When used as a witch-bottle, these vessels have been found with highly unpleasant contents, such as human hair entangled with sharp nails, cuttings of human finger-nails, a piece of cloth in the shape of a heart and pierced with pins ; and sometimes human urine and salt. The bottle was well sealed up, and then buried in some secret place, or thrown into a river or ditch. One of these bottles was recovered from the mud of the Thamesin fairly recent years ; and the frequent post-war demolition works of the 1 950s produced a number of examples of these mysterious vessels, brought to light when the foundations of old houses were revealed. All had typically sinister contents as described above. Whether the witch-bottle was a spell or a counterspell is not always clear. One theory is that it was a form of self-defence, used by people who believed themselves to be ‘overlooked’ by the Evil Eye, to get back at the person who was bewitching them.
