Issue 61: did belief in ‘magic’ actually prevent witch hunts in the British Isles?
Evidence suggests that Celtic communities who believed in fairies and natural magic conducted very few witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Welcome to Born Free Press, a fortnightly newsletter delivering a free-range collection of interesting stories for interested people. Currently focusing on quirks and curiosities from the UK’s history.
About 60,000 people were executed for the crime of witchcraft in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the British Isles there were around 5,000 witch trials. At least 75% of those accused were women.
But maps of the trials (such as in Robin Briggs ‘Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft’) show a significantly low number of cases in the main Celtic areas of the British Isles: the Gaelic regions of Scotland, Ireland, as well as Wales and the Isle of Man despite them being integrated into England’s political and administrative structures by the early modern period.
In the Celtic societies where there were trials, it tended to be in frontier and other zones where links with non-Celtic culture were strongest.
Historian Ronald Hutton has made the case that it was the Celts’ belief in fairies and the evil eye, and their acceptance of magic and cursing as a legitimate tool for getting by in life, which helped prevent them from being drawn into the panic of accusations of evil and demonic witchcraft.
“An examination of witchcraft prosecutions in the early modern Celtic societies of the British Isles reveals an absolutely consistent pattern: of a relatively low incidence of trials, produced by a relatively weak fear of witchcraft, which was itself rooted in a distinctive culture of belief concerning the nature of supernatural harm.”
Witch trials in Celtic societies:
Wales: 34 (majority in regions under English influence; only eight convictions)
Central and Western Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides: 8 (out of 3,837 for the whole of Scotland)
Isle of Man: 4
Ireland: Hutton says “witch trials seem to have been totally absent among the native Irish”
It must be noted – as Hutton does in his paper ‘Witch-Hunting In Celtic Societies’ – that not all historians agree with his theory. Although in his later book, ‘The Witch’, he states responses to the paper had been favourable.
I present a summary of his research here because I find the idea intriguing and the argument convincing.
Before we go too far, a point of clarification: the use of ‘Celtic’ in this context refers to a group of languages, and by extension, the ethnic and cultural identities developed around those languages.
The term ‘fairies’ can be used to describe multiple categories of being, but there are two in particular which are relevant to this story: creatures associated with natural features of land and water, and a parallel society of non-human people that live in hills and mounds. The former could cause shipwrecks, lure people to a watery death, and roamed the moors and glens where they were particularly dangerous to lone travellers. The latter where known for causing illness or death to humans, crops, and livestock, and were especially dangerous to children – injuring them, or even stealing them and leaving fairy children in their place.
Another feature of Celtic culture was belief in the ‘evil eye’, the capacity of certain people to cause harm – to people, animals, property – with just a look. Although in most cases it was considered to be unintentional. The person did not choose to wield the power and therefore could not be held responsible for its effects.
Crucially, this mischief, misfortune, and maleficence is exactly the type of crime that might be attributed to witches in non-Celtic societies.
That’s not to say that the Celts didn’t believe in witches, or that the English and Lowland Scots didn’t believe in fairies and the evil eye – there is evidence for both these things. But it’s the degree to which they believed in them that Hutton, and the other historians whose evidence he’s drawn on, says made the difference.
“Scottish Gaels feared witches less than other Scots, and feared both fairies and the evil eye proportionately more.” He also cites Thomas Crofton Croker, who found that tales of witchcraft in Irish Gaelic folklore were few in comparison with those about fairies and did not seem native. Similarly, Richard Suggett said the concept of the evil, often female, witch only arrived in Wales in the 16th Century and came from England.
Evidence from Gaelic Scotland and Ireland in particular show no sense of the witch as naturally evil and driven by demonic forces – the stereotype that lies behind the early modern European witch hunts. Instead, the lethal beings were the fairies.
The historic records of Celtic communities also show evidence of counter-magic used by humans as a regular part of their everyday lives to thwart or punish their adversaries, and to further their lot.
Hutton says magic was “treated as a weapon or tool which was neutral in itself but attracted condemnation if used by bad people to attack the good, especially if it was deployed with treachery”.
This magic could take various forms – from prayers and blessings, to charms, spells, or curses.
And, for example in Gaelic Scotland, punishment for using magic maliciously was proportionate to the amount of damage inflicted (as was the case with the use of physical weapons) and the deception and spite involved. In Wales and the Isle of Man, mediation was used to solve problems between the curser and the cursed, with apologies and retraction of curses the desired outcome.
So, when the above beliefs and practices are considered, it’s reasonable to suggest that Celtic societies had little need to ascribe misfortune and malevolence to witches – and seek justice or revenge through accusation, trial, and execution – when their culture said that fairies and the evil eye were to blame and they had mechanisms in place for protection and resolution. And therefore, it’s reasonable to suggest that these beliefs and practices influenced the exceptionally low incidence of witch trials in their communities.