Some said she was born on the feast of Samhna, when the people of Ballinakelly celebrated the harvest with a feast, but others said she was born after sunset and before dawn, when the malevolent pookas, banshees and fairies joined the spirits of the dead to roam freely among the living during the hours of darkness. Whichever the case, the reality was that Maggie O’Leary came into the world on the first day of November 1640, when a dense mist gathered in the valleys and a light drizzle dampened the air and the wind smelled of heather and grass and brine.
There was a restlessness about the O’Leary farm that night. The cows mooed and stamped their hooves, and the horses snorted agitatedly and tossed their manes. Inky black crows gathered on the roof of the farmhouse where Órlagh Ni Laoghaire paced her bedroom with her hands on the small of her back, anticipating the impending arrival of her sixth child with more than the usual apprehension. She was as restless as the animals, moaning and suffering with the extent of her labor, for the first five children had arrived easily and in haste. Every now and then she glanced out of the window, searching for the flush of dawn in the eastern sky. She hoped her baby would hold on until All Saints Day and not arrive during these dark and haunted hours.
Not far away Órlagh’s children were enjoying the feast with the rest of the community in a large barn in the heart of the village. The doors and windows of every dwelling had been flung open to allow both the ghouls and the friendly spirits to wander freely, and the fires had been quenched. Outside the golden glow of bonfires warmed the air, which was cold with the presence of those malevolent beings who wreaked havoc in the darkness.
It was not a night to come into the world, but Maggie came anyway.
Just before dawn, after a difficult labor, Órlagh was delivered of a healthy baby whose shrill cries tore a hole in the sky, releasing the first ray of light. But with the birth of a new life came the death of an old one. Órlagh was carried into the beyond, but not before she whispered weakly to the babe in her arms, “Céad míle fáilte, Peig,” a hundred thousand welcomes—thus giving her child a name and blessing her with a kiss.
Maggie was a child whose beauty was strange and arresting. Her hair was as black as a raven’s wing, her eyes were a bewitching shade of green and her lips were full and sensual and curled with knowing. Maggie was uncommon in many ways, but nothing separated her more surely from her family and community than her unusual gift: Maggie saw visions of dead people, sometimes even before they were dead.
Such was Maggie’s gift that her brothers and sister teased her for being a witch until their father told them in a low and trembling voice what became of witches. Father Brennan, the local priest, crossed himself whenever he saw her and tried to coerce her into confessing that the things she claimed to see were invented in order to get attention; the people of Ballinakelly stared at her with wide and frightened eyes, believing her to be under the influence of the ghosts who had been present at her birth, and the old women muttered, “That child has been here before, as true as God is my judge.” Even Maggie’s grandmother said that if she hadn’t seen her slither out of Órlagh’s body with her own eyes she would have believed her to be a changeling sent by an old pooka to bring misfortune into the house.
But misfortune came anyway, whether or not Maggie was a changeling.
For Maggie, however, there was nothing unusual about seeing the dead or predicting death. For as long as she could remember, she had seen things that were beyond the senses of other people. And she wasn’t wicked. She knew that. Her gift was God-given. So she escaped to the hills where she could be at one with all creation. With the wind in her hair and her skin damp with drizzle, she enjoyed striding through the wild grasses toward the edge of the earth where the sea rolled onto the sand in glistening waves. Beneath the wheeling gulls she’d wrap her shawl about her shoulders and throw her gaze across the water, and occasionally she’d spy the sails of a vessel on the distant horizon and wonder at the vastness and mystery of the world far from her shores. But it was high up on the cliffs, in the ancient stone circle known as the Fairy Ring, that she played with the nature spirits no one else could see, for there, in that magical place, no one feared her or judged her or castigated her: there was only God and the secret pagan world that He permitted her to see in all its wonder.
However, as Maggie got older, the spirits grew insistent. They demanded more from her. They had messages, they said, which they wanted passed on to those they had left behind. Maggie’s father reminded her of the penalty of witchcraft, her older sister begged her to keep quiet and her grandmother predicted nothing but doom, yet still the voices did not quieten or leave Maggie in peace. She believed she had a higher purpose. She believed it was God’s will that she relieved the consciences of the dead. She was convinced that it was her duty to do so.
Times were hard, and the O’Learys were poor. Maggie’s father and four older brothers were farmers, as generations of O’Learys had been before them, keeping watch over the sheep that grazed on their land overlooking the sea; the beloved land that had been theirs for as long as anyone could remember. But there were eight mouths to feed in the O’Leary farmhouse, and food was scarce. Out of desperation Maggie’s father relented, and slowly, secretly, he began to charge for a sitting with his daughter. Maggie would pass on messages she claimed were from the dead, and he would collect the money in order that they could eat. By and by word spread, and the bereaved and troubled came in droves, like dark souls with outstretched arms, searching for the light. Those who could not pay with coin brought anything they could, be it milk, cheese, eggs—even the odd hen or hare. But the fear spread also, for surely such a gift was the Devil’s work, and Maggie grew up without a friend save the birds and beasts of the land.
Maggie was nine years old when Oliver Cromwell arrived with his army to conquer Ireland. Her brothers joined the Royalists, and even with her gift of sight she could not foresee whether she’d ever lay eyes on them again. The war was vicious, and tales of Cromwell’s brutality spread throughout county Cork like the plague and famine that swept the land in its wake. The siege of Drogheda and the massacre that followed were woven into Ireland’s history in a scarlet thread of blood. Cromwell’s soldiers put thousands to the sword and burned to death those who had fled to the church to seek refuge in God’s house.
Word reached Ballinakelly that Cromwell would show no mercy to Catholics, even if they surrendered. So it was, with a mixture of outrage and fear, that Maggie’s father joined the rebels and took to the hills to fight with whatever weapons he could lay his hands on. He was brave and strong, but what was bravery and strength against the might of Cromwell’s well-armed and highly trained soldiers? King Charles II withdrew his support. He abandoned his armies in Ireland in favor of the Scots, and the defense disintegrated. The Irish were beleaguered and alone, cast aside and betrayed, left to die on the hillside like helpless sheep ravaged by wolves.
Maggie’s brothers came to her from the other side of death with messages for her sister and grandmother, standing with the other poor souls at the window to this world, recounting their deaths by fire, bludgeon and sword. Maggie’s father died in the hills, cut down like a hare in the heather, and his womenfolk were left with no one to look after them. Indeed they were as helpless as beggars. Most of their sheep had been plundered. There was no charity to be had, for the war had razed the land and the local people were starving or slowly dying of the plague. But Maggie had her gift and people continued to come knocking, with what little they had, to receive messages from their loved ones. And the O’Leary women grieved in silence because they had to remain strong for one another; because their grief would get them nowhere; because their survival depended on their resilience.
However, all was not lost. They had their land, their precious, beautiful land overlooking the sea. In spite of the violence of war, nature flourished as it always would. The heather blossomed on the hillsides, butterflies took to the air, birds twittered in trees burgeoning with bright green leaves, and the soft rain and spring sunshine gave birth to rainbows that bestrode the valley in dazzling arcs of hope. Indeed, they had their land; at least they had that.
But Barton Deverill, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, would take it from them; he would take all they had and leave them with nothing.