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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Irish belief narratives, drawing on texts like Fairy Legends and the Fenian Cycle, to locate literary precursors for New Animism's emphasis on other-than-human agency, boundary permeability (metamorphosis), and nature's personhood.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how Irish belief narratives provide a rich literary foundation for understanding "New Animism," particularly the concepts of other-than-human agency and shared environmental influence. Traditional Irish folklore, spanning fairy lore and epic cycles, consistently portrays non-human entities as possessing agency, intelligence, and even personhood, thus offering a historical context for contemporary ecological literary criticism.

Key texts reveal a universe where power is distributed widely beyond humanity. The Fairies, or "Good People," (such as the Shefro, Cluricaune, and Phooka) are described as a "powerful" and "capricious" race that often influences human fate and behaviour. The sources depict nature explicitly exercising will: mountains are said to "fight for you" in battle, and the perennial plant digitalis purpurea (Fairy Cap) bends its stalk "in token of recognition" towards supernatural beings.

The permeability of boundaries, a central tenet of animism, is frequently emphasized through metamorphoses and hybrid forms. Powerful beings transform into animals (the Phooka often appears as a Spirit Horse), mythical figures shift shape (Cian is turned into a pig by a Druid rod), and magical objects may contain previous, non-human identities (a treasure-bag was once the transformed woman Aoife). Such literary portrayals of interconnectedness and fluid identity make Irish folklore an indispensable archive for analyzing shared agency in the modern ecological age.