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"How do you know she's a witch?": Witches, cunning folk, and competition in Denmark

Western Folklore, Summer 2000 by Tangherlini, Timothy R

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Despite the possibility of using stories as a rhetorical weapon emphasizing the negative aspects of cunning or a cunning person's individual talents or allegiances, given the large numbers of positively resolved legends concerning cunning folk-well over seventy percent of all such stories have positive resolutions-one must conclude that most tradition participants valued their services." These people would also be inclined to tell stories which described the cunning folk to be more adept at curing than local physicians, as in the following account:

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There was an old cunning man who lived on Balle Hojbjerg a little northwest of Balle, the old ones called him Hans Kristian, and he was a kind of doctor in everything, but especially for broken bones. People also went to him for toothaches. He was a really nice old man... There was a farmhand down in Kjeldkjaer who was unlucky enough to break his leg. So they sent for Doctor Orbech in Vejle, he was their doctor. He came and bound the leg and then the farmhand was to stay in bed for six weeks. But he nearly died from the pain, because the leg was not set property of course. So he asked for someone to fetch Hans Kristian, but they wouldn't, they couldn't have a quack come to the farm. But the farmhand gets another farmhand to get him that night, and when Hans Kristian comes down there and examines him, he rips all the stuff off, which the Doctor had bound around the leg, and fixed it again, and now the sick farmhand didn't have any pain. Then he told him that, if he kept still for five days, he could get up again. He did that and he got better. Now it happens that the doctor came back to the area and then he decides to make a sick visit at Kjeldkjzaer. The farmhand is standing there loading manure. When the doctor sees that he gets whistling mad and he gets up on his wagon again and leaves for Vejle. But then among other things he had an errand at Braesten Inn, and when he comes in, the room is full of people, and Hans Kristian also happens to be there. Now he was a little man, and he sat quietly in a corner and the doctor didn't notice him. He begins to talk loudly about this Hans Kristian from Balle Mark, and he would take care of him who'd done it. Then Hans Kristian gets up and says, "If you want to do something to the man, he's right here. But I want you to know that if you want to take care of broken bones that you're a real bungler." The doctor flies out the door and leaves (Kristensen 1936: 139-- 40).

The competition between physicians and cunning folk is brought to the fore in this story, as are the conflicting notions of the abilities of cunning folk. The sharp competition between physicians and the cunning folk could-and often did-lead to a formal accusation of breaking the kvaksalver law with a subsequent court case, as the physician alludes to in the second part of the story. Certainly, many cunning folk found themselves on the wrong side of the law, and local physicians and apothecaries frequently pursued these cases to their fullest extent. Despite conviction, many cunning folk would return to their practice-often in a slightly more discrete form-soon after paying their fines or serving their sentence. Stories such as the preceding could be used then as a means for stealing customers from a physician or, after a conviction, reclaiming lost customers.

"How do you know she's a witch?": Witches, cunning folk, and competition in Denmark

Western Folklore, Summer 2000 by Tangherlini, Timothy R

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