Queens of the Wild

Queens of the Wild 

Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation

by Ronald Hutton  

Published by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300261011

In this book, the author, Professor of History at Bristol University, is focused primarily on the origins of four specific female figures from European folklore, looking at the evidence of how they came into existence. These are Mother Earth/Nature, the Fairy/Faerie Queen, Lady of the Night, and the Cailleach (the Old Woman of Celtic tradition). In the epilogue, he discusses the Green Man. In each case, he is interested in whether or not there is evidence for these figures being pagan goddesses, as is often asserted. He meticulously goes through the evidence for each figure and comes to the conclusion that they were not. The first two were creations of the cultural elite, introduced through literature. The last two were products of belief by ‘common’ people. He shows how the arguments about their origins evolved and spread, and the part played by academics. He makes a compelling case. He provides a good reminder about the limitations of archaeology when it comes to trying to decipher belief systems based on bits of material culture. When reading, I was reminded of an episode from my former life in academic anthropology (in the US, archaeology is housed in anthropology departments). I attended a presentation given by an archaeologist colleague who was working in an area in which nomadic people still lived. He spent time with them, not because he thought they would live the same way as people did long ago, but because he wanted some insight into how nomadic people lived in general. Being nomadic means the amount of stuff people have is limited, so kids don’t have a bunch of toys and played with rocks. He watched them piling up the rocks and then leaving them when they were done playing. He realized that an archaeologist coming across something like that would make the case for the pile of rocks being part of a religious or other important ritual, not simply a result of children at play. Hutton is making the same kind of argument here. People with agendas seized on small points to make arguments that fit certain narratives. These arguments spread and were soon seen as fact, but a deeper examination tells a different story. 

The book is well written and very readable, in addition to being fascinating. He provides a history of each figure based on what evidence he was able to uncover. I learned a lot.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-galley of this book in exchange for a review.

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