Spooky nights, hoots at dawn

‘HEX the patriarchy’ reads a heading on a TLS review of of Waking the Witch by Pam Grossman — a book on how interest in witchcraft “has surged again”. Donald Trump gets a mention. He tweeted the phrase “witch hunt” 130 times in 2018. And, as witches are recast as “vigilantes against sexual predation”, one learns of a ‘binding spell’ put on the president to prevent harm; there is even a Bind Trump group on Facebook!

My abiding spooky encounters at this bewitching time are set in Spain on a tricky journey across Galician hills to a former convent. The witches, however, were ragdoll effigies strung up like game birds outside shops in small towns. It was still too early for a dusting of frost on the coloured cloth, wood and straw, carefully sewn, along with the black hats and broomsticks. But I was told that up in the hills there were real witches.

Sharp bends and steep inclines were carefully navigated on the way to what was now a parador — a State-run hotel chain using refurbished former religious properties. It had been long given up by the nuns, but there remained a functioning chapel, all ancient gloom with candles waiting to flicker to a match. It seemed overpoweringly peaceful. Then, at dawn’s stillness among the woods of sweet chestnut and pine there came an eerie sound — “hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo” — the distinctive call of an eagle owl, the largest European species.

Twice I have seen an eagle owl close up — once in a taxidermist’s and the second time was a fence-perched bird during daylight in Co Dublin! This was on a back road near Kinsaley so I contacted the area’s best known resident to inquire if the bird was his. No, he did not have an aviary of exotics. The owl, having come from elsewhere, could maybe then have been attracted to his farm, which raised game birds.

In an older Ireland we were not without some terrifying figures — such as the pooka, which was said to gallop the rural roads at this time. There was a saying in Ring, Co Waterford: ‘What the pooka writes the pooka can read’. There was a custom in Mayo to cast out the door a glass of poitin to mollify the creature. A drop was also acceptable to other dark forces of folklore such as Mungo Mango, An Dullachain and Muck Ulla wandering the roads with black goats on Halloween’s Oiche na hAimleise or night of mischief. Young people were out also, shouting and banging pots to drive away the creatures.

This was all harmless fun, as are today’s trick-ortreat kids who have probably never heard of the pooka.