Dr Gillian Kenny

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.

Ooh.

Now that sounds a lot, but it's actually not.

That's actually quite a small one.

So they were very cognizant that women were doing this kind of magic and they needed to prepare for it.

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 forts, bushes, trees and the great brew which they guarded ferociously because the land was shared.