A Coven of Scholars: Margaret Murray and Her Working Methods

A Coven of Scholars: Margaret Murray and Her Working Methods. By Caroline Oates and Juliette Wood. Folklore Society Archive Series, no. 1, 1998. 101pp. 5.95 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0 903515 16 54

This booklet gives a flying start to a new Folklore Society series by tackling three main objectives: to investigate more fully the working methods used by Margaret Murray in writing her important but discredited works upon the history of witchcraft; to set her in the context of scholarship of her period and since; and to publish a list of the papers concerning folklore which she bequeathed to the Society's archive, with full texts of the most interesting ones.

The result illustrates even more vividly than before, not only how ruthless and unscrupulous Murray was in her selection and presentation of evidence, and her promotion of her own reputation, but also how much the latter was assisted by her gift for making friends, which ensured that she usually had an ally in an influential position when she needed to get something accepted for publication. This was aided by the manner in which her ideas fitted into a preexisting theory of the history of witchcraft, and more generally into the Frazerian cast of much of the history of religion written in her time, both points well made here. This study also brings out, more than any before, how much Murray's publications were concentrated in the second half of her hundred-year life; for her, formal retirement dearly represented a tremendous and sustained release of energy. That however (I would add) is fairly typical of the gerontocracy which led the Folklore Society for much of the century, making it rank with the Papacy as one of the world's most impressive institutional illustrations of old age in action.

The selection of transcripts contains some useful tit-bits--my personal favourite being the true (and mundane) fate of the Dorset Ooser--and it will be interesting to watch future scholars making use of them. Like any good piece of research, this booklet points forward to further work. Its survey of the English forerunners of Murray's views of witchcraft might be extended to include the antiquarian mavericks like Thomas Wright and Folklore Society grandees such as Laurence Gomme, both of whom clearly enunciated it before any of the group of writers cited here. No proper appreciation of Murray's career will be possible until an expert fully assesses her part in the history of Egyptology, always the core of her work, let alone her contribution to the institutional development of London University and her activity as a suffragette. What has been achieved here is to relate her to the scholarship of folklore and witchcraft during the years after 1908, and with that a major component of the job is now in place.

Ronald Hutton, Bristol University

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