Irish Witchcraft and Demonology

by St. John D. Seymour

Mary Butters, the Carnmoney witch—Ballad on her—The Hand of Glory—A journey through the air—A “witch” in 1911—Some modern illustrations of cattle- and milk-magic—Transference of disease by a cailleach—Burying the sheaf—J.P.’s Commission—Conclusion

Old beliefs die hard, especially when their speedy demise is a consummation devoutly to be wished; if the Island-Magee case was the last instance of judicial condemnation of witchcraft as an offence against the laws of the realm it was very far indeed from being the last occasion on which a witch and her doings formed the centre of attraction in an Irish law-court. Almost a century after the Island-Magee incident the town of Carrigfergus again became the scene of action, when the celebrated “Carnmoney witch,” Mary Butters, was put forward for trial at the Spring Assizes in March 1808. It is an instance of black magic versus white (if we may dignify the affair with the title of magic!), though it should be borne in mind that in the persecution of witches many women were put to death on the latter charge, albeit they were really benefactors of the human race; the more so as their skill in simples and knowledge of the medicinal virtue of herbs must have added in no small degree to the resources of our present pharmacopœia. The following account of this is taken from the Belfast News-Letter for 21st August 1807, as well as from some notes by M‘Skimin in Young’s Historical Notices of Old Belfast.

One Tuesday night (evidently in August 1807) an extraordinary affair took place in the house of a tailor named Alexander Montgomery, who lived hard by Carnmoney Meeting-House. The tailor had a cow which continued to give milk as usual, but of late no butter could be produced from it. An opinion was unfortunately instilled into the mind of Montgomery’s wife, that whenever such a thing occurred, it was occasioned by the cow having been bewitched. Her belief in this was strengthened by the fact that every old woman in the parish was able to relate some story illustrative of what she had seen or heard of in times gone by with respect to the same. At length the family were informed of a woman named Mary Butters, who resided at Carrigfergus. They went to her, and brought her to the house for the purpose of curing the cow. About ten o’clock that night war was declared against the unknown magicians. Mary Butters ordered old Montgomery and a young man named Carnaghan to go out to the cow-house, turn their waistcoats inside out, and in that dress to stand by the head of the cow until she sent for them, while the wife, the son, and an old woman named Margaret Lee remained in the house with her.

Montgomery and his ally kept their lonely vigil until daybreak, when, becoming alarmed at receiving no summons, they left their post and knocked at the door, but obtained no response. They then looked through the kitchen window, and to their horror saw the four inmates stretched on the floor as dead. They immediately burst in the door, and found that the wife and son were actually dead, and the sorceress and Margaret Lee nearly so. The latter soon afterwards expired; Mary Butters was thrown out on a dung-heap, and a restorative administered to her in the shape of a few hearty kicks, which had the desired effect. The house had a sulphureous smell, and on the fire was a large pot in which were milk, needles, pins, and crooked nails. At the inquest held at Carnmoney on the 19th of August, the jurors stated that the three victims had come by their deaths from suffocation, owing to Mary Butters having made use of some noxious ingredients, after the manner of a charm, to recover a sick cow. She was brought up at the Assizes, but was discharged by proclamation. Her version of the story was, that a black man had appeared in the house armed with a huge club, with which he killed the three persons and stunned herself.

Lamentable though the whole affair was, as well for the gross superstition displayed by the participants as for its tragical ending, yet it seems to have aroused no other feelings amongst the inhabitants of Carnmoney and Carrigfergus than those of risibility and derision. A clever racy ballad was made upon it by a resident in the district, which, as it is probably the only poem on the subject of witchcraft in Ireland, we print here in its entirety from the Ulster Journal of Archæology for 1908, though we have not had the courage to attempt a glossary to the “braid Scots.” It adds some picturesque details to the more prosaic account of the News-Letter.

“In Carrick town a wife did dwell
Who does pretend to conjure witches.
Auld Barbara Goats, or Lucky Bell,
Ye’ll no lang to come through her clutches.
A waeful trick this wife did play
On simple Sawney, our poor tailor.
She’s mittimiss’d the other day
To lie in limbo with the jailor.
This simple Sawney had a cow,
Was aye as sleekit as an otter;
It happened for a month or two
Aye when they churn’d they got nae butter.
Rown-tree tied in the cow’s tail,
And vervain glean’d about the ditches;
These freets and charms did not prevail,
They could not banish the auld witches.
The neighbour wives a’ gathered in
In number near about a dozen;
Elspie Dough, and Mary Linn,
An’ Kate M‘Cart, the tailor’s cousin.
Aye they churn’d and aye they swat,
Their aprons loos’d, and coost their mutches;
But yet nae butter they could get,
They blessed the cow but curst the witches.
Had Sawney summoned all his wits
And sent awa for Huie Mertin,
He could have gall’d the witches’ guts,
An’ cur’t the kye to Nannie Barton.[56]
But he may shew the farmer’s wab,
An’ lang wade through Carnmoney gutters;
Alas! it was a sore mis-jab
When he employ’d auld Mary Butters.
The sorcerest open’d the scene
With magic words of her invention,
To make the foolish people keen
Who did not know her base intention,
She drew a circle round the churn,
And washed the staff in south-run water,[57]
And swore the witches she would burn,
But she would have the tailor’s butter.
When sable Night her curtain spread
Then she got on a flaming fire;
The tailor stood at the cow’s head
With his turn’d waistcoat[58] in the byre.
The chimney covered with a scraw
An’ every crevice where it smoak’d,
But long before the cock did craw
The people in the house were choak’d.
The muckle pot hung on all night,
As Mary Butters had been brewing
In hopes to fetch some witch or wight,
Whas entrails by her art were stewing.
In this her magic a’ did fail;
Nae witch nor wizard was detected.
Now Mary Butters lies in jail
For the base part that she has acted.
The tailor lost his son and wife,
For Mary Butters did them smother;
But as he hates a single life
In four weeks’ time he got another.
He is a crouse auld canty chiel,
An’ cares nae what the witches mutter;
He’ll never mair employ the Deil,
Nor his auld agent Mary Butters.
At day the tailor left his post
Though he had seen no apparition,
Nae wizard grim, nae witch, nor ghost,
Though still he had a stray suspicion
That some auld wizard wrinkled wife
Had cast her cantrips o’er poor brawney
Cause she and he did live in strife,
An’ whar’s the man can blame poor Sawney.
Wae sucks for our young lasses now,
For who can read their mystic matters,
Or tell if their sweethearts be true,
The folks a’ run to Mary Butters.
To tell what thief a horse did steal,
In this she was a mere pretender,
An’ has nae art to raise the Deil
Like that auld wife, the Witch of Endor.
If Mary Butters be a witch
Why but the people all should know it,
An’ if she can the muses touch
I’m sure she’ll soon descry the poet.
Her ain familiar aff she’ll sen’
Or paughlet wi’ a tu’ commission
To pour her vengeance on the man
That tantalizes her condition.”

There also exists a shorter version of the ballad, which seems to be a rather clumsy adaptation of what we have given above; in it the witch is incorrectly termed Butlers. That the heroine did not evolve the procedure she had adopted out of her own fervent imagination, but that she followed a method generally recognised and practised in the country-side is shown by a case that occurred at Newtownards in January 1871.[59] A farm-hand had brought an action against his employer for wages alleged to be due to him. It transpired in the course of the evidence that on one occasion he had been set to banish witches that were troubling the cows. His method of working illustrates the Carnmoney case. All left the house except the plaintiff, who locked himself in, closed the windows, stopped all keyholes and apertures, and put sods on top of the chimneys. He then placed a large pot of sweet milk on the fire, into which he threw three rows of pins that had never been used, and three packages of needles; all were allowed to boil together for half an hour, and, as there was no outlet for the smoke, the plaintiff narrowly escaped being suffocated.

It is strange to find use made in Ireland of that potent magical instrument, the Hand of Glory, and that too in the nineteenth century. On the night of the 3rd of January 1831, some Irish thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, co. Meath. They entered the house, armed with a dead man’s hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the superstitious notion that if such a hand be procured, and a candle placed within its grasp, the latter cannot be seen by anyone except him by whom it is used; also that if the candle and hand be introduced into a house it will prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inhabitants, however, were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them.[60] No doubt the absolute failure of this gruesome dark lantern on this occasion was due to the fact that neither candle nor candlestick had been properly prepared! The orthodox recipe for its preparation and consequent effectual working may be found in full in Mr. Baring Gould’s essay on Schamir in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.

The following tale comes from an article in the Dublin University Magazine, vol. lxiv.; it has rather a Cross-Channel appearance, but may have been picked up locally in Ireland. A man named Shamus Rua (Red James) was awakened one night by a noise in the kitchen. He stole down, and found his old housekeeper, Madge, with half a dozen of her kidney, sitting by the fire drinking his whisky. When the bottle was finished one of them cried, “It’s time to be off,” and at the same moment she put on a peculiar red cap, and added:—

“By yarrow and rue,
And my red cap, too,
Hie over to England!”