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Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland by Andrew Sneddon (review)

Ireland looms large in modern witchcraft traditions, but has received little scholarly attention in witchcraft studies, in part because it saw relatively few trials. Andrew Sneddon’s Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland fills in some important gaps in our understanding of witchcraft beliefs and trials since the sixteenth century. Its most important contributions lie in its careful consideration of varying attitudes towards witchcraft and its prosecution among Ireland’s three main religious denominations, Catholic, Church of Ireland, and Presbyterian. Sneddon here builds on his previous studies of Bishop Francis Hutchinson, “the only eighteenth-century English witchcraft sceptic living in Ireland in the 1720s and 1730s,” and the 1711 Islandmagee trial, which his 2013 book title proclaims “Ireland’s only Mass Witchcraft Trial” (106). He skillfully argues that English and Scottish settlers brought their home countries’ witchcraft beliefs with them to Ireland and deeply feared malefic witchcraft until the mid-eighteenth century, by which time Protestants had come to regard themselves as “polite, rational, and enlightened” and witchcraft allegations as “self-evidently irrational and ridiculous” (123), something they imputed more to ignorant and superstitious Catholics. Yet, as Sneddon and others note, Ireland’s Catholics were far less likely to accuse people of witchcraft than were its Protestants. Sneddon explains this as arising from Irish Catholics’ “more benign, culturally-specific witch figure [who] was not threatening enough to warrant legal proceedings” (146). They saw witches primarily as butter-thieves who “were easily combatted by religious, magical, or ritualistic means, and consequently they posed a minimal economic and social threat to their communities” (54). In addition, fairy beliefs offered Irish Catholics a more compelling explanation for mysterious misfortune than did witchcraft allegations. Both Catholics and Protestants, however, continued to believe in the power of “cunning-folk,” magical practitioners who could heal and help counter supernatural afflictions of people and property, especially crops and animals, and Sneddon ably integrates attitudes toward and allegations against such individuals into his analysis. He also diligently considers scholarship on witchcraft in Ireland since the sixteenth century, especially works by St. John Seymour, Raymond Gillespie, Ronald Hutton, and Elwyn Lapoint, and carefully contextualizes Irish developments with those occurring in England and Scotland. Yet, while Sneddon’s Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland fills some significant gaps, it also creates new ones, especially if it becomes the standard study of