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"She is Not My Wife": The Burning of Bridget Cleary and the Last Witch Trial of Ireland

  • 17 hours ago
  • 17 min read

Welcome back, and if you're new here — God help you, because you've arrived just in time for one of the darkest, strangest, and most heartbreaking cases in Irish history. I'm talking about a story that asks you to sit in the uncomfortable space between superstition and murder, between community and complicity, between a woman who was simply ill and the people who decided she was something else entirely. This is the story of Bridget Cleary. And I warn you — it does not end well.


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Part One: A Woman Worth Knowing

Before we talk about how Bridget Cleary died, we have to talk about how she lived. Because the tragedy of this case — one of many — is that history has been far more interested in the manner of her death than in the fullness of her life. Let's fix that.

Bridget Boland was born around 1869 in the townland of Ballyvadlea, near Cloneen in County Tipperary. She grew up in rural Ireland at a time when the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the Famine, when the land was being contested in the courts and the fields, and when the old ways — the folk beliefs, the fairy stories, the cures and the curses — existed in an uneasy tension alongside the Catholic Church and the creeping modernity of the late Victorian era.

By the time of her death in 1895, Bridget was 26 years old, and she was, by every account, exceptional. She was a dressmaker — skilled, self-employed, and earning her own money. She kept chickens and sold eggs. She was literate. She was considered beautiful, spirited, and unusually independent for a woman of her time and class. She had married Michael Cleary, a cooper by trade, sometime around 1887, and the couple lived in a cottage in Ballyvadlea — a house that was actually a Local Government Board cottage, considered something of a step up from the typical laborer's dwelling of the era.

Neighbors noted that Bridget was not the typical rural wife. She had opinions. She made her own money. She came and went as she pleased. Some accounts suggest she had friends her husband didn't know well and that she was perhaps more comfortable in her own company than in deference to Michael's.

This independence, as we will see, would be weaponized against her.


Part Two: The World She Lived In — Fairy Faith in Rural Ireland

To understand how what happened in Ballyvadlea could have happened at all, you need to understand the belief system that surrounded Bridget Cleary like the very air she breathed.

The fairy faith — the belief in the sídhe, the Good People, the Fair Folk — was not merely a quaint set of bedtime stories in rural Ireland in 1895. It was a living, breathing cosmology. The fairies were not the small-winged creatures of Victorian children's books. They were powerful, capricious, dangerous beings who occupied a parallel world just beside this one, and who were known to meddle with human lives in ways both mysterious and terrible.

Chief among the fears associated with fairy belief was the concept of the changeling — the idea that the fairies could steal away a human being, particularly a child, a beautiful woman, or an unusually gifted person, and leave in their place a fairy substitute. The changeling looked like the person. It spoke like the person. But it was not the person. It was hollow. A husk. An impostor wearing a human face.

The signs that someone had been taken were read in their behavior: sudden illness, personality change, withdrawal, unusual moods, loss of appetite, or simply acting in ways that seemed "not like themselves." And the cures — the ways to drive out the changeling and retrieve the real person — were specific, ritualized, and often brutal. They included:

Forcing the suspected changeling to eat certain foods, particularly bread or meat cooked with herbs. Holding them over fire or hot coals, because fairies were said to abhor heat. Pouring urine over them. Making them confess their true identity by naming themselves three times. Taking them to a known fairy fort at a prescribed time — often at dawn on a significant date — where the fairies would be forced to return the stolen person.

These were not fringe beliefs held by a lunatic few. They were part of the ambient cultural knowledge of rural Ireland, passed down through generations, reinforced by storytellers, by local wise men and women, by whispered warnings and half-remembered tales. The folklorist Lady Augusta Gregory, collecting stories just a few years after the Cleary case, filled volumes with accounts of changeling belief from ordinary people across Connacht and Munster. W.B. Yeats wrote about it. Douglas Hyde wrote about it. It was everywhere.

This is not a defense of what happened to Bridget Cleary. It is an attempt to make the horror comprehensible — to show you the soil in which it grew.


Part Three: The Illness and the Suspicion

The sequence of events that led to Bridget Cleary's death began in late February 1895, when Bridget fell ill.

The illness began innocuously enough — she had reportedly gone out in cold, damp weather to collect eggs from her chickens, and she came back chilled and unwell. Over the following days, what seems most likely to have been a severe bronchial infection — possibly complicated by pneumonia or perhaps early tuberculosis — took hold. She took to her bed. She lost her appetite. She was weak, confused at times, perhaps feverish.

Her husband Michael grew alarmed. But the nature of his alarm was not quite what you might hope for from a devoted spouse. Michael Cleary, a man who by all accounts was not given to fringe belief in his everyday dealings — he was a tradesman, reasonably prosperous, capable of engaging with the modern world — began to fixate on the idea that his wife's illness was not natural.

She seemed different to him. Changed. She wouldn't eat. She wouldn't respond in the way she normally would. She looked at him strangely. She was thinner.

Michael began to consult people. He went to a local "fairy doctor" — a person who specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of fairy-related ailments. The man he settled on was a local figure named Jack Dunne, variously described as a herbalist, a wise man, and a self-styled expert in the ways of the Good People. Dunne was elderly, deeply steeped in folk tradition, and held a position of some informal authority in the community. He was exactly the wrong man for Michael Cleary to find at exactly the wrong moment.

Dunne examined Bridget and confirmed Michael's worst fears: this was not the real Bridget Cleary. The real Bridget, he declared, had been taken by the fairies. The creature in the bed was a changeling.

The machinery of tragedy was now in motion.


Part Four: Nine Days of Horror

What followed was not a single, sudden act of violence. It was a sustained campaign of ritualistic abuse spread across approximately nine days in early March 1895, with multiple witnesses, multiple participants, and multiple opportunities for someone — anyone — to stop it.

They did not stop it.


The first stage involved the administration of herbal remedies provided by Jack Dunne. These were given forcibly to Bridget, who was apparently resistant, confused, and frightened. The herbs were brewed into a liquid that was poured into her mouth whether she consented or not.


The second stage involved what became the central ritual: making Bridget eat. Specifically, Michael became obsessed with forcing her to consume pieces of bread and herbs — a ritual that was meant to test whether she was human or fairy. Fairies, according to the belief, could not consume human food in the normal way. If she ate, she was human. If she refused or could not eat, she was an impostor.


Bridget was a sick woman. Of course she had trouble eating. And her inability or unwillingness to consume what was being forced on her was interpreted by Michael and by those around him as confirmation of the changeling theory.

The witnesses to these events were not strangers. They were family. Bridget's own father, Patrick Boland, was present. Her cousins — Michael Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, James Kennedy, and William Kennedy — were in the cottage. An aunt and neighbor, Mary Kennedy, was there. These were people who knew Bridget, who had grown up with her, who loved her. And yet they participated, or watched, or said nothing effective to stop what was happening.

On the night of Thursday, March 14th, 1895, the violence escalated to its most extreme form.

Michael Cleary, in the grip of a paranoid certainty that had by now fully consumed him, subjected his wife to what the subsequent court proceedings would describe with careful legal restraint as "ill-treatment." He dragged her from her bed. He demanded, over and over, that she state her name and confirm she was his wife. The formula he required her to repeat was specific: "I am Bridget Cleary, wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of God." She would have to say it three times.

Bridget, terrified and desperately ill, reportedly complied — saying the words, saying them again, saying them a third time.

It was not enough. Michael did not believe her.

What happened next in that small Tipperary cottage on a cold March night was witnessed by everyone in the room and denied by almost all of them in the days that followed.

Michael Cleary forced his wife to the fireplace. He held her over the open flames. The accounts vary slightly in their particulars — how long, how close, whether others held her or merely watched — but the central fact is not in dispute. He then seized a lamp — a household oil lamp — and poured the burning oil over his wife's body.

Bridget Cleary caught fire.

The accounts from those who were present describe her screaming. They describe the smell. They describe Michael Cleary standing over his burning wife and saying — in words that would echo through every newspaper in Britain and Ireland in the weeks that followed — "She is not my wife. She is an old deceiver sent in place of my wife."

Bridget Cleary died on the night of March 14th, 1895. Her body was burned beyond recognition. She was 26 years old.


Part Five: The Burial and the Cover-Up

Here is where the case takes on an additional layer of darkness, because the death of Bridget Cleary was not immediately reported. It was concealed.

Michael Cleary, apparently believing — or at least claiming to believe — that he had driven out the changeling and that his real wife would return, buried Bridget's body himself. Or rather, he had it buried. Her charred remains were wrapped and taken at night to a shallow grave approximately a mile and a half from the cottage, near Kylenagranagh — a known fairy fort. The choice of location was significant. Michael was reportedly telling people in the days immediately following her death that Bridget would appear there, riding on a white horse, and that he would cut the enchantment by slashing the horse's bridle with a knife and releasing her.

He was, in the parlance of today, not mentally well. Whether that mental distress constituted a legal defense was something that would be debated at some length. It did not ultimately save him.

Bridget's disappearance was noticed. Questions were asked. Her cousin Johanna Burke — who had been in the cottage during the abuse but had apparently reached some breaking point — eventually went to the Royal Irish Constabulary.

The RIC began searching. On March 22nd, 1895, eight days after Bridget's death, her body was discovered in its shallow grave, still partially identifiable by the remnants of her clothing and jewelry.

The arrests followed swiftly.


Part Six: The Accused

Nine people were arrested in connection with the death of Bridget Cleary. Let's meet them, because this is not a story with a single villain:

Michael Cleary — Bridget's husband. The primary instigator and the man who set her on fire. He would face the most serious charges.


Patrick Boland — Bridget's father. His presence in the cottage during his daughter's abuse is one of the most painful aspects of the case. He was elderly, apparently dominated by Michael, and in the grip of the same folk belief, though his precise role was disputed.


Michael Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, James Kennedy, and William Kennedy — Bridget's cousins. The Kennedy men were central to the events of March 14th, present and actively involved in the rituals. Some accounts place them as holding Bridget down.


Mary Kennedy — An aunt and neighbor and participant in the events of the days preceding Bridget's death.


Johanna Burke — Mary Kennedy's daughter and Bridget's cousin by marriage. She was the one who ultimately went to the police, and her cooperation with authorities would significantly shape her own legal outcome.


Jack Dunne — The so-called fairy expert. The man who had diagnosed Bridget as a changeling, provided the herbal remedies, and whose authority had given Michael Cleary's delusion a kind of community sanction. Dunne was in his seventies and had spent his life as a figure of local wisdom. At the end of that life, he was in a prisoner's dock.


Part Seven: The Trial

The trial of Michael Cleary and the others opened at the Clonmel Assizes in July 1895 before Justice William O'Brien. The courtroom was packed. The case had by this point achieved international notoriety. The New York Times covered it. The London papers covered it. It was discussed in the House of Commons. It became a flashpoint in debates about Irish superstition, Irish fitness for Home Rule, and the backwardness of rural Catholic life — debates that were deeply political, deeply unfair in their generalizations, and deeply painful for many Irish people who felt their entire culture was being reduced to this one terrible night in a Tipperary cottage.

The prosecution, led by the Crown, laid out the case methodically. Witnesses were called. The medical evidence was presented — Bridget's injuries, the nature of her burns, the cause of death. The constabulary evidence was presented — the state of the cottage, the location of the grave, the accounts from the arresting officers.

The defense attorneys for various accused mounted different arguments. For Michael Cleary, the defense made a case that hinged — carefully, but not convincingly — on the question of premeditation and intent. Could a man who genuinely believed he was performing a ritual to save his wife be held to the same standard as a man who committed murder in the ordinary sense? Could his delusion be offered in mitigation?

It could, to a degree. But it could not exonerate him.

Jack Dunne took the stand and proved himself a slippery witness — denying the full extent of his role, minimizing his advice, presenting himself as a harmless old man whose words had been taken to extremes he never intended. The court was not entirely persuaded. His age and apparent frailty generated some sympathy, but the evidence against him was clear: he had diagnosed the changeling, he had provided the ritual remedies, and his authority had been the spark that lit the fire — metaphorically before Michael Cleary lit it literally.

Johanna Burke, as the cooperating witness, gave the most comprehensive first-hand account of the events inside the cottage. Her testimony was devastating in its specificity. She described Bridget being held over the fire. She described the oil. She described Michael Cleary's words. She described the screaming. And she described the silence of everyone else in the room.


Part Eight: The Verdicts

The jury deliberated and returned its verdicts.

Michael Cleary was found not guilty of murder — a verdict that shocked many — but guilty of manslaughter. The distinction was significant and controversial. To return a murder conviction, the jury would have needed to be satisfied that Michael Cleary acted with full understanding that he was killing his wife — a real human being — as opposed to a fairy changeling he was attempting to expel. The jury apparently accepted, at least partially, that his genuine if catastrophically wrong belief colored his intent. The manslaughter verdict was, in the legal parlance of the day, a compromise — acknowledging the killing without fully accepting the deliberate murder of a person he recognized as his wife.

He was sentenced to 20 years of penal servitude — a severe sentence for a manslaughter conviction that reflected the gravity of what the court knew had occurred.

Patrick Boland, Bridget's father, was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison. His age and the fact that he did not directly inflict the injuries on his daughter were factors in the sentence he received, but he was not absolved.

The Kennedy cousins — Michael, Patrick, James, and William — were found guilty and received varying sentences. Their role as participants who had held Bridget down and witnessed her abuse without intervening was clearly established.

Mary Kennedy was convicted and her sentence commuted.

Jack Dunne was found guilty and sentenced to three years imprisonment — a sentence widely considered lenient given his role in initiating the entire sequence of events. His age, once again, appears to have weighed heavily with the court. Some observers then and since have argued that Dunne bore a moral culpability far exceeding his legal punishment: without his diagnosis, without his authority, Michael Cleary's obsession might never have found its terrible outlet.

Johanna Burke, whose testimony had been essential to the prosecution's case, received a suspended sentence.


Part Nine: Aftermath and Legacy

Michael Cleary served approximately fifteen years of his twenty-year sentence before his release in 1910. He emigrated to Canada and, as far as the historical record shows, lived out the rest of his life in obscurity. He never, apparently, recanted his belief that what he had killed was a changeling.

The case sent shockwaves through Irish society in ways that went far beyond the courtroom. It was used — cynically and repeatedly — by English commentators and politicians as evidence that the Irish were unfit for self-governance, that a people who burned women as fairy changelings could not be trusted with Home Rule. This was bigotry dressed as political analysis, and it was cruel, and it was wrong, but it happened, and it shaped the case's reception in the broader world.

For Irish nationalists and scholars, the Cleary case became a different kind of marker — a moment of painful reckoning with the real human cost of folk belief when it was carried to its extreme, and an urgent reminder of the vulnerability of women within systems — legal, social, spiritual — that offered them little protection.

The folklorists kept collecting. The fairy stories kept being told. But the changeling belief — at least in its most dangerous, physically violent form — seems to have retreated after 1895. The case may have served as a grim inoculation of sorts.

Angela Bourke's masterful 1999 study, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, remains the essential reading on this case — a scrupulous, deeply compassionate reconstruction that treats Bridget not as a symbol or a cautionary tale but as a human being whose life and death both deserve our full attention.


Part Ten: Who Was Really on Trial?

I want to close with something that nags at me, and that I think deserves to be said plainly.

The people who stood trial in Clonmel in July 1895 were a cooper, a farmer, several farm laborers, a dressmaker's cousin, and a very old man. They were not, by and large, extraordinary people. They were ordinary people who did an extraordinary, terrible thing — enabled by a belief system that their culture had handed them, amplified by a husband's possessiveness and paranoia, and allowed to proceed by a silence that was part fear, part confusion, and part the terrible human capacity to defer to authority even when authority is monstrous.

Michael Cleary's possessiveness — his discomfort with his wife's independence, her earnings, her friendships — likely predated any fairy diagnosis. The changeling belief gave him a language, a framework, a community ritual through which to express a rage and a control that had darker, more familiar roots. This is the reading that many scholars have offered, and I find it persuasive. Bridget Cleary was, in a very real sense, killed because she was a woman who wouldn't stay in the place her husband had defined for her. The fairies were the excuse.

Jack Dunne handed Michael Cleary a key. Michael Cleary opened the door. And the people in that cottage — her father, her cousins, her neighbors — chose, for whatever reasons, to stand in the room and watch.

Bridget Cleary never had a choice at all.

She is buried somewhere in the earth of County Tipperary. A woman who made her own money and kept her own chickens and wore good clothes and had plans. Twenty-six years old.

She was not a fairy. She was not a changeling. She was not a symbol of Irish superstition or an argument for or against Home Rule.

She was Bridget Cleary. And she deserved so much better than the world she lived in.


If you found this episode useful or moving, please leave a review, share with a friend who loves Irish history, and come find us on all the usual platforms.

Slán go fóill.

Sources and Further Reading: Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary (1999) · Lady Augusta Gregory, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920) · Court records, Clonmel Assizes, July 1895 · RIC investigation files, National Archives of Ireland · Contemporary press coverage, Freeman's Journal, The Times (London), Irish Times, March–July 1895.


Sources used for this podcast:


Articles and web pages

Atlas Obscura. (2022, October 20). The haunting true story of Bridget Cleary’s “changeling” murder. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bridget-cleary-changeling-murder-ireland

Bourke, A. (1999). The burning of Bridget Cleary: A true story. Pimlico.

Don’t Forget Your Shovel. (2015, June 12). Raggy trees: An Irish pishogue. https://dontforgetyourshovel.com/2015/06/12/raggy-trees-an-irish-pishogue/

Fisher, M. (2016, May 5). Mystery of the ancient Irish ringforts (part 1). https://markfisherauthor.com/2016/05/mystery-ancient-irish-ringforts-part/

History Collection. (2018, September 30). The charred remains of Bridget Cleary were found in a bog and opened up a chilling investigation involving fairies. https://historycollection.com/the-charred-remains-of-bridget-cleary-were-found-in-a-bog-and-opened-up-a-chilling-investigation-involving-fairies/

Irish Folklore & Traditions. (2017, August 16). The fairy bush. https://irishfolklore.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/the-fairy-bush/

Inspiration Pie. (2018, March 12). Mythical Monday: Trooping and solitary faeries. https://inspirationpie932794997.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/mythical-monday-trooping-and-solitary-faeries/

Mint Julep Experiences. (2018, September 5). Barrel making tour: Louisville slugger, cooperage, and bourbon. https://mintjuleptours.com/louisville/blog/2018-09-05-barrel-making-tour-cooperage-bourbon

RTÉ Brainstorm. (2025, October 13). “Darkest Ireland” and the burning of Bridget Cleary. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/1013/10855544-darkest-ireland-and-the-burning-of-bridget-cleary/

RTÉ Culture. (2025, July 16). Fairy forts: What are they, who built them, what were they for? https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0716/1521843-fairy-forts-what-are-they-who-built-them-what-were-they-for/

The Irish Place. (2020, October 6). The slaying of Bridget Cleary – Brutal murder or a faery killing? https://www.theirishplace.com/heritage/brutal-murder-or-a-faery-killing-the-slaying-of-bridget-cleary/

The Supernatural Fox Sisters. (2015, February 6). Monster of the week: The cluricaun. https://thesupernaturalfoxsisters.com/2015/02/06/monster-of-the-week-the-cluricaun/

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Digitalis purpurea. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 14, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis_purpurea

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Milesians. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 14, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milesians


Fairy‑lore blogs and posts

Fairyland Blog. (2024, March 5). Fir darrig fairies. https://fairyland.blog/post/775460252055470080/fir-darrig-fairies

Inspiration Pie. (2018, March 12). Mythical Monday: Trooping and solitary faeries. https://inspirationpie932794997.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/mythical-monday-trooping-and-solitary-faeries/

Irish Folklore & Traditions. (2017, August 16). The fairy bush. https://irishfolklore.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/the-fairy-bush/


Newspaper images (trial coverage)(Replace paper titles/dates when you have them; these are generic APA web‐image citations.)

Newspapers.com. (1895). [Newspaper report on the Bridget Cleary case] (Image 1242998904). https://www.newspapers.com/image/1242998904/

Newspapers.com. (1895). [Newspaper report on the Bridget Cleary case] (Image 1259682469). https://www.newspapers.com/image/1259682469/

Newspapers.com. (1895). [Newspaper report on the Bridget Cleary case] (Image 1255038204). https://www.newspapers.com/image/1255038204/

Newspapers.com. (1895). [Newspaper report on the Bridget Cleary case] (Image 1259681795). https://www.newspapers.com/image/1259681795/


Additional general‑context sources

Ancient ringforts / fairy forts, foxglove, etc. – if you used specific pages beyond the ones above, you can format them similarly. For example:

Mark Fisher, Author. (2016, May 5). Mystery of the ancient Irish ringforts (part 1). https://markfisherauthor.com/2016/05/mystery-ancient-irish-ringforts-part/


Film and television

Big Mouth. (2017). Ejaculation (Season 1, Episode 1) [TV series episode]. In J. Mantzoukas & N. Kroll (Executive Producers), Big Mouth. Netflix.

Friends. (2001). The one with Joey’s new brain (Season 7, Episode 15) [TV series episode]. In K. S. Bright & M. Kauffman (Executive Producers), Friends. NBC.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action. (2003). [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.

Malcolm in the Middle. (2000). Francis escapes (Season 1, Episode 7) [TV series episode]. In L. Boomer (Creator). Fox.

Pan. (2015). [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.

Parks and Recreation. (2015). Pie‑Marry (Season 7, Episode 9) [TV series episode]. In M. Schur & G. Daniels (Executive Producers), Parks and Recreation. NBC.

School of Rock. (2003). [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

The Godfather Part II. (1974). [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

The Office. (2009). Koi Pond (Season 6, Episode 8) [TV series episode]. In G. Daniels (Executive Producer), The Office (U.S.). NBC.

True Blood. (2010). I smell a rat (Season 3, Episode 10) [TV series episode]. In A. Ball (Executive Producer), True Blood. HBO.


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All information contained in this audio podcast or video presentation is provided for entertainment purposes only. The authors leave any and all conclusions to individual members of the audience. The author offers no statements of fact beyond those available through diligent private research or through information freely available in the public record. To the extent that pending or settled criminal matters or crime or possible crimes, are discussed in this audio podcast or video presentation, all parties or defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. To the extent that any pending or settled civil matters are discussed in this video presentation, all parties or defendants are presumed not liable unless proven liable in a court of law. Copyright for material incorporated and presented under Fair Use is retained by the original author or copyright holder where applicable. Our cases are researched using open source and archive materials, and the subjects are real crimes and people. We strive to produce each episode with respect to the victims, their families and loved ones. At Hitched 2 Homicide we are committed to always discussing how victims lived, and not just how they died. All podcast information is gleaned from sources given. All opinions in the podcast are solely of Hitched 2 Homicide and are for entertainment purposes only. All suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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