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The "Fairy" Tale of Another Bridget
Dermot McEvoy -- 8/7/00
Are you a witch or are you a fairy,
Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?
 | | Two titles tell a century-old Irish legend |
The legend of Bridget Cleary is kept alive in this haunting children's rhyme that is still heard in County Tipperary, Ireland. In March 1895 in rural Tipperary, Bridget Cleary, a pretty, intelligent woman in her mid-20s, was thought to have been abducted by the fairies, with a changeling left in her place. Drastic measures were taken to exorcise the fairies and reclaim Bridget, including treating her with herbs, force-feeding her "first milk" and "drowning" her in urine. This was followed by beatings from her husband until he finally set her on fire in front of witnesses. Her burnt body was left at a "fairy fort," and her husband was charged with murder. He was convicted of manslaughter and served prison time until his release in 1910. But the question remained: was Bridget Cleary abducted by the fairies--as many believed--or was her burning revenge for romantic transgressions on her part, cloaked in the ancient legend of the fairies?
One hundred and five years after her murder incited debate in Ireland and Britain, two very different and enthralling books--one by an Irishwoman and one coauthored by Americans--are coming out in late summer. Publicists at both houses told PW that pre-pub media interest for their respective books, The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke (Viking, $24.95) and The Cooper's Wife Is Missing by Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates (Basic Books, $26), is driven largely by the gruesome nature of the story and the fact that the two are coming out at the same time.
Bourke, a senior lecturer in the Irish languageat University College Dublin, examined the tragedy in terms of folklore and the Gaelic language. "I have written and published many essays over the last 15 years on fairy-belief legend and its reverberations in all areas of culture, from childcare and land use to p try and painting," said Bourke. Wendy Wolf, senior editor at Viking, thought The Burning of Bridget Cleary "an extraordinary work of history" reminiscent of The Return of Martin Guerre (Harvard University Press) by Natalie Zemon Davis and The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Basic Books) by Robert Darnton.
Joan Hoff, coauthor of The Cooper's Wife Is Missing and director of the Contemporary History Institute of the University of Ohio, approached the story from the political, historical and legal side. "My strength is in legal history and law and economics [she is the author of Nixon Reconsidered]. I tried to put it in total historical context: religion, economics, etc. The Irish in 1895 were embarrassed by incident, but now it can be reflected upon without embarrassment and with greater understanding." In fact, Hoff and Yeates have captured the political climate of the last half of the 19th century as few writers have, portraying the "testy," nationalistic, pope-baiting archbishop of Cashel, Thomas William Croke, and Charles Stewart, as cunning and ruthless a politician and revolutionary as the infamous Michael Collins. "It is an odd, but engaging book," said Don Fehr, executive editor at Basic Books who acquired the book, "and the story itself is compelling."
Although they approached the legend of Bridget Cleary from different viewpoints there is one thing that both authors agree on--the possible existence of fairies. Hoff recalled that "the fairies were with us" when she lost some material on her PC while doing research in Ireland. And Bourke said she believes "in an unseen dimension to human life, whether you want to call it spiritual, or the imagined, or the unconscious. I believe that fairy narratives gave--or give--people a language through which to share their experience of everything that is not nailed down and certain."
And only one thing appears to be certain: 105 years after her murder, Bridget Cleary is once again commanding attention.
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