Irish Witchcraft Collection

 Dame Alice Kyteler in 1324 was one of the first recorded people condemned for witchcraft in Ireland and one of the first cases in Europe also.

Alice married four times, and three of these husbands died suddenly and mysteriously. By the time she married her fourth husband she was a wealthy woman. And it was the fourth husband of Kilkenny’s ‘Merry Widow’ who unwittingly began a chain of events that would lead to Alice being convicted on charges of witchcraft before an ecclesiastical court.

Some years after his marriage to Alice, he too became suddenly ill. Shortly before he succumbed to death, he changed his Will to the benefit of Alice and her son William, an act which resulted in anger and resentment among his other family members.

Armed with rumours (most likely false and inspired by local jealousy), they brought charges of witchcraft and sorcery against Alice before the Bishop of Ossory. They claimed that Alice had ‘bewitched’ her husband and forced him to change his Will. His Lordship convened a Court of Inquisition which heard evidence that Alice headed a coven of witches and had relations with a demon called Artissen. One rumour also maintained Alice and her son used to sweep the street with a broom reciting an incantation to bring all the town's wealth to her doorstep.

What followed next was a legal and political battle in which the Bishop tried, but failed, to get the Temporal Authority to arrest and condemn Alice, her son, and several of her friends and servants.

Alice escaped Ireland and disappeared, along with her son. However sadly her handmaiden Petronilla De Meath was not so fortunate.
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"But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
There lurches past, his great eyes without thought 
Under the shadow of stupid straw pale locks,
That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronze peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks." - W.B Yeats 

 Florence Newton was much like our modern day conceptions of women accused of witchcraft – she was old, and poor, and an outsider. And on 24 March 1661, was committed to prison in Youghal, Co Cork, having been accused of bewitching a young servant girl named Mary Longdon.

Shortly before Christmas in the year 1660, Florence came begging to the door of the Pyne household. John Pyne was a respected and wealthy gentleman, but it was his servant, Mary Longdon, who answered the door. Despite their age difference, Mary and Florence knew each other. Florence asked for “a piece of beef out of the powdering tub”. But Mary refused. She could not give away her master’s beef, she told Florence. At this, Florence became angry, Mary later told the courts.

About a week later, when Mary Longdon went to get water for the household, she ran into Florence again. Florence rushed towards Mary, knocking the pail of water from her head, and “violently” kissed her and said, “I pray thee let thee and I be friends, for I bear thee no ill will and I pray thee do thou bear me none” (St. John D. Seymour, Irish Witchcraft and Demonology (1913)).

Mary said that within a few days of this encounter, she saw Florence and the Devil standing by her bedside, tempting her to become a witch (Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Palgrave 2015), 79). Rejecting the offer, Mary told the Devil that she had “nothing to say to him, for her trust was in the Lord”. Over the next month, Mary was possessed with fits so violent that “three or four men could not hold her”, and that she would “vomit up needles, pins, horsenails, stubbs, wool, and straw”.

With no record of the verdict, it has long been assumed that Florence was found guilty and executed under an Elizabethan Statute known as the 1586 Irish Witchcraft Act.

Personally, I feel like Florence was just a lonely, hungry, and perhaps a little grumpy (but wouldn't you be too), little old lady that unfortunately for herself, sorrow and misfortune seemed to follow. 

 Revered as "the wisest of the wise women" by W.B Yeats, and honored in his poem The Shadowy Waters: "Wise Biddy Early called the wicked wood: Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods, I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes..."

Biddy was a Bean Feasa; ‘wise woman’ or ‘woman of knowledge’ in Irish Gaelic, which in Irish vernacular oral tradition, history, folklore and mythology is viewed as a healer and a seer, and one deeply connected with the land.

Viewed by some as a Draoí or Cailleach (Irish witch), Biddy had people come from all over Ireland for her herbal healing and Draíocht (trad. Irish magic) and sought as a Doctúir na Síofraí (Fairy Doctor) to help in matters relating to the Sídhe and otherworldly afflictions and conflicts.

Born 1798, Co. Clare, as Brigit Connor she went by her mother's maiden name 'Early'. Her parents died early on, forcing Biddy to leave home aged 16. She married 4 times, surviving each of her husbands and only child, Tom, who died of typhus aged 8. Her life was extremely hard and she lived through famine, evictions, disease and forced emigrations. 

Biddy's most mysterious power was reputed to lie in her famous Blue Bottle. Some say her mother returned from the dead to give it to her, others firmly believe that it was a gift from the Otherworld. By looking into it she was said to predict futures and divine the source of illness.

Biddy, only accepted poiteen, whiskey or food for her services.. It was said that never was a tired traveller turned from her door and many a passer-by was given a jug and a seat in front of her warm fire.

Her fame as a wise woman, who helped those in poverty and need, was considered dangerous and disruptive by the church. Although she was well respected within her community the parish priest denounced Biddy from the altar and admonished people for visiting her.

In 1865 Biddy was accused of practicing witchcraft. During her trial in Ennis many people who had benefitted from Biddy's skills supported her and by the end most of her accusers had withdrawn their testimonies. She was acquitted of the charge due to lack of evidence.