Product Description

This text offers the story of Bridget Cleary, who in 1895 disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. Some said the fairies had taken her, but then her body was found. Her husband, father, aunt and cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers attempted to make sense of what had happened.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #483213 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 251 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In March 1895 Bridget Cleary was ill with a cold. Her husband Michael and a number of neighbours and relatives became convinced that she was a fairy changeling and tortured her to death. This grisly true story forms the basis of Angela Bourke's outstanding narrative in which the whole context of this "crime" and its punishment is sparely and powerfully laid out. Bourke's style, judgement and eye for detail are superb; there are scenes on this book of quite appalling vividness--in particular the chapters concerned with poor Bridget's end. The closed room, the men yelling questions at her, trying to force her to eat herbs soaked in milk (if she could eat then them then she might be the real Bridget and not the changeling), manhandling her; "lifting her body and winding it backwards and forwards, yelling 'away with you; come home, Bridget, in the name of God!' while slapping her." On 14 March, they held her over the fire to drive the spirits out, and on 15 March Bridget's husband set fire to her nightgown, throwing on lamp-oil to make the fire burn more fiercely. "She's not my wife", he told the assembled people. "You'll soon see her go up the chimney".

This is a chilling story, one that stays with you creepily long after you have finished reading. Like Arthur Miller's The Crucible it seems to open itself to a wide variety of interpretation, and Bourke's balancing of old-world superstitious Ireland against the new rational nation about to be born is expert. These events may be a hundred years old, but they come over as frighteningly contemporary. --Adam Roberts

The Times
‘It succeeds as a study of belief and superstition and resonates with our contemporary experience.’

About the Author
Angela Bourke is the author of By Salt Water and Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker. Born in Dublin, where she still lives, she has spent long periods in the USA, and has held visiting academic positions at Harvard University, Boston College and the University of Minnesota. A leading scholar in interdisciplinary Irish Studies, Angela Bourke writes in Irish and English, and makes frequent appearances on television and radio. She is Senior Lecturer in Irish at University College Dublin, The National University of Ireland, Dublin.

Customer Reviews

More gripping than a novel
As other reviewers have said, you would hardly believe that this is not a novel. The story is gripping and the author's telling of it is masterful. Bourke not only relates the facts of the case, she evokes the spirit of the age. What is more, she skillfully portrays how folk beliefs and superstitions are intimately intertwined with power and the status quo. In a quasi-religious kind of way, the folk beliefs of the community in the novel form the basis of control. In our 21st century world, driven by empirical evidence, the rule of rational law is paramount. In the absence of such laws, folk beliefs functioned to shape society and were used to legitimise the punishment of those who stepped outside the bounds of the status quo. This book is truly fascinating and a must-read for anyone interested in human belief systems and the way they shape society. On top of what we can learn from it, it is also just a truly wonderful story, horrific, poignant and altogether human.

Written by a historian but reads (and grips) like a novel
I bought this after reading a eulogistic FT review and not for any particular interest in the subject. It remains one of the most memorable and informative books I have read, and left me fascinated with both Irish faery lore and history. How the author did this I still don't know, but recommend it highly - chilling, thrilling yet managed to educate me on the sly. I now know the origin of "she's off with the fairies", which my Irish grandmother used to say when I wasn't listening.

First rate scholarship combined with brilliant writing
What a wonderful work! The discovery of a tragic, seemingly cultish, killing is played out at the same time as Oscar Wilde's trial. A true picture of true 'folk' peoples and ways the 'cultured' elite chose to observe and condemn them. Bourke blends sociology, history, folk-lore, and cultural anthropology into a brilliant book that brings a time and place into devastating reality. Unforgettable!