Angela Bourke

Reading all those stories of Crofton Croker's, usually involving babies, hot pokers, boiling water or open fires, about the various ways for dealing with changelings, I remember feeling a sense of creeping horror at the idea that someone at some time genuinely thought it might be a good and necessary thing to do these things. At the back of my mind - not even that far back, really - was the story of Bridget Cleary, burned to death after two nights of torture and mistreatment because her show more husband somehow became convinced that she was a fairy and his real wife had been taken away. It's a nasty, brutish, sordid story, but Angela Bourke's masterful book works to dispel myths and misconceptions about the case and to put the events in a social, historical and cultural context.

The Cleary's were a relatively well-off childless couple. He was a cooper and she was a seamstress and they lived in a newly-built labourer's cottage at a time that was post-Famine, post-Land War, when progressive and ordered values were gradually asserting themselves across Ireland, conditions for the vast, legendarily-mistreated and long-suffering labouring class of the country were beginning to improve through political and agricultural reforms. A way of life that had employed fairy tales for instruction and entertainment, and belief in which was a complex, ambiguous thing, was being encroached upon. Values were changing. The creameries were replacing dairies, with massive economic and social shifts to small-scale every-day life. Scientific approaches to farming were rendering the fairy tales used to pass knowledge and practice orally through generations obsolete for that purpose.

Bourke cogently and intelligently makes the case that it was this decline and devaluation that seemed to prompt this savage manifestation of folkloric belief and action in a fraught domestic situation filled with subtle undercurrents and tensions. She also links the events to the political situation - Land Acts and Home Rule, as well as the Oscar Wilde libel trial and indecency case with which it was concurrent. Attitudes to the Irish as savage and backward vie with the Irish trying to defend themselves while the fascination with folklore and Irish heritage struggles to come to terms with a grim expression of a their heavily romanticised past-time.

A brilliant, measured, extremely well-written work of non-fiction that gets behind the lurid and sensational facts to form a narrative that provides some insight and understanding. show less

Just in time for Halloween, I finished reading The Burning of Bridget Cleary. The book is a very good narrative and analysis of the mysterious death of 26-year-old Bridget Cleary on March 15, 1895 in Ballyvadlea, Ireland. Apparently Bridget was believed by her family to have been taken away by "the fairies" and a sickly changeling left in her place. In the course of trying to determine if the Bridget in his house was really his wife, her husband Michael exploded into a rage and Bridget show more either caught fire or was intentionally ignited. Author Angela Bourke expertly places us in the politics and culture of the time, helping us to understand what might have caused seemingly rational people to behave in a way that is nearly inexplainable. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, folklore, true crime, the supernatural, or sociology. show less

The Burning of Bridget Cleary is by Angela Bourke, a one-time senior lecturer in Irish History at the University College, Dublin. In 1895, Bridget Cleary of County Tipperary caught a bad cold which possibly developed into bronchitis but her husband Michael decided she’s been taken by faeries. After trying to treat this doppelganger with various home remedies such as herbs and milk, sprinkling her with urine, placing burning objects in her mouth she was beaten and burned to death. When her show more body was discovered in a shallow grave, the Royal Irish Constabulary saw this murder as evidence of the backwardness of the Irish and hence justification of British rule. A group of men and women were rounded up, arrested and charged with her murder. The accused Irish set forth a case that they had justifiably killed a fairy changeling.

The author chose to use this story as an example of the collision of cultures that were on-going in the Irish/British disputes. Unfortunately I felt the case was a weak one, the evidence showed that Bridget and her husband Michael were not getting along, she was barren, opinionated and perhaps overly flirtatious. Wanting to be master in his own house, Michael had both beaten and threatened her previously. I believe Michael played upon his neighbours jealousy and ignorance which induced mass hysteria that had them believing in the fairy story when in truth Bridget fell victim to Michael’s anger.

I didn’t love this book, finding that it read much like someone’s term paper analyzing culture, politics, religion and mythology. The case was horrific, but I think the author stretched out her information to the point of watering down the story. There was so much unrelated information that the narrative had no clear direction and was quite confusing at times. show less

This was a great narrative, with tons of documentation, of a burning of a woman "posessed by fairies" in the late 19th Century in Ireland. What will stick with me: the notion of ancient ideas in more primitive society of balancing (crime, money, responsiblity, reality/fantasy, etc.) as opposed to today's prescribed and equally imposed punishments, consequences, etc.