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Not Just the Tudors
Ireland's Witchcraft Trials
00:44:00
The chilling story of possession, witchcraft accusations and Ireland’s only recorded execution of a man for witchcraft.
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
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- [02:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. In February 1711, Anne Haltridge, an elderly widow, died at no head house on the island McGee Peninsula of County Antrim island, having suffered months of debilitating supernatural attacks. Beds stripped by unseen hands, stones hurled against windows household objects which vanished only to reappear days later. Bed sheets found arranged in the shape of a corpse, and finally, an apparition which told of Anne's death. In the days after the funeral, Anne's 18 year old niece, Mary Dunbar, moved into no Head House. Almost immediately she showed signs of similar possession, convulsions, violent fits, levitation and the vomiting of pins, buttons and feathers. In March, Mary Dunbar accused eight women of summoning demons to possess her. The women were tried and sentenced under the 1586 Irish Witchcraft act, imprisoned for a year and publicly shamed in the pillory. Though those responsible had seemingly been punished, Mary Dunbar's health continued to worsen. Blame this time fell on William Seller, husband and father to the previously convicted Janet and Elizabeth. When Mary died suddenly, William was tried and found guilty not only of witchcraft, but of murder, becoming the first man in Irish history to be executed as a witch. Joining me to discuss the remarkable story of the Island McGee witches is Dr. Andrew Sneddon, senior Lecturer in International History at Ulster University. A historian of early modern society and culture, Dr. Snowden is an expert in the field of medicine, magic and witchcraft. His wonderful books include Witchcraft and Wigs and Representing Magic in Modern Belief, History and Culture. He's currently working on a forthcoming title on disability and magic, and he's recently revised his landmark work on the island McGee witches. Possessed by the Devil. The History of the island of the McGee Witch Trials, 1711. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb and you are listening to Not Just the Tudors from history hit. Dr. Sneddon, welcome to the podcast.
- [04:52]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Hello.
- [04:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It seems funny because we know so much about the 1612 Pendle witches, the 1692 Salem witches. The story of the island McGee witches is comparatively, relatively unknown. What drew you to it?
- [05:08]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, I mean, I wrote about English witchcraft at first and I actually did my PhD in Lancaster. So I knew a lot about the Pendle witches and my supervisor wrote about it. And when I came to Ulster, I was working as an archivist first of all. And then I got a job at Ulster University and I was teaching the history of witch trials and the students were saying, so what about Ireland? And nothing had really been written about it. So I started a book. Writing about it became Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland. And through that I found the Nayla McGee trial and it was so well documented compared even to the pendlewitch trial that you're talking about there. I thought I just have to do something with this. I really do.
- [05:52]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I'm very glad that you did. So let's think about the story together then. It really starts with the death of Anne Holdridge. What can you tell me about the unusual circumstances surrounding it?
- [06:03]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, I mean, to the eyes of people who were living there at the time In Isle of McGee, they're mostly Presbyterians, so they're Protestants, they're from Scotland. They probably came after 1660, but they might have came before displacing the Catholic population of Aylan Magee. And they all basically believed that what was happening was demonic. And there were loads of things that were happening. You've mentioned some of them, like bed clothes being removed, things opening at night. Ann Haultry's feeling horribly this demonic presence crawling over her body at night. And when she went to look for it, she couldn't find it anything. And then obviously the demonic boy who has described the way that demons are described in Scottish witch trials, you know, dressed in black, appearing out of nowhere, that sort of thing. So the community who are well versed in demonic literature, who are well versed in Scottish witch beliefs, are seeing this as not quite right, you know, and ascribing it to demonic behavior. Maybe two centuries later, they would have said it was a poltergeist because it's doing the same thing, but they're interpreting this supernatural phenomenon as demonic.
- [07:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yeah, that's so interesting, isn't it? All in the eye of the beholder. And I suppose the key thing here is that it happens to Anne. Anne dies, then her niece, Mary Dunbar moves in and it starts happening all over again. Is that really when attention is paid to it?
- [07:39]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Yeah, I mean, well, even before that, I mean, what you get is almost Anne Haltridge, who's the elderly Mitchell of this gentry family, she's holding up well, she's retiring to her room, she's seeing these things, but she's not making a big deal of them, you know, and this happens over what, the course of four months to Anne. But it all kicks off and Mary Dunbar arrives and the whole community is turned upside down. You know, like they are in a lot of possession and witch trials, but possession cases as well. There are opportunities to see the devil in action.
- [08:14]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And why was Mary's testimony believable?
- [08:17]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, she is a member of the gentry, she's well educated, she's convincing and she's telling it to men a lot of the time who, when they're writing this down or continue telling you how good looking she is and how well presented she is, you know, and maybe we're going to talk about that in a minute, but in Contrast to the people she's accusing, she strikes a very believable. Oh, a very believable character. But I think the main thing is that she's in a community that believes in witchcraft. It believes in the earthly power of the devil. And there's whole other things that are happening that are making, like in most trials, making things worse, making bad situations worse by wider, you know, societal and economic and political changes around them.
- [09:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So how did they go about investigating this case? And what was the explanation for her knowing the names of the women she accused?
- [09:12]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
What we have here is we have a Scottish people in Ireland, but it's under English laws and English court system. If you were talking about an English trial, just transport that to Ireland because it's the same sizes, jp. So they initially look into it, of course, they go to the minister first, then just the peace. The magistrate looks into it and then the mayor, Edward Clements, he gets involved. His descendant is Samuel Hawthorne Clements, Mark Twain. So he looks into it and what he does was he gets a minister to do the usual, get the women in, ask them what they know about the Bible, see if they can repeat the Lord's Prayer. And also he's trying to find out about the spectral evidence because Mary Dunbar says she's never been in the place before. She doesn't know these people. She only knows them, the people she's going to accuse of her demonic possession, of witchcraft, because they're attacking her in a spectral or spirit form. They're coming to her, they're threatening or doing what they always do in the spectral attack in witch trials, threatening her, tempting her to come with them to join the devil's legions and hurting her as well. And so people see that, they don't see the spectral form. What they see is her going into convulsions and fits and fallen down dead and all that. That's what they say. They don't see the spirits. So what they do is they bring, when she names them or she describes her clothing, you know, they're tracked down by the clothing, and we can go into that as well. They're very distinct. I mean, we're talking about people with disabilities here. So they have very distinct physical appearance and they're tracked down by this. And they bring them in in a kind of identity parade. But there are people there who are skeptical. So what they do is they make sure it's a blind one and they put in different people and all that, you know, so that, you know, she has to pick them out of this lineup. And then at One point they turn her to the wall unfathomably. She picks them out every time, the eight women, every time you know, they do this, she picks them out of the lineup, no matter whether she's, you know, and often she goes into the fits when they approach, which is another common trope in English witch trials involving demonic possession.
- [11:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, and something that people will be familiar with from the Salem trials. But as you've pointed out, these eight women named by Mary are likely to be particularly vulnerable to the charge of witchcraft because of how people saw such sort of marginalized groups at the time.
- [11:57]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Absolutely. I mean, they're all poor. You know, Mary Dunbar is not poor. They're all educated. But I mean, if you go through them, you know, if you even, you know, just look at the women involved and their names and their physical descriptions that she gives them, you can see this straight away that she's basically picking likely suspects here. You know, through their behavior, through the way they look, through their local reputations, she's picking the likely suspects. They're believable witches in the sense they have. You know, for example, Janet Latimer is said to be of an ill fame, suggesting a reputation for low morals. She's talked about being as ill looking with a sallow complexion. But Janet Miller, you know, has disabilities and has physical difference. She's from the Scotch quarter of Carrickfergus, she's blind in one eye. She has smallpox scars and she survived falling in the fire. So she's a little woman with dark brown hair and the same side of her face where she's lost an eye is drawn in by the smallpox and her fingers are all drawn together in a crook where she has fell on in the fire. Margot Mitchell, she's married. She's red faced and said to have unevenly set teeth, rough arms, coarse arms and blind of an eye. Their clothes are old and stained as well. So she's plac them physically as well. And at this point, disability is linked in religious terms to inner corruption and sin. What can be. And so the outward physical appearance is almost a text is read as a way into their characters. So by the fact they look like this is an indication that they're likely witches. I'll not go on, but I mean, I think just one more. Janet Main is an irreligious woman. Malicious temper, unkept appearance, average height, very little lies. Mary describes her as. And she's describing these, you know, under oath, and she's describing them to the people who are watching this so that they can go and get them. And she said she's short nosed, long faced, with a birthmark on her breast. And that's how Mary describes her. And if I go through them all, I mean it's one after the other. So they're not only, you know, they'll look different but. But they're challenging authority as well. They're said Mary Dunbar points out, they drink wine, strong alcohol, they smoke. A lot of them resist arrest, they resist the prosecution process. They're not doing what a good woman should do, go along with the process. They resist it right up to the end. You know, when they're convicted, they are, I think, you know, the type of women that people would have thought were likely to slide into witchcraft.
- [14:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It is extraordinary when you outline it all like that, to think that this feels from our perspective, really like a license for cruelty from someone from this position of utter privilege to describe them in such harsh terms. So what happens in the trial? They're specifically accused of dealing with the devil, but what are they actually convicted of?
- [15:12]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Yeah, they're convicted of harm and using magical means. So what happens? Do you remember we were saying about the court procedure is taken from England? Well, the Witchcraft act is taken from England. So the 1587 Irish Witchcraft act, it's just a rolling out of the Elizabethan statute or law book and that's part of it. So it's basically the 1563 English Witchcraft Act. It's not replaced in Ireland by the 16041 like it is in England. It stays there. So they have to basically murder for it to be a capital trial. But they're only accused of Harmon Mary Dunbar. Now the 12 man jury, the petty jury, not the grand jury, the petit jury, try to bring in Ann Haltridge's murder. They try to make it a capital crime, but the judges stop that. We don't really know why, but I think they don't want to go down that route mid trial turning any capital case.
- [16:08]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And fascinating too that if they haven't introduced the 1604 act in Ireland, then it's not a capital offense to conjure with the devil, to conjure black magic as it would have been at the same time in England.
- [16:26]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Absolutely. You know all the stuff about familiars you've got in the 1563 and 1586, you know, don't conjure and don't do this. It's a kind of anti conjuring act as well. You know, an anti cunning person act as much as anything, but you don't have the level of detail. And yet the 1604 Act. You just have to harm using magic for it to be a capitalist.
- [16:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And is this why their sentence seems mild, at least in comparison to what we know was happening in other countries at the time?
- [16:55]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and this is what, you know, people, you know, they almost think of it as, oh, well, it couldn't have been that bad if the women were not accused. If the women weren't executed, it wasn't that bad. But we know about prisons at that time. They were there for remanding. They weren't actually set up. And a lot of crimes weren't actually punished by putting people in jail. They weren't set up to put you in jail for a year. So they were pretty horrible. And they were pilloried four times in a year and hit by all sorts of things. And I think Yeats and his Irish tales of the Irish peasantry in 1888, he actually sticks in a bit about the Illmagee witch trials at the end, you know, and he brings to the fore a kind of idea, it's a folk idea that one of them lost an eye while being pelted by cabbage stalks, you know, and that actually comes from a local historian in 1823, Samuel McKimmon. But Yeats takes it, and that is popularized, you know, that one of them. And considering two of them were partially cited anyway, it does make it, you know, make you think.
- [18:04]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And actually, there's also a really important point here about public humiliation. Some of my work has been on Protestant constitutory courts in France, where all they could do was a form of shaming punishment. And historians had previously thought that meant that they were sort of toothless. But in actual fact, the power of shame is so great. You know, when I was a child, my mother would tell me the phrase, sticks and stones my bones, but words will never hurt me. And it's almost the inverse is true, isn't it? Words are very, very powerful. And that kind of sense of public humiliation must have been intensely damaging at the time.
- [18:38]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Yeah, and, you know, I know because I've worked in the area and my research has went up to, you know, the 20th century about witchcraft and island. And I know for a fact that these people continued to live in the area, Their descendants continued to live in the area. The trial lived on in folk history. You know, there was places associated with the witches, and the people continued to live there, and tales were constantly talked about. And there were actually, you know, during the troubles, there were. The Elle McGee witches story was actually, you know, kind of Weaponized as well. So what I'm saying is even the fact that you get through that whole public shaming, getting hit with things, you have to live in the place as well, and your descendants, and it sticks to families because it lives on in folk history and in folklore right up to the 20th century, right up to today, you know, when I do a lot of public history around the trial, we're doing a video game and VR and graphic novel and things, and talking to people from the area, they're still telling the tales among themselves.
- [19:43]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Given the outcome of the trial, we might assume that Mary Dunbar's experiences with the supernatural would have ceased. What actually happened. And do you think it is because they continue to live, or is it more complicated than that?
- [19:56]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, I mean, it depends what you think Mary Dunbar's motivations were. You know, do you think. I mean, and this is. I had a chapter in the book and I kept doing. I was revising it. Many reasons why, because I think trying to have one overarching view of it is sometimes, you know, unhelpful. So there's a. There's a lot of reasons why she might have done it. I mean, and one of them could have been she was ill. And when I wrote the first book, couldn't find out what happened to her, you know, and that's why, you know, I expanded it because I did find what happened to her. She died just after this. So it was about two weeks after the first trial, she died. And so the idea is, was she really ill? It's hard to tell, but people and doctors at that time and she was examined, did pick up on, you know, forms of mental illness. They did pick up on, you know, epilepsy and things. And they did explain things in natural ways, but there wasn't any indication of that here, you know. And the other thing is, did she do it deliberately or semi deliberately? Did she fake some of her symptoms or did they start off being faked and become real? Because you see that in possession cases as well. You start off feigning it, but they actually. They're simulated and then become real, you know, but then you have to explain, you know, all the stuff that's happened. The demonic obsession, things moving on their own. She actually levitates at one point, she's not speaking in tongues. And then the other idea is that why would she fake it? And I would argue that you've got to look at this kind of terms of apartriacal world. So we're saying that because these were poor, uneducated women they were easy targets, well made them. Bar in her own way is reacting against this patriarchy. She'll be basically called a girl until she gets married. You know, she has very little political power. She can't go to university. There is so many prescriptions on what she can and can't do. And witchcraft is a good way and possession is a good way to do what you want, whether it's on a subconscious level or not. So for example, she's able to roll about her bed with young men who are holding her down from the local area. And as a member of the gentry, that would have got her in so much trouble because reputation is everything. But she can get away with that and maybe you know as well allows her to go from the margins of adult attention to the center of it. You know. And I'm not saying she's just an attention seeker. I'm saying that it's an exclusion and it's actually, it's an act of resistance just as much as the women who are accused. It's an act of resistance. She is resisting against this prescriptions on what she can and can't do.
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- [25:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So after her death, how then do we get to William Cella? How does he become the only man ever to be executed as a witch in Ireland?
- [25:20]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
So what happens at her trial? You know, on the road to her trial? So this happens mostly in the month of March and she's moved to a place, Larne, which is across the kind of Larne Loch from Isle and McGee, which is the peninsula. And then she's there for a couple of weeks and just before the trial she's on the way to Carrickfergus, where is the main assize court to stand trial. And she meets two women she's never met before in spectral form and a man. And they say you're not going to be able to testify at your trial against her friends the witches because we're going to remove your power of speech. So that's what they do. So she can't actually testify during the trial. There's 19 other witnesses, so she's okay, but you know, she can't testify in the trial. And she regains it by reading a passage of the Bible afterwards. But she's sent away. She's sent back to Castlereagh, which is, you know, it's miles away anyway, you know, back to her mother, get her out of Aylan McGee, get her out of Carrickfergus, send her back. But she continues to see these people. The two women drop out of the equation, the two strangers. But William Seller, he starts appearing to her and things, you know, start to happened in no head house as well. We've not talked about the demonic obsession, but we can come to that. She's continually seeing William Seller for a few days and then she complains that he stabbed her. He threatens to kill her. She says that he stabbed her with this kind of makeshift knife and everybody can see the scar, you know, so there's, you know, so we don't know how it got there, but she's saying that William Seller did that in spectral form. So they arrest him, they're brought before him, as you know, to test him again to see whether she goes into fit, she reacts or she knows who he is. She says no. He's left to go for two days. Then it continues again. And what happens is they get him again, but he tries to abscond, tries to run away and they bring him back and then put him in jail. Now this is happening two days before she dies. And she dies, you know, around, I think, 14-4-1711. So what's happened? He would have just been accused and prosecuted for harming or using magical means under the 1586 Act. But because she's died, it's a capital crime. And we know from a lengthy pamphlet account that he was tried on 14 September 1711 again at Carrickfergus Assize court and found guilty. And we know from the actual that basically that was the execution by hanging was the punishment for that crime.
- [28:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Where we do come across accounts of the Arne McGee witches, they actually little often mention Sella. And I wonder why that is. Why is his fate sort of separated out from those of the women and viewed differently?
- [28:15]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, what you have is like anything else, you know, you have an afterlife of a cultural afterlife of a trial. And if you're talking about the Salem. Why do we know more about the Salem witch trials, you know, or our American witch trials were, I think, what was it, 38 were executed across American history and 2 or 2,500 in Scotland, you know, I mean, how we remember and the importance we put to trials, you know. And you just said it yourself as well. Why do we know about the Pendle trials, you know. Well, a lot of work went into that, I think, you know, through playwrights in the 19th century. I'm talking about Pendle here. And then in the 20th century, late 20th century and early 21st century, through tourists boarding the local councils and things, you know. So why do we know more about this? Why was William Seller left out? Well, I think you can go Back to Samuel McSkimmon in 1823, who is the first local historian to write about it. And his book becomes really important because people just go back to it, whether they're journalists, whether they're playwrights or poets, they go back to that version and he leaves it out. He keeps alive, basically, the lone Pafla account by publishing it. But when he's talking about it, he leaves William Seller out and that's continued right the way through. And I think what you're doing here by excluding William Seller as you're Feeding into a narrative of the witch trials. And you're creating a narrative of the witch trials. And it's kind of an enlightened narrative as witch trials are caused by religious bigots at the elite, you know, people who, you know, who just want to get rid of any. It's not their religion, an ignorant populace. And the victims, the people who are accused of witchcraft and put to death, well, they're victims and they're women, you know, and the kind of complexity of people accused of witchcraft is lost. The resistance and the agency of the women involved is lost. And what you're seeing them as kind of hapless victims. And that worked in the 19th century and the 20th century. The Hail McGee witches are seen as well educated, they're seen as, you know, who are basically tracked down by this patriarchal state and prosecuted for it. And that narrative of William Seller doesn't fit. Witches are women.
- [30:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So there's a follow up question which is why then do we have thousands of people executed as witches in Scotland and comparatively few in Ireland?
- [30:51]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
I think the easiest answer to that is population, right? Most of the population are in this period and in the period of the witch trials, let's just say 1550, 1750, they're Roman Catholic, you know, native Irish and Irish speaking. And at the core they have a different view of witchcraft and it's different from Scotland. So the cumulative concept of witchcraft in Scotland, that witches use magic to harm under the aegis, the devil under the devil's direction is not there in Ireland. Witches, people who harm using magic are not associated with the devil. And Gaelic culture, they also, they tend to sit and act at times in the ritual year, for example Beltane, May day, May Eve. They're also easily countered. And they're not seen as harmful basically because they don't attack humans mostly as a butter and milk, as produce and sometimes harming a cattle as well. They're not a threat, they become a threat later on. And so you see in the 19th century they're almost a bigger problem. You see more accusations in the local courts. There's no trial, there's no witch law, but you're seeing loads of accusations coming before them. But at this point in Gallagherish culture, they're not a big threat. And so they're not going to the courts, they're not accusing each other of witchcraft. There's another argument that they're not going to these English courts because they're a colonial power. Well, they're actually. Native Irish are actually using these courts for other things. So that argument doesn't quite work. But that doesn't mean that they're not using the courts. I think that they probably would find it quite hard to get somebody accused and prosecuted for witchcraft when it's not that important and they can handle it themselves.
- [32:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Do you think there would have been any sort of skepticism about the enforcement of English law and these are Protestant courts and all that sort of thing, outside of the groups that were kind of Scottish Presbyterians?
- [32:57]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, yeah, I mean, there would have been skepticism, but I mean, they are using them for prosecuting each other. I mean, that's what we've seen in other areas of crime. But yeah, you can definitely the elites in the towns, the old English elites and, you know, the native Irish elites. Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that it's a pain in the neck to do it, it's really. Compared to Scotland, it's really quite hard in England to get somebody prosecuted for witchcraft. I'm talking about Scotland and the local courts, you know, the ad hoc courts. And you're talking in England and in Ireland you have to get the justice of the peace who has to look into it, who has to then put them in jail. Then you have to await trial. Then it has to go to the grand jury to see if it's a true bill, to see whether, you know, there's enough evidence. Then it goes to the jury trial, you know, in front of two assize judges, learned judges and a petty jury. A lot of those steps are, you know, and obviously in Scotland you can torture for evidence. You're meant to ask, but most of them don't, you know, after local trials. And that's one of the, I think the key things here. Now, what you've got in this kind of settler population, especially in Ulster, where they're mostly coming from Scotland, is this strong belief in demonic malfaic witchcraft, harmful witches operating under the devil. But it's not going anywhere either. You were talking about the consistory courts. We don't know much about the Church of Ireland consistory courts, the state Protestant church because they were destroyed in 1922. The ones that are found. I found one consistory court book for killal low in 1704. And that does have, you know, you are seeing the ministers involved, you know, stopping the accusations going any further. But we do have Presbyterian records and they're definitely doing that. They're mediating. So if you look at the fact that Presbyterians have not got full civil rights either at this point under the Protestant church of island state, and so they're Handling themselves by telling off the accuser. See, if you keep doing that, we are going to do you from slander. We are going to make you stand up in front of the church and tell everybody how bad you are or they're getting the person accused to apologize. So that's happening. And judicial skepticism, you know, I mean, you study France, so you know that it's there by 1711. Trials are on the downward slope because of, you know, judiciaries and judges and members of the legal machinery of prosecution aren't one to. I'm not saying they don't believe in witchcraft, but they don't want to convict on, you know, the evidence brought before them, especially from poor people sometimes, you know, and you're seeing this in Ireland, see by the point where you're getting an influx of Presbyterians after 1660 into Ulster, that's at the point where judicial skepticism is taken off. So when you're getting beliefs coming in, you're actually getting, you know, skepticism. So I think the judicial aspect, the fact that the clergy are getting involved and it's not much of a threat, I think that that explains it, you know, as much as we'll ever get an explanation.
- [36:24]
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And it does parallel what I found amongst Protestants in the sort of similar setup to the Kirk courts in France, which is that we do exactly have, you know, the curious case of the dog in the nighttime, which is, why does he not bark? In this case, we've got people who are accusing others of witchcraft and it gets written off as an insult and they have to say, sorry. We have, you know, cases where we've got a full panoply of magical practices that are enacted and nothing happens. So the skepticism of elites is crucial. Now, you've mentioned something about the fact that for those who were accused of witchcraft, they had to carry on living in that community. What else do we see in terms of lasting effects of the trials on the community of Anna McGee?
- [38:31]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, I mean, I think that people have, you know, sites in the peninsula, you know, in the 19th century and the 20th century that they won't go near at night, you know, so it's almost. There is no official commemoration of the elmagee witches until 2022. So it's almost informal commemoration through folk history embedded in the landscape, you know, so there's this old rocking stone at the very tip of the peninsula, and the folklore will tell you, in the 19th century, the witches dance on it at night and people won't get near it. And then there's another one in a field where it's called the witchy stone. And Catherine McCalmond, one of the accused witches, who. She lived next to there, and so did the minister, and she was meant to have been dragged off to court, and she left her fingerprints in this witchy stone. And this is another thing that the wound guinea. And there's loads of ghost sightings round about no Head House. People are always saying it's strange and don't get near it and things like that. And you will see that in the folklore when I talk to people right up to the present day, you know, but it changes depending on who you're talking to. And I think what you had in the 19th and 20th century, because people are still believing in witchcraft there, it's reinforcing a continuing belief in witchcraft. And when people are talking to folklore collectors or memoir collectors from Ainley McGee in the 1840s or 50s or 60s, what they're saying is that they believe that the Elmagee witches were guilty and they were punished for it and they deserved it. Now, you're not getting that, obviously, in the 20th century as much, but you're definitely getting it there, you know, so it's keeping belief alive almost in harmful witchcraft. And there's a case as well. It's part of a bigger work by Richard Jenkins. It's called Black Magic and Bogeymen. And it's about Special Branch of the ruc, the police service in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, who, according to one of the people in Special brands who was talking to Richard and obviously, you know, there's archival material as well. He was basically saying they set up these black magic sites, you know, the fake pentagrams and black candles, and they did them around Northern Ireland. And this is about 1972, 73. It places a strategic importance. So, you know, next to bases are places they wanted to keep kids away from, you know, and then they found their way into the newspapers. And there was a child murder as well earlier that was linked to, you know. So this Special Branch officer, he said that he chose Island McGee as one of the places for this fake black magic site because it already had a whole folklore, people were already scared of it. So what you do is you put on this kind of satanic panic onto the witch trial and there you go. And it was in the Goblins Cliffs in a cave that, you know, he said he recreated all this.
- [41:33]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I'm really struck by the fact that you've not only written about this case and as you've talked about all the many forms of public history you're producing from it, but you've also made the surviving evidence publicly accessible from pretrial depositions, letters, newspaper reports. How important was it to you to do that? And is that in some ways a kind of counterbalancing of this demonization, quite literally of the story from the 1970s back in time?
- [42:05]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, absolutely. I mean, I think that you should also always, if you can, make your materials available. You know, we are academic historians, we do it for a living. I follow rules, you know, I follow methodologies and I come up with these explanations, but that doesn't mean I'm right. And I find public history should be co produced. It should have many voices. I shouldn't be the only voice. There they are. If you can find something else, you know, go on. And when we were doing these projects, when we did an exhibition at Carrick Vergus Museum, just down from where they were pilloried, we saw that and we tried to get storytelling workshops and things and printmaking workshops so that people can tell the story in their way. And I think that that's important. And if you've got the documents there, you can do that.
- [42:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Absolutely. And everyone brings their own insights. I want to ask you now about the legal status of the nine convicted because in many countries there's the practice of historical pardons for those who were convicted and executed for witchcraft. What do you think of this and what's going on with the Island McGee witches?
- [43:18]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, I mean, that's been controversial. There's still sectors of Northern Ireland who are not convinced they were not innocent. They were in league with the devil. So there was. In 2015, there was a move by a novelist, Martina Devlin, to pardon the witches, but also to do a commemorative garden. And it went before the alarm council, which no longer exists. One particular member, he said, you know, let's not do this, because what we're doing is commemorating devil worship. He as a member of a traditional unionist voice, and that's who he represented. And I think there was a clash with maybe religious ideals there as well. So nothing happened, and still nothing has happened about pardoning them. But the original proposal was by the new council. They took it on board, and an alliance councillor, she took it on board and brought it through. And there was a small memorial plaque. And, you know, the original Worden in 2015 didn't have William Seller on it and things, but the new Worden has them all on it. But it was still controversial because some councillors wanted to take out the line about. And it was taken out about. The community still sees you as innocent. So that line wasn't in the final one, you know. And so it was finally there. But also the council, for the first time and the first time in Northern Ireland, allowed us to have an exhibition and Carrick Fergus about the Ellen Gay witches. And we did all our public history stuff and all our video game and all that in there. And then there's a permanent hub. So they've begun to embrace it, you know, and in 2022, some of the politicians who had maybe some misgivings about it said on record to local newspapers that one of the reasons why that they should embrace the plaque is because of tourists. And there was a Gobbins Visitor center in El Maguhee in the community. The old Victorian walkways that were there. I think that is at the crux of it as well. And if you want to look at Salem, why is Salem so important? Well, Salem itself is a tourist attraction first and foremost. If you go there.
- [45:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I've always thought the pardons question is slightly curious. Hadn't occurred to me that people might object to it on the basis of thinking that they weren't innocent. But I can now see it could be the case as well. I also think it's possible to object to it on the basis that they were, because you could only pardon Somebody of something that you think they've done in the first place. So it's all quite intractable and difficult.
- [46:03]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Yeah, I know that some historians that I've talked to. So what's the point in this, you know, and who really wants it, you know, who really wants them pardoned, you know? You know, it's difficult in Northern Ireland as well, because it was a different country, they passed the law, it was a different legal jurisdiction. It became Northern Ireland in 1922. So you've got a whole layers of reasons, you know, why it's difficult. You know, I think you can overplay that. The opposition telling you, you know, witches and pardoning and, you know, commemoration. The vast majority of people that I've came in contact with and the vast majority that I know are very interested in the trial now. They just kind of can't believe that don't know about it and they're eager to know about it. And I wonder whether, you know, nowadays, in 2025, whether pardon would be opposed, you know, in such a way. Because I suppose that was 10 years ago and it was all very new.
- [47:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, it's so interesting, isn't it? The David Knowles, the great medieval historian, talked about the fact that. That sometimes when we are thinking of the past in this way, it's because we imagine that the past is still ongoing in the next room and we want to sort of rush in through the door and change it. And that's the one thing we absolutely can't do.
- [47:29]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Well, absolutely. If people want a pardon, I'm for it. Absolutely. And I think the campaign in Scotland has been great. You know, witches in Scotland, they've done so much to raise awareness of Scottish witch trials, because I'm Scottish. Right, right. I was born in the great Glasgow area and I grew up, and I didn't know, but, you know, Scottish witches. I went to university in England and so I studied English witch trials and I went to Ireland and studied Irish witch trials. So I didn't really know about Scottish witch trials. Well, I did through, obviously, studying them, you know, in a wider context. But I think that an awful lot of people, you know, are still kind of not informed in Scotland about the breadth and the depth of witch hunting there.
- [48:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, I am hoping that I will get to speak to Claire Mitchell Casey and Zoe Bendatozzi from Witches in Scotland at some point in the future. But thank you so much, Dr. Andrew Sneddon, for your time today, because it has been an absolute delight, if that is the correct word, to talk about this importance of event in Irish history and to bring it to people's attention. Thank you for everything you've done to make that the case.
- [48:41]
Dr. Andrew Sneddon
Thanks very much for having me.
- [48:46]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Susannah Lipscomb next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit.
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