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Abstract
This article examines storytelling events as contexts in which propositions about the fairies and folk healers associated with them were appraised and contested. It considers the evidential rhetoric employed in narratives that argued for and against the existence of fairies and the powers of wise folk who trafficked with them. Particular attention is given to narratives of negative evidence including stories that depicted individuals who believed they have had supernatural experiences as deluded, either by their own imaginations or through the chicanery of others. As will be seen throughout, traditions of belief and traditions of disbelief were competing discourses that came into collision, interpenetrating and modifying each other in a dialectical relationship that informed individuals as they negotiated their own attitudes about the fairies and fairy healers.
Introduction
In nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Ireland, magico-medical beliefs about the fairies and folk healers said to derive power from them were increasingly condemned on both rationalist and religious grounds. From the seventeenth century onward, the leaders of the Catholic Church followed Tridentine directives that sought to impose uniformity in religious standards and practices. This included the enactment of synodal statutes aimed at routing magical and quasi-religious customs, including superstitious curing and beliefs (Connolly 1982, 111; Rogan 1987, 33 and 60-1; Forrestal 1998, 124-5). Anti-Catholic legislation carried out by the Protestant ascendancy, however, decimated the church infrastructure, insuring that the full implementation of the Counter-Reformation mission was protracted (Conolly 1982, 60; Forrestal 1998, 45-6).
With the legalisation and state subsidisation that occurred after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the organisational strength of the Catholic Church grew rapidly (Corish 1985,151-91). The restructuring of society that occurred following the Great Famine of 1845-9 accelerated what has been referred to as the "devotional revolution" (Larkin 1976). The ratio of priests to people tripled, as did attendance at Mass in some areas (Miller 1975, 83). Improvements in communication led to a tightening of clerical discipline and a more systematic censure of behaviour deemed inappropriate by the Church. Official doctrine was disseminated and monitored through sermon, pastoral visitation, confession, confraternities, book societies, schools, and hospitals (Larkin 1976, 68 and 77; Connolly 1982, 70; Corish 1985,193-6; Inglis 1987,143; Rogan 1987,132ff; Correll 2003, 217-26).
The condemnation of "vulgar superstitions" was part of...