Robert Henry Murray

“ In 1488 Innocent VIII held that witches 'blight the marriage bed, destroy the births of women and the increase of cattle; they blast the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, the grass and herbs of the field'. ”

“ The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. A Study in Anthropology. By Margaret Alice Murray. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921.)
There is no task for the historian so difficult as really to re-think the thoughts of the past, especially when these thoughts assume a form which modern knowledge discredits. Few, indeed, are the historians capable of such a task, and among these few we certainly place Miss Murray. It is true that her book is a monument of compressed information, sound scholarship, and solid learning. ”

“ Much interested in politics, he entitled his presidential address 'A New Voyage to Utopia,' a kind of appeal from the new whigs to the old, which was suggested by the passing of the third reform bill. ”

“ Miss Murray boldly applies her theory to the case of Joan of Arc. She believes—and adduces evidence for her belief—that Joan was put to death as a witch, and that the conduct of her associates during her military career sustains the fact that she belonged to the Dianic cult, not to the Christian. ”

“ In 1887 he was called to the Irish bar, and in 1888 he began to work actively on behalf of the unionist cause. At the general election of 1892 Falkiner contested, unsuccessfully, South Armagh. He served on the recess committee whose labours resulted in the creation of the Irish department of agriculture. Devoting much thought to the Irish land problem, he mastered the intricacies of the many Irish Land Acts. ”

“ She never loses herself in details, nor forgets in following out its ramifications the main object of her work. There is nothing of the kind, so far as we know, in English on the study of the ideas of the distant past ”