Message #184130

[Vlad the Impaler]

The primary use of the bottles was counter-witchcraft, says Brian Hoggard, a Worcester University graduate student who is writing a thesis on them. Victims of spells would urinate in bottles, add pins and perhaps some hair, and then bury them under their homes, casting a vengeful curse on the witches who had injured them in the first place. "The curse was intended to make the unfortunate object of it feel as if they were weeing with a bladder full of bent pins," says Alan Massey. Hoggard maintains a website on English folk magic that, in addition to witch bottles, discusses dried cats and horse skulls (www.apotropaios.co.uk).

http://www.archaeology.org/0011/newsbriefs/wine.html