Not Just a Nail
Today the term "coffin nails" is probably more recognised as a type of sharp, tapered manicure, but the ones we're talking about today come from somewhere much older, and colder. For centuries, the iron nails that sealed the dead into their final resting place were thought to carry something of the grave with them. Gravediggers, cunning folk and the desperate all believed in their power.
The Protection of Iron
Across European folklore, iron has long been a boundary against the otherworldly. It was hung over doorways, buried at thresholds and carried in pockets to keep away fairies, spirits and ill-wishers. Horseshoes were nailed above stable doors, and iron knives were slipped under cradles to guard sleeping infants. Iron is considered naturally protective: a metal pulled from the earth and forged in fire, it was thought to be something no spirit could cross.
In folk magic and witchcraft, coffin nails (iron spikes from actual coffins) have long been used for protection and curse-breaking. Rooted in hoodoo, European folk traditions and old cemetery lore, they are buried or placed in strategic locations to guard a person, place or object against harm.
Cramp Rings and Grave Cures
In English folk medicine, rings forged from coffin nails, hinges or handles were worn to ward off cramp and rheumatism. Rings like these turn up again and again in rural records from the 18th and 19th centuries. Metal taken from the grave was believed to draw sickness out of the living body and bury it where it belonged. The belief never quite faded. Walk through some pharmacies today and you'll still find copper bangles sold to soothe aching joints. Wearers say the metal draws out pain or seeps healing through the skin. Clinical trials haven't found a measurable effect, but the old instinct remains.
Witch Bottles and Warding
Archaeologists across Britain keep finding "witch bottles" buried beneath hearths and thresholds. These stoneware jars were filled with bent iron nails, pins, hair and urine. They were meant to trap or turn back a witch's curse. Bent nails, "killed" so they couldn't be used again, show up in them over and over. There's a great collection of iron nails, witch bottles and other folklore items at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall.
Nails of Binding
Coffin nails have their darker uses too, in banishing spells, baneful magic and rituals of finality. They are used to remove unwanted influences, attachments or spirits and drive negative forces out. Driving a nail was a way of fixing something in place, whether that was a spirit, an illness or an enemy. Folk practitioners hammered nails into trees to "peg" toothache or fever away. Some traditions drove a nail into a person's footprint to bind or harm them. A nail that had already held the dead in place was thought to be doubly potent. It had done its work at the grave and could do it again.
Witches still use iron nails and coffin nails for protection magic and banishing spells today, though real coffin nails are much harder to come by.
Strange Coffin Nail Superstitions
- A nail from a coffin, carried in the pocket, was said to protect against nightmares and the evil eye
- Taking a nail from a grave without leaving something in return was thought to invite the dead to follow you home
- Nails that had worked loose from a coffin were considered especially unlucky or especially powerful, depending on who you asked
The coffin nail sits where the gothic imagination thrives, right between protection and curse, on the edge of the living and the dead.
At the end of this month we're releasing our own coffin nails, each one hand-forged in silver. The shape holds the myth of centuries of folklore and occult beliefs, forged in silver for a different kind of valiant protection.
Where iron wards, binds and banishes, silver purifies and protects with its own occult lore. Silver cutlery and cups were believed to reveal poison by tarnishing. Charms of silver were hung around children's necks and sewn into clothing to turn away the evil eye. Brides were given a silver sixpence for their shoe for luck and protection on the threshold of a new life. Later folklore made silver the one weapon that could stop the werewolf and the restless dead: silver bullets, silver blades, silver crosses.
Once, you'd have had to dig for a coffin nail. Our silver coffin nails arrive at the end of the month and come perfectly packaged in a black Bonearrow box, straight to your door. A little protection magic for your daily armour.