You're Dead to Me - Medieval Irish Folklore (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

In this special live episode, recorded at the 2023 Hay Festival, Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Gillian Kenny and comedian Seán Burke to learn about medieval Irish folklore.Greg and his guests discuss the lore and stories from Gaelic Irish culture. Gaelic culture remained the dominant set of cultural and societal beliefs on the island of Ireland well into the 17th century until it was destroyed by a succession of English invasions.But what were these beliefs and how did the Christianisation of Ireland from the 5th century onwards amalgamate pre-Christian stories into it?From fairy darts to banshees, through some unusual ways of warding off the evil eye, this is a jovial jaunt across some ancient myths and legends.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Research by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Written by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Steve Hankey

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Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound. Start listening to Sherlock Holmes, the computer. complete BBC collection wherever you get your audio books. And welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And that hum of excitement you can hear in the air is because we're coming to you live from the Hay Literary Festival in Wales. Say hello, audience.

So today we are meandering back to medieval Ireland to learn all about Irish magic. And I didn't Irish there, didn't I? Sorry. to learn all about Irish magic and folklore in the Middle Ages and to help me separate history from hocus pocus, I'm joining my two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a historian of medieval and early modern Ireland, specialising in women, gender and folklore.

She's returning to your dead to me after her raucous run in our Gronia O'Malley episode, absolute chaos it was. It's Dr Gillian Kenny. Welcome back, Jill! And in Comedy Corner, he's a comedian, writer and actor. You might have caught him on the hilarious sketch show, no worries, if not, the Michael Frye Show, or Hollywood Hijack. And it's very likely you've seen him on Tintinette

because he's one of those young people who does viral sketch comedy and he does him very well. It's Sean. Thrown to have you on, Sean. First timer. Yeah, yeah, first timer. So I have to ask the contractually obliged question.

Did you do medieval Irish history at school? I think. Good. It's a while ago now. Counterintuitively, we studied a lot of American history in school. That's the Joe Biden curriculum. Yeah, yeah. We're still so proud of JFK to this day.

So, what do you know? We start as ever with the Sawadia know. This is Warre how I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener and audience, hello, know about today's subject. And I'm guessing most of you don't know a huge amount about medieval island, let alone medieval Irish magic and folklore. Perhaps you're conjuring up vague images of banshees, frolicing around forests.

Pop culture is not exactly bursting with references to Irish magic. You can get glimpses in films like Hellboy 2. Not everyone's favour, I guess. It's got characters there that are based on the mythological race called Tuadadain. You've got sinister fairies in Jonathan Strange, Mr. Norrell. Anyone seen an Excalibur, Arthuriana? That's got a sort of Irishy vibe to it. And you've got countless cultural references in films and books and TV

to fairies and elves and other worlds. But what else do we need to know? Right, Dr. Jill, start with the basics. What is Ireland? No, come on, we can do that than that. How are we defining medieval island? because you as a historian go longer into the medieval period than I do as a historian in the medieval period.

So presumably everyone knows where Ireland is. We just start with that one. It's just over to the left, the one that looks like a teddy bear. So it does go a little bit longer. It goes into the 16th and 17th centuries because Gaelic Ireland, which was the predominant culture on the island, spread into that.

It was sadly destroyed in the 16th and 17th centuries, but we won't talk about that today. It's a comedy show. It's a comedy show. Who described it? I think if a Welsh might understand it. Any Welsh in the audience? No.

Anyway, so today we'll talk mostly about Ireland after the conversion to Christianity in the 5th century, as that's where we start to get most of our literary sources. And this conversion brought with a huge economic, social and intellectual changes. But we do have some idea about what happened

in pre-Christian Ireland. There's some historical sources, but we use archaeology as well. There's certainly an idea that there was a kind of a nature worship around forests and wells. Of course, there's the druids, which people will, of course. Love a druid. Be aware of.

But, of course, when the Christians come along in the 5th century, they run those out. And then they start to write down the oral tales, but of course everything has a veneer of Christianity on it. Okay. So 5th century is the Christianisation of Ireland. Is that sort of St. Patrick's vibe? Yeah, that's St. Patrick's.

then and then runs around battling druids and does the whole shebang, which I'm sure Sean knows about as a good Irish man. Yeah, the whole shebang. Drawed the snakes out as well while he was at it. The whole thing with the Shamrock. The logo launch. Resounding success.

How are you imagining life in medieval island, Sean? What's your sort of go-to image in your head? Lots of fields, a few little huts. Probably cheaper rent. I imagine than nowadays. So not too bad, to be honest, overall. Jill, what do we mean by medieval? in terms of life and identity culture.

Well, Sean pretty much had it. No, he didn't. Thank you. Anyway, the story is medieval Ireland is, of course, it is a tale of two cultures, basically, for most of the Middle Ages, particularly the later period. You have Gaelic Irish and the English Irish,

or the Anglo-Irish they were known. What we're talking about today are really Gaelic-Irish culture and beliefs and society. So within that, it's a very hierarchical, it's a very patriarchal system, There are what used to be kings, they became lords. There's loads of little kingdoms and lordships that gave allegiance to kind of overlords.

And this is medieval Europe, so of course, it's rural. People are working the land. Fields? Yeah. See? Come on. There's widespread violence. Of course there is, because it's a warrior society.

But what's really interesting about medieval Gaelic Ireland to me is that there is an intellectual class, which is right at the top. And these are the birds, the olives, the professors. and they have huge rights and absolute respect at the top. So these are historians. We're right at the top of the tree. So my ancestors knew what was what. Comedians? So men were allowed to be this.

Okay. Sorry. Women were not. So there was types of comedian called a braggator, which was a professional varter. I'm saying, Sean, do you know what I mean? It's an option. Do you know what I mean?

If the whole thing doesn't work out... I do that for free all the time, too. If I could monetise that. Yeah, there's comedians in medieval Ireland, but they are always male. Okay. All right. Listen, it wasn't perfect, you know what I mean?

Yeah. But there's another big influence coming down the tracks as well. It's the infamous V word. Sean, what is the V word in the medieval period? Vegans? I was going to go Vikings. Vegans is fine. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what I was going to say. No, Vikings. Well, Dublin's a Viking settlement, isn't it? Yeah. So I'm from Dublin. so I'm technically Viking, is what you're saying. You've got the moustache. Yeah, so.

Their listeners at home will just have to trust us on that one as well. You've also got the English showing up. Sorry. But we also get a special guest appearance from the Welsh. Wow. Don't show too soon. Because it's basically the Welsh you invaded. Oh, well, well, well.

You've lost the room. But all I'm saying is, you're an old one, because in the early medieval period, the Irish used to raid along your coasts and catch slaves. So fair enough. We'll give that one to the Welsh. You know what I mean? Wasn't...

They're rising up against it. There we go. Okay, okay. Close the gates. We're outnumbered here. Let's take the festival, Sean. Let's do it. But anyway, what happened was in 1166,

the King of Lentster, Dirk McMurrah, had been exiled, and he approached Henry the second, asking for help to get back his kingdom. of Lentster and Henry said yes of course because he quite fancy getting a foothold in Ireland what I think we might nicely term a whole load of back and forth over the medieval period and below and afterwards but after the English you were hyped as a whole shifting pattern of territory controlled by the English king it becomes a real mishmash of different kind of cultures

by the early 16th century about 60% of the island is controlled or influenced by Gaelic Lord so it's very heavily Gaelic. What's interesting is that this consistent Gaelic identity spread across the island. It was very consistent. They used the same language, same system of laws. And that even spread up into Scotland, into what's widely called the Gwaltok. So it was a whole outward-looking Irish-speaking world, which was kind of very active and very vibrant by that stage.

Time now to talk about magic, the realm of magic. Sean, what is magic? That's a very conceptual question, great. Harry Potter. springs to mind, but famously English. Things that cannot be explained by, you know, logic and science, mystical stuff. It's a supernatural. Yeah.

All right. Are we happy with that definition? Yeah, it does involve some of that, but mostly Irish magic is about influencing material reality through words. So words quite literally transform reality in the Irish system, whether because of its inherent power in the words themselves, or thanks to the intervention of a supernatural, being, you make a supplication. So words of power have three uses in the Irish system. It's healing,

harming and protection. We also see the importance of words in things like place names, which were often associated with mystical and mythical beings. The land itself is diffused with magic. In Rathcrowan, in Kenti Ross Common, there's a cave called Ouv Magat, the Cave of the Cats, which since medieval times has been thought of as the entrance to the other world. And that's very much associated with the goddess. Morrigan. She's a very fearsome battle goddess who is said to emerge out of there once a year with her host to lay waste. Where's the entrance to the underworld? The other world? The Cave the Cats. Round. Yeah, Rat Crow in County Roscommon. And that's also a place associated with Queen Mave, who's also a very badly behaved woman. So many of the magical beliefs we're

discussing today, Jill, they come from oral traditions of stories, magical tales and myths that are recorded, they're written down during the Christian era. They're sorted into what historians call cycles, which has nothing to do with bicycles, it's to do with collections of stories. They are grouped into collections. They feature different beings which appear in magical tales, and as I said, they were written by Christian monks. They're grouped into these cycles.

There's a mythological cycle, and that features the Tuhududdinan, who were mangled in Hellboy, too, as Greg was saying in the beginning. So they usually translated as tribes and people of the guys. They're a supernatural race who live in the other world. And the other world is where you go via certain elements in the Irish countryside, like the Great Passage Tumes, the Brew. And their enemy are a race called the Formorians, which are depicted as evil and monstrous.

The Ulster cycle, which is set in the mythical parts of Eastern Ulster and Northern Leinster, the Fenian cycle about a mythical hero called Finn Macool, and his band of warriors, the Fiena. and the Kings cycle, which are legends about historical and semi-historical Irish kings. And the Tuhl de Danan were said to have acquired magic in the Northern Islands before coming to Ireland, Ireland. So they are what you might know as the fairies. And a lot of this activity is listed in an actual book we have called The Book of Invasions, because we don't forget. And you mentioned fairies.

How are you picturing a fairy, Sean? Are we sort of Tinkerbell with Tato? Yeah, that feels like the Hollywood version of fairies. But as always with these things, I feel like they're probably more fearsome than that in the actual tellings. How big? You thinking this big, small? I think in waist height. Waste height.

But fierce. Small but aggressive. You hear a lot about fairy fort. Like most Irish people. Yeah. Sorry, are we not describing it? Irish people. Yeah, yeah.

The idea of a fairy, I mean, Hollywood has taken it and made it adorable and cute and small. and it's sort of very princessy, but we're not talking that here in medieval island, don't we? Fairies are scary. You don't want to mess. They are beings who are immune to our charm. They can be very malevolent. They can love us.

They live alongside us in the invisible realm. So the fairy, though, doesn't even begin to describe them. Fairy is a later English name for them. Their original name is the Aishi, and that means people of the Hollow Hills. In Irish tradition, you never call them by their name. because you don't want to get their attention. They provide a very handy mechanism within Gaelic medieval Ireland

for explaining bad stuff. So if someone died, unfortunately, if you had problems with livestock, if you had crop failures, that's the fairies. You've annoyed the fairies. Of course, you've got like famous fairies, like the Banshee, for example, who predicted people's deaths by crying out and screeching at them or their loved ones.

So the thing about the banshee is if you hear it, you're not going to die but someone you know is just putting that out there. That's very intense. Yeah. When I first moved to London, I heard foxes in the night and I just thought, it's the banshee.

But they're not the only ones who will turn up for people because fairies would do you a bad turn if you did one for them. There's a belief in Ireland, for example, in things called fairy darts. Elf darts is another name for them. So it's like bits of stone,

or they fashioned into like arrowheads. They were probably like Stone Age arrowheads that people found and they would fire them at cattle and cause them some kind of harm. And fairy women are often described trying to steal away princes or heroes in the midst. So there's also a belief in changelings, for example, as well. This is where the fairies would swap your baby and put a fairy baby in its place, a changeling. And the way you'd know it was a changeling was,

okay, so your baby would start to... smoke a pipe or or play the fiddle or start talking in an old man's voice so then you might go I think my baby's a fairy subtle giveaway there

look did the baby always smoke with a pipe what we thought we do now actually Sean is because you're a sketch comedian and you've got a range of voices impressions we thought maybe we'd give you some role-playing to do oh I love a bit of role-playing. We've got some props

we've got some costumes Okay. And then we're going to have our medieval agony aunt, Dr. Jill. She's going to help you and your various characters out with their medieval magical problem. Sounds great. So we're going to have problem number one.

So, Sean, do you want to pop on your appropriate costume? A bag of some fairly stereotypical possessions. Oh my God, is that a flat cap? That is a flat cap. I presume this is for this one. Okay. Here we go. Dear Dr. Jill, help!

My cattle have keeled over and I fear they've fallen foul of fair. Darts. How can I protect the rest of my livestock from disgruntled fairy folk? Hi, Sean. There are a variety of protections against fairy attacks on your cattle. The first is an amulet of mistletoe and

mountain ash, which you will have to use. You may also want to enlist the help of your local friendly cunning folk, people who practice healing and defensive magic. So these are the cunning men and wise women, Ban Fasa, of the Irish tradition. They can do

incantations, prayers and so on. You must also make sure to avoid disturbing any reported fairy dwellings. There are loads of stories about people being cursed with bad luck if they dig it up in any way or interfered with fairy forts.

Fairy forts are early medieval homesteads called rats ring forts. So avoid. The only time I hear about fairy forts is when somebody's trying to build a road in Ireland. They're like, no, I'm not touching that.

They stopped it. They stopped it. Yeah, it happens. Ferries can be mischief makers, but we don't want to unfairly scapegoat them, because they're not always to blame, because there's something else to worry about, Sean. The evil eye.

Have you heard of the evil eye? You mean like Sauron? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, man, yeah. No, outside of that, no. I mean, it sounds familiar, but I actually don't, specifically not. Dr. Jill, why is the evil eye? Because I've heard of it. Sean's heard of it, but what is it?

People were genuinely worried about the evil eye. about the effect on people and animals. There's a source in the 16th century, a Jesuit priest, Father Good, and he talks about the fact that cunning folk were regularly employed to cure what he called eye-bitten livestock. There's a few options. If you get stuck by the evil eye, in 17th century Kildare, parents used to protect their children from the evil eye

by spitting in their faces. Yes. Bring it back. Bring it back. I don't try that one at home and even better is the next thing which is even more effective against the evil eye so all around Ireland there are mysterious stone carvings

called Sheelan Agiggs and they are of old women or hags Kailok in the Irish tradition I've no other way of saying this displaying their vulva I have to get it out so they are a grotesque and they are doing, just please Google it, not your work one.

And the idea is that these vulvas of old ladies are so powerful that they can avert the evil eye. And the older I get, the more I begin to agree with it, I've got to tell you. Should we have another problem? Yeah, that's a handy. Yeah, can we have problem number two then, Sean? This is a, I think this is a butter problem. Right.

Classic butter problem. Dear Jill, help. The girls are coming over for brunch this weekend and my butter won't churn. How can I make my dairy delicious again? 99 butter churning problems. Okay, that was a big problem in medieval Ireland because people liked their dairy.

So, Sean, sounds like you've got a butter witch on your hands. That's a true thing. These were beings who, in the Irish tradition, transformed into hairs to steal milk fruit. cows and to prevent your butter from being churned. To drive away a Butter Witch, Sean, what you have to do is burn the thatch from a suspected Butter Witch's house.

You need you to be sure or not if you didn't like her, no care. You could also drive the cattle through the ashes or smoke of bonfires on May Eve, or you could try shooting some hairs and waiting to see the inevitable horribly horrendous. old woman staggering around after it. Okay. Because she turned back into an old woman,

not because he was shooting old women. He's shooting hairs. Oh, I'm glad you clarified that. Yeah, yeah. So they are Irish witches. That is an Irish witch. They steal your butter, which is probably the least threatening which you've ever heard. Let's talk about magical words and cursing as well. And I think you mentioned it very early on the idea of cursing,

and the magical transformative power of words to affect real change in the material world, which is all very exciting. But how do you curse someone? There's a couple of ways you can do it. You can go to a blacksmith. They will help you curse. The blacksmith's curse was really powerful. You can go to places where there are cursing stones.

There are actual places in the Irish landscape where they set up cursing altars and you could go and touch them in an anti-clockwise direction while uttering the curse. So it's a huge ritual. Gerald of Wales described Irish saints as having a particularly vindictive cast of mind. And they were very, very good at curse.

and they used props. So they used their bells, their hand bells, and what were called their buckles or croziers. And they used to use them in these spectacular displays of cursing. And there's all these crazy stories where they took their buckle and struck it and killed druids and fell dragons. And so there's a total tradition of that. They're basically a magic wand.

They could use those. Nice. Anti-clockwise on the stone. Anti-clockwise to curse, clockwise to send good thoughts. But who is going to travel? to one of these places and go, yeah, I love my neighbour. Yeah, sure. No, and it's proper, like, it's a proper effort.

Sending good vibes. Yeah, you've got to really hate your neighbour. You've got to get in a boat. You're going to get out there. You're going to trudge up, and then three times you've got certain words to say, and then you turn them anti-clockwise and bang. It's a lot to remember. Did you say there was a bell in there as well?

So the bishops used to use bells, very, very famous for it. They had little hand bells, which they were correct. curse people with. Right. It really adds an extra umph if you could just ring a bell. It's every time you say... They've no special effects,

you know what I mean? It's a big deal back there. It was theatre. It was the type of theatre. It was good. But there is still sin in doing some of this cursing magic, right? I'm trying to get my head around

where the rules lie because we know of penitential handbooks, guide books for priests on what happens if a parishioner comes in and they've done a magical sin. So there is still a sense that this is not always okay. it's about power with the early Christian church.

They didn't like women doing magic because women often did love magic and magic to try and attempt reproduction and they didn't like that at all. Now there's a penitential of Finian as it's called which dates from 591 and that does use the term maleficium which is sorcery to refer to magic.

It's a really early use of the phrase. Interestingly, when the church appeared in Ireland the words for magic exploded. So that's what they were talking about. They were fixated on magic after they arrived and on controlling it. So in the penitential of Finian, if you do sorcery

you do half a year's penance on bread and water if you use sorcery to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy and you get an abstention from wine and meat for two years. Now that sounds a lot but it's actually not. That's actually quite a small one. So they kind of, they were very cognizant that women were doing this kind

of magic and they needed to prepare for it. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is where Sean and I churn our butter for two whole minutes, while Dr Gill brings her magic touch to today's story. So pray silence for the nuance window and take it away, Dr. Jill. Right. Well, after all of that, I hope I've convinced some of you that magic matters.

To my mind, how can we ever really lay claim to uncovering a culture's secrets if we pay no heed to their inner secret lives? In Ireland's case, those were millennia long conversations with gods, goddesses and the realm invisible. The land itself was marked by magic. For thousands of years, human sacrifices lay buried in the ancient quiet of Ireland's dank, velvety soil, those bog bodies ritually killed at the borders of ancient kingdoms so that they could continue to protect them even in the afterlife. And embedded above them in Ireland's physical landscape is a magical geography which everyone knew. The homes of their invisible neighbours, the she, the four,

warts, bushes, trees and the great brew, which they guarded ferociously, because the land was shared. These places teamed with invisible life, and the fairy folks were just as capricious and unpredictable as the land and weather itself. Life, both seen and unseen, was always on a knife edge in medieval Ireland. And so over centuries people developed the means to manage those relationships, to engage with the land as a goddess to try and mollify her. Experts emerged whose skills allowed them to intercede with the she, to keep the peace, and opportunities were found to magically redirect the stress and fear that was a constant companion to many.

For example, if you hated your neighbour and wished to harm them but couldn't, what better way to relieve the stress than to take yourself to the place of the cursing stones? And do that. Some magic matters. From understanding the types of charms women chanted over sick children to figuring out just how a great saint used magic to enchant a woman into loving a man and onto absorbing how magic was such a standard part of life, that the lawyers put safeguards and punishments in place.

From looking at all of this, we can tell lots about how and why the society used magic, which in turn tells us loads, about the nature and balance of power and belief in Ireland, how social change, gender roles, and about how human beings understood and charted their responses in times of both crisis and plenty. Magic lasted a long time in Ireland,

until the 20th century anthropological students were still visiting and writing thesis on Banshee belief. In 1999, famously, a campaign was run not to disturb a fairy bush inclair while a road bypass was being built. Have those beliefs now gone? A lot of them, sure, but perhaps not all of them. And maybe that's not a bad thing.

Irish farmers won't interfere with a fairy fort even today. Does that speak to a backwardness? No, of course not. Ireland's a modern educated country. But in a Western world, which has lost its connection with nature and its spirits, We might ponder the value of lingering, powerful guardians of the land who we dare not interfere with.

It seems to me that that's not at all, a bad magical belief to hold on to. Thanks for you. Lovely. Thank you very much. Bab. Thoughts on that, Sean. Irish people have an excuse for everything. Oh, I'm late. Oh, it was the fairies.

Yeah, yeah. You just want to watch yourself tonight, John is what I'm saying. You think you hear a fox man. You just be careful. Van Chi, yeah. Right, okay, I think we're done with our episode. So an enormous thank you to Sean.

Thank you to Jill. And listener, if you want more medieval myths and stories, check out our episode on Old Norse Sagers, because actually maybe they're slightly interacting with... Yeah, yeah, you get Irish characters in Norse Saga. Yeah, there we go then. So it's a revision homework. It's the same story from a different perspective.

And remember, if you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, so you never miss an episode. Just time for me to see a huge thing. Thank you to our guests. In History Corner, our very own medieval wizard, Dr Gillian Kelly. Thank you, Jill.

Thank you. And in Comedy Corner, the sensational Sean Burke. Thank you, Sean. But for now, I'm off to go and spit in a child's face. Bye! Hi, we're the Van Toluccan. The identical twin Dr Van Tullochans, Chris and Zand. In What's Up, Docs, we're diving into the messy, complicated world of health and well-being.

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