Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T04:37:47.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Magic

Representing Magic in Modern Ireland

Belief, History, and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2022

Andrew Sneddon
Andrew Sneddon
Affiliation:
Ulster University

Summary

This Element argues that Ireland did not experience a disenchanted modernity, nor a decline in magic. It suggests that beliefs, practices and traditions concerning witchcraft and magic developed and adapted to modernity to retain cultural currency until the end of the twentieth century. This analysis provides the backdrop for the first systematic exploration of how historic Irish trials of witches and cunning-folk were represented by historians, antiquarians, journalists, dramatists, poets, and novelists in Ireland between the late eighteenth and late twentieth century. It is demonstrated that this work created an accepted narrative of Irish witchcraft and magic which glossed over, ignored, or obscured the depth of belief in witchcraft, both in the past and in contemporary society. Collectively, their work gendered Irish witchcraft, created a myth of a disenchanted, modern Ireland, and reinforced competing views of Irishness and Irish identity. These long-held stereotypes were only challenged in the late twentieth-century.
Get access

Keywords

modernitywitchcraftmagicIrelanddecline
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Magic
Online ISBN: 9781108954044
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 19 May 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Primary Sources

McGaw, William Orr, ‘Tragic Occurrence, Which Took Place in the Parish of Carnmoney and County of Antrim in the year 1807 through Belief in Witchcraft’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, third series, 18 (1955), 113–16.Google Scholar
McSkimin, Samuel (ed.), The Islandmagee Witches: A Narrative of the Suffering of a Young Girl Called Mary Dunbar … in the Latter End of 1710 and the Beginning of 1711 (Belfast, 1822).Google Scholar
Tisdall, William, ‘Account of the Trial of Eight Reputed Witches, 4 April 1711’, Hibernian Magazine or Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge (January 1775), 47–51.Google Scholar
Wright, Thomas (ed.), A Contemporary Narrative of the Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, Prosecuted for Sorcery in 1324 by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory (London: Camden Society, 1843).Google Scholar
Young, Robert M. (ed.), Historical Notes of Old Belfast (Belfast: Marcus Ward, 1896).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Sheil, Sarah, ‘The Revelry of Janet & Patrick Sellor’ (2016). https://sarahsheilart.bigcartel.com/product/the-revelry-of-janet-patrick-sellor.Google Scholar
Barnard, , Toby Christopher ‘Seymour, St John Drelincourt’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/seymour-st-john-drelincourt-a7984.Google Scholar
Blúiríní Béaloidis, Folklore Podcast, 27, https://soundcloud.com/folklore_podcast/bluirini-bealoidis-27-the-banshee-with-professor-patricia-lysaght.Google Scholar
McGarry, Marion, ‘A Guide to Piseogs, Ireland’s Sinister Folk Magic Spells’, RTÉ Brainstorm, 6 July 2020, www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0706/1151667-piseogs-ireland-folklore-evil-magic-spells/.Google Scholar
Thompson, Michael, ‘Wright, Thomas (1810–1877), Historian and Antiquary’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30063.Google Scholar
Williams, Fionnuala Carson, ‘Samuel “Sam” McSkimin, 1775–1843’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/mcskimin-samuel-sam-a5758.Google Scholar
Fulton, John, ‘Clerics, Conjurors and Courtrooms: Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Ireland’. Unpublished PhD thesis, Ulster University, 2016.Google Scholar
‘A New Explanation of Old Superstitions’, Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 24 (1824), 382–3.Google Scholar
‘Another Evening with the Witchfinders’, Dublin University Magazine, 30, no. 176 (1847), 146–61.Google Scholar
Ady, Thomas, A Candle in the Dark or, a Treatise Concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft (London, 1655, repr. 1656).Google Scholar
Croker, Thomas Crofton, ‘Witchcraft in Kilkenny’, Dublin Penny Journal, 1, no. 43 (1833), 341.Google Scholar
Finlay, Peter, ‘Witchcraft’, Irish Monthly, 2 (1874), 523–9.Google Scholar
Glanvill, Joseph, Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (London, 3rd ed., 1689).Google Scholar
McSkimin, Samuel, The History and Antiquities of the County of the Town of Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim (Belfast: Hugh Kirk Gordon, 1811).Google Scholar
McSkimin, Samuel, The History and Antiquities of the County of the Town of Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim (Belfast: J. Smyth, 2nd ed., 1823).Google Scholar
M. S. H., ‘Witchcraft in Ireland’, Dublin University Magazine, 82, no. 488 (1873), 218–23.Google Scholar
Porter, Classon, Witches, Warlocks and Ghosts (Belfast, 1885).Google Scholar
‘Review of Irish Witchcraft and Demonology’, The Athenæum, 4505 (1914), 305–6.Google Scholar
Scot, Reginald, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584, repr. 1972).Google Scholar
S. M. S. [McSkimin, Samuel ], ‘An Account of Island Magee, Taken in 1809’, Belfast Monthly Magazine, 3, no. 13 (1809), 104–6.Google Scholar
S. M. S. [McSkimin, Samuel ], ‘A Statistical Account of Island Magee’, Newry Magazine, 3, no. 18 (1818), 506–10.Google Scholar
Wood, William, ‘Witchcraft’, The Cornhill Magazine, 5, no. 29 (1898), 655–70.Google Scholar
Wright, Thomas, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic from the Most Authentic Sources (New York: Redfield, 1852).Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B., Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (London: Walter Scott, 1888).Google Scholar
Young, Robert, ‘Carrickfergus’, Dublin Penny Journal, 47, no. 1 (1833), 369–71.Google Scholar
Akenson, Donald Harman, Between Two Revolutions: Islandmagee, County Antrim, 1798–1920 (Hamden: Archon Books, 1979).Google Scholar
Barclay, Katie, ‘Singing, Performance, and Lower-Class Masculinity in the Dublin Magistrates’ Court, 1820–1850’, Journal of Social History, 47, no. 3 (2014), 746–68. http://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/sht105.Google Scholar
Barclay, Katie, ‘Stereotypes as Political Resistance: The Irish Police Court Columns, c.1820–1845’, Social History, 42, no. 2 (2017), 257–80. http://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2017.1290343.Google Scholar
Barnard, Toby Christopher, ‘Writing and Publishing Histories in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in Williams, Mark and Forrest, Stephen Paul (eds.), Constructing the Past: Writing Irish History, 1600–1800 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 95–112.Google Scholar
Barry, Jonathan, ‘News from the Invisible World: The Publishing History of Tales of the Supernatural c.1660–1832’ in Cultures of Witchcraft, pp. 179–213.Google Scholar
Barry, Jonathan, ‘Public Infidelity and Private Belief: The Discourse of Spirits in Enlightenment Bristol’ in Beyond the Witch Trials, pp. 117–43.Google Scholar
Barry, Jonathan, Davies, Owen and Usborne, Cornelie (eds.), Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).Google Scholar
Bath, Jo and Newton, John, ‘“Sensible Proof of Spirits”: Ghost Belief during the Later Seventeenth Century’, Folklore, 117, no. 1 (2006), 1–14. http://doi.org/10.1080/00155870500479851.Google Scholar
Beaumont, Catriona, ‘Women Citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922–1948’, Women’s History Review, 6, no. 4 (1997), 563–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behringer, Wolfgang, Hexenverfolgung in Bayern: Volksmagie, Glaubenseifer und Staatsräson in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1987).Google Scholar
Beiner, Guy, Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (London: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Bell, Karl, The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England 1780–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Borsje, Jacqueline, The Celtic Evil Eye and Related Mythological Motifs in Medieval Ireland (Leuven: Peeters, 2012).Google Scholar
Bourke, Angela, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London: Pimlico, 1999).Google Scholar
Boyce, D. George and O’Day, Alan, ‘Introduction’ in George Boyce, D. and O’Day, Alan (eds.), The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London: Routledge, 1996, repr. 1997), pp. 1–14.Google Scholar
Breathnach, Ciara, ‘Handywomen and Birthing in Rural Ireland, 1851–1955’, Gender & History, 28, no. 1 (2016), 34–56. http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12176.Google Scholar
Briggs, Robin, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2nd ed., 2002).Google Scholar
Briody, Mícheál, The Irish Folklore Commission 1935–1970 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2007).Google Scholar
Brown, Terence, The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2001).Google Scholar
Brown, Terence, The Literature of Ireland: Culture and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Bruce, Toni, ‘The Case for Faction as a Potent Method for Integrating Fact and Fiction in Research’ in Farquhar, Sandy and Fitzpatrick, Esther (eds.), Innovations in Narrative and Metaphor (Singapore: Springer, 2019), pp. 57–72. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6114-2_5.Google Scholar
Buckley, Anthony D., ‘Unofficial Healing in Ulster’, Ulster Folklife, 26 (1980), 15–34.Google Scholar
Butler, Alison, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).Google Scholar
Butler, Jenny, ‘The Nearest Kin of the Moon: Irish Pagan Witchcraft, Magic(k), and the Celtic Twilight’ in White, Ethan Doyle and Feraro, Shai (eds.), Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 85–105.Google Scholar
Byrne, Patrick F., Witchcraft in Ireland (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1969, repr. 1973).Google Scholar
Callan, Maeve Brigid, The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish: Vengeance and Heresy in Medieval Ireland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Cameron, Euan, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Cashman, Ray, ‘Neighborliness and Decency, Witchcraft and Famine: Reflections on Community from Irish Folklore’, Journal of American Folklore, 134, no. 531 (2021), 79–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churms, Stephanie Elizabeth, Romanticism and Popular Magic: Poetry and Cultures of the Occult in the 1790s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).Google Scholar
Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, repr. 1999).Google Scholar
Cox, Catherine, ‘Access and Engagement: The Medical Dispensary Service in Post-Famine Ireland’ in Cox, Catherine and Luddy, Maria (eds.), Cultures of Care in Irish Medical History, 1750–1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 57–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Catherine, ‘The Medical Marketplace and Medical Tradition in Nineteenth Century Ireland’ in Moore, Ronnie and McClean, Stuart (eds.), Folk Healing and Health Care Practices in Britain and Ireland: Stethoscopes, Wands and Crystals (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), pp. 55–79.Google Scholar
Craik, Alex, ‘The Hydrostatical Works of George Sinclair (c.1630–1696): Their Neglect and Criticism’, Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 72 (2018), 239–73. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2017.0044.Google Scholar
Crone, John S., ‘Witchcraft in Antrim’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 14, no. 1 (1908), 34–7.Google Scholar
Crowley, Una and Kitchin, Rob, ‘Producing “Decent Girls”: Governmentality and the Moral Geography of Sexual Conduct in Ireland (1922–37)’, Gender, Place and Culture, 15, no. 4 (2008), 355–72. http://doi.org/10.1080/09663690802155553.Google Scholar
Curran, Bob, A Bewitched Land: Witches and Warlocks of Ireland (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Daly, Mary E., ‘“The State Papers of a Forgotten and Neglected People”; the National Folklore Collection and the Writing of Irish History’, Béaloideas, 78 (2010), 61–79.Google Scholar
Darwood, Nicola, ‘Review: The House Where It Happened, Martina Devlin’, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 16 (2017), 175–6.Google Scholar
Davies, Owen, America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft after Salem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Davies, Owen, ‘Researching Reverse Witch Trials in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England’ in Cultures of Witchcraft, pp. 215–32.Google Scholar
Davies, Owen, The Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Davies, Owen, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Davies, Owen and Houlbrook, Ceri, Building Magic: Ritual and Re-enchantment in Post-medieval Structures (Cham: Palgrave, 2021).Google Scholar
Davies, Owen and Matteoni, Francesca, Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).Google Scholar
Owen, Davies and Willem, de Blécourt (eds.), Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Davies, Owen, ‘Newspapers and the Popular Belief in Witchcraft and Magic in the Modern Period’, Journal of British Studies, 37, no. 2 (1998), 139–65.Google Scholar
Davies, Owen and Willem, de Blécourt (eds.), Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in Modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Day, Angélique and McWilliams, Patrick (eds.), Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland (Belfast, 40 vols, 1990–1998).Google Scholar
Willem, De Blécourt, ‘Hexenfamilien – Zauber(er) geschlechter: Das Beispiel Drenthe (17–19 Jahrhundert)’ in Labouvie, Eva and Myrrhe, Ramona (eds.), Familienbande – Familienschande: Geschlechterverhältnisse in Familie und Verwandschaft (Cologne: Böhlau-Verlag, 2007), pp. 121–45.Google Scholar
Michael, De Nie and Farrell, Sean (eds.), Power and Popular Culture in Modern Ireland: Essays in Honour of James S. Donnelly (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Delay, Cara, Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism, 1850–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Dent, J. G., ‘The Witch-stone in Ulster and England’, Ulster Folklife, 10 (1964), 46–8.Google Scholar
Devlin, Martina, The House Where It Happened (Dublin: Ward River Press, 2014, repr. 2015).Google Scholar
Dillinger, Johannes (ed.), The Routledge History of Witchcraft (London: Routledge, 2020).Google Scholar
Doak, Naomi, ‘Ulster Protestant Women Authors: Olga Fielden’s Island Story’, Irish Studies Review, 15, no. 11 (2007), 37–49.Google Scholar
Docherty, Iain and Smith, Denis, ‘Practising What We Preach? Academic Consultancy in a Multi-Disciplinary Environment’, Public Money & Management, 27, no. 4 (2007), 273–80. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9302.2007.00594.x.Google Scholar
Doherty, Michael L., ‘The Folklore of Cattle Diseases: A Veterinary Perspective’, Béaloideas, 69 (2001), 41–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, Dixon, History of Islandmagee (Islandmagee, 1927, repr. 2002).Google Scholar
Doughan, Christopher, The Voice of the Provinces: The Regional Press in Revolutionary Ireland, 1914–1921 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Dowd, Marion, ’Bewitched by an Elf Dart: Fairy Archaeology, Folk Magic and Traditional Medicine in Ireland’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 28, no. 3 (2018), 451–73. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774318000124.Google Scholar
Dysa, Kateryna, ‘A Family Matter: The Case of a Witch Family in an Eighteenth-Century Volhynian Town’, Russian History, 40 (2013), 352–63.Google Scholar
Edwards, R. W. Dudley and Mary O’Dowd, Sources for Modern Irish History, 1534–1641 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Elmer, Peter, The Miraculous Conformist: Valentine Greatrakes, the Body Politic, and the Politics of Healing in Restoration Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Fexneld, Per, ‘Disciples of Hell: The History of Satanism’ in Routledge History of Witchcraft, pp. 334–48.Google Scholar
Fielden, Olga, ‘Witches in Eden’ in O’Connor, Patricia (ed.), Four New One-Act Plays (Belfast: Quota Press, 1948), pp. 7–25.Google Scholar
Fitzsimmon, Betsey Taylor and Murphy, James H. (eds.), The Irish Revival Reappraised (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Foley, Ronan, ‘Indigenous Narratives of Health: (Re)Placing Folk-Medicine within Irish Health Histories’, Journal of Medical Humanities, 18 (2015), 5–18. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9322-4.Google Scholar
Foster, Cooper Jeanne, Ulster Folklore (Belfast: H. R. Carter, 1951).Google Scholar
Foster, Roy F., W. B. Yeats: A Life, I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Foster, Roy F., W. B. Yeats: A Life, II: The Arch-Poet, 1915–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Foster, Roy F., Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Garnham, Neal, ‘Local Elite Creation in Early Hanoverian Ireland: The Case of the County Grand Juries’, Historical Journal, 42, no. 33 (1999), 623–42.Google Scholar
Gaskill, Malcolm, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘The Pursuit of Reality: Recent Research into the History of Witchcraft’, Historical Journal, 51, no. 4 (2008), 1069–99. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X0800719X.Google Scholar
Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘Witchcraft Trials in England’ in Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft, pp. 283–99.Google Scholar
Gibson, Marion, Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft: Witches in Early Modernity and Modernity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar
Gibson, Marion, ‘Retelling Salem Stories: Gender Politics and Witches’, American Culture European Journal of American Culture, 25, no. 2 (2006), 85–107.Google Scholar
Gibson, Marion, Witchcraft: The Basics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar
Gibson, Marion, Witchcraft Myths in American Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).Google Scholar
Gillespie, Raymond, ‘Women and Crime in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in MacCurtain, Margaret and O’Dowd, Mary (eds.), Women in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), pp. 43–52.Google Scholar
Gillespie, Raymond and Hadfield, Andrew (eds.), The Oxford History of the Irish Book: Volume III, The Irish Book in English, 1550–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Glassie, Henry, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: History and Culture of an Ulster Community (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Goodare, Julian, The European Witch-hunt (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).Google Scholar
Gregory, Lady, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland Collected and Arranged by Lady Gregory: With Two Essays and Notes by W. B. Yeats (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1920).Google Scholar
Gribben, Crawford, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Hall, Wayne E., Dialogues in the Margin: A Study of the Dublin University Magazine (Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 2000).Google Scholar
Harper, George Mills (ed.), Yeats and the Occult (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1976).Google Scholar
Harris, Mary N., ‘Parochial, National and Universal: The Concerns of Irish Regional Publishing’ in Hutton, Clare and Walsh, Patrick (eds.), The Irish Book in English, 1891–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 304–34.Google Scholar
Hayton, David, Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Henderson, Lizanne, Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670–1740 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).Google Scholar
Henningsen, Gustav, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 1609–1614 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Hewes, Henry, ‘Broadway Postscript: Arthur Miller and How He Went to the Devil’, Saturday Review (21 January 1953), p. 26.Google Scholar
Houlbrook, Ceri and Armitage, Natalie (eds.), The Materiality of Magic (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015).Google Scholar
Hug, Crystal, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1999).Google Scholar
Hunter, Michael, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).Google Scholar
Hutton, Ronald (ed.), Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).Google Scholar
Hutton, Ronald, ‘The Changing Face of Manx Witchcraft’, Cultural and Social History, 7, no. 22 (2010), 153–69. http://doi.org/10.2752/147800410X12634795054531.Google Scholar
Hutton, Ronald, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Hutton, Ronald, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Hutton, Ronald, ‘Witch-hunting in Celtic Societies’, Past and Present, 212, no. 1 (2011), 43–71. http://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtr003.Google Scholar
Inglis, Tom, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Irish Society (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Ingram, Luan, The Last Witches of Islandmagee (Kraken, 2015).Google Scholar
Irwin, Liam, ‘Thomas Johnston Westropp, 1860–1922’ in Chatháin, Próinséas Ní, Fitzpatrick, Siobhán and Clarke, Howard (eds.), Pathfinders to the Past: The Antiquarian Road to Irish Historical Writing, 1640–1960 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012), pp. 131–43.Google Scholar
I. P., ‘On the Rise and Progress of Witchcraft, no. III’, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle (1829), pp. 580–5.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Richard, Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland, 1972–4 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Jenkins, Richard, ‘Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the Millennium’, Max Weber Studies, 1, no. 1 (2000), 11–32.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Richard, ‘Spooks and Spooks: Black Magic and Bogeymen in Northern Ireland, 1973–4’ in Witchcraft Continued, pp. 191–212.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Richard, ‘The Transformations of Biddy Early: From Local Reports of Magical Healing to Globalised New Age Fantasy’, Folklore, 118, no. 2 (2007), 162–82. http://doi.org/10.1080/00155870701337379.Google Scholar
Jean, La Fontaine, ‘Satanism and Satanic Mythology’ in Willem, de Blécourt, Hutton, Ronald and Jean, La Fontaine (eds.), The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Twentieth Century (London: Athlone Press, 1999), pp. 83–140.Google Scholar
Lapoint, Elwyn C., ‘Irish Immunity to Witch-Hunting, 1534–1711’, Eire Ireland, 27, no. 2 (1992), 76–92.Google Scholar
Larner, Christina, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981).Google Scholar
Leeder, Murray, The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).Google Scholar
Lehane, Shane, ‘The Cailleach and the Cosmic Hare’ in Hillers, Barbara, Gealbháin, Ciarán Ó, Tuomi, Ilona and Carey, John (eds.), Charms, Charmers and Charming in Ireland: From the Medieval to the Modern (Melksham: University of Wales Press, 2019), pp. 189–204.Google Scholar
Levack, Brian (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Linn, Meredith B., ‘Irish Immigrant Healing Magic in Nineteenth-Century New York City’, Historical Archaeology, 48, no. 3 (2014), 144–65.Google Scholar
Luddy, Maria, ‘Sex and the Single Girl in 1920s and 1930s Ireland’, The Irish Review, 35 (2007), 79–91.Google Scholar
Lysaght, Patricia, ‘Perspectives on Narrative Communication and Gender: Lady Augusta Gregory’s Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920)’, Fabula, 39, no. 3–4 (1998), 256–76.Google Scholar
Lysaght, Patricia, The Banshee: The Irish Supernatural Death Messenger (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Mac Cárthaigh, Críostóir, ‘The Ship-Sinking Witch: A Maritime Folk Legend from North-West Europe’, Béaloideas, 60/61 (1992), 267–86. http://doi.org/10.2307/20522410.Google Scholar
MacCarthy, B. G., ‘Thomas Crofton Croker 1798–1854’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 32, no. 128 (1943), 539–56.Google Scholar
MacCartney, Donald, ‘The Writing of History in Ireland 1800–30’, Irish Historical Studies, 10, no. 40 (1957), 347–62.Google Scholar
Machielsen, Jan, The War on Witchcraft: Andrew Dickson White, George Lincoln Burr, and the Origins of Witchcraft Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).Google Scholar
MacRitchie, David, ‘Review of Irish Witchcraft and Demonology’, The Celtic Review, 10, no. 37 (1914), 8–5.Google Scholar
Martin, Lauren, ‘Witchcraft and Family: What can Witchcraft Documents Tells Us about Early Modern Scottish Family Life?’, Scottish Tradition, 27 (2002), 7–22. http://doi.org/10.21083/irss.v27i0.195.Google Scholar
McAuliffe, Mary, ‘Gender, History and Witchcraft in Early Modern Ireland: A Re-reading of the Florence Newton Trial’ in Valiulis, Mary Ann Gialenella (ed.), Gender and Power in Irish History (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), pp. 39–58.Google Scholar
McConnell, Charles, The Witches of Islandmagee (Carrickfergus: Carmac Books, 2000).Google Scholar
McCormick, Leanne, Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth Century Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
McCrum, Elizabeth J. (ed.), The History and Antiquities of the County of the Town of Carrickfergus by Samuel McSkimin (Belfast: Mullan & Son, James Cleeland, Davidson, and McCormack, 1909).Google Scholar
McDonough, Ciaran, ‘Folk Belief and Landscape in Connacht: Accounts from the Ordnance Survey letters’, Folk Life, 57, no. 1 (2019), 56–69.Google Scholar
McGarry, Marion, Irish Customs and Rituals: How Our Ancestors Celebrated Life and the Seasons (Dublin: Orpen Press, 2020).Google Scholar
McGaw, William Orr, ‘Notes on the Parish of Carnmoney, Co. Antrim’, Ulster Folklife, 1 (1955), 53–7.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Gillian, The Force of Culture: Unionist Identities in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Melechi, Antonio, Servants of the Supernatural: The Night Side of the Victorian Mind (London: Arrow Books, 2009).Google Scholar
Merrifield, Ralph, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (London: New Amsterdam Books, 1987).Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit and Pels, Peter (eds.), Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur, The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts (London: Penguin, 1953, repr. 2000).Google Scholar
Monod, Paul Kléber, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Moore, Ronnie, ‘A General Practice, a Country Practice: The Cure, the Charm and Informal Healing in Northern Ireland’ in Ronnie Moore and Stuart McClean (ed.), Folk Healing and Health Care Practices in Britain and Ireland: Stethoscopes, Wands and Crystals (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), pp. 104–29.Google Scholar
Moutray Read, D. H., ‘Review of Irish Witchcraft and Demonology’, Folklore, 27, no. 3 (1916), 322–3.Google Scholar
Murphy, James H. (ed.), The Oxford History of the Irish Book: Volume IV, The Irish Book in English, 1800–1891 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Murphy, Michael J., Rathlin: Island of Blood and Enchantment (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Nildin-Wall, Bodil and Wall, Jan, ‘The Witch as Hare or the Witch’s Hare: Popular Legends and Beliefs in Nordic Tradition’, Folklore, 104, no. 1–2 (1993), 67–76. http://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1993.9715854.Google Scholar
Ó Crualaoich, Gearóid, The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003, repr. 2015).Google Scholar
Ó Giolláin, Diarmuid, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000, repr. 2004).Google Scholar
Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid and Nuttall, Deirdre (eds.), Folklore of County Wexford (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Owen, Alex, The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England (London: Virago Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Owen, Alex, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Paterson, T. G. F., County Cracks: Old Tales from the County of Armagh (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press, 1945).Google Scholar
Pels, Peter, ‘Introduction: Magic and Modernity’ in Magic and Modernity, pp. 1–38.Google Scholar
Phelan, Mark, ’Beyond the Pale: Neglected Northern Irish Women Playwrights, Alice Milligan, Helen Waddell and Patricia O’Connor’ in Sihra, Melissa (ed.), Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 109–29.Google Scholar
Pudney, Eric, Scepticism and Belief in English Witchcraft Drama, 1538–1681 (Lund: Lund University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Purkiss, Diane, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London: Routledge, 1996).Google Scholar
Rice, Adrian, The Mason’s Tongue (Belfast: Abbey Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Riddell, William Renwick, ‘The First Execution for Witchcraft in Ireland’, Journal of the American Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, 7, no. 6 (1917), 828–37.Google Scholar
Riordan, Michael, ‘Materials for History? Publishing Records as a Historical Practice in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century England’, History of Humanities, 2, no. 1 (2017), 51–77. http://doi.org/10.1086/690572.Google Scholar
Roper, Lyndal, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Bernard, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, repr. 1995).Google Scholar
Rowlands, Alison, ‘Gender, Ungodly Parents, and a “Witch Family” in Seventeenth-Century Germany’, Past and Present, 232, no. 1 (2016), 45–86. http://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtw014.Google Scholar
Saler, Michael, ‘Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographic Review’, The American Historical Review, 111, no. 3 (June 2006), 692–716. http://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.111.3.692.Google Scholar
Seymour, St John, D., Irish Witchcraft and Demonology (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1913, repr. 1989).Google Scholar
Sharpe, James, ‘Witch-hunting and Witch Historiography: Some Anglo-Scottish Comparisons’ in Goodare, Julian (ed.), The Scottish Witch-hunt in Context (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 182-97.Google Scholar
Smith, James M., ‘The Politics of Sexual Knowledge: The Origins of Ireland’s Containment Culture and the Carrigan Report (1931)’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 13, no. 2 (2004), 208–33.Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, ‘Gender, Folklore and Magical Healing in Ireland, 1852–1922’ in Atwal, Jyoti, Breathnach, Ciara and Buckley, Sarah Ann (eds.), Gender and History: Ireland 1852–1922 (Routledge India, forthcoming).Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, ‘Medicine, Belief, Witchcraft and Demonic Possession in Late Seventeenth-Century Ulster’, Medical Humanities, 42 (2016), 81–6. http://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2015-010830.Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, Possessed by the Devil: The Real History of the Islandmagee Witches & Ireland’s Only Witchcraft Mass Trial (Dublin: History Press Ireland, 2013).Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, ‘Select Document: Florence Newton’s Trial for Witchcraft, Cork, 1661: Sir William Aston’s Transcript’, Irish Historical Studies, 43, no. 164 (2019), 298–319. http://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2019.55.Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, ‘The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish: Vengeance and Heresy in Medieval Ireland by Maeve Brigid Callan (Review)’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 12, no. 11 (2017), 139–42.Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, ‘Belief, Witchcraft, Representation and Memory in Modern Ireland’, Cultural and Social History, 16, no. 3 (2019), 251–70. http://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2019.1595273.Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew, ‘Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, 39, no. 1 (2012), 1–25.Google Scholar
Sneddon, Andrew and Fulton, John, ‘Witchcraft, the Press and Crime in Ireland, 1822–1922’, Historical Journal, 62, no. 3 (2019), 741–64. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X18000365.Google Scholar
Storm, Jason Josephson, Ānanda, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Suggett, Richard, A History of Magic and Witchcraft in Wales (Stroud: History Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Summers, Montague, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (London: Kegan Paul, 1926).Google Scholar
Szachowicz-Sempruch, Justyna, ‘The Witch Figure in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature’ in Routledge History of Witchcraft, pp. 370–81.Google Scholar
Tait, Clodagh , ‘Worry Work: The Supernatural Labours of Living and Dead Mothers in Irish Folklore’, Past and Present, 246, Issue Supplement 15 (2020), 217–38. http://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa042.Google Scholar
Tallis, Lisa Mari, ‘Which Craft? Witches, Gypsies, and the Fenyw Hysbys in Eighteenth-Century Wales’, Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 8, no. 2 (2019), 231–53.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael, ‘Viscerality, Faith and Scepticism: Another Theory of Magic’ in Magic and Modernity, pp. 272–306.Google Scholar
Tilley, Elizabeth, ‘Periodicals’ in Oxford History of the Irish Book: Volume IV, pp. 144–73.Google Scholar
Underwood, E. Ashworth , ‘Dr. J. D. Rolleston’, Nature, 157 (1946), 506. http://doi.org/10.1038/157506a0.Google Scholar
Urquhart, Diane, ‘Gender, Family and Sexuality, 1800–2000’ in Liam Kennedy and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), Ulster since 1600: Politics, Economy and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 245–59.Google Scholar
Valiulis, Maryann Gialanella, ‘Power, Gender, and Identity in the Irish Free State’, Journal of Women’s History, 7, no. 1 (1995), 117–36. http://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2011.599612.Google Scholar
Walsham, Alexandra, ‘The Reformation and “the Disenchantment of the World” Reassessed’, Historical Journal, 51, no. 2 (2008), 497–528. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X08006808.Google Scholar
Waters, Thomas, Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Waters, Thomas, ‘Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 1750–2018’, Past and Present, 247, no. 1 (May 2020), 113–49. http://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz051.Google Scholar
Waters, Thomas, ‘Maleficent Witchcraft in Britain since 1900’, History Workshop, 80, no. 1 (2015), 99–122. http://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbv014.Google Scholar
Waters, Tom, ‘Belief in Witchcraft in Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, c. 1860–1900: The Evidence of the Newspaper Archive’, Midland History, 34, no. 1 (2009), 98–116. http://doi.org/10.1179/175638109X406640.Google Scholar
Westropp, Thomas Johnson, ‘A Study of the Folklore on the Coasts of Connacht, Ireland (Continued)’, Folklore, 33, no. 4 (1922), 389–97.Google Scholar
Willis, Deborah, ‘The Witch Family in Elizabethan and Jacobean Print Culture’, Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, 13, no. 1 (2013), 4–31.Google Scholar
Winter, Alison, Mesmerised: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998).Google Scholar
Wolf, Nicholas, ‘Orthaí and Orthodoxy: Healing Charms in Irish Popular Religion’ in Power and Popular Culture in Modern Ireland, pp. 125–44.Google Scholar
W. P. W., ‘Review of Irish Witchcraft and Demonology’, Irish Church Quarterly, 7, no. 25 (1914), 85–6.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Representing Magic in Modern Ireland
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Representing Magic in Modern Ireland
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Representing Magic in Modern Ireland
Available formats
×