Filid, Fairies and Faith
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FILID, FAIRIES AND FAITH THE EFFECTS OF GAELIC CULTURE, RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND THE DYNAMICS OF DUAL CONFESSIONALISATION ON THE SUPPRESSION OF WITCHCRAFT ACCUSATIONS AND WITCH-HUNTS IN EARLY MODERN IRELAND 1533-1670 A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History by William E. Kramer May 2010 © 2010 William E. Kramer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP TITLE: FILID, FAIRIES AND FAITH THE EFFECTS OF GAELIC CULTURE, RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND THE DYNAMICS OF DUAL CONFESSIONALISATION ON THE SUPPRESSION OF WITCHCRAFT ACCUSATIONS AND WITCH-HUNTS IN EARLY MODERN IRELAND, 1533 - 1670 AUTHOR: William E. Kramer DATE SUBMITTED: May 2010 COMMITTEE CHAIR: Tom Trice, PhD., Master’s Program Coordinator COMMITTEE MEMBER: Paul Hiltpold, PhD., Professor COMMITTEE MEMBER: Daniel Krieger, PhD., Professor Emeritus iii ABSTRACT FILID, FAIRIES AND FAITH THE EFFECTS OF GAELIC CULTURE, RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND THE DYNAMICS OF DUAL CONFESSIONALISATION ON THE SUPPRESSION OF WITCHCRAFT ACCUSATIONS AND WITCH-HUNTS IN EARLY MODERN IRELAND 1533 - 1670 William E. Kramer The European Witch-Hunts reached their peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Betweeen 1590 and 1661, approximately 1500 women and men were accused of, and executed for, the crime of witchcraft in Scotland. England suffered the largest witch-hunt in its history during the Civil Wars of the 1640s, which produced the majority of the 500 women and men executed in England for witchcraft. Evidence indicates, however, that only three women were executed in Ireland between 1533 and 1670. Given the presence of both English and Scottish settlers in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the dramatic discrepancy of these statistics indicate that conditions existed in early modern Ireland that tended to suppress the mechanisms that produced witchcraft accusations and larger scale witch-hunts. In broad terms those conditions in Ireland were the persistence of Gaelic culture and the ongoing conditions of open, inter-religious conflict. In particular, two artifacts of Gaelic Irish culture had distinct impact upon Irish witchcraft beliefs. The office of the Poet, or fili (singular for filid), seems to have had a similar impact upon Gaelic culture and society as the shaman has on Siberian witchcraft beliefs. The Gaelic/Celtic Poet was believed to have magical powers, which were actually regulated by the Brehon Law codes of Ireland. The codification of the Poet’s harmful magic seems to have eliminated some of the mystique and menace of magic within Gaelic culture. Additionally, the persistent belief in fairies as the source of harmful magic remained untainted by Christianity throughout most of Ireland. Faeries were never successfully demonized in Ireland as they were in Scotland. The Gaelic Irish attributed to fairies most of the misfortunes that were otherwise blamed on witchcraft, including the sudden wasting away and death of children. Faerie faith in Ireland has, in fact, endured into the twentieth century. The ongoing ethno-religious conflict between the Gaelic, Catholic Irish and the Protestant “New English” settlers also undermined the need for witches in Ireland. The enemy, or “other” was always readily identifiable as a member of the opposing religious or ethnic group. The process of dual confessionalisation, as described by Ute Lotz-Huemann, facilitated the entrenchment of Catholic resistence to encroaching Protestantism that both perpetuated the ethno-religious conflict and prevented the penetration of Protestant ideology into Gaelic culture. This second effect is one of the reasons why fairies were never successfully associated with demons in Ireland. Witch-hunts were complex events that were produced and influenced by multiple causative factors. The same is true of those factors that suppressed witchcraft accusations. Enduring Gaelic cultural artifacts and open ethno-religious conflict were not the only factors that suppressed witchcraft accusations and witch-hunts in Ireland; they were, however, the primary factors. iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank the members of my Thesis Panel, who were also the three Professors who influenced and inspired me the most during my graduate studies at Cal Poly. Dr. Trice, who introduced me to the process of writing about history and who has continued to guide and encourage me throughout my time in the Master’s Program. Dr, Hiltpold, who first introduced me to the European Witch-Hunts and allowed me to deviate from his planned course work in 2008 to write a very preliminary Thesis examining the dearth of witch-hunts in early modern Ireland. Very much the same as Dr. Trice, Dr. Hiltpold has continued to push me to excel in my writing and to never settle for simply presenting information. Dr. Krieger, who rekindled my passion for British and European History, who afforded me the liberty to delve into Irish History whenever I was able and whose encouragement and support have been invaluable. All three of these amazing men demonstrated a faith and belief in my abilities that kept me going even when everything else around me seemed to be falling apart. For that, Gentlemen, I will be eternally grateful. I would never have accomplished what I have without the three of you. It is an insufficient expression of my gratitude, but it is all I have at the moment, thank you. Finally, my daughter, Devon, deserves special recognition for having gracefully endured her Dad’s attention being focused on researching and writing this Thesis instead of on her and for never doubting that I loved her. I promise, Sweet Pea, it will all be worth it in the end. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PROLOGUE................................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION: A WITCH IN YOUGHAL........................................................ 1 PART I: WITCHCRAFT IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE................................... 21 1. THE EVOLUTION OF WITCHCRAFT BELIEF........................................ 22 2. THE SOCIAL ROLE OF THE WITCH AND WITCHCRAFT.................... 45 3. CONDITIONS FOR AN IRISH WITCH-HUNT............................................ 66 PART II: FILID, FAIRIES AND FAITH.................................................................. 87 4. FILID ................................................................................................................... 93 5. FAIRIES............................................................................................................. 112 6. FAITH................................................................................................................... 134 PART III: IRISH WITCHCRAFT TRIALS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT......... 163 7. TUDOR CONQUEST AND THE KILKENNEY WITCHES ......................... 166 8. THE WITCH THAT WASN’T.......................................................................... 174 9 FLORENCE NEWTON ................................................................................... 185 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY (Annotated) ...................................................................................... 209 vi vii Prologue: This work began in January 2008, when a novice historian began his first Graduate Seminar at California Polytechnic University. I developed the concept for this thesis while preparing for Dr. Hiltpold’s seminar on the Witch-Hunts in Early Modern Europe. In reading The Witch-Hunts in Early Modern Europe, I noticed that Brian Levack mentioned that there were very few witchcraft trials in Ireland during the same time period that, literally, thousands of women were being tried and executed as Devil -worshiping witches in the German Lands, France, and even Scotland and England. Obviously, I wondered why that was so. Levack’s arguments regarding the preconditions and conditions necessary to initiate and sustain a witch-hunt seemed well reasoned and convincingly presented; and after two additional years of research they remain thorough and convincing arguments. Early modern Ireland, then, presented itself as an opportunity to test Levack’s conditions with a negative example. In short, which of Levack’s preconditions or sustaining conditions were absent in Ireland that thus prevented the machinery of witch-hunts from engaging or running in that country? The answers proved as multi-layered as Levack’s arguments regarding the causes of the European witch-hunts. Along the way, the nature of my argument changed and evolved. While the concept of proving Levack’s arguments through a negative example remain at the core of this work, several other objectives developed. Witch-hunts and the concept of witchcraft are complex social phenomena, subject to local variations and interpretations. Once I confirmed that the viii ordinary person in Ireland believed in magic, witchcraft and sorcery, I realized that I had to understand the nature of those beliefs within the Irish context. This was problematic because by the sixteenth century there was more than one “Irish context” due to the sporadic and incomplete nature of English colonization efforts in Ireland. Understanding the Protestant English belief system was simple, refer back to the beliefs as manifested in the “home country.” Understanding the Gaelic Irish context was more complicated. It was, in fact the