Written by Kate Phillips
One of the most gruesome manifestations of folklore superstition is the Changeling. The Irish Changeling is a fairy that is hidden in a human, most often a child. While the body’s appearance remains the same, the fairy lurks beneath the surface. Those believed to be Changelings were subject to a standard progression of violent actions meant to drive the fairy out. Herb doctors, or fairy doctors, prescribed dunking the Changeling in water, burning it, or the forced consumption of a concoction of herbs and urine – all meant to purify the body and drive out the fairy, a culturally standard exorcism.
In 1885, a woman named Bridget Cleary was killed by her husband, who claimed she had been possessed by a fairy. Several trials followed suit, and a newspaper battle began between modern Christian Unionists who blamed the primitive Irish lifestyle and Irish pagan nationalists who maintained that modernization was the ultimate enemy. Today, Bridget Cleary is often labelled as “the last witch to be burned in Ireland.” Perhaps, the label of Bridget as a “witch” instead of a “Changeling” points to Bridget’s story as an example of a woman’s “punishment” being justified by folk belief, just as it was often justified in the Witch Trials by Christian doctrine.
Bridget Cleary and her husband Michael lived in the small village of Tipperary in which pagan superstition still ran strong, a cove of traditionalism among modern and British influence in the years after the famine. Bridget was fond of long walks and often faced reprimands from her husband for visiting a place nearby which Michael claimed was a fairy ring and dangerous for her to be near. One day, upon returning from one of her walks, Bridget declared that she felt unwell. Michael called a doctor to the house who gave Bridget medicine for common illnesses, but Michael became increasingly distressed that his wife had finally met the consequences of walking around a fairy ring and had indeed become a Changeling. He called for a fairy doctor, Jack Dunne, and gathered several family members to help him begin the process of removing the fairy from Bridget. Dunne began with the usual remedy of herbs and the husband’s urine. Michael repeatedly asked her if she was truly Bridget, and when she did not reply, he threatened her with a hot poker – it was a common folk belief that fairies could be driven out by fire. The abuse increased in violence, with Bridget eventually being doused in Michael’s urine. Finally, Michael threw Bridget towards their fireplace: her head struck the hearth, and Bridget Cleary died in the fire.
The following trials a few days later of Michael, Dunne, and the family members present in the Cleary house revealed that the Irish pagan belief was as rooted in the justice system as in the people – Bridget’s death was ruled an unintended result of the attempted exorcism. Although Michael was initially charged with murder and faced the punishment of hanging, the jury voted and the judge approved a sentence of twenty years of labour service, Michael having committed manslaughter, not murder. In testimony given at the trial, Michael maintained that he had repeatedly asked his wife: “Are you a witch, are you a fairy, or are you the husband of Michael Cleary?” Bridget not answering persuaded him she was indeed possessed, a belief that drove him to continue his violence. It can then be argued that labelling Bridget Cleary as “the last witch to be burned in Ireland” directly contradicts the Irish pagan belief system. While a woman who was burned for being a witch was killed as punishment, Bridget Cleary was killed by accident. Irish paganism played a role in men being declared innocent, whereas Christian superstition in witch burnings played a role in women being declared guilty.
However, Irish pagan belief can be interpreted as a form of punishment for an individual’s imperfections. Bridget Cleary held a rocky reputation amongst some people, not only her husband. The assumption has been made that Michael’s reprimands for her long walks were not a response to his concern for fairies, but instead a response to his suspicion of an affair. A cousin present at the house, Johanna Burke, wrote a poem as her testimony that alludes to other possible social misdemeanours of Bridget (whom she refers to by her maiden name):
“… I never liked her,
I admit. Dress-proud. She made herself
the word on every gossip’s tongue but
even I could see that a chest cold
does not mark a woman for murder
unless that drunk Jack Dunne is called in,
and what did Michael expect from him,
a fairy doctor, but “That is not
Bridget Boland?” I think of her now,
the fevered face, her fear when she pulled
me down to the pillow to whisper,
“He’s making a changeling of me.” I
saw only tuberculosis, blood
on her mouth…”
However, while citing possible imperfections, the poem is far more critical of Dunne’s actions than it is of Bridget’s. It is worth noting that tuberculosis at that time in Ireland was a taboo malady itself, much like the malady of being possessed by a fairy. While this fact – and the fact that the initial doctor and Johanna Burke believed Bridget was only suffering from tuberculosis – suggest the use of folklore as a coverup of Bridget’s medical condition as the result of social stigma, later in the poem Johanna writes that she could see that Michael desperately believed that Bridget would return “as she was before”, and appear at the place where she entered the fairy realm (the ring she often walked to.) Indeed, witnesses accounted for multiple trips Michael made to that supposed fairy ring after Bridget’s death, searching in vain for the appearance of her purified form, healthy and alive. Johanna’s testimony, while in the form of only a short poem and perhaps an edited account, proves that Irish pagan belief in Changelings was to be accepted as a valid justification for Michael’s actions (as opposed to the existence of an affair, for example) even if it was not a valid diagnosis. However, traditionalist Irish newspapers at the time do the opposite of Johanna’s testimony; they cite a collective readiness to fault the fairies and fail to report any misdemeanours conducted by those present at the killing. Below is an excerpt from a local Irish nationalist newspaper, The Clonmel Chronicle:
“The poor woman [Bridget Cleary] had been ill for some time, and a few days ago she told her husband that if he did not do something for her by a certain time ‘she would have to be going.’ An old woman who had been nursing the sick woman was sitting up with her as usual one night last week, and as she puts it, the invalid was ‘drawn’ away. Search has been made everywhere and the police have been communicated with, but up to this afternoon no trace of the missing woman has been discovered. The country people entertain the opinion that she has ‘gone with the fairies!’”
The possibility for hidden malice from Michael or Johanna makes a possible case for an interpretation of Irish pagan belief in the Changeling as a form of punishment if distorted, for an individual’s faults. In this sense, labelling Bridget Cleary as a witch – a label assuming she was believed to be guilty of something and was in fact dealt death as a punishment – could indeed be accurate within the lens of Irish paganism.
The Christian lens, however, is an essential view within the topic of witches. Catholic Unionist and British newspapers asserted that Bridget Cleary’s death was clear evidence that the traditionalist Irish were truly unfit for self-rule. While it may be considered ironic for the Christian opinion, which certainly led to witch accusations and dealt out death accordingly, to fault the Irish pagan opinion on Cleary, it is essential to differentiate between the justice systems at work in both Cleary’s and the accused witches’ deaths. Women killed for being witches had their guilt clearly defined, even if in an obviously unfair system. Witch trials were biased and flawed, but they were so in a different way than a trial that was conducted by a husband in the living room. The questions “guilty or not guilty” and “Are you a witch, are you a fairy, or are you the husband of Michael Cleary?” are vastly different, making the Catholic response to Bridget Cleary’s ironic due to similarities, but some nuance is still present.
This irony is further nuanced by a rather odd incident that occurred while Bridget was outside boiling potatoes: a Catholic priest rode past on horseback, and the Cleary’s dog ran after him, barking and biting. The priest kicked the dog in response, so Bridget threw the potatoes at him. Angry, the priest told her that as punishment, Bridget would “burn.” While it is unclear if this incident is tied to Bridget’s fate or was a metaphor for hell, the fact that the priest readily and orally cited death as punishment provides a glimpse as to what Bridget would really look like as a “witch” – perhaps she would’ve been fatally punished for a labelled sin like throwing potatoes, not be killed in a scenario where the existence of both punishment and guilt is unclear. Once again, the trial was held for Michael, not Bridget.
The authentic Irish pagan belief in the Changeling allows for Bridget’s innocence, as does the politically driven opinions of Catholics and Unionists justifying modernism in the face of dangerous primitivism. And yet there remains the possibility of Irish paganism acting instead to erase a husband’s accountability in violently punishing his wife. In short, Bridget Cleary can be both innocent and guilty in the Irish pagan belief system. But in both the Irish pagan belief system and the Christian one, women die.
In Ireland today, Michael Cleary’s question – “Are you a witch, are you a fairy, or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?” – is a children’s skipping rhyme and folk tune. At the time Michael was asking the question, the answer that she was “the wife of Michael Cleary” would have saved Bridget’s life. But, of course, it is not that simple. The Irish pagan Changeling procedure could have been prescribed to a woman who had the fault of adultery or another misdemeanour, the folly of stepping into a fairy ring or marrying a man willing to murder. Whatever her malady, Bridget did suffer some form of punishment, which has only avoided the name due to the existence of another, “folk belief.” Just as we now disregard accused women’s guilt and instead focus on the true biased nature of their punishment in the study of witch trials, we can leave the question of Bridget’s guilt unanswered and still just as readily claim she was indeed punished. So perhaps, while not the typical woman to deserve the word, Bridget Cleary was indeed “the last witch to be burned in Ireland.”
Bibliography
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Featured image credit: The Changeling by Henry Fuseli (1780). Accessed via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%BCssli_-_Der_Wechselbalg_-_1780.jpeg
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