Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - Episode Thirty： Celtic Witchcraft - Counter fairy attacks

00:00:00.000 Well, Biddy was, and she wasn't a witch, you see.

00:00:11.220 No, he never believed.

00:00:14.060 He said she was a witch because she did nothing but good.

00:00:27.000 Here we are again, weeks later. 0.90

00:00:30.000 We're back, witches.

00:00:31.900 Sorry.

00:00:32.940 Weeks later.

00:00:34.080 Yeah, definitely weeks later. 0.87

00:00:35.920 I couldn't help myself making a witches joke. 0.86

00:00:39.520 Yes, Emily is being very truthful.

00:00:41.260 We have not spoken to each other in at least 10 days.

00:00:45.460 We were, well, we haven't spoken to you guys in about two weeks.

00:00:48.740 A fortnight.

00:00:49.480 A fortnight.

00:00:50.960 Emily loves that word.

00:00:53.340 I love it.

00:00:54.020 Well, at least like that video game that all of the kids love, it's spelled differently.

00:01:00.000 than like actual fortnite that's like n-i-t-e oh thank god i wonder if it's supposed to mean the

00:01:06.940 same thing i don't know it's probably like some sort of play on words like you build forts at

00:01:13.020 night or something yeah i don't know what the premise of that game is and i don't care don't

00:01:18.280 tell me i could not care less what the premise of fortnite is i don't want to know but yeah as

00:01:24.440 somebody who has to research a lot of folklore this is my formal taylor swift why would you do

00:01:31.880 that to us why would you name an album folklore because it's messing up all of the google searches 0.97

00:01:36.120 and all of the reddit i am so mad at her oh are we gonna piss off the swifties 0.87

00:01:44.260 i'm fine with her just don't name your album folklore please that's all i ask yeah we're too 0.86

00:01:49.120 late especially when you're trying to find something on reddit because there are a lot

00:01:52.420 of Swifties on Reddit apparently which yeah I wouldn't have thought like Reddit was a big

00:01:56.420 Swiftie place but I guess they're everywhere yeah Reddit always has felt to me sort of like the

00:02:01.440 incel place to be but then I realized that Reddit is kind of for everybody you just have to find

00:02:07.720 yeah your place on Reddit Reddit's good for like if you need like a very quick question answered

00:02:14.080 that you can't find online because you can usually find somebody who says they're an expert or like

00:02:19.720 might know something about it yeah i also go there for validation when there is like something

00:02:23.980 that's annoying me i'll usually find a post on reddit that like somebody else has like posted

00:02:28.580 i'm like yeah it's not just me oh when you're like i hate when people do xyz or whatever this

00:02:34.800 like youtuber that i watch has this really annoying habit of xyz and then you go on and

00:02:39.820 somebody has written like a full five paragraph post about how they hate her and i'm like i won't

00:02:44.220 go that far but it's nice to be validated there have you heard of miss rachel yes okay for those

00:02:50.620 who don't know she does speech videos for little kids where she tries to help them learn words and 0.57

00:02:56.200 things like that and they sing and dance and whatever she's a preschool teacher isn't she

00:03:01.200 i think so i think she's like an early education teacher of some sort but her husband creeps me

00:03:09.500 out so badly and he's in the videos and so I googled miss rachel husband creepy and I found

00:03:18.160 a whole reddit thread about a bunch of different moms and parents who were just like yeah my kid

00:03:23.380 cries when he comes on yes there's always somebody on reddit who's annoyed about the same thing as

00:03:28.820 you are it's so validating like oh my god I thought this was just me or like yeah so I

00:03:34.600 started watching only murders in the building and oh yeah i was like because i've never watched

00:03:41.120 anything with selena gomez and i don't follow her on instagram or anything like that but i was

00:03:45.280 literally like has her voice always been like that i was wondering the same thing when i first

00:03:50.720 started watching it i was like did she always sound like this i was like did she always sound

00:03:54.120 like this and i like people on reddit were giving like explanations to do with her health and stuff

00:03:57.840 i don't know if any of that is true i'm not going to speculate on her health but yeah it was very 0.95

00:04:02.180 validating that i was not the only person to go what the fuck is up with her voice 0.58

00:04:06.240 yeah because she kind of sounds like she doesn't open her jaw or something i was just gonna say 0.96

00:04:11.880 she sounds like she doesn't open her mouth yeah like who was really bad for that was blake lively

00:04:17.140 when she was in gossip girl i'd be like oh chuck chuck you gotta meet me at the plaza or whatever 0.97

00:04:24.280 the fuck it was and you're like oh my god open your mouth i don't i did watch gossip girl but 0.84

00:04:29.320 i don't remember that i might have to i don't know if i want to watch it again no you don't 0.99

00:04:34.740 because like when you're yeah as i saw like some guy reacting to um gossip girl as like a man in

00:04:41.680 his 30s and he's like chuck bass is like not going to high school but he like bought a hotel

00:04:48.440 and he's 17 and you're like yeah that was kind of unbelievable wasn't it all of their situations

00:04:54.620 were so strange but it suffers from the same thing that a lot of those tv shows suffer from

00:05:00.620 it's like just age them up to college why do they have to be in high school

00:05:05.000 why are they 25 year olds playing 16 year olds just say they're in college

00:05:10.840 yeah what was the other show that i was like euphoria i know you didn't watch i was gonna

00:05:16.560 guess euphoria yeah euphoria would just make so much more sense if they were all in college

00:05:20.880 they have like online like sex work accounts and like they're going to like raves and stuff like

00:05:27.520 that and you're just like yeah you're you're 16 that's not happening like there's very few 16

00:05:31.900 year olds who are going to raves or maybe i'm very sheltered i don't know that's what i thought i

00:05:36.340 thought that um my high school years were going to be way scarier and when i say scarier i mean

00:05:41.380 that i thought people were going to be doing all these like horrifically bad things like hard drugs

00:05:47.340 and stuff like that and when it's like no most kids were smoking weed or like drinking yeah and

00:05:53.280 making bad choices and sex partners yeah like we had in the uk and ireland we had skins and that

00:06:01.260 was sort of oh i remember hearing about that skins walked so euphoria could run sort of thing it was

00:06:07.160 like very much debauchery and parties and ragers and drugs and all that kind of stuff and a lot of 0.88

00:06:13.760 it was very unbelievable and they were like yeah 18 i think well like not like the like effie in

00:06:21.620 skins she was like 14 when she was first on it and she was like smoking and being very like

00:06:25.940 mysterious and you're like you're 14 please go hang out at shop at center or whatever the hell

00:06:31.140 it is skins would have been like that where like i was like the exact age demographic for skins but

00:06:37.520 like nobody that i knew in my life was behaving like them did you ever watch the in-betweeners

00:06:43.440 yes i did i mean it was a little more believable the way like they would kind of like fall flat

00:06:50.020 on their faces exactly yeah i like the whole like all the social pressure of like we're invited to

00:06:56.260 the pub at the same time as everybody else from our year like it's so exciting like that was that

00:07:00.720 was more like relevant to my life yeah or that oh my god i'll never get over it like the one guy

00:07:05.960 who was like acted like he was so cool and stuff like that and they would always call him on his 0.99

00:07:10.480 bullshit yeah they go on holiday after like they finish school and the guy's like you shit on floor 0.99

00:07:17.360 50 euro so we used to shout that at like my cat ripley when we first got her because that's what 1.00

00:07:24.420 she used to do she's on the floor she owes us about 9 000 euro with this dude yeah my brother 0.98

00:07:29.740 and i would quote it a lot because we watched it together uh he's not my fucking friend 0.99

00:07:34.340 boss wankers yeah boss wankers thumbs up friends 0.99

00:07:39.540 yeah old friends speaking of forever speaking of forever we've been talking about 0.96

00:07:47.720 and we should talk about witches witches who are forever you're back for the second part of our

00:07:56.000 witchy mini series um i don't know if we're calling it anything else but let's just call

00:08:02.020 it our witchy mini-series. Is it mini? We don't know, but it's a series. This part is my episode

00:08:08.860 on witchcraft within the Celtic region. I can hear the pipe flute now. Is that what they call it?

00:08:15.540 The pipe flute? Pipe flute. Like the tin whistle? Yeah, maybe that's it.

00:08:22.380 That kind of thing? Yeah. Wow, I failed. The pipe flute. There's like an Irish instrument

00:08:26.840 that's kind of like the bagpipes called the ellenpipe. I thought that's what you meant.

00:08:30.860 pan flute i was thinking of a pan flute oh the patent flute i understand okay so just the crash

00:08:37.700 course on the celtic region so we're talking right way back to the iron age which was after

00:08:43.940 the stone age pre-roman but also sort of contemporary to the romans like they overlap

00:08:49.500 contemporary contemporary yeah to the romans like they you know that's the word for that when you

00:08:54.840 somebody is your contemporary you they exist at the same time as you i never knew that that's

00:09:00.200 what that meant um so the celts inhabited what would have been like the northwestern part of

00:09:08.040 europe where i am coming to you hot from their regions that i would have learned in school are

00:09:14.420 britney which is not as in spears britney as in the northwestern extremity of what was gaul is

00:09:22.600 now france cornwall which is the southwest of england it's the very little tip ireland just the

00:09:28.540 tip. Just the tip. That's the Cornish travel slogan. Cornwall, just the tip. You guys can

00:09:36.020 have that, Cornwall. Oh no. Apart from Ireland, we have the Isle of Man, which is a little tiny

00:09:42.560 island that's in the Irish Sea in between Ireland and England. If you zoom in really, really hard

00:09:46.460 on Google Maps, you can see it. Scotland and Wales. Those would be the Celtic nations. The

00:09:50.960 only thing about Celtic history is a lot of it has been recorded by the enemies because the Celtic

00:09:59.280 language was not as detailed as, say, the Roman language, Latin, and most of Celtic history is

00:10:07.280 oral history. So it's a lot of stories being handed down, probably being added to, subtracted

00:10:12.480 from. So when we have recorded history, we have to remember that it is being recorded by what were

00:10:19.040 essentially enemies of the celts so that yeah that would color a lot of it um so there are a lot of

00:10:25.140 things that are not very favorable towards the celts and it's not exactly a reliable source and

00:10:29.960 what is that quote like history is told by history is written by the written by the victors is that

00:10:35.620 right yeah something like that and also history history of the celts only begins in the sixth

00:10:41.520 century ad and you're talking celtic history well back like bc so that's like a thousand years after

00:10:47.460 the beginning of it wow kudos to professors and to researchers in celtic history because they have

00:10:54.080 quite a difficult job to try and actually hammer out what is real and support everything with

00:10:59.300 archaeological finds and dig through all of the crap to figure out what was their real story

00:11:05.360 so the good stuff that we're all here for was the celtic magic magical systems the episode before 0.78

00:11:11.000 last we talked about how indigenous cultures do tend to focus their belief systems on nature

00:11:18.440 and i mentioned that the celts are like that too all of their customs methods of worship were

00:11:24.960 connected to nature in some way all celtic peoples honored the oak tree they also venerated

00:11:30.620 mistletoe which usually grew upon the oak tree and blossomed in winter so when the oak was bare

00:11:36.540 there was mistletoe so it was like a perpetual sign of life that's so cool yeah uh they used to

00:11:43.040 gather mistletoe they believed that mistletoe when solemnly gathered made all animals fertile and

00:11:48.900 fruitful and that mistletoe could destroy every kind of poison which wouldn't that be cool if

00:11:54.180 that was true that would be really cool be handy because mistletoe's freaking everywhere here

00:11:58.620 that is so funny because i have never i don't think i've ever seen the real plant have you

00:12:04.160 not you've seen like you've seen like the fake ones or like the ones that you buy in shops and

00:12:08.020 stuff you've never seen in the wild yeah yeah yeah i have a i have a fake one that i hang up

00:12:12.280 in my house like a little bundle with a red ribbon on it i'm like it's my mistletoe if you

00:12:18.160 go on any like little forest walks or anything like you are bound to see mistletoe mistletoe

00:12:22.520 and a lot of ivy and then like we call them winds i don't know what the actual that's what my dad

00:12:26.940 calls them uh they're like it's like this bush that looks like it's fire tipped they're like

00:12:32.000 really cool looking i don't know if they're actually called winds or that's just like a

00:12:35.620 colloquial thing that they're called that's like yeah those are like big big plants here yeah

00:12:40.880 what's interesting is that we have ivy here but it's considered an invasive species yeah it was

00:12:46.740 probably brought over yeah it's not native to this environment good at choking things i was

00:12:52.020 gonna say and it's real good at sticking around and ruining everything yeah in ireland the druids

00:12:58.420 really liked you trees you as in y-e-w no you yeah no you it was you would that you they used

00:13:06.200 to cut their boards from to write on so have you ever seen o-m writing so it's like sorry what o-m

00:13:12.220 o-g-h-a-m so it's like no you see it a lot in art here it's a a vertical system of writing

00:13:18.600 it's an early alphabet it's the only way of the irish language was ever recorded before we had

00:13:24.420 the roman alphabet interesting you usually see it on on like tombs and on like signposts and stuff

00:13:31.760 okay it's not read horizontally the way we would normally understand writing to be it's actually a

00:13:38.180 vertical form of writing it kind of looks like runes as well a little bit right it's it's very

00:13:44.140 simple um it's kind of just like lines straight across diagonal lines like x's i've seen like i

00:13:51.300 know triangles i know people who have it as tattoos you see it of course inscribed in jewelry

00:13:57.220 you see it's um on pottery on like wall hangings stuff like that it's cool like if you

00:14:03.680 anybody who comes here and you buy anything like celtic with celtic art on it it'll usually have

00:14:10.340 oom on it somewhere along with all those swirling patterns that we always associate with celtic art

00:14:14.400 as well did you roll your eyes i know it's just because you know when something becomes so like

00:14:21.080 commercialized that you're just like it's like the live laugh love signs pretty much or like you

00:14:26.620 know those triscalay patterns there's always triscalay patterns everywhere it's like the

00:14:30.280 three swirls and they represent like past present future and all that kind of stuff they're everywhere

00:14:35.300 yeah it's not to say that it doesn't have significance but it's just like you see so

00:14:39.360 much of it it's like overexposed right it reminds me of how um people call it the bridesmaid fought

00:14:46.220 now but it was kind of like if you like hand drew letters yes it used to look really good

00:14:52.160 and now it looks dated and ugly and beaten to death because everybody's used it exactly so

00:14:58.920 yeah the yew tree was used like a board so that they could uh inscribe on writing on them because

00:15:05.060 they didn't have paper the egyptians hadn't brought it this far yet and then for some other

00:15:10.100 magic trees, the blackthorn

00:15:12.320 and

00:15:13.080 the rowan. They all had

00:15:16.060 magical properties or

00:15:18.100 magical beliefs attached to them.

00:15:20.140 In fairy tales, a bunch of ivy 1.00

00:15:22.060 would play the part as a magic 0.98

00:15:24.020 shrub. A fairy's favourite resting

00:15:26.120 place was beneath a hawthorn tree.

00:15:28.680 I talked about how

00:15:29.700 a lot of Celtic records

00:15:31.940 are from a rowan perspective.

00:15:34.480 They were specifically

00:15:36.020 the Gaulish Celts

00:15:38.080 because

00:15:38.720 the romans would have had a lot more interaction with them romans conquered britain not scotland

00:15:46.140 and they did not conquer ireland apparently because they were scared off by the celts

00:15:52.420 we don't know we like to say that let's just like hear the way the romans would speak about the

00:15:57.480 when they were um uh recording them in their history so the wife of the emperor augustus

00:16:04.140 was shocked by the loose morals 1.00

00:16:06.120 of Celtic women. 1.00

00:16:08.120 She actually confronted one 0.53

00:16:10.000 who was the consort of a

00:16:11.980 Gaulish king, so not his wife, but

00:16:13.660 one of his ladies.

00:16:16.780 The consort replied, 0.84

00:16:18.400 we Celtic women obey the demands 0.96

00:16:20.120 of nature in a more moral way

00:16:22.000 than do the women of Rome.

00:16:23.920 We consort openly with the best

00:16:26.140 of men. You allow yourselves to

00:16:28.080 be debauched in secret by the vilest. 1.00

00:16:30.660 Burn. 0.99

00:16:32.640 Yeah, seriously.

00:16:34.140 What a sick burn. At least we're not being like screwed in private by complete assholes. Because the Celts really venerated like warriors and they're very like warmongering race of people. You know, the stronger you are, the more respect you had. So I guess if you're a warrior, you were able to have your pick of the women. And we'll talk a little bit more later about the role of women and how like relationships and sex and marriage all like related to each other. 1.00

00:17:02.340 because I think it's really interesting to see the way

00:17:04.300 like when we look at witchcraft

00:17:05.900 like how actually this reflected the way

00:17:08.300 women in Celtic society were viewed

00:17:10.340 so guess what past Niamh 1.00

00:17:13.460 we're actually not going to do that

00:17:14.700 because the episode was 90 feckin minutes long

00:17:17.020 all of that about Celtic marriage

00:17:19.980 and relationships and the legal system

00:17:22.100 is going to be an extra content

00:17:24.180 Pinecones episode just for you

00:17:25.740 and it's going to be released on

00:17:27.500 Saturday of our week off

00:17:29.160 so you can check it out then 1.00

00:17:30.240 a celtic woman didn't really have good manners apparently

00:17:34.140 amanius marcellinus in his description of the manners and customs of the gauls 0.66

00:17:39.560 describes what he called the furor heroicus which is the heroic fury of the gallic women

00:17:46.380 who were quote large as men with flashing eyes and teeth bared i mean it sounds like you yeah it does

00:17:52.800 so probably the the most like famous magic practitioners in celtic life were the druids

00:17:59.700 so we'll talk about the druids in different types of celtic societies in gaul it was interesting so

00:18:05.400 the group the druids occupied the forefront of social rank they actually had a national network

00:18:12.120 and they had communal assemblies so they were like properly organized like almost like an

00:18:16.380 organized religion and the power that they had in this organization they were able to influence and

00:18:23.420 decide the choice of magistrates they performed divine services they brought offerings explained

00:18:30.480 oracles they were doctors and teachers and they acted as arbitrators in the absence of state

00:18:36.900 jurisdiction and they were able to enforce their decisions afterwards so they were basically judge

00:18:43.040 jury executioner doctor priest everything they were a lot of titles and despotic and the words

00:18:51.540 here were they actually held the people in subjection so they were basically like rulers

00:18:55.860 they were not answerable to many other people wow but that was in Gaul the druids of Ireland

00:19:01.240 weren't quite the same level of power it's theorized that part of the reason why they

00:19:05.940 didn't reach the same like heights of power and rule was because in Ireland you also had the

00:19:11.480 the phila the phila is the poet so the poet and the storyteller sometimes the druid and the phila

00:19:17.140 were the same person but they almost had a counterpart in society meant that you also had

00:19:22.120 other people in their world who are just as respected it's so interesting because when I

00:19:27.980 think of druids I don't think of people who have a lot of power yeah I kind of think of them being

00:19:34.540 sort of like the weird yeah outcasts of society yeah and that would have been that would have been

00:19:41.380 more reflective of what they were like in Ireland like they would have been you know a traveling man

00:19:46.460 who went round and were like part of the quote-unquote court system

00:19:50.860 and we'll talk a little bit about the legal system at this time.

00:19:53.740 So Irish Druidism remained,

00:19:56.700 each Druid would have been tied to their clan or their geographical area.

00:20:01.140 Whoever they were affiliated with,

00:20:03.000 they would sort of stay with that person 0.99

00:20:04.380 rather than having like a big network of Druids

00:20:06.680 that they were meeting up with.

00:20:07.740 It seemed like it was more like a calling

00:20:09.240 than like an occupation where you could rise through the ranks. 1.00

00:20:12.480 Druids were more like early priests

00:20:14.360 and like advisors and counselors than what later became priests and what Gallic druids were they

00:20:20.100 were able to gain their respect through their knowledge and through all of their studying

00:20:26.340 they study for literally like years to become druids like almost like their whole lives oh yeah

00:20:31.420 because we were joking about like once you become one then then you die yeah it's like yay graduation

00:20:38.520 and then like funnily enough what they look like is they had their own like white robes of office

00:20:44.900 I would have always thought they looked like dirty and had like sackcloths basically but no

00:20:48.520 they had white robes of office and a peculiar tonsure or like haircut you know like the monks

00:20:53.980 haircuts they had those haircuts as well oh interesting these druids are not who I think

00:20:58.500 they are or who I thought they were yeah so it became a little bit more organized as the society

00:21:03.780 evolved but they still were like advisors and wise men and and all of that other stuff that

00:21:10.240 you would probably associate with them and then they were also keepers of like sacred knowledge

00:21:14.740 and magic so they had like hymns their own rules for prophecy their formulae for charms as you were

00:21:22.360 talking in our previous episode like the recipes for curses and charms so the druids would have had

00:21:27.700 that as well they were able to read and write whereas not everybody would have been able to

00:21:31.540 They are responsible for the Oum writing that we were talking about.

00:21:35.380 They're responsible for it like they started it or? 0.93

00:21:38.520 Created it and perpetuated it.

00:21:40.240 Okay.

00:21:40.860 And that was because their education was actually a formal form of education, which wouldn't have been common. 0.99

00:21:46.960 More interestingly, there were female Druids.

00:21:49.200 Talk of upon a British island famed for its oracles. 0.93

00:21:52.720 There were Druids who lived in perpetual virginity, which of course they did. 1.00

00:21:57.380 Right. 0.98

00:21:58.460 Like the priests.

00:21:59.620 although with irish druidesses as they're referring to them in this text also known as druids i know

00:22:07.260 it's like a priestess druidess irish druidesses were married and known to like fight in wars i

00:22:13.760 would love to think that they're actually like using magic during these wars but i don't think 0.90

00:22:17.140 so there was one druidess called dew or dove uh it's d-u-b-h she was married and she killed a

00:22:25.600 rival and her rival for her husband's affections by drowning her in a flood which she created wow 0.94

00:22:30.800 in fairness if you're going to sleep with anybody's husband don't sleep with somebody

00:22:34.080 who has magical powers and can cause a flood that would drown you yeah maybe pick somebody else 0.99

00:22:39.060 in celtic society there were magical women apart from the druidesses um we have the country midwife

00:22:46.960 who was the band glinja the wise woman who's the band fassa the corpse washer or the layer out who 0.99

00:22:54.980 was the ban van which means okay wait the what the ban van ban van yeah ban as in irish woman

00:23:04.060 van as in uh irish word for white yeah so it basically means white woman the ban who is the

00:23:11.060 crying woman at awake who does all of the keening wait did we talk about this before we talked about

00:23:16.360 the the keening woman who gets hired to cry basically in our banshee episode because there's

00:23:22.680 a theory that um the banshee is the ghost of a keening woman yeah that's part of it there was

00:23:28.880 the category of magical women who were the cunning women or the cunning folk so they had specific

00:23:35.600 rituals and magical protective devices their primary function was to counter fairy attacks 0.98

00:23:41.180 and i love that phrase counter fairy attacks yeah fairy attacks so they would have had like the

00:23:47.440 knowledge of the land and all of that to like make their potions and their amulets they usually

00:23:53.140 made amulets out of mistletoe and rowan i think we need a sound effect for every time rowan is

00:23:58.500 brought up yeah rowan and probably their most important function was to prevent attacks on

00:24:05.280 cattle because as i talked about definitely big cow people over here that gave me a very

00:24:10.440 interesting visual big cow people it's like the boy cow a boy cow yeah

00:24:18.700 we have a call back to our changeling episode as well um so the cunning folk used to be the 0.77

00:24:25.280 ones that would warn you to dress male children in female clothing to stop them being replaced

00:24:31.840 by fairy changelings and i mentioned that a while ago as well people who made pochine which is like

00:24:36.640 the irish moonshine they were especially vulnerable to changeling attacks or changeling swaps i guess

00:24:43.420 usually if you had a male child being dressed as a female child it was because their father was a

00:24:50.860 putching maker and then just really quickly another area that we had um we have celtic

00:24:57.740 customs was the isle of man so they have a big uh culture of healing and conning folk there are

00:25:03.960 Certain well-known families on the Isle of Man who have inherited folk medicine,

00:25:09.860 knowledge of folk medicine, passed all the way down from Celtic times right up until modern times.

00:25:15.720 They would refer to them as the Manx witch.

00:25:18.640 So it was a wise man or woman who worked their spells and charms, both good and bad,

00:25:23.660 murmured their incantations and prepared their potions alone and in secret,

00:25:27.520 unassisted by human and as far as is known any other agency.

00:25:31.220 they were individual performers and their powers were such that they could if necessary

00:25:35.680 cure from a distance so that a sick animal or person would begin to show signs of recovery

00:25:40.800 before the person consulting the charmer reached home that was like a person that you would go and

00:25:45.860 visit if there was something wrong in your family or on your farm and a lot of people would have

00:25:50.320 compared them to the druids that we were talking about earlier throughout the modern period there

00:25:55.220 were male and female practitioners of like herb magic in the manx custom they were fairy doctors

00:26:02.460 females were known as herb women i'm sorry they were known as what women herb oh okay i genuinely

00:26:09.460 didn't know what you said i thought you were trying to make me say it again no i was like i

00:26:14.760 think i heard the h but i wasn't sure and it seems like such a strong tradition in the isle of man

00:26:22.940 because the Isle of Man gets its name from a Celtic god called Manon

00:26:29.320 or like a legendary figure called Manon

00:26:31.740 who was known to have a cloak of invisibility

00:26:34.460 and a lot of people who would sail past the Isle of Man

00:26:38.320 said that you often won't see it because it has a cloak of fog around it

00:26:43.100 so you won't realise until you're above it.

00:26:45.500 So they say that's why it's the Isle of Man

00:26:47.680 because it wears a cloak of invisibility 1.00

00:26:49.700 And it's the descendants of Manon who live on the Isle of Man

00:26:53.120 who have this knowledge of the land and healing and cunning folk and all of that

00:26:57.340 because they're literally descended from Celtic legend.

00:27:00.480 So do people crash on the island?

00:27:03.460 Probably way back.

00:27:05.040 Not now because now it's like a proper...

00:27:07.580 Yeah, now they know about it.

00:27:09.140 Yeah, they know about it.

00:27:10.560 Would you have heard of the Isle of Man?

00:27:12.920 Like it's just a tiny little island.

00:27:15.320 Yeah. 0.98

00:27:15.980 Well, probably their biggest like best known export is the Manx cat.

00:27:19.180 it's a cat that has naturally no tail oh yeah so a manx cat they're originally from the isle of man

00:27:25.920 i was just reading about the the tortoise shell cats last night i don't remember why it just like

00:27:30.840 came up and i was like oh and then it was i remember people saying that they can only be

00:27:34.780 female oh and i was like wait why and i like was like then on like a deep dive on like why is this

00:27:41.280 a thing and apparently it's because black fur and orange fur can only be carried by the x chromosome

00:27:48.980 so if you have two x's then that can have black and orange fur but if you have an x y it can only 0.86

00:27:54.620 be orange or only be black yeah because i've heard that like orange female cats are extremely rare 0.95

00:28:00.060 like yeah like you very rarely ever see them oh that's weird i never knew about that so like if

00:28:06.280 you ever see like a feral like orange cat it's more than likely a boy fun facts from emily and

00:28:11.080 neve about cats like we were talking about witches and people that have like this cunning and all of

00:28:16.800 that it's all knowledge based because according to celtic folk belief everybody has access to

00:28:22.700 supernatural power in the form of like whether it's spells or charms or if you actually go to

00:28:28.540 the fairy world yourself for good or evil anybody who wished to make use of it could tap into that

00:28:34.040 power which is a very nice thought to have but like we could all be witches if we want that we

00:28:39.220 all have that everyone is magic we're all magic to focus on one of the magical women that i was

00:28:46.340 talking about before the Ban Fassa who is the wise woman those are women who were known to have

00:28:51.800 direct communication with as are known the good people the fair folk the fairy folk the fae they

00:28:58.400 gain their knowledge from the fae they're taught by the fae and they invoke the fae if they need

00:29:03.220 they need help with something it's believed by many people that a Ban Fassa gains her power after

00:29:08.460 being taken by the fairy folk or spending time with them when she's young and then they teach

00:29:13.900 her occult knowledge and then keep providing her information some of the like special knowledge

00:29:19.620 that she might have is she might appear to have knowledge of events occurring at a distance so

00:29:25.140 like something that's happening at the same time that she would have no way of knowing she knows

00:29:29.000 like the location of lost items which would be really fucking handy yeah and she reckons that 0.68

00:29:34.340 all of this knowledge is given to her by the fairies she's like a big figure in the community 0.98

00:29:39.020 she provides divination herbal remedies and like helps you solve problems that are caused by the 0.86

00:29:45.760 fairies as well they are almost exclusively older women who are unmarried and who are known to 1.00

00:29:50.880 travel like imagine being so weird that you travel that's how tiny and insular these societies were

00:29:58.020 she travels she's a witch some of the things attributed to ban fastest they were more used

00:30:06.480 to like love and sex magic in medieval times a lot of times they would have done the curse of

00:30:12.000 impotence because as you remember you could divorce a man if he was impotent hell yeah if a

00:30:17.520 woman was maybe for whatever reason she couldn't divorce herself she would i'd be writing that on 1.00

00:30:22.180 my curse tablet she would prepare a charm or get the band facet or prepare a charm and put it in 0.97

00:30:28.960 the bed and it would cause impotence but also if he was having an affair you would prepare this

00:30:34.640 charm of impotence because like if you can't have him no one can the most famous who was

00:30:41.000 considered to be a banfasa is bridget she was stolen by the church so she's saint bridget but

00:30:47.440 she was bridget first and she's also known as a goddess too her day is coming up soon right yeah

00:30:53.640 it is we're gonna have um a bank holiday at the start of february for us saint bridget it's only

00:30:59.960 a new bank holiday it's actually the latest bank holiday we've only had it like three years they

00:31:03.780 just added it to the calendar the government were like we should have a national holiday for her i

00:31:08.500 wonder why i think they realized that we didn't have as many bank holidays as uh other countries

00:31:14.000 in europe so we're like can we have another one and they're like okay what's a big date on our

00:31:18.100 calendar let's think about this yeah because we had no like days off between christmas and st

00:31:24.820 patrick's day in march so people were getting very depressed and then you don't have like the fourth

00:31:28.760 of july we don't we have like other like we like the may bank holiday and the august bank holiday

00:31:34.400 and stuff but we've no like martin luther king day or anything like that you know yeah i don't

00:31:38.360 even know what that when that is it was just this um on monday oh okay it's always the second monday

00:31:46.140 in january oh i didn't realize it was january that's good yeah so it falls on my birthday a

00:31:51.000 lot our birthday our birthday our birthday that's a lot better than blue monday last year it was

00:31:57.080 blue monday it's like supposed to be the most depressing day of the year i was like oh it's

00:32:01.080 my birthday but that's fine maybe that's why they put it around that time because i don't know why

00:32:07.780 else they would have had martin luther king day in the middle of january yeah unless it's like

00:32:13.580 his birthday or something oh i guess his birthday was on january 15th oh cool huh he missed us by a

00:32:19.560 day he did how dare he so bridget aka the goddess bridget aka ban fassa bridget she famously blessed

00:32:29.160 a man whose wife hated him and she made her love him forever so she was able to perform some pretty

00:32:36.020 powerful love magic don't know if i love that bridget it's not great about on the whole consent

00:32:41.640 thing yeah forcing somebody to love somebody else she performed the first in irish history recorded 0.94

00:32:48.980 abortion as i've put down here the fetus deletus because she would have been the she was like as 1.00

00:32:56.320 we said like these wise women were could be like midwives and healers and all of that kind of stuff

00:33:02.120 yeah so in ireland we you told us last week or last episode about the cursing stones in ireland

00:33:09.920 there was also a big tradition of cursing to do with stones that's cool in pre-modern ireland

00:33:17.160 cursing was regarded as an actual real thing and a legitimate activity it was a form of

00:33:23.240 supernatural justice that only afflicted guilty parties so if you went and you said that somebody 0.79

00:33:28.840 had cursed you it was only because you had fucked up you got him so the cursing stones similar to 0.88

00:33:35.080 what you were talking about in our previous episode they were sort of like the mass rocks 0.99

00:33:39.900 that i've spoken about before they would have like some sort of ecclesiastical significance

00:33:44.280 probably a pagan significance after the church came they were associated with a christian saint

00:33:50.900 so what they look like is it was a stone with a depression carved into it almost to look like a

00:33:57.480 bowl so they were called a bullen stone um in some places the bullen had the power to curse someone

00:34:02.940 but only if the punishment was just if not the person who performed the ritual would receive 0.97

00:34:07.480 the curse that's why you can't fuck with somebody because the curse will come back on you if the 0.98

00:34:12.320 a person that you're trying to curse does not deserve it yeah it was a ritual turning always 0.99

00:34:17.960 anti-clockwise or against the sun and it would include a prayer or an invocation the turning of

00:34:23.940 the stones was preceded by a ritual fasting in preparation for carrying out the curse they

00:34:29.880 attribute like this like belief in curses and the belief in that you only get cursed if you deserve

00:34:35.240 it as part of the reason why ireland never really had a witch craze or witch trials because people

00:34:40.440 thought that witches were performing this altruistically and that it was it was sort of

00:34:45.280 karma in a way yeah it wasn't yeah just to be just to be evil it wasn't to be vengeful and like if 0.97

00:34:53.020 you didn't fuck up or you didn't like hurt somebody then you had nothing to worry about because

00:34:56.880 a curse wouldn't work on you that's kind of nice i like that idea and like it was interesting 0.68

00:35:01.860 because in ireland they actually passed a witchcraft act in 1563 and it just didn't really

00:35:08.680 work they had like maybe one trial we'll get into it during the witch trials but yeah it's just the

00:35:13.900 whole thing just did not take off in ireland like dating back to celtic times and like throughout it

00:35:19.140 all even after christianity came in this belief in curses and in healing and cunning folk and all of

00:35:26.680 that was so inherent that they were just like witches are part of us and part of our society

00:35:31.040 and part of our culture like there's no point in putting these women to death right that's nice 0.80

00:35:35.480 good on them so we'll talk a little bit more about that legislation and in particular the

00:35:40.040 scottish witch trials because there was like 4 000 people tried for witchcraft in scotland

00:35:44.880 wow more to come in our witch trials slash church episode

00:35:47.700 so yeah cursing comes like basically the power of words and that like what you say

00:35:53.760 can be made true there was a manx custom of swearing on a grave there are actually accounts

00:35:59.460 you know when you say oh i swear on like my like i swear on my mom yeah in manx custom

00:36:04.880 And there are accounts of people actually lying on a grave with a Bible on their chest in order to settle debts.

00:36:10.320 So they would lie and then they had to tell the truth about what debts that they owed.

00:36:14.180 They actually had to outlaw it in the 1600s because people were using it to like just basically lie.

00:36:19.440 You weren't supposed to lie.

00:36:20.640 Oh no.

00:36:22.360 And then like I said, there was no witch craze.

00:36:25.240 Around the same time there was stories from continental Europe and British folklore of witches flying around in covens like on their brooms like meeting with the devil.

00:36:34.880 using their powers to curse and torment their neighbours.

00:36:38.620 In Ireland, she was working with the community,

00:36:42.880 and if she was doing something malicious,

00:36:45.680 it was a lot less destructive.

00:36:47.740 They would do things like steal milk while in the form of a hare,

00:36:51.200 or they would work magic on cattle. 1.00

00:36:52.960 These were the bad things that the Irish witches would do. 1.00

00:36:55.560 And they were also known as butter witches. 0.96

00:36:57.580 The butter witches were different from their European sinister counterparts. 0.80

00:37:01.400 This came right the way up to the Enlightenment,

00:37:04.880 There was a bishop of County Down wrote,

00:37:09.300 a man in his diocese swore that he took aim at a hare that he found in his barn

00:37:13.100 and an old woman rose up. 0.57

00:37:14.500 So she was in stealing his butter. 1.00

00:37:16.220 I really like the idea of witches being like rabbits and hares. 1.00

00:37:20.840 Yeah, just like complete shape-shifting. 0.94

00:37:23.280 People claim that like milk and butter could be harmed by sorcery.

00:37:27.460 So strong was the image of the butter witch

00:37:29.080 that it remained a part of Irish rural pop culture up until the 20th century.

00:37:33.660 Wow.

00:37:34.060 That's how much it took hold. 0.85

00:37:36.380 You could protect against them by you could burn the thatch from the roof of whoever was being afflicted by the Butter Witch. 0.95

00:37:43.880 And then if you wanted her to stop fucking with your cattle, you had a, yeah, you had a bonfire on May Eve and you would have to drive your cattle through the smoke to purify them to keep her away. 0.91

00:37:57.460 And that also happened in the Isle of Man. 0.99

00:37:59.580 in 1695 the parliament outlawed profane swearing and cursing because they were detestable sins

00:38:06.500 and you had you were fined if you swore a curse on somebody wow in county mayo during the 19th

00:38:12.940 century clergymen cleared their parishes of ancient cursing stones destroying or burying

00:38:17.440 the unusual rocks that had long been used to lay powerful maledictions so this is the way that like

00:38:23.660 basically irish people lived like right up until like the mid 20th century like they believed in

00:38:28.600 these cursing stones. They believed 0.90

00:38:30.500 in folk healing. People still

00:38:32.580 believe in folk healing and folk cures.

00:38:35.280 To finish us off

00:38:36.720 I'm just going to tell you about a modern 0.98

00:38:38.380 Ban Fassa, a woman called 1.00

00:38:40.340 Biddy Early who

00:38:42.300 was born

00:38:44.460 sometime around 1900

00:38:46.400 and died sometime around the

00:38:48.420 1970s. She's a very

00:38:50.340 mysterious woman. She

00:38:52.460 was a member of the travelling

00:38:54.320 community in Ireland who are

00:38:56.300 a separate ethnic group

00:38:58.480 from irish people who traditionally live as as a reclaimed word gypsies they're distinct from the

00:39:04.460 roma people but would have very loosely connected customs as in they lived in caravans they would

00:39:12.260 have certain crafts that they would always do like whether it's stone masonry or knackery where 1.00

00:39:19.720 which is where you take away like like uh dead animals to destroy them if you don't want to

00:39:24.180 knackery yeah that's actually a derogatory term for them as well people call them oh yeah

00:39:31.260 sounds very close to another terrible word yes it does the formal like term for them is uh members

00:39:39.760 of the traveling community so biddy early was a traveler woman remember when we said earlier when

00:39:45.380 the band faso was a woman who's known to travel this could also be an interpretation she was a

00:39:49.820 traveler okay so in perfect irish style the most important source of information comes about her

00:39:56.380 comes from the oral tradition so everybody has just been passing around stories about this

00:40:00.900 legendary woman for over a century now the traveling community tend to have like a very strong

00:40:07.220 folklore superstition tradition like i had actually sent you a message telling you about

00:40:12.480 like for an example even in modern times like members of the traveling community if somebody

00:40:16.840 who is somebody in their home dies while they live there they burn the home down oh my gosh

00:40:23.300 yeah it's part of their their custom so usually that would have always been a caravan so they

00:40:28.260 would burn down their caravan wow that's just one of a lot of their like their customs and

00:40:32.860 their superstitions and their traditions can you even imagine i know like doing that i know it's

00:40:39.340 like oh my dad died now i have to burn my house down that's like what a terrible week jesus that's

00:40:45.960 what's so crazy it's not certain how biddy got her magic but it is said that her son sean was

00:40:50.820 returning from his court which is um like an irish term for visiting somebody at night so like it can

00:40:57.640 talk about dating them so when you're curtain my parents talk about when they're dating they say

00:41:02.120 they were curtain like courting court like courting but they say courting that's i think it comes from

00:41:07.440 this irish word but it's yeah it would just be the same as courting okay so it's not just seeing

00:41:12.040 somebody at night it's like seeing somebody at night yeah spicy sean was returning from his

00:41:18.460 court when he met a crowd of fairies who were playing hurling which is like a traditional 0.56

00:41:22.700 gaelic game with sticks it's kind of like field hockey they were one man down so they asked him

00:41:27.980 to play with them he did so and his side won and as a reward they gave him a magic bottle which he

00:41:33.600 was instructed to give to his mother and with it she could cure all diseases

00:41:37.660 so that's probably where Biddy got her 0.58

00:41:40.680 power from. She got her groove back 1.00

00:41:42.960 This bottle was known as the 0.94

00:41:44.640 which means magic bottle

00:41:46.600 it served the same purpose as

00:41:48.800 like a crystal ball that a fortune teller would have

00:41:51.040 she would always have it

00:41:52.760 in her possession and hold it

00:41:54.220 and when she held it she was able to

00:41:56.820 see what was wrong

00:41:58.700 with the person that she was called to

00:42:00.780 help so she could help diagnose them when she

00:42:02.820 held her 0.99

00:42:03.380 and sometimes this was a Pishog 0.96

00:42:05.900 Peshug is in a fairy curse

00:42:07.520 like it wasn't always

00:42:08.720 like a physical ailment

00:42:10.400 so that was like

00:42:11.420 her main focus 0.91

00:42:12.440 was to counteract spells

00:42:13.740 and diagnose

00:42:14.560 what was either

00:42:15.340 what ailment was wrong with you

00:42:16.560 or how you had 0.99

00:42:17.520 pissed off the fairies

00:42:18.840 and what you could do 1.00

00:42:20.240 to appease them again

00:42:21.340 she would also give you

00:42:22.660 herbal remedies as well 1.00

00:42:23.900 she had like a couple of rules 0.96

00:42:25.300 as well 1.00

00:42:25.780 so she would give a herbal remedy

00:42:27.260 but she made it clear

00:42:28.220 that if a doctor was called in 1.00

00:42:29.760 that her power would stop working 0.96

00:42:31.860 is that like

00:42:33.400 in an attempt to

00:42:34.740 to get people to not call a doctor i think it's because as like time went on people will go to her

00:42:41.300 after they'd already been to a doctor so she wanted them to put all of their faith in her

00:42:45.400 okay so if you called a doctor back again she would say to you like oh like my my cure will

00:42:51.020 stop working if you call a doctor seems a little dangerous it does seem a little dangerous she would

00:42:56.480 only accept payment in kind less her power desert her but she did manage to receive a quote 1.00

00:43:01.920 comfortable income from her cures so she was making a little bit of bank just a little she

00:43:07.380 was known to say that if a chronic infection or an undiagnosed ailment didn't respond to ordinary

00:43:11.960 treatment it was it must have been from a supernatural cause and it was her place to

00:43:17.340 discover why i feel like we've heard about this before the fact that the folk cures maybe it was

00:43:24.200 about the the whole the idea that if something couldn't cure it then it was like a supernatural

00:43:29.900 cause i'm trying to remember when we talked about that yeah i think it might have been our folk

00:43:34.340 cures episode yeah maybe it's hard to remember that far back something that you could do to

00:43:41.060 piss off the fairies was we talked about in our fairies episode you could plow across a fairy ring

00:43:46.760 or disturb their fairy ring so rude or you could build a wall blocking their path or one of the

00:43:52.940 things that i've never heard of before is um you could do like a social faux pas in the in the

00:43:58.580 fairy's eyes such as over praising an animal or a child without simultaneously saying god bless

00:44:04.220 which is very strange oh that is so interesting because my friend who is muslim that's kind of

00:44:12.500 like a thing that they do in that culture oh is because if you like like when they saw

00:44:19.740 my daughter they're like oh my god she's so cute like praise god oh but they say it because it's

00:44:26.080 almost like i'm trying to remember exactly how she described it to me but it was something about

00:44:31.580 like if you didn't say that then it sort of implied that you saying like oh your child is cute

00:44:39.760 means that you're envious oh okay and that would be like almost like a curse right oh wow that's

00:44:46.220 so interesting i was like oh that's so cool i've never heard of anybody doing that before

00:44:52.900 yeah that's so interesting and i find that like yeah like it's so weird that it's like there's

00:44:59.820 similar things across these two cultures which we always see when we're looking into this research

00:45:04.160 yeah is that there's so much overlap between completely different places and cultures

00:45:12.380 it's interesting as well that like you would have to say god bless but if you didn't say god bless 0.99

00:45:18.480 it would piss off the fairies 0.99

00:45:21.100 when you think about it

00:45:22.440 because you would think it's like a pagan belief

00:45:24.520 conflicting

00:45:25.360 you would say fairy bliss or something

00:45:28.360 but the way this was

00:45:31.260 sort of explained was

00:45:33.240 Biddy believes she was like a mediator

00:45:35.320 between the ecclesiastical

00:45:37.320 world and the ordinary people

00:45:38.960 so she would treat the priests

00:45:41.220 with like a directness of speech

00:45:43.120 which other people wouldn't have been comfortable

00:45:45.360 doing because she didn't care because she had 1.00

00:45:47.340 the fairies on her side 0.99

00:45:48.400 and she was a mediator between the people and the aspects of the fairy world as well which they

00:45:54.440 couldn't or weren't able to directly deal with so the banfasa was a link with the supernatural

00:46:00.340 and the fairy world on one hand and the ecclesiastical world on the other

00:46:04.280 establishing like this weird sort of spiritual equilibrium in the community and that is my

00:46:12.200 episode on celtic witches and witchcraft and magic i loved it aren't you glad i didn't go

00:46:18.300 into norse witchcraft in the same episode that would have been a lot yeah i mean even with the

00:46:25.380 the greek and roman stuff there are so many pockets of it and you could just keep going

00:46:31.280 and going and going that could like that could have been a long a three-part like thing

00:46:37.560 all right next time emily is going to bring us an episode on we'll be journeying to the north

00:46:47.060 and covering some hopefully nordic witchcraft and wizardry and sorcery and all that other fun stuff

00:46:56.580 think about like runes and all of that cool fun stuff and a lot of hell yeah i'm sorry to emily

00:47:04.240 in advance for all of the um pronunciation that she's gonna have to try and do oh god i didn't

00:47:10.620 even think about that part so thank you because i was just like i'm gonna jump start on it i let

00:47:16.180 myself off easy uh by doing the irish one because i only had irish things to pronounce yeah which is

00:47:22.340 easy for you yeah make sure you come back for that one and it's going to be yeah it's going

00:47:28.280 to be really metal probably hell yeah and then come back for the one after that and the one after

00:47:33.020 that and the one after that you should just play the exit music while i'm saying that

00:47:38.220 and after that and after that all right everybody i am emily and i have been neve

00:47:45.220 and thanks for joining us thank you talk to you next time

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Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - February 07, 2024

Episode Thirty： Celtic Witchcraft - Counter fairy attacks

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