THE FAIRY DOCTORS OF IRELAND
irish folklore contains accounts of men and women who mediated between the common folk and the supernatural fairy realm – but were they wily charlatans or descendents of ancient celtic shamans?
this rare illustration of a consultation with a Fairy doctor 1 paints a fairly disparaging portrait of the peasant healers of rural ireland. they were men – or women – who made a living treating both mental and physical illnesses (with herbs and spells), healing sick animals, finding lost items, lifting curses, recovering ‘changelings’ and so on. the general view among the early folklorists and academicians – from the irish antiquarian thomas crofton croker (1798-1854) in his Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, (1825) to the archæologist Wg Woodmartin (1847-1917) in his Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland (1902) – was that they were wily rogues, exploiting the ignorance of common folk by claiming to have a special relationship with the otherworldly and unpredictable ‘good neighbours’, and whose bogus rituals – called by rev. John o’hanlon “mysterious quackery” 2 – were full of dubious gaelic and cod latin, and fuelled by frequent, generous swigs of poteen. 3
it was only a later generation of scholars – typified by WB yeats (1865-1939) – who saw in these often solitary and dirt-poor hermits more than mere mendacity. their playful brogue and colourful language were firmly in the gaelic oral tradition, promulgating, in their own untutored way, the mysticism and lore of ancient but fading celtic traditions. hidden in the body of so many of these collections of tales are hints of this – perhaps more truly sheoguey4– type of Fairy doctor.
lady Wilde (1821-1896), for example, found that “fairy doctors are generally females” yet describes a “fairy-man” from innis sark: “he never touched beer, spirits or meat in all his life but has lived entirely on bread, fruit and vegetables… he stands quite apart from life and by this means hold his power over the mysteries.” 5 yeats cites from croker an interview with the Fairy doctor tom Bourke, telling how Bourke got his ‘gift’ of association with the good Folk and the terrible cost of it: three of Bourke’s children died young, a fate which faced his fourth, until by acknowledging the ‘gift’ he saved the boy’s life. Bourke also told of warring groups among the Fairies, and allegiances between Fairy factions and human families over generations. 6
yeats himself made a few interesting notes upon the Fairy doctors that he had heard of or come across during his own researches, saying that their “temperament” was born with them and distinguished them from witches. their power came directly from the fairies, he wrote, unlike witches who received theirs from “evil spirits and [their] own malignant will”; and also, while witches are “feared”, the Fairy doctor “is gone to for advice, and is never worse than mischievous”.
modern scholars – such as eva Pócs, gustav henningsen, Wolfgang Behringer, carlo ginsburg and emma Wilby – have drawn special attention to these inherently shamanistic figures and the role they have played in rural communities throughout european history. Pócs defines them as “charismatic healers who maintained a ritual connection with the supernatural fairy world”. 7 as mediators between the living and the fairy world, they pre-date the witchcraft notions of both the european ecclesiastical ‘elite’ and the peasantry, yet were inevitably caught up in the terrible anti-witch pogroms. Whether they are the descendants of some prehistoric european shamanism is currently in debate. admittedly, theirs was a socially peripheral practice where asian shamanism proper originates in a cult that is central to a society.
as a folk motif, the ‘abduction’ itself is a variation upon shamanistic initiation, and a lengthy absence, while frequently mentioned in British and irish fairylore, is often attributed to the differential passage of time in the Fairy realm equating to the ‘blink of an eye’ in the human world (or vice versa). 8 yeats concluded that “the most celebrated Fairy doctors are sometimes people the fairies loved and carried away… not that those the fairies love are always carried off – they may merely grow silent and strange, and take to lonely wanderings in the ‘gentle’ places. such will,” he adds, “in after-times, be great poets or musicians, or fairy doctors.” Probably the most famous Fairy doctor in modern times was Biddy early (c.1798-1874) who “was away seven years. she didn’t tell me about it but she spoke of it to others”. 9
given the history of our dr moore – ‘taken’ many times since childhood, and again as soon as he returns to his homeland – we might presume that he was a latent Fairy doctor himself, retaining his sensitivity to the sheoguey world throughout his life.
THE RETURN OF DR MOORE
As predicted, at about six o’ clock the next morning, Dr Moore was found knocking at the door. Once inside, he asked for food and drink “for he was both hungry and thirsty, having been hurried from place to place all that Night”. Once refreshed and composed he satisfied the clamour for an account of what happened to him:
“That it seemed to him there came into the Room about 20 men, some mounted on Horseback, others on foot, and laid hold on him; That he was sensible of Mr Uniack’s and Mr Moore’s endeavours to have kept him, and of the force they used; but it was all to no purpose, for had there been 40 more they would have signified nothing.”
“That from the House he was carried to a Wood, about a mile distant, where was a fine Horse prepared, and as he was about to mount, a Glass of Wine was given him, and a crust of Bread ; but when he offered to eat and drink, they were both struck out of his hand.”
“That from thence he went in the same Company that had taken him away, to a Danes Fort about seven miles from the Wood; That he imagined himself to be mounted on a white Horse, whose motion was exceeding swift, and when they came to the Fort, their Company multiplied to about 300 large and well-proportioned Men and Women: He who seemed to be Chief, was mounted on a sorrel Horse; that they all dismounted and fell to dancing, and that it came to the Doctor’s turn to lead a Dance, which he did remember the Tune he danced unto.”
“That after the dancing, there appeared a most sumptuous Banquet, and the Governour took him by the hand and desired him to eat; which he several times attempted, but was prevented by something that still struck the Meat out of his hand: And so gives an account how from thence he was carried to the several places the Old Woman had mentioned the Night before; and that about break of day he found himself alone within sight of the Inn.”
Shortly afterwards, Richard Uniack rode with the Doctor and saw for himself the Danes Fort. Here, they found “the Grass so trodden down, and the Ground beaten, as 500 men had been there”. They then pushed onward, tracing the path the Doctor had travelled the night before “so exactly, that if his Horse went but a yard out of the track, he would presently turn him into it again”. The narrative of Dr Moore ends there.
A TOUCH OF AUTHENTICITY?
About a month later – on 18 November 1678 – we find Richard Uniack, in the presence of Dr Moore himself, relating the adventure to a Dr Murphey and (more importantly) to Stephen Ludlow. 18 This meeting, I presume, was in Dublin where Ludlow worked as one of the Six Clerks of the High Court of Chancery. If Ludlow asked any questions afterwards, or sought any verification, we are not told.
No doubt, so-called ‘practical’ and ‘scientific’ men would have us believe that anyone retailing a fairy story is either mad, drunk or perpetrating a fraud, but if our principal participant and his chief witness were fabricating the story for some reason, would they really be so foolish as to try to hoodwink a member of one of the senior law benches in the land? From the circumstances and fantastic nature of this account that seems to me unlikely, and the risk they took in the telling of it may well be a mark of their sincerity.
In just under two months from the original abduction in Wicklow, the story reached London. The final paragraph of the broadsheet identifies a secondary narrator – John Cother, in London – who declares that he is printing this broadsheet on behalf of a friend “T.R.”. Cother says that the story was being “much spoken of” in Dublin “as True News” and the account was sent to him (Cother) from Dublin “by a person whom I credit” and comes “recommended” in a letter bearing date 23 November 1678 – i.e. just five days after Uniack told Stephen Ludlow. However, this ‘reliable’ person is not identified. 19
A final, important point needs to be considered when judging the value of this narrative. The great Gaelic scholar and poet Douglas Hyde (1938-1945) told the American anthropologist Walter Evans-Wentz (18781965) that, when listening to rural folktales, there was a significant difference between those that were ‘raw’ and based on personal belief or experience and those that were the product of a storyteller’s art, the latter being more intricate and structured. 20 While endless retelling over time can massage the former into the latter, this did not have sufficient time to have happened here. We can still distinguish the signatures of the two primary voices (those of Dr Moore and
Richard Uniack). With the narrative of Dr Moore’s adventure we have a tale that seems to have the elements of both categories and yet what little we hear from Dr Moore himself seems authentically ‘raw’ when compared to the structured ‘whole’ (or latter part) which could be a product of Uniack’s retelling.
Should we accept this as evidence of actual teleportation and levitation? The narrative seems consistent with the way an authentic and baffling personal experience would be explained within a belief in fairies. So, while its context may be unacceptable to rationalists, I would not dismiss it completely. That said, several scholars have noted the similarity of Dr Moore’s adventure to the levitations of a butler in the employ of Lord Orrery, also in the 17th century. As this took place in the presence of a larger number of witnesses I would like to compare the two cases in my next article.