Irish Superstitions

Irish Superstitions gathers Irish spells, old wives’ tales and folk beliefs, showing how ideas about luck, danger and protection shaped everyday life. Its subjects include good-luck charms, soothsayings, healing practices, the evil eye, fairies and the banshee, alongside beliefs concerning animals, cattle, childbirth and death.

Dáithí Ó hÓgáin places these traditions within Ireland’s wider cultural history, linking popular beliefs with Irish literature, landscape and older Celtic ideas. References to creatures, plants, customs and legendary figures such as Fionn Mac Cumhaill help show how superstition could operate as both practical knowledge and imaginative explanation. The book presents these traditions as inherited reports and cultural practices, preserving the texture of Irish folk belief without treating them as established fact.