>>>"Biased polemical rant" is a marvelously intense phrase and would be positively delicious if it were'nt so tropic. To be perfectly honest, I have neither the inclination nor a sufficient store of examples taken from his work to completely refute what you say. <<<

What follows are some grave examples, taken from Hutton, of his rather inexcusable behavior (others have also reviewed his work and found it wanting on these very serious grounds: www.suppressedhistories.net/arti...html) He also exemplifies his stance and attitude as a polemicist quite admirably in a discourse with freelance journalist, Janine Farrel-Robert, after it was made blatantly clear to him that the late Prof. Norman Cohn, in his obsolete vitriol (and also a polemical work!) "Europe's Inner Demons", demonstrably lied about Margaret Murray, and forever ruined her credibility as a direct result. This article has, since, led many Pagans to compare Murray's writings with Cohn's allegations, and sure enough they've been finding the same thing as Janine. Cohn's argument, in a nutshell, was that Murray purposefully omitted any fantastic details from the accounts she was quoting from in order to give her readers a misleading impression that they wouldn't otherwise have been fooled into by her if she had only included them. After Cohn's book was published, historians praised it, and most Witchcraft scholars use it to such an extent that it seems to have absolved them from actually having to read Murray's works themselves. However, the fact of the matter remains, in all but one instance did Murray omit what Cohn claims she did--in fact, she considered the counter-evidence VERY carefully. And, that single instance of omission would not have rendered her thesis inept, either. I might charge that Cohn commits the exact historical crimes for which he has charged Murray: demonstrable misquotation in an effort to misdirect his readership. He faults Murray for using ellipses, when he does so to the extent that it leaves his readers incorrectly believing that Murray had omitted whole swaths of data, when she didn't. Despite Janine's testimony, it didn't really seem to matter to Hutton, who continued to tender is unyielding support to Cohn long after in his more recent book, "Witches, Druids and King Arthur".

I recall one instance quite well of Hutton leveling intimidation towards historians reading his material that might, otherwise, endorse the Green Man figures as remnants of Pagan gods in any way, shape or form when, in his Pagan Religions, he declared that "no one with a real knowledge of the Middle Ages" would uphold such a thesis! But, quite the contrary, a specialist scholar, the author of the monograph, "St. George" (her name escapes me, now...as the books down stairs) provides a wealth of evidence for the foliate images being directly traceable to pre-Christian cults and worship. His books are also generally full of ad hominem rants that really have no place in the work of any historian, unless they are intended to color one's readers against a certain scholar or authority, as he does to Carlo Ginzburg's material. Hell, Hutton mitigates the importance of Ginzburg's material to such extremes that it's not even funny! There are many authors whom Hutton assures of agree with his position and conclusions, but...uif you were to actually read their material, you would find quite the opposite, such as the work of Kieth Thomas who discusses many examples of medieval Pagan survivals, and Prof. Monter who regards many medieval testimony pertaining to "green devils" as local pagan Witchcraft fertility cults! Hutton does a great disservice to these authorities by misrepresenting their works as he has done. Although, for all I know, Hutton might not have even read some of these books, like Monter, because he confided to Donald Frew, once, that he frequently pronounces judgment upon a thesis or book before he's ever actually read the material! Now, as for Special Pleading (this is the ONE Logical Fallacies that tends to piss me off above most others), he exemplifies this brilliantly when he draws a conclusion based only upon the similarities of certain evidence (in his Pagan Religions it's when he's dismissing the Rune Poem as absolutely non-Pagan Christian beliefs!), despite the fact that the dissimilarities carry far greater weight than the similarities...but, he refuses to acknowledge them. Anyway, elsewhere in this book, he chastises another scholars (I can't remember whom, right now) for drawing conclusions based solely on the similarities, when those differences were inconsequentially weak by comparison!

>>>I will say, however, that his uncompromising still almost almost reconciliatory tone in his April 2000 article in Folklore ('Paganism and Polemic: The Debate over the Origins of Modern Pagan Witchcraft') was very refreshing and I found very few of his points problematic from a scholarly perspective. It's true that I have not read everything he's written and little more of the debates in which he works, but I've not seen any glaring errors yet.<<<

Oh, that article really should not be read without reading the article to which Hutton is responding! I have read Frew's original article, and they are hardly arguing on the same grounds. In fact, Hutton's appraisal of Frew's article seriously didn't reflect the actuality of the data and academic genius that Frew had published! Frew supplies ample evidence, none of which Hutton seemed to desire to explain or counter directly. I also found it rather low that he tried to re-write Ginzburg's "Night Battles" by attempting to redefine what is and is not a "trance"! Hutton concluded that the Benandanti were not in a trance, but just having unusually vivid dreams! WTF? The medieval clerics recording these events new that they were not merely dreaming, because when the Benandanti went lethargic, they could not rouse them, despite their best efforts! But, what Hutton WILL accept as "a trance", he doesn't say; he just declares that this cannot be (and is NOT) a trance! But, then, what is? That's a perfectly valid question. Oh, and I could go on, and on, with the habitually problematic nature of Hutton's material, if I were to re-read them all over again.

>>>Now, I am a little confused as to what is less academically sound than the Indo-European substrate. The linguistic data that have given rise to the current consensus (and it's barely worthy of the word) is so vast on the one hand, involving such a large number of language families, and so limited on the other, targeting a narrow lexical cross-section common to all, produces a result enormously susceptible to imaginative tweaking. That's where the fun comes in, I think! It's barely falsifiable and, when the material culture is brought to bear on it, capable of producing the most shockingly circular arguments. The relationship between Christian and pre-Christian Celtic culture during the first four centuries of its historical period is sure footing by comparison.<<<

To shore yourself up on the latest in IE studies, I would highly recommend anything you can get your hands on by ML West [Indo-European Poetry and Myth is brilliant]; JP Mallory, and David W. Anthony's extremely erudite text, "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language".

>>>I'm not saying that I dispute Indo-European theory, or even that survivals of European pre-Christian belief do not show some kind of survival of Indo-European cultural facets. I'm only saying that I would never vociferously censure anyone who expresses a deep and critical doubt regarding it. I have always read Hutton as expressing such, but I may have been giving him quite possibly too much benefit of doubt. Harriet Lutzky's article in the 1993 Journal of IE Studies ('On a Concept Underlying Indo-European Terms for the Sacred') is a marvelous work of scholarship, but I think its implications are that cultural elements possibly seen as IE survivals are more than likely newly formed along lines determined by cultural memory ... if that makes any sense. This is of course makes a huge difference in issues of authenticity.<<<

Hutton may not accept IE Studies, but that gives him no justifiable right to ignore it as a science when it can provide some insights into the field he is studying, qualifications aside. Indeed, there are so many Eurasian elements disclosed in the various hearth-goddesses, that Hutton would be hard-pressed to dismiss Brighid as a goddess, as he has so thoroughly in the past. Recently I was able to trace the hearth-goddess cult back to it's most likely mean origins in the shamanic cultures of Siberia and Mongolia, which is roughly where Gimbutas and other subsequent archaeologists have placed the "kurgan" invaders (though more recent archaeologists have adopted a term less emotionally charged).

>>>Anyway, thanks for the other names. I'm not familiar with their work and will start looking them up ASAP. <<<

Oh, far from those, I seriously believe that you should read the work of European witchcraft scholars, as their supporters, such as Eva Pocs, Carlo Ginzburg, Emma Wilby, Prof. David Lederer, Katherine A. Edwards, Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Prof. Phillipe Walter, Prof. Claude Lecauteux, and German anthropologists/ historians, Christian Ratsch and Wolf Dieter-Storl, amid dozens of others whom I just can't think of at this late hour. They have proven that medieval witchcraft-beliefs preserved and sustained local shamanic Indo-European fertility cult!