The Burning of Bridget Cleary

One of my favorite classes when I was working on my undergrad degree at the University Without Walls, UMass Amherst, was Irish History.

As today is Saint Patrick’s Day, I thought I was would share this paper I wrote on the book, The Burning Of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke.

The story of Bridget Cleary is a fascinating nonfiction account of a strong-minded, independent Irish young woman who disappeared from her home in Tipperary in 1895. Some said she was captured by the fairies. But author Angela Bourke uncovers the truth of what really happened to Bridget Cleary.

The Burning of Bridget Cleary

Fairy stories are an important part of Irish culture, particularly Irish Catholic culture. As Irish nationalism ramped up in the late nineteenth century, literary culture played a significant role in renewing the cultural values of the Irish Catholic people. Writers like WB Yeats, Lady Gregory and other notable authors of the day indulged readers with volumes of Irish myths and folklore that included fairy stories. These stories were not simple superstition in the eyes of the Irish Catholics; they were an intricate part of their history and culture, handed down from generation to generation in the oral tradition, until they were put to print. Still, once in print, these stories hallmarked the history of an Ireland long ago, which remained in the hearts and minds of the Irish Catholic people.

As Angela Bourke describes, “Fairies belong to the margins, and so can serve as reference points and metaphors for all that is marginal in human life.”[1] In this, fairies, who existed in an alternative realm, framed conversations that are otherwise ineffable by their human counterparts. There was a sense in the people that fairies were unrestricted by police and government and other overreaches of society in daily life.

Death being a difficult topic for many to discuss, was often in the time of Bridget Cleary’s death, couched in fantastical tales of fairy abductions, somehow giving comfort to the family of the loved one who passed. As one of religious discipline might say that a loved one who had passed away is ‘with the angels now’, an Irish Catholic, acquainted with fairy lore, might tell a tale of how the fairies made off with their loved one.  Invoking fairies stories when questioned about a loved one’s death could have been as simple as implying that someone felt they were asked questions that were none of anyone’s business. Therefore, we see that when the people asked about the death of Bridget Cleary, her family maybe have spoken of fairies in order to keep the matter private. Furthermore, there was possible risk for families who sought out the help of a fairy doctor for their loved one.

The print media accounts, and court records of Bridget Cleary’s death showed a much different account of Bridget Cleary’s death than her family’s claim that fairies were involved. All other accounts largely diminished the account borne of oral tradition and fairy stories, as superstition, involving a “system of reasoning which was alien to those in power.”[2] The courts of the time sometimes showed leniency to cases bearing “the component of ‘superstition’” as fairy legends were an influential force of the times.[3] Many of the stories were focused on women and children and they provided a platform for deeper spiritual interpretation for believers. This form of literary culture was steeped in the Irish nationalism of the times and it was a part of the Irish Catholic’s cultural identity.  Still, non-believers easily discounted its influence, and this played a significant part in the legal case embroiling Bridget Cleary’s death.

Bridget and Michael Cleary exhibited themselves as a couple who were above the norm of the peasantry class of the time. Bridget Cleary was an independent woman who worked as a dressmaker, owned her own sewing machine and raised poultry.[4] In fact, both Bridget and Michael had a skilled trade and they lived in a home that was step above the average home of people of their class. Furthermore, that home was located on land that had once been the location of a ringfort, and ringforts or “raths” were commonly associated with fairies. These facts gave further rise to suspicion of fairy involvement.

The circumstances that led up to Bridget Cleary’s death involved a doctor known to have a drinking problem, which was left out of court accounts, and the practice of fairy healing and magic. On the day that she fell ill, Bridget Cleary had been delivering eggs to the home of Jack Dunne, her father’s cousin. Dunne’s home was located near the ringfort.  Dunne was known to be a local “Shanachie” who was learned in “incantations, charms and spells.”[5]

Jack Dunne figured prominently in the events prior to Bridget Cleary’s burning, as accomplice to Michael Cleary in the force-feeding of fairy herbs to Bridget Cleary on the two days prior to her death. In the accounts given of the events leading up to her death, Bridget Cleary had expressed concerns of her husband’s fairy beliefs and was said to have fought against the forcing feeding of the fairy herbs by Michael Cleary, Jack Dunne and her cousins, all present and involved in the turmoil. For all of his involvement prior, Dunne was not in the Cleary’s house on the following night at the time of her death.

Angela Bourke makes a strong case in The Burning of Bridget Cleary to show that discrepancies from the press and the court discounted the claims that Bridget Cleary was taken by the fairies and her husband Michael Cleary had reacted and acted out of that concern. While Michael Cleary and others charged in the case clearly appeared to believe in the fairy lore, the press and the courts were not as convinced in the power of the fairy lore and the case was depicted as one of witchcraft, domestic abuse and out right murder. Witchcraft is not synonymous with fairy lore, as Bourke points out in her account of the story of Bridget Cleary’s death and the subsequent trial of the accused.

Bourke notes The Times summary of the death of Bridget Cleary dated March 26, as transitioning neatly from Cleary suffering from a touch of bronchitis and nervous excitement, to the concept that Michael Cleary thought his wife was a witch.[6] The term ‘witch’ connotes more “malevolence and its association with death by burning were guaranteed to whet the appetite of readers.”[7] Efforts were also made by the press and the court to draw a correlation to dark stories out of Africa invoking the Hottentots, as well as lumping “the Cleary case together with agrarian outrages” in Ireland.[8] Bourke makes many notes of the political climate in Ireland at the time of Bridget Cleary’s death, as the events of the past like Famine, the Evicted Tenants Bill, and the ongoing Home Rule debate clearly had influence on the life of Bridget Cleary and her family, and subsequently after her death, those accused in her death.

The press took pains to point to the trial as example of “morality and “intelligence” among the rank and file of the electorate.”[9] The fairy stories involved in the Cleary case were the perfect foil the press needed to portray Irish Catholics in a bad light, at a time when politically they needed the opposite. To the Irish Catholics these fairy stories held the promise of “pleasure and wisdom, they were packed with meaning.”[10] However, the educated people who read the press accounts of the events surrounding Bridget Cleary’s death and the trial would have thought differently believing “keeping these old traditions alive would have seemed both pointless and irresponsible.”[11] The fairy stories told by the defendants in the case were damning evidence in the eyes of the press and the court, who quickly concluded after hearing all of the evidence that the “nine remaining prisoners should be committed for trial at the summer assizes.”[12] In discounting the validity of the beliefs of the accused, the press and the court made it apparent that there would be no leniency.

In the end, Michael Cleary would plead guilty of manslaughter, with the others found “guilty of wounding.”[13] The press had had a heyday with the tales told through the trial, there was little in doubt in the popular opinion of the time influenced by education and the theories of Darwin and other scientists, that the romanticized fairy stories were but myth and legend and held no truth. Yet, it was understood by many that superstition had led Michael Cleary and the others to commit a grievous crime.

However, as Bourke concludes in her epilogue, the story of Bridget Clearly is the “sort of human tragedy in which nobody is entirely to blame, or entirely innocent, and there are no winners.”[14] The political and cultural undertones of the time played a large part in the tale of The Burning of Bridget Cleary. The press was not unlike the press today, utilizing tragedy and superstition to make political points at a time when issues divide the populace.

Bibliography

Bourke, Angela. 2000. The Burning of Bridget Cleary. New York, NY: Viking Penguin.

2005. FAIRY WIFE – The Burning of Bridget Cleary. Produced by Wildfire Films Production for Irish Film Board.

[1] (Bourke 2000) p. 32

[2] (Bourke 2000) p. 38

[3] (Bourke 2000) p. 38

[4] (Bourke 2000) chapter 3

[5] (Bourke 2000) p. 66

[6] (Bourke 2000) p. 147

[7] (Bourke 2000) p. 147

[8] (Bourke 2000) p. 131, p. 145

[9] (Bourke 2000) p. 180

[10] (Bourke 2000) p. 188

[11] (Bourke 2000) p. 188

[12] (Bourke 2000) p. 200

[13] (Bourke 2000) p. 213

[14] (Bourke 2000) p. 239

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