And it is the solemn and deplorable fact that there does exist in the Irish blood a tendency toward wickedness of the most ghastly and inhuman character. A case in point is afforded by the frightful doing to death of Mrs. Bridget Cleary at Ballyvadlea in 1895. The following account of this tragedy is abridged from Mr. M’Carthy’s Five Years in Ireland:
“Mrs. Cleary fell ill on Wednesday, the 13th of March, and sent for a doctor and a priest. The priest saw her in the afternoon. She was in bed, and ‘she did not converse with him except as a priest, and her conversation was quite coherent and intelligible.’ The doctor also saw her, thought her illness slight, prescribed for her and left.… On the morning of Thursday the 14th Father Ryan ‘was called to see Mrs. Cleary again, but he told the messenger that having administered the last rites of the Church on the previous day there was no need to see her again so soon.’… William Simpson, a near neighbor of the Clearys, living only 200 yards off, accompanied by his wife, left their own house between nine and ten o’clock on Thursday evening to visit Mrs. Cleary, having heard she was ill. When they arrived close to Cleary’s house they met Mrs. Johanna Burke, accompanied by her little daughter, Katie Burke, and inquired from her how Mrs. Cleary was. Mrs. Burke, herself a first cousin of Mrs. Cleary’s, said, ‘They are giving her herbs, got from Ganey, over the mountain, and nobody will be let in for some time.’ These four people then remained outside the house for some time, waiting to be let in. Simpson heard cries inside, and a voice shouting, ‘Take it, you b⸺, you old faggot, or we will burn you!’ The shutters of the windows were closed and the door locked. After some time the door was opened and from within shouts were heard: ‘Away she go! Away she go!’ As Simpson afterward learned, the door had been opened to permit the fairies to leave the house, and the adjuration was addressed to those ‘supernatural’ beings.
“In the confusion Simpson, his wife, Mrs. Burke, and her little daughter, worked their way into the house.… Simpson saw four men—John Dunne, described as an old man, Patrick Kennedy, James Kennedy, and William Kennedy, all young men, ‘big black-haired Tipperary peasants,’ brothers of Mrs. Burke and first cousins of Mrs. Cleary, ‘holding Bridget Cleary down on the bed. She was on her back, and had a night-dress on her. Her husband, Michael Cleary, was standing by the bedside.’
“Cleary called for a liquid, and said, ‘Throw it on her.’ Mary Kennedy, an old woman, mother of Mrs. Burke, and of all the other Kennedys present, brought the liquid. Michael Kennedy held the saucepan. The liquid was dashed over Bridget Cleary several times. Her father, Patrick Boland, was present. William Ahearne, described as a delicate youth of sixteen, was holding a candle. Bridget Cleary was struggling, vainly, alas! on the bed, crying out, ‘Leave me alone.’ Simpson then saw her husband give her some liquid with a spoon; she was held down by force by the men for ten minutes afterward, and one of the men kept his hand on her mouth. The men at each side of the bed kept her body swinging about the whole time, and shouting, ‘Away with you! Come back, Bridget Boland, in the name of God!’ She screamed horribly. They cried out, ‘Come home, Bridget Boland.’ From these proceedings Simpson gathered that ‘they thought Bridget Cleary was a witch,’ or had a witch in her, whom they ‘endeavored to hunt out of the house by torturing her body.’
“Some time afterward she was lifted out of the bed by the men, or rather demons, and carried to the kitchen fire by John Dunne, Patrick, William, and James Kennedy. Simpson saw red marks on her forehead, and some one present said they had to ‘use the red poker on her to make her take the medicine.’ The four men named held poor Bridget Cleary, in her night-dress, over the fire; and Simpson ‘could see her body resting on the bars of the grate where the fire was burning.’ While this was being done, we learn that the Rosary was said. Her husband put her some questions at the fire. He said if she did not answer her name three times they would burn her. She, poor thing, repeated her name three times after her father and her husband!
“‘Are you Bridget Boland, wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of God?’
“‘I am Bridget Boland, daughter of Patrick Boland, in the name of God.’
“Simpson said they showed feverish anxiety to get her answers before twelve o’clock.
“They were all speaking and saying, Do you think it is her that is there? And the answer would be ‘Yes,’ and they were all delighted.
“After she had answered the questions they put her back into bed, and ‘the women put a clean chemise on her,’ which Johanna Burke ‘aired for her.’ She was then asked to identify each person in the room, and did so successfully. The Kennedys left the house at one o’clock ‘to attend the wake of Cleary’s father,’ who was lying dead that night at Killenaule! Dunne and Ahearne left at two o’clock. It was six o’clock on the morning of the 15th, ‘about daybreak,’ when the Simpsons and Johanna Burke left the house after those hellish orgies. There had been thirteen people present in Cleary’s house on that night, yet no one outside the circle of the perpetrators themselves seems to have known, or cared, if they knew, of the devilish goings-on in that laborer’s cottage.