Episode 4 : Bridget Cleary - The Woman Behind the Folklore

I'm actually going to stop on there for a moment because she has brought us up to the night of March 15th 1895.

There is something I want to pause on here because the word witch appears again and again in the reporting of Bridget's death.

But when you go back to the testimony of the people who were actually inside that cottage, the picture becomes a little more complicated.

William Simpson, a neighbour and friend of the Cleary's and the subject of rumours that he had been involved with Bridget, was one of the witnesses who later gave evidence at the Magistrates' inquiry in Clonmel on April 1st 1895.

His testimony described a disturbing scene inside the cottage on the night before Bridget was murdered, one in which those present appeared to believe that fairies or a changeling were involved.

The belief was that the real Bridget had been taken by the fairies, and that the woman lying in front of them was something that had replaced her.

In other words, this was fundamentally a changeling story, a belief in fairy abduction, rather than a straightforward belief that Bridget herself was a witch.

When William Simpson was asked what so many people had been doing in the Cleary's house that night, he said, and I quote, "...they were there to hunt away the witches and the fairies.

The door was open for that purpose." But the word witch proved difficult to separate from Bridget's story.

Over time she was increasingly remembered and sensationally described as a witch who had been burned even though the changeling belief at the centre of her death was significantly different from witchcraft as we would usually understand it.

There is a children's rhyme still known in South Tipperary that asks Are you a witch or are you a fairy or are you the wife of Michael Cleary? I should say though that I haven't found evidence showing exactly when that rhyme originated, so what I'm about to say is only my interpretation.

It may have come later, shaped by newspaper reporting and by people's attempts to understand a story that was almost impossible to comprehend.

The distinction between a witch and a changeling is an important one in Irish folklore, but for people encountering Bridget Cleary's story from outside that tradition, the two may have become blurred together.

I'm actually going to stop on there for a moment because she has brought us up to the night of March 15th 1895.

There is something I want to pause on here because the word witch appears again and again in the reporting of Bridget's death.

But when you go back to the testimony of the people who were actually inside that cottage, the picture becomes a little more complicated.

William Simpson, a neighbour and friend of the Cleary's and the subject of rumours that he had been involved with Bridget, was one of the witnesses who later gave evidence at the Magistrates' inquiry in Clonmel on April 1st 1895.

His testimony described a disturbing scene inside the cottage on the night before Bridget was murdered, one in which those present appeared to believe that fairies or a changeling were involved.

The belief was that the real Bridget had been taken by the fairies, and that the woman lying in front of them was something that had replaced her.

In other words, this was fundamentally a changeling story, a belief in fairy abduction, rather than a straightforward belief that Bridget herself was a witch.

When William Simpson was asked what so many people had been doing in the Cleary's house that night, he said, and I quote, "...they were there to hunt away the witches and the fairies.

The door was open for that purpose." But the word witch proved difficult to separate from Bridget's story.

Over time she was increasingly remembered and sensationally described as a witch who had been burned even though the changeling belief at the centre of her death was significantly different from witchcraft as we would usually understand it.

There is a children's rhyme still known in South Tipperary that asks Are you a witch or are you a fairy or are you the wife of Michael Cleary? I should say though that I haven't found evidence showing exactly when that rhyme originated, so what I'm about to say is only my interpretation.

It may have come later, shaped by newspaper reporting and by people's attempts to understand a story that was almost impossible to comprehend.

The distinction between a witch and a changeling is an important one in Irish folklore, but for people encountering Bridget Cleary's story from outside that tradition, the two may have become blurred together.