Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland
Witches and Wizards and Irish Folk-Lore (W.B. Yeats)
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 Cox,
who had her head grovelling on the ground, and her globes (as he expressed it)
upward. He knowing her, was so affrighted that his hair on his head stood on
end; and yet spake to her, and ask'd her what brought her there; but she was so
far out of breath that she could not make him any answer; his dogs also came up
full cry to recover the game, and smelled at her and so left off hunting any
further. And the huntsman with his dogs went home presently sadly
affrighted." Dr. Henry More, the Platonist, who considers the story in a letter
to Glanvill, explains that Julian Cox was not turned into a hare, but that
"Ludicrous Daemons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and his dogs, the
shape of a hare, one of them turning himself into such a form, another hurrying
on the body of Julian near the same place," making her invisible till the right
moment had come. "As I have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in a
huge landscape, so lively, that the birds have flown against it, thinking it
free air, and so have fallen down. And if painters and jugglers, by the tricks
of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight, it is no
wonder that these aerie invisible spirits have far surpassed them in all such
prestigious doings, as the air surpasses the earth for subtlety." Glanvill has
given his own explanation of such cases elsewhere. He thinks that the sidereal
or airy body is the foundation of the marvel, and Albert de Rochas has found a
like foundation for the marvels of spiritism. "The transformation of witches,"
writes Glanvill, "into the shapes of other animals … is very conceivable; since
then, 'tis easy enough to imagine that the power of imagination may form those
passive and pliable vehicles into those shapes," and then goes on to account for
the stories where an injury, say to the witch hare. is found afterwards upon the
witch's body precisely as a French hypnotist would account for the stigmata of a
saint. "When they feel the hurts in their gross bodies, that they receive in
their airy vehicles, they must be supposed to have been really present, at least
in these latter, and 'tis no more difficult to apprehend, how the hurts of those
should be translated upon their other bodies, than how diseases should be
inflicted by the imagination, or how the fancy of the mother should wound the
foettis, as several credible relations do attest."
All magical or Platonic writers of the times speak much of the transformation
or projection of the sidereal body of witch or wizard. Once the soul escapes
from the natural body, though but for a moment, it passes into the body of air
and can transform itself as it please or even dream itself into some shape it
has not willed.
"Chameleon-like thus they their colour change,
One of their favourite stories is of some famous man, John Haydon says
Socrates, falling asleep among his friends, who presently see a mouse running
from his mouth and towards a little stream. Somebody lays a sword across the
stream that it may pass, and after a little while it returns across the sword
and to the sleeper's mouth again. When he awakes he tells them that he has
dreamed of himself crossing a wide river by a great iron bridge.
And size contract and then dilate again."
But the witch's wandering and disguised double was not the worst shape one
might meet in the fields or roads about a witch's house. She was not a true
witch unless there was a compact (or so it seems) between her and an evil spirit
who called himself the devil, though Bodin believes that he was often, and
Glanvill always, "some human soul forsaken of God," for "the devil is a body
politic." The ghost or devil promised revenge on her enemies and that she would
never want, and she upon her side let the devil suck her blood nightly or at
need.
When Elizabeth Style made a confession of witchcraft before the Justice of
Somerset in 1664, the Justice appointed three men, William Thick and William
Read and Nicholas Lambert, to watch her, and Glanvill publishes an affidavit of
the evidence of Nicholas Lambert. "About three of the clock in the morning there
came from her head a glistering bright fly, about an inch in length which
pitched at first in the chimney and then vanished." Then two smaller flies came
and vanished. "H; looking steadfastly then on Style, perceived her countenance
to change, and to become very black and ghastly and the fire also at the same
time changing its colour; whereupon the Examinant, Thick and Read, conceiving
that her familiar was then about her, looked to her poll, and seeing her hair
shake very strangely, took it up and then a fly like a great miller flew out
from the place and pitched on the table board and then vanished away. Upon this
the Examinant and the other two persons, looking again in Style's poll found it
very red and like raw beef. The Examinant ask'd her what it was that went out of
her poll, she said it was a butterfly, and asked them why they had not caught
it. Lambert said, they could not. I think so too, answered she. A little while
after the informant and the others, looking again into her poll found the place
to be of its former colour. The Examinant asked again what the fly was, she
confessed it was her familiar and that she felt it tickle in her poll, and that
was the usual time for her familiar to come to her." These sucking devils alike
when at their meal, or when they went here and there to do her will or about
their own business, had the shapes of pole-cat or cat or greyhound or of some
moth or bird. At the trials of certain witches in Essex in 1645 reported
in the English state trials a principal witness was one "Matthew Hopkins, gent."
Bishop Hutchinson, writing in 1730, describes him as he appeared to those who
laughed at witchcraft and had brought the witch trials to an end. "Hopkins went
on searching and swimming poor creatures till some gentlemen, out of indignation
of the barbarity, took him, and tied his own thumbs and toes as he used to tie
others, and when he was put into the water he himself swam as they did. That
cleared the country of him and it was a great pity that they did not think of
the experiment sooner." Floating when thrown into the water was taken for a sign
of witchcraft. Matthew Hopkins's testimony, however, is uncommonly like that of
the countryman who told Lady Gregory that he had seen his dog and some shadow
fighting. A certain Mrs. Edwards of Manintree in Essex had her hogs killed by
witchcraft, and "going from the house of the said Mrs. Edwards to his own house,
about nine or ten of the clock that night, with his greyhound with him, he saw
the greyhound suddenly give a jump, and run as she had been in full course after
a hare; and that when this informant made haste to see what his greyhound so
eagerly pursued, he espied a white thing, about the bigness of a kitlyn, and the
greyhound standing aloof from it; and that by and by the said white imp or
kitlyn danced about the grey-hound, and by all likelihood bit off a piece of the
flesh of the shoulder of the said greyhound; for the greyhound came shrieking
and crying to the informant, with a piece of flesh torn from her shoulder. And
the informant further saith, that coming into his own yard that night, he espied
a black thing proportioned like a cat, only it was thrice as big, sitting on a
strawberry bed, and fixing the eyes on this informant, and when he went to-wards
it, it leaped over the pale towards this informant, as he thought, but ran
through the yard, with his greyhound after it, to a great gate, which was
underset with a pair of tumble strings, and did throw the said gate wide open,
and then vanished; and 'he said greyhound returned again to this informant,
shaking and trembling exceedingly." At the same trial Sir Thomas Bowes, Knight,
affirmed "that a very honest man of Manintree, whom he knew would not speak an
untruth affirmed unto him, 'hat very early one morning, as he passed by the said
Anne West's door" (this is the witch on trial) "about four o'clock, it being a
moonlight night, and perceiving her door to be open so early in the morning,
looked into the house and presently there came three or four little things, in
the shape of black rabbits, leaping and skipping about him, who, having a good
stick in his hand, struck at them, thinking to kill them, but could not; but at
last caught one of them in his hand, and holding it by the body of it, he beat
the head of it against his stick, intending to beat out the brains of it; but
when he could not kill it that way, he took the body of it in one hand and the
head of it in another, and endeavoured to wring off the head; and as he wrung
and stretched the neck of it, it came out between his hands like a lock of wool;
yet he would not give over his intended purpose, but knowing of a spring not far
off, he went to drown it; but still as he went he fell down and could not go,
but down he fell again, so that he at last crept upon his hands and knees till
he came at the water, and holding it fast in his hand, he put his hand down into
the water up to the elbow, and held it under water a good space till he
conceived it was drowned, and then letting go his hand, it sprung out of the
water up into the air, and so vanished away." However, the sucking imps were not
always invulnerable for Glanvill tells how one John Monpesson, whose house was
haunted by such a familiar, "seeing some wood move that was in the chimney of a
room, where he was, as if of itself, discharged a pistol into it after which
they found several drops of blood on the hearth and in divers places of the
stairs." I remember the old Aran man who heard fighting in the air and found
blood in a fish-box and scattered through the room, and I remember the measure
of blood Odysseus poured out for the shades.
The English witch trials are like the popular poetry of England,
matter-of-fact and unimaginative. The witch desires to kill some one and when
she takes the devil for her husband he as likely as not will seem dull and
domestic. Rebecca West told Matthew Hopkins that the devil appeared to her as
she was going to bed and told her he would marry her. He kissed her but was as
cold as clay, and he promised to be "her loving husband till death," although
she had, as it seems, but one leg. But the Scotch trials are as wild and
passionate as is the Scottish poetry, and we find ourselves in the presence of a
mythology that differs little, if at all, from that of Ireland. There are orgies
of lust and of hatred and there is a wild shamelessness that would be fine
material for poets and romance writers if the world should come once more to
half-believe the tale. They are divided into troops of thirteen, with the
youngest witch for leader in every troop, and though they complain that the
embraces of the devil are as cold as ice, the young witches prefer him to their
husbands. He gives them money, but they must spend it quickly, for it will be
but dry cow dung in two circles of the clock. They go often to Elfhame or
Faeryland and the mountains open before them and as they go out and in they are
terrified by the "rowtling and skoylling" of the great "elf bulls." They
sometimes confess to trooping in the shape of cats and to finding upon their
terrestrial bodies when they awake in the morning the scratches they had made
upon one another in the night's wandering, or should they have wandered in the
images of hares the bites of dogs. Isobell Godie who was tried at Loclilay in
1662 confessed that "We put besoms in our beds with our husbands till we return
again to them... and then we would fly away where we would be, even as straws
would fly upon a highway. We will fly like straws when we please; wild straws
and corn straws will be horses to us, and we put them betwixt our feet and say
horse and hillock in the devil's name. And when any see these straws in a
whirlwind and do not sanctify themselves, we may shoot them dead at our
pleasure." When they kill people, she goes on to say, the souls escape them "but
their bodies remain with us and will fly as horses to us all as small as
straws." It is plain that it is the "airy body" they take possession of; those
"animal spirits" perhaps which Henry More thought to be the link between soul
and body and the seat of all vital function. The trials were more unjust than
those of England, where there was a continual criticism from sceptics; torture
was used again and again to distort confessions, and innocent people certainly
suffered; some who had but believed too much in their own dreams and some who
had but cured the sick at some vision's prompting. Alison Pearson who was burnt
in 1588 might have been Biddy Early or any other knowledge-able woman in Ireland
today. She was convicted "for haunting and repairing with the Good Neighbours
and queen of Elfhame, these divers years and bypast, as she had confessed in her
depositions, declaring that she could not say readily how long She was with
them; and that she had friends in that court who were of her own blood and who
had great acquaintance of the queen of Elfhame. That when she went to bed she
never knew where she would be carried before dawn." When they worked cures they
had the same doctrine of the penalty that one finds in Lady Gregory's stories.
One who made her confession before James I. was convicted for "taking the sick
party's pains and sicknesses upon herself for a time and then translating them
to a third person."
There are more women than men mediums today; and there have been or seem to have been more witches than wizards. The wizards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relied more upon their conjuring book than the witches whose visions and experiences seem but half voluntary, and when voluntary called up by some childish rhyme:
Hare, hare, God send thee care;More often than not the wizards were learned men, alchemists or mystics, and if they dealt with the devil at times, or some spirit they called by that name, they had amongst them ascetics and heretical saints. Our chemistry, our metallurgy, and our medicine are often but accidents that befell in their pursuit or the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life. They were bound together in secret societies and had, it may be, some forgotten practice for liberating the soul from the body and sending it to fetch and carry them divine knowledge. Cornelius Agrippa in a letter quoted by Beaumont, has hints of such a practice. Yet like the witches, they worked many wonders by the power of the imagination, perhaps one should say by their power of up vivid pictures in the mind's eye. The Arabian philosophers have taught, writes Beaumont, "that the soul by the power the imagination can perform what it pleases; as penetrate heavens, force the elements, demolish mountains, raise valleys to mountains, and do with all material forms as it pleases."
I am in a hare's likeness now,
But I shall be a woman even now;
Hare, hare, God send thee care.
He shewed hym, er he wente to sopeer,One has not as careful a record as one has of the works of witches, for but few English wizards came before the court, the only society for psychical research in those days. The translation, however, of Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia in the seventeenth century, with the addition of a spurious fourth book full of conjurations, seems to have filled England and Ireland with whole or half wizards. In 1703, the Reverend Arthur Bedford of Bristol, who is quoted by Sibley in his big book on astrology, wrote to the Bishop of Gloucester telling how a certain Thomas Perks had been to consult him. Thomas Perks lived with his father, a gunsmith, and devoted his leisure to mathematics, astronomy, and the discovery of perpetual motion. One day he asked the clergyman if it was wrong to commune with spirits, and said that he himself held that "there was an innocent society with them which a man might use, if he made no compacts with them, did no harm by their means, and were not curious in prying into hidden things, and he himself had discoursed with them and heard them sing to his great satisfaction." He then told how it was his custom to go to a crossway with lantern and candle consecrated for the purpose, according to the directions in a book he had, and having also consecrated chalk for making a circle. The spirits appeared to him "in the likeness of little maidens about a foot and a half high … they spoke with a very shrill voice like an ancient woman" and when he begged them to sing, "they went to some distance behind a bush from whence he could hear a perfect concert of such exquisite music as he never before heard; and in the upper part he heard something very harsh and shrill like a reed but as it was managed did give a particular grace to the rest." The Reverend Arthur Bedford refused an introduction to the spirits for himself and a friend and warned him very solemnly. Having some doubt of his sanity, he set him a difficult mathematical problem, but finding that he worked it easily, concluded him sane. A quarter of a year later the young man came again, but showed by his face and his eyes that he was very ill and lamented that he had not followed the clergyman's advice for his conjurations would bring him to his death. He had decided to get a familiar and had read in his magical book what he should do. He was to make a book of virgin parchment, consecrate it, and bring it to the cross-road, and having called up his spirits, ask the first of them for its name and write that name on the first page of the book and then question another and write that name on the second page and so on till he had enough familiars. He had got the first name easily enough and it was in Hebrew, but after that they came in fearful shapes, lions and bears and the like, or hurled at him halls of fire. He had to stay there among those terrifying visions till the dawn broke and would not be the better of it till he died. I have read in some eighteenth century book whose name I cannot recall of two men who made a magic circle and who invoked the spirits of the moon and saw them trampling about the circle as great bulls, or rolling about it as flocks of wool. One of Lady Gregory's story-tellers considered a flock of wool one of the worst shapes that a spirit could take.
Pores tes, parkes ful of wilde deer;
Ther saugh he hertes with hir hornes hye,
The gretteste that evere were seyn with ye.
***
Tho saugh he knyghtes justing in a playn;
And after this, he dide hym swich plaisaunce,
That he hym shewed his lady on a daunce
On which hymself he daunced, as hym thoughte.
And whan this maister, that this magyk wroughte,
Saugh it was tyme, he clapte his handes two,
And, farewel! al our revel was ago.
There must have been many like experimenters in Ireland. An Irish alchemist called Butler was supposed to have made successful transmutations in London early in the eighteenth century, and in the Life of Dr. Adam Clarke, published in 1833, are several letters from a Dublin maker of stained glass describing a transmutation and a conjuration into a tumbler of water of large lizards. The alchemist was an unknown man who had called to see him and claimed to do all by the help of the devil "who was the friend of all ingenious gentlemen."
