Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment

Henderson, Lizanne

doi:10.1057/9781137313249

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Cited by 8 publications

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Milevsky

2024

The Religious Roots of Longevity Risk Sharing

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Milevsky

2024

The Religious Roots of Longevity Risk Sharing

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Representing Magic in Modern Ireland

Sneddon

2022

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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.

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Witchcraft, the Press, and Crime in Ireland, 1822–1922

Sneddon

Fulton

2018

Hist. J.

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Drawing on witchcraft cases reported in newspapers and coming before Ireland's courts, this article argues that witch belief remained part of Protestant and Catholic popular culture throughout the long nineteenth century. It is shown that witchcraft belief followed patterns established in the late eighteenth century and occasioned accusations that arose from interpersonal tensions rather than sectarian conflict. From this article, a complex picture emerges of the Irish witches and their ‘victims’, who are respectively seen to have fought accusation and bewitchment using legal, magical, physical, and verbal means. In doing so, the contexts are revealed in which witchcraft was linked to other crimes such as assault, slander, theft, and fraud in an era of expansion of courts and policing. This illustrates how Irish people adapted to legal changes while maintaining traditional beliefs, and suggests that witchcraft is an overlooked context in which interpersonal violence was exerted and petty crime committed. Finally, popular and elite cultural divides are explored through the attitudes of the press and legal authorities to witchcraft allegations, and an important point of comparison for studies of witchcraft and magic in modern Europe is established.

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Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

From Church PAYGO to Fully Funded

From Church PAYGO to Fully Funded

Representing Magic in Modern Ireland

Witchcraft, the Press, and Crime in Ireland, 1822–1922

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