Clodagh Finn: When dead women tell tales of vampires and sorcery
Three Vampire — Project A A Pien Zosia's Dimensional Face, Nilsson Reconstruction Picture: Of Oscar A Woman As Buried
When they buried her, they thought they were burying her malign forces too. They padlocked her foot and pinned her down with an iron sickle — failsafe ways to protect the world from this 17th-century ‘vampire’.
Now, with a kind of irony that fits the season, the young Polish woman once believed to be a force of evil has reemerged into the light of the 21st century. Using the marvels of modern technology, scientists have not only reconstructed her centuries-old face, but they have rendered this poor mistreated soul human again.
Gathering up the dishonoured remains of a woman who suffered God only knows what horrors in her lifetime reminds us that some kind of retrospective justice is possible.
In this case, Zosia — as she was named by locals — was considered to be a supernatural threat. That was evident when, in 2022, archaeologists discovered her body in an unmarked cemetery in Pien, northern Poland. The sickle, padlock and types of wood found at the grave site were all items once thought to ward off vampires, according to archaeologists from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland.
In real life, 18-year-old Zosia most likely suffered from a health condition that would have caused fainting and severe headaches, as analysis of her skull showed.
Now, at least, the woman has been returned to us while the monster has been relegated to the past.
The same spirit of reclamation will be present at a multi-faith ceremony of atonement in St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny tomorrow to mark the 700th anniversary of the death of Petronella de Meath, believed to be the first woman executed for witchcraft in Ireland.
She was flogged in six parishes and then burned alive at the stake, according to one account.
When I was growing up, I wish I had known about her fate and that of Florence Newton, who died while being tried as a witch in Youghal, Co Cork. There were so many others. Some 60,000 people — 80% of them women — were hanged and burned at the stake in the real witch trials that swept Europe in the 15th to 18th centuries.
If I had known, I might have cast off the plastic witch mask, with its wart-encrusted nose, and done something different.
At least now, we are being offered inspiration on how to re-imagine Halloween. Kudos to the organisers of the new Kilkenny Toil and Trouble Festival in marking Petronella de Meath’s anniversary by exploring “the societal fears, power struggles, and personal stories that shaped this notorious trial”.
We might also remember the eight women convicted of witchcraft at Islandmagee in Antrim in 1711. That case was the last witch trial to be held in Ireland and, unlike Petronella and Florence Newton, the women were not put to death.
They were, however, convicted on the evidence of local woman Mary Dunbar, who claimed they caused her to vomit pins, have fits and convulsions and see apparitions of demons.
While witch trials in Ireland were relatively rare, in Europe and parts of America similar evidence was relied on to send tens of thousands of innocent women and men to their deaths.
In neighbouring Scotland, more than 2,500 people left this world in the most horrible of ways after being convicted in a country that had witch-hunter general, James VI (later James I of England), as its leader.
Recent attempts to pardon the 4,000 people tortured and often executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563 have proved controversial and difficult to implement. Scotland, and other countries around Europe, have been more open to memorialisation and apology. Both are welcome.
The difficulties of granting posthumous pardons was illustrated this week when President Michael D Higgins awarded a rare pardon to two men wrongly accused of murder. It is just the fourth such pardon in the history of the Irish State.
On Wednesday, Sylvester Poff (35) and James Barrett (21) were pardoned after they were wrongfully convicted of the murder of Thomas Browne in Co Kerry in 1882, then hanged at Tralee Gaol in January 1883.
As President Higgins said, the pardon cannot undo what happened, but it can acknowledge a great wrong. He said: “We may not be able to undo what took place... the people of Kerry remember. But we can lift the shadow.”
The case also highlights the invaluable work done by local historians. The pardon was based on extensive research and a detailed report from UCD legal expert Dr Niamh Howlin. That, however, became possible because Michael O’Donoghue, a local historian from Castleisland, Co Kerry, came across the case in Tralee library.
After his death, Johnny Roche and Janet Murphy of the Castleisland District Heritage Group took up the case.
The relatives of those two wronged men, Tomo Burke and Mike Sugrue, spoke of the torment of the wrongful conviction, and the subsequent relief in having it lifted.
Their comments bring me back to the ceremony for Petronella at St Canice’s Cathedral tomorrow. Those taking part will be asked to reflect on the terrible wrong done to her and the lessons for modern society.
We might take that as a cue to think about developing a different kind of Halloween holiday. Could we begin to use this liminal time of spooks and spectres to explore the shadows, and the wrongs lurking in them? And then, as President Higgins put it, lift those shadows. Or, at least, attempt to do so.
In the Browne murder case, we’ve seen how enduring the pain of injustice can be, even more than a century later.
How sharp and vivid, then, the pain must be for those who spoke this week about the corporal punishment cruelties perpetrated in our schools during the 20th century.
Will their voices be enough to conjure up the political will to do something that the Irish Government has, up to now, failed to do? That is, put the survivors at the centre of a commission of inquiry and any redress scheme that might come from it.
Let’s hope so, because we have seen all too clearly how the wrongs of the past come back to haunt us when we do not do enough to atone for them.