Episode 76: Burning on the Hearth: The Ordeal of Bridget Cleary with Morgan Daimler
“Driving Out the Imposter.” Mixed media collage by Barbara Fisher, 2022. This collage utilized a photographic portrait of Bridget and Micheal Cleary as well as a photograph of their cottage. The flames are made of images from newspaper articles of the day describing the case, and the two female faces representing “a witch,” and “a fairy” are sketched from a photograph by the amazing art photographer of the 19th century, Julia Margaret Cameron.
“He’s making of me a fairy.”
Content Warning: This episode discusses violent verbal, emotional and physical, abuse of children and women that occurred historically. If you have suffered trauma from such abuse and may be sensitive to stories about abuse, please listen carefully, or just skip this episode and come back next week. Take care of yourself first.
“Are you a witch, or are you a fairy? Or are you the wife of Micheal Cleary?”
That’s a skipping rhyme still chanted by children in Ireland, and it is rooted in a true story that still echoes through the consciousness of the Irish people today.
In March of 1895, in County Tipperary, Ireland, in the village of Ballyvadlea, a young woman named Bridget Cleary fell ill after walking through a freezing storm. Struck with a high fever, sore throat and persistent cough, she lay in bed, unable to get up to do her work, so her aunt and cousin came to do her chores and care for her chickens, while her husband Michael went to fetch the doctor, and her father, who lived in the house with the couple, stayed at home and worried over her.
One of her husband’s friends, a well-known fairy doctor and story teller, looked in on Bridget and noted that she didn’t look or sound like herself at all, and what started as probable pneumonia, ballooned into a case of a woman being replaced by a fairy changeling.
What happens next is the subject of Episode 76.
No more spoilers—you have to listen to the episode where Morganna and I are joined by author, scholar and expert in fairy lore, to talk about what happened in the home of Bridget and Micheal Cleary, and try to understand the terrible tragedy not from our modern points of view, but through the lens of the the time period and the points of view of the the perpetrators: Bridget’s family, friends, husband and neighbors.
We also examine the time period in which this occurred, which was a very momentous one in Irish history, as well as the political and journalistic writings about it at that time.
It’s a very complex happening, not straightforward at all,, and is not easily understood by us denizens of the 21st century, but it is valuable to look at and understand what happened to Bridget Cleary from every available source, because it is applicable to experiences women have had and still have to this day.
I have a deeply personal interest in this story, not because I am related to any of the people involved, but because an analogous situation happened with me 30 years ago. I’m not going to go into the particulars right now—maybe someday I will write about it or talk about it publicly, but for now, rest assured that I know how tenuous a woman’s place can be in her family, even at the end of the 20th century.
For more information about Bridget Cleary, here’s a list of sources mentioned in this episode.
”Child Substitution: A New Approach to the Changeling Motif in Medieval European Culture” a thesis written by Rose Alice Sawyer. (I haven’t personally read this, yet, but Morgan praises it highly, so I reckon it’s quite good. )
The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story by Angela Bourke (This one I read and it is a very good, very thorough micro-history of the events surrounding Bridget Cleary and how they were affected by and affected the political climate in Ireland at the time. Highly recommended.)
The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary by Joan Hoff and Marian Yates (Morganna read this and said that the thread of the events was sometimes buried in asides about fairy folklore, but that it was interesting.)
Lore: Season 1, Episode 3: Black Stockings. by Aaron Manhke and Darnell Martin, et al (None of us recommend watching this, BUT if you must, it is interesting. The acting is well enough done, however there were lots of deviations from the facts as presented in the court documents of the period, and many assumptions were made about the Clearys as a couple that are not born out by any factual information. Also, Annie Oakley makes an appearance. We don’t know why.)
The Fairy Wife: The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Wildfire Films, directed by Adrian McCarthy This is an excellent documentary film that features people who live near the Cleary House, which, yes, is still standing, and some descendants of some of the people involved in this tragic story.
