The Wild IrishmanCrosland, T. W. H. (Thomas William Hodgson)
History
The Wild Irishman
Crosland, T. W. H. (Thomas William Hodgson)
National characteristics, Irish
“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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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