Meeting the Other Crowd – Eddie Lenihan

Meeting the Other Crowd, The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland – Eddie Lenihan
Gill and Macmillan – 2003

I first encountered the author of this book in a Tg4 documentary about Alice Kyteler, the witch of Kilkenny. Just looking at him, you can tell that the man is a legend. There are loads of videos of him telling stories online, and you’d be better off watching them than reading this review. About 3 years ago, I was visiting Ireland and somehow ended up in the Freemason’s Hall in Dublin. I got chatting to one of the lads there about books on Irish folklore, and he recommended this. I bought it the next day.

The astute reader will have noticed a decline in the amount of non-fiction being reviewed on this blog recently. This is largely due to my developing revulsion towards occultism. I don’t know whether it’s having a kid, a job and less time or if it’s just that I’ve come to know what to expect from new-age imbeciles, but I simply don’t have the patience to wade through the sort of rubbish that I used to review. Standing in front of my bookshelf, trying to choose between an outdated book about aliens and a pamphlet about magic beans, I cast my eyes to the ground in despair. It was on its way to the ground that my line of sight crossed the copy of Meeting the Other Crowd on my bottom shelf, wedged in between books on the Holy Grail and serpent worship. Yes, this book would work. The topic is occult in every sense of the word and from what I had seen of the author, I knew it would be interesting

Fairies though. Isn’t that a bit lame?

Let’s make this very clear. The fairies of Ireland are not the pleasant, wingèd creatures, fluttering about and turning little girls into princesses that some might expect. Fairies are wrathful, violent, and manipulative entities that live in a shadow world, emerging to kidnap children and seek violent retribution for any actions they have perceived as wrongs against them. They’re not objectively bad or evil, but they are certainly the kind of things that are best avoided.

This book is a collection of stories that Eddie Lenihan collected over what seems to have been several decades. He traveled around Ireland, recording old people telling the fairy stories that they had heard throughout their lives. The tales have been transcribed fairly precisely, and they retain a flow of speech that makes it easy to imagine the voice of the teller as you’re reading their words. While all of the stories are followed with a brief commentary by Lenihan, I would have liked a little more information about the story tellers and when they were recorded.

The other issue here is the consistency of the different stories. Some of these accounts are absolutely fascinating, but some are little over a page long and present only minor variations to other stories in the collection. I suppose this was probably inevitable given the nature of the book though, and I’d prefer for these shorter stories to be included than omitted.

Unlike the authors of much of the occult material that I have reviewed on here, the tellers of these tales had, as far as I can tell, an honest conviction in the stories they were telling. These people weren’t out to proselytize or to make a buck. They were telling stories that they had been asked to tell. That in itself makes it much easier to both enjoy the stories as stories and to consider them as something more than imaginary.

A skeptic might claim that these accounts are the attempts of uneducated, rural people to rationalize the traumatic events in their lives (infant deaths, thefts, abductions) but that interpretation doesn’t do these stories justice. Whether or not the events in these tales occurred precisely as they are described has no bearing on their beauty and cultural worth. While I’m not entirely convinced about the objective existence of fairies, I don’t think I’d ever enter a Fairy Fort, just to be safe.

I’d recommend this book for anyone with an interest in folklore and/or malevolent shadow people. I’m looking forward to reading more of Lenihan’s books in the future.

Speaking as an Irishman: Aleister Crowley’s Saint Patrick’s Day Poem

crowley tiocfaidh ar la up the rah Last year, I wrote a post about Aleister Crowley in which I briefly discussed his strange fascination with Ireland. In the Book of Lies, he claims to be an Irishman, and his title within the O.T.O. was “Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Iona and all the Britains within the Sanctuary of the Gnosis”. In 1915, he tried to cause a scene in New York by proclaiming the birth of an independent Irish Republic. Thirteen years prior to doing so, he wrote a poem about the Emerald Isle. I’m going to post it here:

ST. PATRICK’S DAY, 1902.
“Written at Delhi.”

O GOOD St. Patrick, turn again
Thy mild eyes to the Western main!
Shalt thou be silent? thou forget?
Are there no snakes in Ireland yet?

“Death to the Saxon! Slay nor spare!”
“O God of Justice, hear us swear!”

The iron Saxon’s bloody hand
Metes out his murder on the land.
The light of Erin is forlorn.
The country fades: the people mourn.

Of land bereft, of right beguiled,
Starved, tortured, murdered, or exiled;
Of freedom robbed, of faith cajoled,
In secret councils bought and sold!

Their weapons are the cell, the law,
The gallows, and the scourge, to awe
Brave Irish hearts: their hates deny
The right to live — the right to die.

Our weapons — be they fire and cord,
The shell, the rifle, and the sword!
Without a helper or a friend
All means be righteous to the End!

Look not for help to wordy strife!
This battle is for death or life.
Melt mountains with a word — and then
The colder hearts of Englishmen!

Look not to Europe in your need!
Columbia’s but a broken reed!
Your own good hearts, your own strong hand
Win back at last the Irish land.

Won by the strength of cold despair
Our chance is near us — slay nor spare!
Open to fate the Saxons lie: —
Up! Ireland! ere the good hour fly!

Stand all our fortunes on one cast!
Arise! the hour is come at last.
One torch may fire the ungodly shrine —
O God! and may that torch be mine!

But, even when victory is assured,
Forget not all ye have endured!
Of native mercy dam the dyke,
And leave the snake no fang to strike!

They slew our women: let us then
At least annihilate their men!
Lest the ill race from faithless graves
Arise again to make us slaves.

Arise, O God, and stand, and smite
For Ireland’s wrong, for Ireland’s right!
Our Lady, stay the pitying tear!
There is no room for pity here!

What pity knew the Saxon e’er?
Arise, O God, and slay nor spare,
Until full vengeance rightly wrought
Bring all their house of wrong to nought!

Scorn, the catastrophe of crime,
these be their monuments through time!
And Ireland, green once more and fresh,
Draw life from their dissolving flesh!

By Saxon carcases renewed,
Spring up, O shamrock virgin-hued!
And in the glory of thy leaf
Let all forget the ancient grief!

Now is the hour! The drink is poured!
Wake! fatal and avenging sword!
Brave men of Erin, hand in hand,
Arise and free the lovely land!

“Death to the Saxon! Slay nor spare!”
“O God of Justice, hear us swear!”

I’d love to hear Bono and Enya do a duet version.

I haven’t read much else of Crowley’s poetry, but this seems more political than mystical. It’s quite vicious. I wonder how much of Crowley’s sympathy for Ireland was sincere and how much was just part of his anti-authoritarian shtick. Somehow, I doubt the Irish public of 1902 would have had much time for him.

Sorry for the recent lack of updates on the site; the books I’m reading at the moment are quite long, but I’m aiming for another two posts by the end of the month. Anyways, I hope you have a pleasant, holy and snake-free Saint Patrick’s day.

Brits out!

Rover, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond – Tarry Thou till I Come and Melmoth the Wanderer

tarry thou till i come croly Tarry Thou till I Come or Salathiel, the Wandering Jew – George Croly
Funk and Wagnalls – 1902 (Originally Published in 1828)

A long time ago, I read Paul Murray’s article on the greatest Gothic novels ever written. At that stage I had already read most of the books on the list*, and out of the ones I had not yet read, there was only one that I had never heard of: Salathiel The Immortal by George Croly. Murray’s description of the book reads:
“Now almost forgotten, the Reverend George Croly was a friend of the Stoker family. In Salathiel the Immortal (1829), there are similarities of predicament between Salathiel and Dracula (as well as with that of Melmoth the Wanderer). Salathiel led the mob which promoted the death of Jesus, in return for which he was condemned to the misery of the undead state. A reshaping of the Wandering Jew legend which underlies so much of the gothic genre, including Melmoth the Wanderer. Like Maturin, Croly was a Church of Ireland clergyman.”
I have emboldened all the parts of this description that convinced me that I would have to read this book. I looked it up to research further, but could not find a single review. Ohhh, the alluring mystique! I quickly ordered a copy online, and when it arrived, I was thouroughly impressed with the physical book. It was printed in 1901, includes several full page colour illustrations, and ends with a bunch of notes and critical essays. It’s about 700 pages of small text though, so it sat on the shelf for four years before I found the time to read it.

tarry thou frontispiece
So, the Wandering Jew is a legendary character who was supposedly doomed to immortality after insulting Christ during the events leading up to his death. In this version of the tale, he is Salathiel, a priest of the Temple who had been gravely insulted by Christ’s heresy against traditional Judaism. Salathiel is the man who led the crowd demanding the blood of Christ. The book begins right at the moment of his exultation. As Jesus is lead to the cross, Salathiel hears a voice whisper “Tarry thou till I come” and understands that this is the voice of God telling him that he is going to have to wait around on Earth until Jesus returns on judgement day.

Ok, so we’re off to a good start: a cursed priest doomed to walk the earth until the end of time. Now this tale was originally published in 1828, so you would imagine that its 500+ pages cover a time period of almost two millennia. However, the protagonist’s most striking feature, his ability to survive for thousands of years, barely comes into play in the events of the story. The book ends with the destruction of the Second Temple, roughly 35 years after Jesus was crucified. Yes, Salathiel shows impressive endurance and manages to escape from some very tricky situations, but aside from the book’s title, first chapter and final chapter, there is very little in here that suggests anything preternatural about the title character; by the end of the book, he might be as young as 60.

tarry thou sorceror Salathiel meets a sorceror and spirit (That’s him in the back.)

This book includes virginal maidens, gloomy dungeons, heros, tyrants, curses, bandits, miraculous survivals, clergy, secret passageways, night journeys, and strange spectres: in short all the things that one might expect to find in a Gothic novel. But these elements are strewn (rather sparsely I will add) amoungst 500 pages of historical fiction about the siege of Jerusalem. Realistically, this is a fairly dry adventure novel about a warrior who has little fear of death. The main character has to rescue his family from captivity about 5 times, he escapes from captivity himself about 10 times, and finds himself doing battle (both physical and mental) with countless foes. He becomes stranded on a desert island, he briefly takes command of a pirate ship, he plans devastating attacks against the Roman forces, and he does it all for the love of his wife and children. There are a few spooky parts; he meets a ghost, a magician and some strange spirits, but these events only make up a few paragraphs in this tome. Referring to this book as a Gothic novel is a bit of a stretch.

Just some of the adventures on which our hero finds himself

So maybe it’s not Gothic, but is it any good? Well, it took me well over a month to finish it. I found the first 300 pages or so to be very, very boring. In fact, when I was reading it, I started wondering if this was not a precursor to the modernist novel. I wondered if Croly had deliberately avoided mentioning the legend of the wandering Jew and instead focused on extremely boring details. The horrendously wordy prose inflicts a sense of brutal tedium on his reader, and this technique gives that reader a sense of what life would be like for an individual who was doomed to live forever. Is this a stroke of absolute genius, or is it just poor writing? It’s hard to say.

The characterization is quite awful. Aside from their names, Salathiel’s associates are mostly interchangeable; they’re either completely good or completely bad. Also, some characters reappear after hundreds of pages of absence, and the reader is expected to remember exactly who they are. The biggest problem is with the title character though. Aside from a few hasty moments when he is contemplating his daughters being courted by a goy, Salathiel, the hero of this novel, is a very sensible, rational, empathetic individual. The idea that he was the man that led the mob against Christ (the proverbial ‘Jew that broke the camel’s back’) is very strange indeed. I would not be surprised to find out that Croly had written the novel and tacked on the few Wandering Jew parts afterwards because he realized that nobody would be interested if he didn’t lure them in with a familiar legend.

tarry thou jesus croly LOL, keep walking, lil bitch!

Of course, the legend of the Wandering Jew is in itself quite bizarre. The idea is that Jesus put a curse on the lad for being mean to him. Let’s just recall that the fundamental belief of Christianity is that Jesus Christ died so that the sins of man could be forgiven. Isn’t it a bit odd then that he would personally inflict immense suffering on any individual for wronging him? Also, the nature of Salathiel’s trangression isn’t even that severe when you consider the context in which it occurred. He, a holy man, genuinely believed that Christ was a heretic trying to pervert his religion. Sure, it was a shitty thing to do to try to get him killed, but Salathiel seems genuinely remorseful afterwards. If Jesus had only cursed him with a bad dose of verrucas, Salathiel probably would have had to sit down for a while to contemplate his bad behaviour, and I reckon he’d quickly realize that he had been a bit harsh. He would have asked God for forgiveness, and if God had truly meant all the stuff that he had just had Jesus tell everyone, he’d have to forgive Salathiel immediately. As things currently stand, Salathiel is doomed to suffer regardless of how remorseful he is. Jesus is a hypocrite.

To today’s socially conscious reader, the title of this book might set off alarm bells. After all, the Nazis once made a propaganda film titled Der Ewige Jude (the German name for the Eternal/Wandering Jew). The legend of the Wandering Jew is doubtlessly anti-Semitic in its origins, but in fairness to Croly, I think it is safe to say that this book was not anti-Semitic by the standards of the time in which it was written; he’s definitely not attempting to demonize the Jews. He is however, more than happy to malign black people at every given opportunity. At one point he refers to Ethiopians as “Barbarians, with a tongue and physiognomy worthy only of their kindred baboons”.

In fairness, this book does pick up quite a bit towards the end, but overall, it’s really not that great. Tarry Thou till I Come will be a real treat for anyone with an interest in historical, religious fiction, but it’s likely to bore the pants off everyone else. If you want to go ahead and check it out, the text is available online at archive.org. Make sure that you read this version though, as some of the other versions online only contain the first two out of its three volumes.

melmoth wanderer penguin Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Maturin
Penguin – 2012 (Originally published in 1820)

Like I said earlier on, I bought my copy of Salathiel quite a while ago. I had originally planned to make this a comparative post weighing Croly’s book against Charles Stuart Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, a book that I had read long before hearing of Croly’s. Unfortunately, so much time has passed since reading Melmoth that I can’t remember it terribly well. I do recall it being similar to Salathiel in the following ways:

It is also excessively long.
It is also about a cursed immortal.
It was also written by a protestant clergyman from Dublin.

Unlike Salathiel however, Melmoth the Wanderer is very definitely a Gothic novel. Its title character is immortal due to his dealings with Satan, not Jesus Christ. I know that I enjoyed Melmoth, but I recall it getting a bit boring in places. Regardless, all book-goths are obliged to read this one. The cover of the edition of this book that I own is one of the reasons that I try not to buy modern reprints of old books. Luminous pink, turquoise and orange for the cover of one of the classics of Gothic literature? No fucking thank you Mr. Penguin!

*The following is the list of Paul Murray’s 10 favourite Gothic novels from the article that set me on the track of Salathiel.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
History of the Caliph Vathek by William Beckford
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
Salathiel the Immortal by George Croly
Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood by James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Pecket Prest
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker

Now that this post has been published, I have managed to review all of these books except Frankenstein. I’ll have to reread it and get it up here soon!

Le Fanu’s Short Stories – Madam Crowl’s Ghost and In a Glass Darkly

Sheridan Le Fanu – Madam Crowl’s Ghost & Other Stories / In A Glass Darkly
Wordsworth Editions – 2006 and 2008

Here are two collections of short stories from one of my favourite writers. I would recommend the Oxford edition of In A Glass Darkly, as that one contains nice notes at the back. Wordsworth editions are bare bones and rarely contain annotation. They are cheap however, and I own quite a few of them.

In A Glass Darkly is the better of the two collections. It’s been a few years since I read it, but I distinctly remember the joy I felt when the evil monkey appeared the first story. It’s also great because it contains lesbian vampires in a vampire story that predates Dracula. I think my favourite story in here is the novella: The Room in Le Dragon Volant. It’s not as spooky as the others, but I really like Le Fanu’s writing

Madam Crowl’s Ghost is a nice collection of ghost stories compiled by none other than M.R James. I read this one more recently, but I read the first two stories on a transatlantic flight and didn’t end up enjoying them as much as I would have were I to read them on the couch at midnight with a cup of peppermint tea. The stories in here are collected from different sources, and the quality and tone varies quite a bit. Some are great though, and most of them are set in Ireland. You can imagine my sheer delight on finding a story in here about a man from my hometown who shares my name. I loved this book, but the other collection is probably a better place to start if you haven’t read Le Fanu before.

Kyteler’s Inn

Hark! What is this treachery? This looks like a review of a restaurant, not a book!

This isn’t really a review at all; it’s more an appendix to my earlier post on St. John D. Seymour’s Irish Witchcraft and Demonology.

Alice Kyteler was a wealthy woman from Kilkenny, Ireland. By her mid forties, three of her husbands had died, and her latest was dying. An opportunistic bishop named Richard de Ledrede jumped at the chance to confiscate the immense wealth that Alice had built up from her previous marriages. In 1323, she was accused of killing her husbands through poisoning and heretical sorcery. She was also accused of sacrificing animals to the divil, and having communications with a incubus named Robert, Son of Art.

The whole affair was fairly mad. The bishop himself spent some time in prison for underestimating Alice’s powerful connections. Alice’s first son and her maid Petronella were accused of being in on the mischief, and poor Petronella was tortured and burnt alive. Alice managed to escape from Kilkenny, and nobody is quite sure what happened to her.

There’s much better, and more detailed versions of the story online; my favourite account of her life is this TG4 documentary (as Gaeilge). I think that her story would make a really great film.

Anyways, apparently this inn used to be her home. It’s a cool pub, and the food was nice. I’ll definitely go back if I’m ever in Kilkenny again.
Here’s the website: http://www.kytelersinn.com/

Alice’s familiar, Robert filius Artis and I.

Oscar Wilde from Purgatory – Hester Travers Smith

Online Text
(I printed and published my own edition)

Well Ireland is having a gay marriage referendum tomorrow, and although I can’t vote, I can review a text by Ireland’s most infamous homosexual.

I suppose this book isn’t technically by Oscar Wilde; it’s a series of messages delivered by Wilde’s disembodied ghost to Hester Travers Smith and her accomplice, Mr. V in 1923. These messages were originally published in The Sunday Express, nearly a quarter of a century after Oscar’s death.

What does Oscar have to say after 23 years festering in the grave? Well, he gives his opinions on women, being dead and the possibility of composing another play from beyond. He also spends quite a lot of time discussing modern literature. Contacting Smith through a Ouija board, he lets her know that he is not a fan of Joyce, Shaw or Yeats. You may wonder how a dead man could have read literature that was written after his death, but Oscar gives a perfectly satisfactory explanation:

Like blind Homer, I am a wanderer. Over the whole world have I wandered, looking for eyes by which I might see. At times it is given me to pierce this strange veil of darkness, and through eyes, from which my secret must be forever hidden, gaze once more on the gracious day. I have found sight in the most curious places. Through the eyes out of the dusky face of a Tamal girl I have looked on the tea fields of Ceylon, and through the eyes of a wandering Kurd I have seen Ararat and the Yezedes, who worship both God and Satan and who love only snakes and peacocks. […] It may surprise you to learn that in this way I have dipped into the works of some of your modern novelists. That is, I have not drawn the whole brew, but tasted the vintage.

So Oscar’s ghost just floats around the world, and from time to time he possesses the bodies of unsuspecting individuals to read a few buks. It’s interesting to note that he refers to himself as a wanderer in this passage. To avoid unwanted attention after his stint in prison, Oscar adopted the name Melmoth when traveling. Melmoth the Wanderer is of course the title of a Gothic novel by Wilde’s great uncle, Charles Maturin. Even in death he persists in this self-characterization. Now, if that’s not proof that these messages were delivered by the actual Oscar Wilde, then I don’t know what is!

This text includes not only the messages from the different seances at which Oscar appeared, but also an explanation and defense of the methods that were used to obtain the messages. Incredibly unconvincing arguments for the trustworthiness of ouija boards, automatic writing, cryptesthesia and spiritism are given.

The mediums involved also assure the reader that they knew very little about the life and style of Mr. Wilde before his communications, and hence could not possibly have faked these messages. The obvious argument against this would be that they were lying, and that they probably did a great deal of research into Oscar’s life and style before creating this hoax.There is actually very little reason to believe that they did not indulge in such research. This however is not a particularly interesting explanation of the the scripts, and I far prefer the explanation given by the Reverend Montague Summers:

I do not for a moment accept this script as being inspired or dictated by Wilde. I hasten to add that I do not suggest there was any conscious fraud or trickery on the part of those concerned ; it is quite probable that these psychic messages were conveyed by some intelligence of no very high standing, and the result in fine is not of any value.
(The History of Witchcraft – p.268)

So the communication and messages were real, but the spirit was an imposter. It was only a púca; one who was well versed in Irish literature. I am happy to accept this completely rational argument.

This book is absolute crap. I knew it was going to be crap before I read it, but I couldn’t resist. 3/10. Vote yes.

Myself and Oscar in 2011.

The Irish Gothic – Uncle Silas, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula

Well it’s Saint Patrick’s day on Tuesday, and what better way to celebrate Irishness than to review some classic Gothic Literature from the Emerald Isle. I won’t go into too much detail as all three of these novels are absolute classics, and I expect anyone who is following this blog to have read them all.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Dell – 1978

Dorian looking a bit scaldy.

This novel is great. It’s been a long time since I read it though. Either way, I won’t hear a word said against our Oscar. It’s a pity he didn’t write more novels. 7.5/10

Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Oxford – 1981

Howiye Maud?

This is one of my favourite books of all time. It’s standard Gothic fare really; a young girl loses her parent and she has to go live in creepy uncle’s house. The chapter in which Maud, the protagonist, encounters her repulsive governess for the first time had me shitting in my britches. The way that creepy bitch comes down the hill is absolutely CHILLING.

My edition of the novel is nicely annotated, and there is one note that I found particularly amusing. “414 a clumsy old press: in Ireland and Scotland, press = cupboard” Visiting my in-laws would be so much easier if I could get that printed on a t-shirt.

Anyways, this book is magnificent. If you like Jane Eyre or The Mysteries of Udolpho, then this is the book for you. If that doesn’t sound like your thing, then sorry, but we can’t be friends.

Dracula – Bram Stoker
Penguin – 1994

Nice ‘tache Drac. (Sweet diddys too!)

Well, this is obviously one of the greatest novels ever written. This was also one of the first books that I read after graduating from university. I had just spent four years reading books that had been selected by other people, and to have the freedom to choose a book according to my own tastes was tremendous. I remember actually looking forward to going to bed at night, just so I could get stuck into this absolute masterpiece.

I’ve always had an interest in ghosts and monsters: I grew up watching Ghostbusters and reading Goosebumps, and I’ve always preferred horror films to any other genre. I was expecting to enjoy this book, but I was not expecting to be frightened. Well, I was; there are parts of this book that are damned scary. There’s nothing in here that I hadn’t seen in a hundred movies; but reading Dracula, I realized that all of those movies had used this book as a template to produce their scares. I was spooked good and proper when the lads start to go missing on the boat as the count is lurking in the shadows. Pure deadly.

There’s also some weird sexiness to this novel. That’s not just something that Hollywood added to make the film versions more successful. There’s a lot of heaving breasts in here. Mina and Lucy sound like absolute babes. The count is a kinky one too, check this out:
With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension; his right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.
Dracula! She’s a married woman, ye dirty bowsy!!! And you’d think he’d be satisfied with those lovely vampire wenches he keeps in his castle. I’ll tell ye now, if I was a single man I’d have no bleedin’ bother lettin’ them have a little suck, wha?

Anyways, I’ll give this a perfect 10/10. If you haven’t read this book, you have no reason to be wasting your time reading this blog.

There are other fantastic works of Gothic fiction to have emerged from Ireland. Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer might seem like a glaring omission from this post, but I have a plan to review that later on in conjunction with another book. I’m also planning to review more of Le Fanu’s works in the near future.

I think it’s rather interesting to note that all three of the authors reviewed in this post were Dublin protestants. (Maturin, who was incidentally Oscar Wilde’s great-uncle, was also a Church of Ireland clergyman.) These three books were also written within 50 years of each other. You’d wonder what the Church of Ireland were putting in their non-transubstantial eucharist to get their congregation to be such creeps. I’ve read that Dracula represents Stoker’s alienation from the largely Catholic Ireland, but I reckon it was just dodgy proddy communion wafers.

These books are all savage. Fuck going to the parade this St. Patrick’s day; read one of these smashers instead.

Irish Witchcraft and Demonology – St. John D. Seymour

Dorset – 1992
irishj

I love books about witchcraft and demonology. I also love books from/about Ireland. I’m sure you can imagine my excitement on finding this little beauty. I actually read the book online, but managed to pick up a copy online for a reasonable price.

This edition is lovely. It’s a nice hardback, with lovely typeset and a very interesting cover. The image on the cover is from a painting by Richard Dadd called “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”. It’s not particularly Irish or witchy, but it’s cool all the same. Look it up on google there and have a gander. I really like it.

The contents of this book are pretty good too. Unlike a lot of European countries, Ireland never really had much of a problem with witches. It’s hard to know whether that was due to the fact that’s it’s an island and hence relatively isolated, or whether it was because the country had enough problems with the bleedin’ Brits during the witchcraze and didn’t have time to be getting upset over such silly nonsense. It could also be that the deeply superstitious Irish peasantry had been holding on to some ancient pagan traditions, and had never come to see witchcraft as an inherently negative thing. It was very probably due to these and a combination of other reasons that Ireland wasn’t much affected by the witchcraze of the middle ages.

Some parts in this book are great. I really liked the part on Alice Kyteler. TG4 did a great documentary on her that’s up on youtube. The house she lived in is now an inn, and I swear that the next time I’m in Ireland, I’m going to try to pay it a visit.

There’s a few aul stories in here about fairies and lads cheating the divil and that kind of craic. I enjoy reading that stuff immensely, but this might not be the book for you if you’re looking for pure, nasty witchcraft. That said, there are some grim incidents recounted in here. There’s one story about a woman who goes mad and kills her elderly neighbour:

One of the witnesses deposed that he met the accused on the road on the morning of the murder. She had a statue in her hand, and repeated three times: “I have the old witch killed: I got power from the Blessed Virgin to kill her. She came to me at 3 o’clock yesterday, and told me to kill her, or I would be plagued with rats and mice.”

The most chilling thing about that story is that it’s actually from 1911.

Overall, this is an enjoyable little book. A lot of it’s taken up with folktales that seem unlikely to have had any basis in truth, but there are a few sinister and curious accounts of what were doubtlessly real events. Seymour isn’t out to scare anyone and definitely comes across as critical of the witch craze. (Montague Summers, he is not.) Irish Witchcraft and Demonology is a decent attempt to compile the history of witchcraft in an almost witch-less country. It’s short, interesting and definitely worth a read. 8/10

Getting back to the cover illustration, check this lad out!
Howiye Paddy!

Blasphemers and Blackguards, Do What You Will (A History of Anti-Morality), and The Hellfire Club

The Hellfire Club on top of Montpelier Hill.

In Dublin, the phrase ‘Hellfire Club’ is almost exclusively used to refer to the ruins of the hunting lodge on top of Montpelier Hill. Families walk up to these ruins on Sunday evenings after dinner, and everybody knows the legend of the Devil appearing there during a card game:

Some lads were up at the lodge, gettin’ locked, shaggin’ tarts and playin’ cards. One of of the lads drops his cards on the ground. He stoops over to pick them up and notices that the lad beside him has hooves for feet. He stands back up and the other lad (Satan) disappears in a flash of smoke.

That story scared the shit out of me when I was little. I had visited the lodge when I was a kid, but it wasn’t until 2 years ago that I got to go back.

A view from inside.

The lodge was built over a pre-historic passage tomb.

Anyways, the original ‘Hellfire club’ was actually a group of 18th century English politicians. It was probably little more than an excuse to get drunk and talk lewdly, but it has literally become the stuff of legends. Several other clubs, including the one that met on top Montpelier hill, have inadvertently assumed the Hellfire moniker, and these groups are the subjects of the three books I am reviewing.

Blasphemers and Blackguards (The Irish Hellfire Clubs) – David Ryan
Merrion – 2012

This book gives an account of the several different organizations that were founded by wealthy rakes in Ireland during the 18th century. The clubs consisted of upper-class individuals who were able to use their place in society to get away with murder. The Irish clubs don’t seem to have been involved in much satanism, but it’s not hard to see how a group of licentious and wealthy individuals of Protestant descendency could gain a diabolical reputation in a country that was mostly populated by poor Catholics. Besides, the crimes that some of these groups committed were far more reprehensible than the boudoir blasphemy of the real Hellfire Club.

This book is fairly academic: it’s properly researched and sourced, and I never felt like the author was bullshitting. Ryan gives a trustworthy account of the facts about these clubs, while also delineating and discussing the folklore that has developed around the Hellfire legend. I’m from Dublin and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this account of the city’s shadiest secret. 7.5/10

The Hellfire Club – Daniel P. Mannix
New English Library – 1970
This book focuses on the The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe. While the Friars were not the original Hellfire Club, they were definitely the most infamous. This book is full of tales of blasphemy, debauchery and political upheaval. Even the less lurid parts of the book are fairly interesting. John Wilkes comes across as a particularly interesting character.

The big problem with this book is that it’s not properly sourced. Many of the events herein are undoubtedly based in fact, but there are episodes in this book that seem to be taken straight out of works of fiction. One such episode, which involves a baboon dressed as Satan, is almost definitely based on a scene from Charles Johnstone’s novel, Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea. Chrysal was a satirical novel published between 1760 and 1765 that poked fun at the political leaders of the time. The novel is narrated by a golden coin that at one stage enters into the pocket of a Hellfire monk. Somehow, the experiences of this imaginary golden coin managed to transmigrate themselves into facts in Mannix’s supposedly historical account of the Club.

That being said, the subtitle of this book is “Orgies were their pleasure, politics their passtime”, and I wasn’t particularly surprised or disappointed to find that this book is a tad sensational. I’m giving it a 6.5/10 for its entertainment value.

Do What You Will (A History of Anti-Morality) – Geoffrey Ashe
W.H. Allen – 1974
This book has sections on Rabelais, John Dee, the Marquis De Sade and Aleister Crowley, but it’s really about the Hellfire Club. Dashwood’s club is again the focus, but this time the author is reasonable in his assertions. Ashe presents very similar information to Mannix, but he does so in a far less credulous manner. This book is definitely worth reading if you want a legitimate account of the Monks of Medenham.

The subtitle of this book is ‘A History of Anti-Morality’, but more than half of the book’s chapters are on the Hellfire Clubs. I obviously find the clubs fascinating, and I understand that their members played an important role in the politics of the 18th century, but I’m not convinced that they are the single most important anti-morality movement in the history of the world. I’m certain that I’m not the only person to notice this as recent editions of this book have actually been renamed ‘The Hellfire Clubs’. Basically, Ashe has arbitrarily chosen several groups and individuals, and assigned them an inordinate amount of moral accountability. It’s not that any of the material here is irrelevant, it’s the fact that so much has been left out. Compiling a history of anti-morality would be an outrageously difficult and lengthy procedure, and ultimately Ashe has failed in this task.

I was very interested to read a book that had consecutive chapters on the Hellfire Clubs and the Marquis De Sade. There are many parallels with Hellfire legends and the events in De Sade’s fiction. I have often wondered if the Divine Marquis had heard tales about the Brotherhood of Wycombe and taken inspiration from them. Think about it; he was a nobleman and a libertine, writing only a few years after the dissolution of Dashwood’s posse. I find it hard to believe that he had never heard of the friars taking young harlots into the sacrilegious abbey at Medenham or the Hellfire caves at Wycombe. I’ve done a little research to verify this link but I haven’t found anything to substantiate it. If anyone has any suggestions on where to look, I would love to hear from you!

Anyways, although I think that this book falls short on what it sets out to do, I did enjoy reading it. The stuff in here isn’t bad; there’s just not enough of it. That being said, there is an abundant amount of information on the Hellfire Clubs in here, and I would urge anyone who has any interest in this topic to get their hands on this one. I’m going to give this one a 6.5/10.

BONUS REVIEW
Secret Societies – Nick Harding
Chartwell Books Inc. – 2006

I’m not hugely interested in most secret societies. I inadvertently bought a copy of this book as part of a collection on satanism. It’s quite short and quite shit. It provides a little information on about 20 different secret societies, but doesn’t go into detail on any of them. I don’t really know why a person would buy a book like this. I suppose it would be quite good if you were taking a long flight and you needed something to halfheartedly glance at now and then. I am reviewing it as part of this post as it contains a section on Dashwood’s Hellfire Club. Let’s just give it a 4/10 and leave it at that.