The Dark Spirit. Sinister Portraits from Celtic Folklore

The Dark Spirit. Sinister Portraits from Celtic Folklore. By Bob Curran. London: Cassell, 2001. 256 pp. B/W illus. $29.95/18.29 [pounds sterling] (hbk). ISBN 0-304-35622-0

"There is a dark spirit that underlies much of Western history and society, both cultural and political, and which has had a profound influence upon both." The "dark spirit" to which Dr Curran refers "has its roots in the ancient traditions and beliefs of the Celts." Any book with "Celtic" in the title always immediately raises suspicions, for the term is heavily laden with cultural assumptions and riddled with historiographical problems. Curran sets out to explore what other writers have called "the night side of nature," the negative aspect of human imagination and expression within what he deems to be Celtic society. He has selected a broad spectrum of tales of the supernatural in which he claims the underlying "dark spirit" of Celtic beliefs can be traced. Most of his examples date from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, only a few from an earlier period. While most of these stories have been drawn from the more recognisably defined "Celtic" areas of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, at least five chapters, bizarrely, are dedicated to North American examples. The rather peculiar decision to include the latter was made, states the author, to exemplify, for the first time, a direct connection between the folklore and mythology of Western Europe and that of the North American continent. For instance, the legend of the Vampire Lady of Rhode Island, who died in 1889, is unconvincingly explained as a "survival" of Irish and Scottish folklore regarding blood-drinking fairies and malignant revenant-style corpses. Thus, allegedly, the belief in the "returning dead which had characterized both the pagan and Christian aspects of the Celtic imagination was the dark and sinister foundation for the American vampire legend." Belief in witchcraft was another Old World tradition that "crossed the Atlantic with the emigrant ships." Rather than flog the Salem horse, Curran has chosen the legends surrounding John Dimond and his grand-daughter Molly Pitcher from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Both individuals, who lived in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were credited with various psychic abilities. They could foretell the future, uncover the identity of a thief, and, most importantly within a fishing community, make predictions about the weather. The tie that supposedly binds the so-called Marblehead Magicians with the Celtic world is the fact that communities "especially in Ireland and Scotland" had also relied upon the secret knowledge of witches for such things as the detection of criminals or forewarnings of storms.

One must be cynical about the author's approach. The main issue is Curran's flippant usage of the term "Celtic" to encapsulate an almost "anytime, anywhere" attitude towards the subject of the supernatural. At best it is naive, but at worst it is misleading and at times erroneous. On the positive side, Curran most definitely has a flair for writing and the book is very readable. General readers will enjoy the storytelling narrative style of the author, but academics will be frustrated by the lack of proper referencing. The book is finely complemented by the atmospheric black and white illustrations of artist Andrew Whitson.

Lizanne Henderson, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland

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