Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 9 (1943-01).djvu/124

 merited, rather wistfully, we thought, that he never heard of any witches there. But he wanted to get the lowdown. Luckily he addressed his query not to the editors of, who might have been hard put to settle the issue, but to Seabury Quinn who returned the following information in reply. We can heartily vouch for Mr. Quinn's qualifications to answer this—or almost any other—question.

This is in answer to Mr. Mark Cathal's open letter to me in the Eyrie of the September issue:

The witch, in the technically accepted meaning of the term—one who has foresworn God and made a compact with the Devil whereby, in return for the trifling consideration of his or her immortal soul she (or he) is granted magical powers, enabled to work charms, brew potent potions, cause death or illness by magic, find buried treasure, summon or drive away love, and perform such-like handy little tricks—is practically unknown in Ireland.

Irish folklore swarms with fairies, "the little people," or, as the Irish prefer to call them euphemistically, "the little good peo'ple," who are almost continuously up to some sort of mischief, much of which has elements of witchcraft in it. But the fairies aren't people, they have no souls, they work their tricks for their own ends, not for hire or for the glorification of Satan. Indeed, it's almost a sure thing that the least spirited Irish fairy would reach for his blackthorn or the nearest half-brick if you called him a Satanist—bad cess to ye!

Father Montague Summers, who can smell a witch as far as anybody, and a lot farther than most, makes mention of only one Irish witch in his monumental work on witchcraft, Dame Alice Kyteler, tried in 1324.

My former fellow Brooklynite, Miss Theda Kenyon, relates the case of Bridget Cleary Boland of Clonmel, Tipperary, who was actually burned to death in 1895 by her husband and neighbors after being "tried} in circum-

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