Abstract
Before examining in succeeding chapters witchcraft accusations and trials in early modern Ireland, it is essential to explore the belief systems that underpinned them, for as Robin Briggs has argued, witchcraft beliefs ‘were the one absolute prior necessity if there were to be trials at all’.1 The precise relationship between intensity of belief and prosecution rates in early modern Europe, however, is more disputed historical territory: some historians suggest that intensity of witchcraft belief directly affected prosecution rates,2 while others argue that there is little evidence of such a relationship.3 This chapter will in some way contribute to this debate and offer a culturally nuanced picture of witchcraft belief in early modern Ireland.
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Notes
See Peter Elmer, ‘Towards a Politics of Witchcraft in Early Modern England’, in Stuart Clark (ed), Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (Hampshire, 2001): 101–18;
Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Whigs: The Life of Bishop Francis Hutchinson (Manchester, 2008): 99, 125; Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: 101–5.
See Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, c.1650–c.1750 (Oxford, 1997): 36, and Clark, Thinking with Demons: vii–viii.
Brian P. Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 3rd ed., 2006): 51.
Clark, Thinking with Demons: 527–30, 541; Sharpe, Witchcraft in Early Modern England: 18; idem, Instruments of Darkness, Chapters 1–3; Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: the Demonisation of Christians in Medieval Christendom (London, 2nd ed., 1993): 144–7; Peter Burke, ‘The Comparative Approach to European Witchcraft’, in, Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries: 440–1;
Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland (London, 1981): 187;
Brian Levack, Witch-hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics, Religion (Abington, 2008): 7; idem, Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe: 30–1, 37–8;
Philip C. Almond, The Lancashire Witches: A Chronicle of Sorcery and Death on Pendle Hill (London, 2012): 21–2, 54–5; Edward Bever, ‘Popular Witchcraft and Magical Practices’, in Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft: 50–1.
For a discussion of the problems associated with the division of culture into popular and elite traditions: Pieter Spierenburg, The Broken Spell: A Cultural and Anthropological History of Pre-Industrial Europe (New Brunswick, 1991): 49–59; and in relation to witchcraft in particular, see
Barry Reay, Popular Culture in England, 1550–1750 (London, 1998): 115–19, and
Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000): 18.
E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: the Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca and London, 1976), Chapter 6.
Almond, Lancashire Witches: 22–4, 54–5; Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: 70–9; Levack, ‘Introduction’, in Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft: 8; [Thomas Benskin], A True and Impartial Relation of the Informations against Three Witches, viz. Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards … (London, 1682): 11. For a detailed examination of this pamphlet and the religious and political context of the trial it depicts, see Stephen Timmons, ‘Witchcraft and Rebellion in Late Seventeenth-century Devon’, Journal of Early Modern History, 10/4 (2006): 317–22, and Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, Chapter 3.
James Sharpe, ‘Women, Witchcraft and the Legal Process’, in Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker (eds), Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (London, 1994): 108;
Orna Alyagon Darr, ‘The Devil’s Mark: A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Physical Evidence’, Continuity and Change, 24/2 (2009): 361–87.
Julian Goodare and Lauren Martin, ‘Introduction’, in Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland: 3–9; Stuart Macdonald, ‘In Search of the Devil in Fife Witchcraft Cases, 1560–1705’, in Julian Goodare (ed.), The Scottish Witchhunt in Context (Manchester, 2002): 51–72; idem, ‘Enemies of God Re-visited: Recent Publications on Scottish Witchcraft’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 23/2 (2003): 71, 73–4.
Bodil Nilden-Wall and Jan Wall, ‘The Witch as Hare or the Witch’s Hare: Popular Legends and Beliefs in Nordic Tradition’, Folklore, 104/1–2 (1993): 67–8;
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, ‘“The Old Woman as Hare”: Structure and Meaning in an Irish Legend’, Folklore, 104/1–2 (1993): 78.
Gillian Kenny, Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Women in Ireland, c. 1170–1540 (Dublin, 2007): 9, 13. I am grateful to Dr Kenny for reading early drafts of this discussion of medieval magic and supplying references.
I have argued elsewhere that butter-witches were, in the early modern period at least, a culturally distinct Gaelic-Irish witchcraft belief: Sneddon, ‘Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland’: 10, and idem, Possessed by the Devil, Chapter 4. For studies that suggest in the highlands and islands of Scotland witches were less threatening and largely concerned with the disruption of agricultural production rather than with diabolical deeds and endangering human life, and as such culturally distinct from those of lowland Scotland and much of Europe: Francis E. Thomson, The Supernatural Highlands (London, 1976): 12, 20–3, and
John Gregorson Campbell, Witchcraft and the Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland: Tales and Traditions Collected Entirely from Oral Sources (Glasgow, 1902), Chapter 1. For a critique of these views, see Henderson, ‘Witch-hunting and Witch-belief in the Gàidhealtachd’: 100.
The first surviving Irish ecclesiastical text is from the fifth century, while the oldest Penitential texts date from the sixth century. Secular law texts, first written in the seventh and eighth centuries, along with examples of early Irish literature, have survived in later medieval and early modern manuscripts. Foreign accounts of early Ireland are nearly non-existent before Topographia Hibernica, or The History and Topography of Ireland (1186–7), written by Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis). Although the earliest Gaelic-Irish legal tracts date from the medieval period, it is believed that many features of the Gaelic law they describe stretch back centuries to around 1000 b.c., see: ‘The Irish Penitentials’, ed., Ludwig Bieler, Dublin, 1963: 1–2; Michael Richer, Medieval Ireland: the Enduring Tradition (New York, 1988): 75; The Tain, from, The Táin Bó Cúalnge, trans, Thomas Kinsella (Dublin, 1969, repr. London, 1970): ix;
Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988): 1;
S.J. Connolly, The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford, 2nd ed., 2002): 320.
Jacqueline Borsje, The Celtic Evil Eye and Related Mythological Motifs in Medieval Ireland (Paris, 2012): 16–17; idem, ‘Demonising the Enemy: a Study of Congal Cáech’, in Jan Erik Rekdal and Ailbhe Ó Corráin (eds), Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium of Societas Celtologica Nordica, Studia Celtica Upsaliensia 7, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala, 2007): 21–38; idem, ‘Love Magic in Medieval Irish Penitentials, Law and Literature: A Dynamic Perspective’, Studia Neophilologica 84, Supplement 1 (2012): 6–23; idem, ‘The “Terror of the Night” and the Morrígain: Shifting Faces of the Supernatural’, in Mícheál Ó Flaithearta (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of Societas Celtologica Nordica. Studia Celtica Upsaliensia 6. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala 2007): 71–98; idem, ‘Druids, Deer and “Words of Power”: Coming to Terms with Evil in Medieval Ireland’, in Katja Ritari and Alexandra Bergholm (eds), Approaches to Religion and Mythology in Celtic Studies (Cambridge, 2008): 122–49;
Maeve B. Callan, ‘Of Vanishing Fetuses and Maidens-Made Again: Abortion, Restored Virginity, and Similar Scenarios in Medieval Irish Historiography and Penitentials’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 21/2 (2012): 289–92;
Lisa M. Bitel, Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender from Early Ireland (Ithaca and London, 1996): 25–7, 216–22.
‘The Irish Penitentials’: 79–81. See also, J. Borsje, ‘Rules and Regulation on Love Charms in Early Medieval Ireland’, Peritia, 21 (2010): 173–5.
Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica, or The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John O’Meara, rev. edn (St Ives, 1982): 57–91. See also,
John J. O’Meara, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernia, “Text of the First Recension”’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, 52 (1948–50): 113, and ODNB.
The Register of John Swayne: Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, 1418–1439. With Some Entries of Earlier and Later Archbishops, ed. D.A. Chart (Belfast, 1935): 12; ODNB.
Clarke Garret, ‘Witches and Cunning-folk in the Old Regime’, in Jacques Beauroy, Marc Betrand, and Edward T. Gargon (eds), The Wolf and the Lamb: Popular Culture in France from the Old Regime to the Twentieth Century (Saratoga, California, 1976): 60;
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London, 1971, repr. 1997): 186, 436–7, 448;
Clive Holmes, ‘Women: Witnesses and Witches’, Past and Present, 140/1 (1991): 49;
Timothy R. Tangherlini, ‘“How do you know she’s a Witch?”: Witches, Cunning-folk and Competition in Denmark’, Western Folklore, 59 (2000): 283.
Mary O’Dowd, ‘Gaelic Economy and Society’, in C. Brady and R. Gillespie (eds), Natives and Newcomers: the Making of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641 (Dublin, 1986): 120–2, 129.
Dr Meredith Hanmer, ‘Notes on Customs in Ireland’, n.d. in R.P. Mahaffy (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1601–3 (London, 1912), ii, 687; ODNB.
Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), Chapters 1–3; idem, From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland, 1536–1660 (Dublin, 1987), Chapter 4;
S.J. Connolly, Contested Island, Ireland 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2009), Chapter 5;
Stephen G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London, 1998), Chapters 11 and 12.
Sean Connolly, ‘Ag Déanamh Commanding’: Elite Responses to Popular Culture, 1650–1850’, in J.S. Donnolly and Kerby A. Millar (eds), Irish Popular Culture, 1650–1850 (Dublin, 1998): 4. See also,
Brian MacCuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, 1603–41 (Dublin, 2007);
P.J. Corish, The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1985), Chapter 2; and Colm Lennon, ‘The Counter-Reformation in Ireland, 1542–1641’, Natives and Newcomers: 76–78, 87–91.
Echard, An Exact Description of Ireland: 22. See also, J.F. Fuller, ‘An Exact Description of Ireland’, Kerry Archaeological Magazine, 4/20 (1918): 259.
S.J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: the Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992): 43, 145–7.
The historiography for Protestant Ascendancy Ireland and the Penal Laws in particular is extremely large and complex, but a good starting place would be a combination of the following: David Hayton, Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians, and Parties (Woodbridge, 2004);
John Bergin, Eoin Magennis, Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, and Patrick Walsh (eds), New Perspectives on the Penal Laws: Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, special issue no. 1 (Dublin, 2011);
Toby Barnard, The Kingdom of Ireland, 1641–1760 (Houndsmills, 2004), Chapter 3;
David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (2nd ed., Dublin, 2000), Chapters 1–2;
Patrick McNally, Patriots and Undertakers: Parliamentary Politics in Early Hanoverian Ireland (Dublin, 1997), Chapters 2–4;
Ian McBride, Eighteenth Century Ireland (Dublin, 2009), Chapter 5;
D. George Bryce, Robert Eccleshall, and Vincent Geoghegan, ‘Preface’, in D. George Bryce, Robert Eccleshall, and Vincent Geoghegan (eds), Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Ireland (Basingstoke, 2001): viii; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, Chapter 7.
Borsje, Celtic Evil-Eye, Chapters 1 and 2. See also, Alan Dundes (ed.), The Evil Eye: A Casebook (London, 1981, repr. 1992): 35, 155. For similar beliefs in Scotland and elsewhere, see idem: 145–6, 39–40, 27, 24.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft … (London, 1584): 64. For Reginald Scot, see: David Wootton, ‘Reginald Scot/Abraham Fleming/The Family of Love’, in Stuart Clark (ed.), Languages of Witchcraft: Narrative Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke, 2001): 119–38;
Sydney Anglo, ‘Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft: Scepticism and Sadduceeism’, in Sidney Anglo (ed.), The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (London, 1977): 106–39;
Phillip C. Almond, England’s First Demonologist: Reginald Scot and ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’ (London, 2011, repr. 2014).
Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus: 386. The third edition of Saducismus Triumphatus was compiled anonymously out of the papers and publications of Joseph Glanvill and Henry More and included testimonies and letters sent to the authors: Cameron, Enchanted Europe: 276; Peter Elmer, The Miraculous Conformist: Valentine Greatrakes, the Body Politc, and the Politics of Healing in Restoration Britain (Oxford, 2013): 114.
Jacqueline Borsje, ‘Monotheistic to a Certain Extent: The “Good Neighbours” of God in Ireland’, in Anne-Marie Korte and Maaike de Haardt (eds), The Boundaries of Monotheism: Interdisciplinary Explorations into the Foundations of Western Monotheism, Studies in Theology and Religion 13 (Leiden & Boston, 2009): 54–9, 62–3, 74–7.
Hugh Cheape, ‘Charms against Witchcraft: Magic and Mischief in Museum Collections’, in Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland: 230–1. See also Alaric Hall, ‘Getting Shot of Elves: Healing, Witchcraft and Fairies in the Scottish Witchcraft Trials’, Folklore, 116 (2005): 19–36.
Christina Larner, Witchcraft and Religion: the Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford, 1984): 40–4;
Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500 (London, 1976): 10–26; Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: 14–17; Levack, Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe: 204–5; Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons: 202.
Anne Neary, ‘The Origins and Character of the Kilkenny Witchcraft Case of 1324’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 83C (1983): 333–50; ODNB;
William Renwick Riddell, ‘The First Execution for Witchcraft in Ireland’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 7/6 (1917): 828–37. For a controversial, radical feminist reading of the Kyteler case, see
Anne Llewllyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (New York, 1995), 77: ‘Several important European precedents were established by this trial … women were associated with demonic sex, man-hating and man-harming, and harming of dead infants, and that wives hostile to husbands were witches’.
Statute Rolls of the Parliament of Ireland, Reign of King Henry the Six…, ed. Henry F. Berry (Dublin, 4 vols, 1910): ii, 101; Seymour, Irish Witchcraft and Demonology: 33–4.
The Register of Primate Cromer, 1521–43 (PRONI DIO 4/2/11, f. 103v.); Henry A. Jefferies, ‘The Church Courts of Armagh on the Eve of the Reformation’, Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society, 15/2 (1993): 15.
David Edwards, ‘Collaboration without Anglicisation the MacGiollapadraig Lordship and Tudor Reform’, in Patrick J. Duffy, David Edwards, and Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds), Gaelic Ireland, c.1250–c.1650, Land, Lordship, Settlement (Dublin, 2001): 77–97.
Christopher Wandesford to [John Bramhall], 4 September 1640 (Huntington Library, San Marino, California, Hastings Collection, Irish papers, HA 15969: 6); Jane H. Olmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609–1683 (Cambridge, 1993): 29–30, 49, 75–6, 195;
M. O’Cathain, ‘Witchcraft in Ulster 1608–1731’, unpublished research paper, University of Ulster, 2006;
Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600–41 (Cork, 1985): 138;
Robert Rock, ‘Witchcraft Magic and Politics in Early Modern Ireland, 1563–1699’ (MRes thesis, 2012, University of Ulster): 22–4; Breen, Dunluce Castle: 164–5.
Wandesford to Bramhall, 4 September 1640 (Huntington Library, HA 15969: 6); John McCafferty, The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 (Cambridge 2007, repr. 2010): 227. For more on Wentworth’s religious reforms, see Chapters 2 and 3.
S.J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland 51630–1800 (Oxford, 2008): 24–31; McCafferty, Reconstruction of Ireland: 193–4, 223.
Holmes, ‘Women: Witnesses and Witches’: 48–50; Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-century England (New Haven and London, 2003): 74;
Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study (London, 1970, 2nd ed., 1999): 179–80; Almond, Demonic Possession: 14–17; Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: 14, 152–5; Bever, ‘Popular Witch Beliefs and Magical Practices’: 54–5. For a discussion of demonic possession see Chapter 5.
Poppets are discussed in, Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge, 1992): 39.
Higgs, Wonderful True Relation: 6–8; Sneddon, Possessed by the Devil: 51; George Hughes, Hewn from the Rock, the Story of First Antrim Presbyterian Church (Antrim, 1996): 32–3.
Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford, 2010): 237–8.
For Archbishop William King, see Phillip O’Regan, Archbishop William King of Dublin (1650–1729) and the Constitution in Church and State (Dublin, 2000), and
Christopher J. Fauske (ed.), Archbishop William King and the Anglican Irish Context (Dublin, 2004).
Cotton Mather was heavily involved in the Salem witch trials in the 1690s, see Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New England… (London, 1693). The Salem witch-hunt has a large historiography, including John Putnam Demos’ seminal treatment, Entertaining Satan, Witchcraft and the Culture of Early Modern New England (Oxford, 1982). For an exploration of the social tensions and conflict underpinning the Salem trials, see Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: the Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA, 1974). For the relationship between Salem and political and economic crisis, see Godbeer, Devil’s Dominion, while gender and witchcraft is examined in
Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in a Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York, 1989).
William Tisdall, ‘Account of the Trial of Eight Reputed Witches, 4 April 1711’, Hibernian Magazine (1775): 50. For Anthony Upton, see F.E. Ball, The Judges in Ireland, 1221–1921 (2 vols, New York, 1927): ii, 23, 66.
Stuart Clark, ‘Satanic Libraries: Marsh’s Witchcraft Books’, Muriel McCarthy and Ann Simmons (eds), The Making of Marsh’s Library: Learning, Politics and Religion in Ireland, 1650–1750 (Dublin, 2004): 97–116; Thomas Thornton, A Catalogue of Books, to Be Sold By Auction at Dick’s Coffee House … (Dublin, 1730): 53, 63. For sceptical witchcraft books in auction catalogues, see Chapter 6.
Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: Print, Reading, and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005), Chapter 4.
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Sneddon, A. (2015). Witchcraft Belief in Early Modern Ireland. In: Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319173_2
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