Witch bottle
A sealed jar of pins, hair and other items, hidden in a house in England and America from the 1600s.
Also: Bellarmine jar, spell bottle, protection bottle
A witch bottle is a stoneware or glass bottle, often a salt-glazed jar of the type called a Bellarmine, which holds pins, nails, hair, nail clippings and sometimes urine, sealed and hidden under a hearth, a threshold or a wall. Householders believed it would catch, trap or turn back the curse of a witch. About two hundred have been found in England, mainly dated from the 1600s to the 1800s, and others in North America. The scholar Ralph Merrifield studied them in the 1950s and 1980s, and a project at the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall records finds. They show how ordinary people dealt with fear of harm in a period of witch trials. Modern Pagans make them for protection.