of essex for instance, whereas around four hundred people had been put on trial for witchcraft, only four of those were identifiably cunning folk. however, many of the professional witch-hunters and theologians continued to proclaim the cunning craft as being the same as witchcraft, with them both being caused by the devil. one pamphlet published that espoused these views claimed that the cunning folk should be "most cruelly executed: for that no punishment can bee thought upon, be it never so high a degree of torment, which may be deemed sufficient for such a divelish and danable practise." their views however were not supported by the general population, who continued to see a distinct difference between witchcraft and cunning craft, with the witch-hunter john stearne, an associate of matthew hopkins, remarking that whilst he and hopkins wanted to prosecute the cunning folk, they could not because "men rather uphold them, and say, why should any man be questioned for doing good." meanwhile, the idea of the cunning folk began to appear in the literature of the period. in 1638, the playwright thomas heywood published his comedy, the wise woman of hogsdon, whilst in 1684 another playwright, edward ravenscroft, published his own play about a cunning woman. with the decline in the witch trials in the latter part of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, partly due to the rise of the enlightenment amongst the educated elite, a new law was introduced, the witchcraft act of 1736. unlike earlier laws, this did not accept the existence of magic, and was designed to be used to prosecute those who claimed magical powers as being fraudulent; it could therefore be very damaging to the cunning profession. the new regulations imposed by the witchcraft act of 1736 laid down a maximum penalty of a year's imprisonment for the crime of deceiving people by claiming magical powers, but in effect, during the rest of the eighteenth century, there were very few prosecutions, with most authorities not bothering to enforce this particular law. scotland throughout the early modern period, scotland remained a distinct political entity from england and wales, having its own independent government and monarchy. however, like the rest of britain, it also saw cunning folk operating within its borders. a 1932 article by lewis spence in the weekly scotsman, responding