Representing Magic in Modern Ireland

This Element argues that Ireland did not experience a disenchanted modernity nor a decline in magic. It suggests that beliefs practices and traditions concerning witchcraft and magic developed and adapted to modernity to retain cultural currency until the end of the twentieth century. This analysis provides the backdrop for the first systematic exploration of how historic Irish trials of witches and cunning-folk were represented by historians antiquarians journalists dramatists poets and novelists in Ireland between the late eighteenth and late twentieth century. It is demonstrated that this work created an accepted narrative of Irish witchcraft and magic which glossed over ignored or obscured the depth of belief in witchcraft both in the past and in contemporary society. Collectively their work gendered Irish witchcraft created a myth of a disenchanted modern Ireland and reinforced competing views of Irishness and Irish identity. These long-held stereotypes were only challenged in the late twentieth-century.