Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
History
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
Atlantic Coast (Ireland) -- Social life and customs; Folklore -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs
There was a girl used to be away with them, you'd never know when it
was she herself that was in it or not till she'd come back, and then
she'd tell she had been away. She didn't like to go, but she had to
go when they called to her. And she told her mother always to treat
kindly whoever was put in her place, sometimes one would be put,
and sometimes another, for she'd say "If you are unkind to whoever's
there, they'll be unkind to me."
* * * * *
Three of my uncles were taken by them, young men; some sort of a
little cold they got between them, and there wasn't more than two
months before the first of them going and the last. They were seen
after by a man that lived in the house between there and the school,
and that used often to see them, and to bring them in to dinner with
him.
WITCHES AND WIZARDS AND IRISH
FOLK-LORE
WITCHES AND WIZARDS AND IRISH
FOLK-LORE
I
Ireland was not separated from general European speculation when much
of that was concerned with the supernatural. Dr. Adam Clarke tells
in his unfinished autobiography how, when he was at school in Antrim
towards the end of the eighteenth century, a schoolfellow told him
of Cornelius Agrippa's book on Magic and that it had to be chained
or it would fly away of itself. Presently he heard of a farmer who
had a copy and after that made friends with a wandering tinker who
had another. Lady Gregory and I spoke of a friend's visions to an old
countryman. He said "he must belong to a society"; and the people
often attribute magical powers to Orangemen and to Freemasons, and
I have heard a shepherd at Doneraile speak of a magic wand with
Tetragramaton Agla written upon it. The visions and speculations
of Ireland differ much from those of England and France, for in
Ireland, as in Highland Scotland, we are never far from the old
Celtic mythology; but there is more likeness than difference. Lady
Gregory's story of the witch who in semblance of a hare, leads the
hounds such a dance, is the best remembered of all witch stories. It
is told, I should imagine, in every countryside where there is even a
fading memory of witchcraft. One finds it in a sworn testimony given
at the trial of Julian Cox, an old woman indicted for witchcraft
at Taunton in Somersetshire in 1663 and quoted by Joseph Glanvill.
"The first witness was a huntsman, who swore that he went out with a
pack of hounds to hunt a hare, and not far from Julian Cox her house
he at last started a hare: the dogs hunted her very close, and the
third ring hunted her in view, till at last the huntsman perceiving
the hare almost spent and making towards a great bush, he ran on
the other side of the bush to take her up and preserve her from the
dogs; but as soon as he laid hands on her, it proved to be Julian
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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