Medieval Irish Folklore (Radio Edit)

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1:43Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster and that hum of excitement you can hear in the air is because we're coming to you live from the Hay Literary Festival in Wales. Say hello, audience!

2:10So today we are meandering back to medieval Ireland to learn all about Irish magic and I did an Irish there, didn't I? Sorry. To learn all about Irish magic and folklore in the Middle Ages. And to help me separate history from Hocus Pocus, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a historian of medieval and early modern Ireland, specialising in women, gender and folklore. She's returning to You're Dead to Me after her raucous run in our Gráinne O'Malley episode, Absolute Chaos It Was, is Dr Gillian Kenny. Welcome back, Gill.

2:47And in Comedy Corner, he's a comedian, writer and actor. You might have caught him on the hilarious sketch show No Worries If Not, The Michael Fry Show or Hollywood Hijack. And it's very likely you've seen him on Tintinet because he's one of those young people who does viral sketch comedy and he does them very well, is Sean Burke. Thank you, Sean. Thank you.

3:07Thrilled to have you on, Sean. First timer? Yeah, yeah, first timer. So I have to ask the contractually obliged question. Did you do medieval Irish history at school? I think. Good. It's a while ago now. So counterintuitively, we studied a lot of American history in school. That's the Joe Biden curriculum. Yeah, yeah. We're still so proud of JFK to this day. So, what do you know?

3:35We start, as ever, with the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener and audience, hello, know about today's subject. And I'm guessing most of you don't know a huge amount about medieval Ireland, let alone medieval Irish magic and folklore. Perhaps you're conjuring up vague images of banshees frolicking around forests. Pop culture is not exactly bursting with references to Irish magic. You can get glimpses in films like Hellboy 2. Not everyone's fave, I guess. It's got characters there that are based on the mythological race called the Tuatha Dé Danann.

4:07You've got sinister fairies in Jonathan Strange, Mr Norrell. Anyone seen Excalibur, Arthuriana? That's got a sort of Irish-y vibe to it. And you've got countless cultural references in films and books and TV. to fairies and elves and other worlds. But what else do we need to know? Right, Dr Jill, start with the basics. What is Ireland? No, come on, we can do better than that. No pressure. How long have you got? How are we defining medieval Ireland? Because you as a historian go longer into the medieval period than I do as a historian in the medieval period. So presumably everyone knows where Ireland is.

4:39We just start with that one. It's just over to the left, the one that looks like a teddy bear. So it does go a little bit longer. goes into the 16th and 17th centuries because Gaelic Ireland, which was the predominant culture on the island, spread into there. It was sadly destroyed in the 16th and 17th centuries, but we won't talk about that today. It's a comedy show. It's a comedy show. Who destroyed it? I'm feeling the Welsh might understand it. Any Welsh in the audience, no. Anyway, today... So today we'll talk mostly about Ireland after the conversion to Christianity in the 5th century, as that's where we start to get most of our literary sources and this conversion brought the huge economic, social and intellectual changes.

5:24But we do have some idea about what happened in pre-Christian Ireland. There's some historical sources but we use archaeology as well. There's certainly an idea that there was a kind of a nature worship around forests and wells. Of course there's the druids which people will of course be aware of. But of course when the Christians come along in the 5th century they run those out and then they start to write down the oral tales but of course everything has a veneer of christianity on it okay so fifth century is the christianization of ireland that is that sort of saint patrick's vibe yeah that's saint patrick lands then and then runs around battling druids and does the whole shebang which i'm sure sean knows about as a good irishman yeah the whole shebang drove the snakes out as well while he was at it the whole thing with the shamrock, the logo launch.

6:15Resounding success. How are you imagining life in medieval Ireland, Sean? What's your go-to image in your head? Lots of fields, a few little huts, probably cheaper rent than I imagined than nowadays, so not too bad to be honest, overall. Jill, what do we mean by medieval Ireland in terms of life and identity culture? Well, Sean pretty much had it. No, he didn't. Thank you. Anyway, the story is medieval Ireland is, of course, It is a tale of two cultures, basically, for most of the Middle Ages, particularly the later period. You have Gaelic-Irish and the English-Irish, or the Anglo-Irish they were known.

6:50What we're talking about today are really Gaelic-Irish culture and beliefs and society. So within that, it's a very hierarchical, it's a very patriarchal system. There are what used to be kings, they became lords. There's loads of little kingdoms and lordships that gave allegiance to kind of overlords. and this is medieval Europe so of course it's rural people are working the land fields yeah see come on there's widespread violence of course there is because it's a warrior society but what's really interesting about medieval Gaelic Ireland to me is that there is an intellectual class which is right at the top and these are the birds the olives the professors and they have huge rights and absolute respect at the top so these are historians were right at the top of the tree so my ancestors knew what was what.

7:39Comedians? So men were allowed to be this.

7:45Okay. Sorry. Women were not. So there was types of comedian called a braggator, which was a professional farter. I'm saying, Sean, do you know what I mean? It's an option. Do you know what I mean? If the whole thing doesn't work out. I do that for free all the time. If I could monetise that. There's comedians in medieval Ireland, but they are always male. Okay. All right. Listener wasn't perfect, you know what I mean? Yeah. But there's another big influence coming down the tracks as well. It's the infamous V word. Sean, what is the V word in the medieval period? Vegans? I was going to go Vikings.

8:23Vegans is fine. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was about to say. No, Vikings. Well, Dublin's a Viking settlement. It is, yeah. So I'm from Dublin, so I'm technically Viking, is what you're saying. You've got the moustache. Yeah, so. The listeners at home will just have to trust us on that one as well. You've also got the English showing up. Sorry. But we also get a special guest appearance from the Welsh. Wow. Don't shout too soon. Because it's basically the Welsh you invaded. Oh, well, well, yeah. You've lost the room. But all I'm saying is you're an old one, because in the early medieval period, the Irish used to raid along your coasts and catch slaves.

9:05So, fair enough. OK. Tit for tat. We'll give that one to the Welsh. Do you know what I mean? Wasn't... They're rising up again. There we go. OK, OK. Close the gates. We're outnumbered here. Let's take the festival, Sean. Let's do it. But anyway, what happened was, in 1166, the King of Leinster, Durant McMurray, had been exiled, and he approached Henry II, asking for help to get back his kingdom of Leinster. and Henry said yes of course because he quite fancy getting a foothold in Ireland what I think we might nicely term a whole load of back and forth over the medieval period and afterwards but after the English arrived there's a whole shifting pattern of territory controlled by the English king it becomes a real mishmash of different kind of cultures by the early 16th century about 60 % of the island is controlled or influenced by Gaelic lords so it's very heavily Gaelic.

9:59What's interesting is that this consistent Gaelic identity spread across the island. It was very consistent. They used the same language, same system of laws, and that even spread up into Scotland, into what's widely called the Gaeltaught. So it was a whole outward-looking Irish-speaking world, which was kind of very active and very vibrant by that stage. Time now to talk about magic, the realm of magic. Sean, what is magic? That's a very conceptual question, Greg. Harry potter uh springs to mind but famously english things that cannot be explained by you know logic and science mystical stuff the supernatural yeah all right are we happy with that definition uh yeah it does involve some of that but mostly uh irish magic is about influencing material reality through words so words quite literally transform reality um in the irish system whether because of its inherent power in the words themselves or thanks to the intervention of a supernatural being you make a supplication so words of power have three uses in the irish system it's healing harming and protection we also see the importance of words in things like place names which were often associated with mystical and mythical beings the land itself is diffused with magic in wrath crowan in county roscommon there's a cave called oeuvre magot the cave of the cats which since medieval times has been thought of as the entrance to the other world and that's very much associated with the goddess Morrigan.

11:28She's a very fearsome battle goddess who is said to emerge out of there once a year with her host to lay waste. Where's the entrance to the underworld? The cave of the cats. Wow. Yeah, rat crowing in County Roscommon and that's also a place associated with Queen Maeve who's also a very badly behaved woman. so many of the magical beliefs we're discussing today jill they come from oral traditions of stories magical tales and myths that are recorded they're written down during the christian era they're sorted into what historians call cycles which has nothing to do with bicycles it's to do with collections of stories they are grouped into collections they feature different beings which appear in the magical tales and as i said they were written down by christian monks they're grouped into these cycles there's a mythological cycle and that features the tuha de danon who were mangled in hellboy 2 as greg was saying the beginning so they usually translate as tribes of people of the goddess danu they're a supernatural race who live in the other world and the other world is where you go via certain elements in the irish countryside like the great passage tombs the brew and their enemy are a race called the four maurians which are depicted as evil and monstrous the ulster cycle which is set in the mythical parts of eastern ulster and northern leinster the fenian cycle about a mythical hero called finn mccool and his band of warriors the and the king cycle which are legends about historical and semi-historical irish kings and the tuha de danon were said to have acquired magic in the northern islands before coming to island, Ireland.

13:09So they are what you might know as the fairies. And a lot of this activity is listed in an actual book we have called the Book of Invasions, because we don't forget. And you mentioned fairies. How are you picturing a fairy, Sean? Are we sort of Tinkerbell with Tato? Yeah, that feels like the Hollywood version of fairies. But as always with these things, I feel like they're probably more fearsome than that in the actual tellings. How big? You thinking this big, small? I'm thinking waist height. Let's say waist height, but fierce. Small, but aggressive. You hear a lot about fairy folk. Like most Irish people.

13:44Yeah. Sorry, are we not describing it? Irish people. Yeah, yeah. The idea of a fairy, I mean, Hollywood has taken it and made it adorable and cute and small and it's sort of very princessy, but we're not talking that here in medieval Ireland, are we? Fairies are scary. You don't want to mess. They are beings who are immune to our charm. They can be very malevolent. They can love us. They live alongside us in the invisible realm. So the fairy, though, doesn't even begin to describe them. Fairy is a later English name for them. Their original name is the Ais She, and that means people of the hollow hills.

14:20In Irish tradition, you never call them by their name because you don't want to get their attention. They provide a very handy mechanism within Gaelic medieval Ireland for explaining bad stuff. So if someone died, unfortunately, if you had problems with livestock, if you had crop failures, that's the fairies. You've annoyed the fairies. Of course, you've got like famous fairies like the Banshee, for example, who predicted people's deaths by crying out and screeching at them or their loved ones. So the thing about the Banshee is, if you hear it, you're not going to die. But someone you know is.

14:59Just putting that out there. That's very intense. Yeah. When I first moved to London, I heard foxes in the night. And I just thought, it's the Banshee. But they're not the only ones who will turn up for people. Because fairies would do you a bad turn if you did one for them. There's a belief in Ireland, for example, in things called fairy darts. Elf darts is another name for them. So it's like bits of stone or they're fashioned into like arrowheads. They were probably like Stone Age arrowheads that people found. And they would fire them at cattle and cause them some kind of harm. And fairy women are often described trying to steal away princes or heroes in the midst.

15:38So there's also a belief in changelings, for example, as well. This is where the fairies would swap your baby and put a fairy baby in its place, a changeling. and the way you'd know it was a changeling was, OK, so your baby would start to smoke a pipe

15:58or play the fiddle or start talking in an old man's voice. So then you might go, I think my baby's a fairy. Subtle giveaway there. Look, did the baby always smoke with a pipe? What we thought we'd do now, actually, Sean, is because you're a sketch comedian and you've got a range of voices and impressions, we thought maybe we'd give you some role-playing to do. Oh, I love a bit of role-playing. We've got some props, we've got some costumes, and then we're going to have our medieval agony aunt, Dr Jill. She's going to help you and your various characters out with their medieval magical problems.

16:30Sounds great. So we're going to have problem number one. So, Sean, do you want to pop on your appropriate costume? Bag of some fairly stereotypical possessions. Oh, my God, is that a flat cap? That is a flat cap. I presume this is for this one. Okay. Here we go. Dear Dr. Jill, help! My cattle have keeled over, and I fear they've fallen foul of fairy darts. How can I protect the rest of my livestock from disgruntled fairy folk? Hi, Sean. There are a variety of protections against fairy attacks on your cattle. The first is an amulet of mistletoe and mountain ash, which you will have to use. You may also want to enlist the help of your local friendly cunning folk, people who practice healing and defensive magic so these are the cunning men and wise women ban fassa of the irish tradition they can do incantations prayers and so on you must also make sure to avoid disturbing any reported fairy dwellings there are loads of stories about people being cursed with bad luck if they dig it up in any way or interfered with fairy forts fairy Ferry forts are early medieval homesteads called rats, ring forts.

17:44So avoid. The only time I hear about fairy forts is when somebody's trying to build a road in Ireland. They're like, no, I'm not touching that. They stopped it. They stopped it. Yeah, it happens. Fairies can be mischief makers, but we don't want to unfairly scapegoat them. Because, you know, they're not always to blame. Because there's something else to worry about, Sean. The evil eye. Have you heard of the evil eye? You mean like Sauron? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that, man. yeah no outside of that no i mean it sounds familiar but i actually don't specifically know dr jill uh why is the evil eye because i've heard of it sean's heard of it but why is it people were genuinely worried about the evil eye about the effect on people and animals there's a source from the 16th century a jesuit priest father good and he talks about the fact that cunning folk were regularly employed to cure what he called eye bitten livestock there's a few options if you get stuck by the evil eye.

18:38In 17th century Kildare, parents used to protect their children from the evil eye by spitting in their faces. Yes! Bring it back! Bring it back! It's not... Don't try that one at home. And even better is the next thing, which is even more effective against the evil eye. So all around Ireland, there are mysterious stone carvings called sheil and a giggs. And they are of old women or hags, Kylock in the Irish tradition. I've no other way of saying this. Displaying their vulva. I have to get it out. So they are grotesque and they are doing... Just please Google it, not your work one. And the idea is that these vulvas of old ladies are so powerful that they can avert the evil eye.

19:34and the older I get, the more I begin to agree with it, I've got to tell you. Yeah. All the hugs. All the hugs from the audience.

19:47Should we have another problem? Yeah, that's a happy segue. Can we have problem number two then, Sean? This is, I think this is a butter problem. Right, classic butter problem. Dear Jill, help. The girls are coming over for brunch this weekend and my butter won't churn. How can I make my dairy delicious again?

20:1299 butter churning problems. Okay, that was a big problem in Medieval Ireland because people liked their dairy. So, Sean, sounds like you've got a butter witch on your hands. That's a true thing. These were beings who in the Irish tradition transformed into hares to steal milk from cows and to prevent your butter from being churned. To drive away a butter witch, Sean, what you have to do is burn the thatch from a suspected butter witch's house. You need it to be sure. Or not, if you didn't like her, don't care. You could also drive the cattle through the ashes or smoke of bonfires on May Eve, or you could try shooting some hares and waiting to see the inevitable, horribly hurt old woman staggering around after it.

21:06OK. Again? Because she turned back into an old woman, not because he was shooting old women. He's shooting hares. Oh, I'm glad you clarified that. Yeah, yeah. So they are Irish witches. That is an Irish witch. They steal your butter, which is probably the least threatening witch you've ever heard. Yeah. Let's talk about magical words and cursing as well. And I think you mentioned it very early on, the idea of cursing. and the magical transformative power of words to effect real change in the material world, which is very exciting. But how do you curse someone? There's a couple of ways you can do it.

21:37You can go to a blacksmith. They will help you curse. The blacksmith's curse was really powerful. You can go to places where there are cursing stones. There are actual places in the Irish landscape where they set up cursing altars and you could go and touch them in an anti-clockwise direction while uttering the curse. So it's a huge ritual. Gerald of Wales described Irish saints as having a particularly vindictive cast of mind. And they were very, very good at cursing and they used props. So they used their bells, their hand bells, and what were called their buckles or croziers. And they used to use them in these spectacular displays of cursing.

22:11And there's all these crazy stories where they took their buckle and struck it and killed druids and fell dragons. And so there's a total tradition of that. They're basically a magic wand. They could use those. nice anti-clockwise on the stone anti-clockwise to curse clockwise uh clockwise to send good thoughts but who is going to travel out to one of these places and go yeah i love my neighbor yeah sure no it's and it's proper like it's a proper effort you gotta go like yeah you gotta really hate your neighbor you gotta get in a boat you're gonna get out there you're gonna trudge up and then three times you've got certain words to say and then you turn them anti-clockwise isn't.

22:53Bang. It's a lot to remember. Did you say there was a bell in there as well? So the bishops used to use bells. Very, very famous for it. They had little hand bells which they would curse people with. Right. It really adds an extra oomph if you could just ring a bell every time you say ding-a-ding-a-ding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've no special effects, do you know what I mean? It's a big deal back then. It was theatre. It was the type of theatre. It was good. But there is still sin in doing some of this cursing magic, right? I mean, I'm trying to get my head around where the rules lie because we know of penitential handbooks guidebooks for priests on what happens if a parishioner comes in and they've done a magical sin so there is still a sense that this is not always okay it's about power with the early christian church they didn't like women doing magic because women often did love magic and magic to try and attempt reproduction and and they didn't like that at all now there's a penitential of finian as it's called which dates from 591 and that does use the term maleficium which is sorcery to refer to magic it's a really early use of the phrase interestingly when the church appeared in ireland the words for magic exploded so that's what they were talking about they were fixated on magic after they arrived and on controlling it so in the penitential of finian if you do sorcery you do half a year's penance on bread and water if you use sorcery to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy and you get an abstention from wine and meat for two years.

24:18Ooh. Now, that sounds a lot, but it's actually not. That's actually quite a small one. So they were very cognizant that women were doing this kind of magic and they needed to prepare for it. The Nuance Window!

24:37Time now for The Nuance Window. This is where Sean and I churn our butter for two whole minutes while Dr Jill brings her magic touch to today's story. So pray silence for the nuance window and take it away, Dr Jill. Right. Well, after all of that, I hope I've convinced some of you that magic matters. To my mind, how can we ever really lay claim to uncovering a culture's secrets if we pay no heed to their inner secret lives? In Ireland's case, those were millennia long conversations with gods, goddesses and the realm invisible. the land itself was marked by magic for thousands of years human sacrifices lay buried in the ancient quiet of ireland's dank velvety soil those bog bodies ritually killed at the borders of ancient kingdoms so that they could continue to protect them even in the afterlife and embedded above them in ireland's physical landscape is a magical geography which everyone knew the homes of their invisible neighbors the she the forts bushes trees and the great brew which they guarded ferociously because the land was shared these places teamed with invisible life and the fairy folks were just as capricious and unpredictable as the land and weather itself life both seen and unseen was always on a knife edge in medieval Ireland and so over centuries people developed the means to manage those relationships to engage with the land as a goddess to try and mollify her experts emerged whose skills allowed them to intercede with the she to keep the peace and opportunities were found to magically redirect the stress and fear that was a constant companion to many.

26:08For example, if you hated your neighbour and wished to harm them but couldn't, what better way to relieve the stress than to take yourself to the place of the cursing stones and do that. So magic matters, from understanding the types of charms women chanted over sick children, to figuring out just how a great saint used magic to enchant a woman into loving a man, and on to absorbing how magic was such a standard part of life that the lawyers put safeguards and punishments in place. From looking at all of this, we can tell lots about how and why the society used magic, which in turn tells us loads about the nature and balance of power and belief in Ireland, how social change, gender roles, and about how human beings understood and charted their responses in times of both crisis and plenty.

26:55Magic lasted a long time in Ireland, until the 20th century, anthropological students were still visiting and writing theses on banshee belief. In 1999, famously, a campaign was run not to disturb a fairy bush in Clare while a road bypass was being built. Have those beliefs now gone? A lot of them sure, but perhaps not all of them. And maybe that's not a bad thing. Irish farmers won't interfere with a fairy fort even today. Does that speak to a backwardness? No, of course not. Ireland's a modern educated country but in a western world which has lost its connection with nature and its spirits we might ponder the value of lingering powerful guardians of the land who we dare not interfere with it seems to me that that's not at all a bad magical belief to hold on to.

27:42Thanks very much. Thank you very much.