The Burning Of Bridget Cleary : A True Story

In 1895 twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her home in rural Tipperary. At first, some mentioned that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a close-by hill, from the place she would emerge, using a white horse. However then her badly burned physique was present in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and 4 cousins had been arrested and charged, whereas newspapers in close by Clonmel, after which in Dublin, Cork, London and additional afield tried to make sense of what had occurred.

On this lurid and engaging episode, set within the final decade of the nineteenth century, we witness the collision of city and nation, of storytelling and science, of previous and new. The torture and burning of Bridget Cleary precipitated a sensation in 1895 which continues to reverberate greater than 100 years later.

Winner of the Irish Instances Prize for Non-Fiction