WATER WITCHES *Import, UK

From the editor: Like their fellow lovers of bright colours, the gypsies, the Trent boat families, or Fryske as they sometimes call themselves, had a private Pagan religion of their own, concerned with the earth and, not surprisingly, water. For this reason they were often called water-witches by other boat families who took a more conventional religious outlook.

Most of the families that worked boats on the River Trent, and later also the canals that joined with it, were descended from traders who originally came from the Netherlands in the 7th and 8th centuries. Closely related to the English in speech, they found a new home here, and for many centuries dominated trade in the North Sea, which they called the World's Sea, after one of their most important deities, named simply The World (the Old One, or world-serpent).

There are very few water-witch families left around these days. Over the past fifty years most have simply left the water­ways and become absorbed into the general population.

The author's informants for much of the material in this book are surviving members of the Groom family, who ran a family firm based in Birmingham (the centre of the canal network) until it was finally forced under by the recession of the early 1980s.

Water Witches describes, for the first time, the way of life and religion of the Pagan Fryske.

Pages: 118, Import, United Kingdom
Special Interest: Witchcract, Pagan, Occult, Magick, Ritual, Sorcery.

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