Witch balls. Or did you think only wizards had balls? Well, honestly, witches don't have balls (that I know of). These balls are to repel witches. (Image of beautiful blue balls, courtesy of the Cambridge Folk Museum's Folklore collection.) Yes, this month, I have mostly been considering local folklore, which has led me to read Enid Porter's The Folklore of East Anglia. She was curator of the curious Cambridge Folk Museum*, which has a small collection of the weird and wonder

(Witch skull, Woolley and Wallis Auction House, Salisbury) It's not often that the usual run of skulls up for auction varies from the Victorian medical specimens. But this one caught my eye, and I dearly hope it has found its way to some folk museum in the country. The catalogue text reads: "Provenance: The skull was discovered in 1951 by workmen excavating foundations on Brook Road, Kinson, Bournemouth. It was found at a depth of about two feet with tree roots growing throug

(Image courtesy of Jack's Adventures in Museumland. I don't know if this is his photo, but I can't get similar quality because this was taken with flash, which isn't allowed to the general visiting public.) To start my blog of wonderful museum objects, I thought I should start with what may possibly be my very favourite museum object in the known world. It is in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which is tacked onto the back of the Oxford Museum of Natural History like a secr