Magic Moments in Maynooth
On Sat 6 April 2013, the Department of Early Irish will host a symposium on magic and charms in Medieval and Modern Ireland.
From the earliest extant sources of Old Irish, there is plentiful evidence for the use of verbal magic in Ireland as a method to influence reality and to ward off the evil powers that are a constant threat to the lives and the health of people and animals. Early medieval monks used the margins of their manuscripts to record invocations of saints and of mythological figures of less Christian provenance to cure bodily ailments. Archaeological finds of the traces that such practices left in the material record extend the evidence further back in time, while in some aspects of Irish life, like dairying, the use of magical practices has occasionally persisted even into the twenty-first century.
Charms, the very ‘words of power’ spoken in magical rituals, are one fascinating area of research in Medieval Irish studies, but the tools, the rites and the mindsets required for their use are just as interesting objects of study in themselves.
This one-day open multidisciplinary symposium, organised by the Department of Early Irish at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, brings together scholars from diverse backgrounds as religious studies and archaeology, linguistics and philology, and from applied disciplines like herbal healing and veterinary medicine. The contributions will span more than a thousand years and will shed light into some of the more obscure corners of Medieval and Modern Ireland - a day of charm and magic!