Page 25 - Garda Journal Summer 2019

The Islandmagee Witch Trial Poltergeist
plaque would become a “shrine to paganism”. Ulster University lecturer, Dr Andrew Sneddon, who studies the history of witchcraft in Ireland, commented ““From a modern perspective we might see the conviction as unjust, but from a historical point of view, there was nothing unjust about [the trial]. The women were tried under a law, according to due legal process and convicted by a jury...these women were targeted, and the case certainly became a cause célèbre, at a time when other cases weren’t picked up, partially because of the political and religious turmoil in County Antrim at that time... not all the Islandmagee witches were from Islandmagee, but all the suspects were tried in Carrickfergus...we should mark the last witchcraft trial on the island of Ireland, but must be careful not to impose our modern interpretation on the past or romanticise it.”
Martina Devlin went on to write a novel based on the events of the Islandmagee witch trials called The House Where It Happened. Devlin described her experience with the trial and her inspiration for writing her novel saying, “I stumbled across a passing reference to it five years ago in a newspaper, which reported that eight women had been convicted of witchcraft at the spring Assizes in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim. I felt compelled to dig deeper - the more questions which were answered, the more I had... Why did an 18-year-old named Mary Dunbar arrive in Islandmagee to stay with relatives, and almost immediately start complaining about being
HISTORY | Witches
tormented by witches? Why did she name eight local women as her persecutors? Why did she have convulsions, during which three strong men could barely restrain her? Why did she regurgitate pins and button?”
She also explained her fascination with the story, commenting “I found myself unable to forget the women at the heart of the Islandmagee story. In Dublin’s National Library I read the court documents - sworn depositions from witnesses, including Mary Dunbar. At the nearby Pearse Library, I read a newspaper report referring to the trial. I laid my hands on
an eyewitness account of the trial by the Rev William Tisdall, Vicar of Belfast. And I visited Islandmagee to walk the land, where local historians were welcoming and helpful - a remote place, beautiful, with a sense of otherness. Scotland is a short boat ride away.
As a novelist, the story fascinated me - not least because of modern parallels. Every age has its witches, people marginalised by society. In writing The House Where It Happened, I wanted to give back their voices to those eight women. They were silenced twice: once in the courtroom, where they were disbelieved, and later by being written out of history. I also found myself pondering Mary Dunbar: was she mad or bad? The women were convicted on no real evidence. But their teenage accuser was believed in the remote and superstitious Ulster Scots community. Partly because she was convincing. Partly because she was not examined by a doctor. And partly because punishing women for witchcraft was a social control mechanism for those outside the template. Afterwards, they dropped out of history. As did Mary Dunbar. And that’s where fictions comes into its own: my book imagines what may have taken place in Co Antrim all those years ago. And why.”
For those who wish to delve deeper into the history and facts of the case, Andrew Sneddon, also wrote a non-fiction novel exploring the hows and whys of the trial. The book, Possessed by the Devil: the Real History of the Islandmagee Witches and Ireland’s Only Mass Witchcraft Trial, has been described and reviewed by John Gibney, the online History Ireland editor, as “erudite, accessible and very readable. Sneddon meticulously embeds his story in its wider Irish, British and European contexts as it unfolds, and brings a great deal of scholarship to bear on his tale. But the narrative is never far away: there are no lengthy digressions that go on for pages, ending with phrases such as ‘meanwhile, back in Islandmagee.” Both novels explore the fascinating trial in unique ways, giving the reader options as to what kind of book they wish to read, as well as a different voice and perspective on the case.
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