Bridget Cleary was reared near Fethard, south Tipperary. She married when she was eighteen and by the spring of 1895 she was living in a new house in the townland of Ballyvadlea with her husband, Michael Cleary, and her father, Patrick Boland. Michael Cleary was a cooper by trade and Bridget herself often worked as a milliner. This meant that, by the standards of the time, the Clearys were a relatively well-to-do, modern young couple.
In the spring of 1895 a gruesome crime was committed in this apparently happy home that changed everything. Michael Cleary burned his wife to death in her own kitchen and then buried her in a shallow grave. Shockingly, when Michael stood trial, in the dock with him were Bridget’s own father, her aunt and four of her cousins, all of whom were implicated in her murder. It transpired that the whole family had believed that the real Bridget – their Bridget – had been stolen away by fairies, and that the woman killed in the kitchen was what was commonly known as a fairy changeling, that is, a fairy inhabiting the body of a human.
Connections with the unseen world were still strong in Irish rural communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bad luck was often ascribed to the mischievous and sometimes downright malevolent ‘little people’, variously known as the gentlefolk, the Sídhe and, of course, the fairies. In a world where oral traditions were important, stories were handed down about supernatural interventions. They were a way of making sense of the apparent randomness of unexpected deaths, strange behaviours, ailing animals or bad harvests.
Belief in fairies coexisted quite happily with a sincere belief in Christianity, and people would think nothing of attending Mass and then going straight to a local wise woman, such as the famous Biddy Early, for advice on how to deal with a fairy problem. However, as with the notion of witches in previous centuries, there was a darker side to this belief in fairies. It was usually the difficult or unorthodox people in the community who were accused of involvement with the fairies – especially strong or domineering women.
Bridget Cleary fit into this category. She was not popular in the community. She was said to be outspoken, moody and somewhat high-handed. She was a good-looking woman and there was salacious gossip concerning herself and a male neighbour. Most importantly, she was suffering from the stigma of childlessness after seven years of marriage. In short, Bridget didn’t fit into her community and was fitting in less and less as time went on.
Then Bridget became ill. She developed bronchitis and took to her bed for a few days. She was feverish and refused to eat. Not surprisingly, her manner was snappish and, to her husband, she literally seemed like a different woman.
As her condition worsened, Michael called the priest and had a Mass said over her. Then he called the local fairy doctor, under whose instruction Bridget’s nearest and dearest menfolk forcibly enacted a series of fairy remedies to drive out the changeling they believed was inhabiting her body. These remedies included forcing her to ingest herbs steeped in new milk, slapping her, questioning her, holding her over the fire in the range and pouring urine on her.
Eventually, after nights of little or no sleep and consumed by the belief that a fairy was infesting the person of his wife, Michael Cleary leapt on Bridget in the kitchen, threw paraffin oil over her and burnt her alive. Her father, aunt and cousins were all witnesses, but not one attempted to save Bridget. Michael and one of the cousins then took the body and buried it.
Apparently Michael believed that once he had burnt the changeling, his true wife would emerge from a local fairy fort and he would be able to retrieve her as she rode past on a grey horse. He took a group of men and they went to wait their chance by the fairy fort. They waited and watched for three nights, but to no avail. Bridget did not appear. Shortly afterwards, Michael was arrested and tried for the murder of his wife.
The court accepted that the belief in changelings was genuine and that the crime had not been premeditated, accordingly the charge was reduced to manslaughter. Bridget’s aunt received a suspended sentence, and the other accessories got between two and five years’ imprisonment. Michael Cleary got twenty years’ hard labour. He was released after fifteen years and emigrated to Canada, where he died.