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Bridget Cleary: Fairy Intrusion in Nineteenth Century Ireland
Are you a witch? Are you a fairy? Are you the wife Of Michael Cleary? —Children’s rhyme from Southern Tipperary, Ireland I promised in my first post on fairies as other to look at a fairy intrusion in nineteenth century Ireland, specifically, the fairy burning of Bridget Cleary. In March of 1895 Bridget Boland Cleary (Bríd Ní Chléirig) was a trained seamstress, with a good eye for fashion, who owned her own Singer sewing machine. She lived with her husband Michael Cleary and her father Patrick Boland in a small cottage in Ballyvadlea, Tipperary, Ireland. Michael, like his wife, was atypical in that he could read and write; he worked…
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Medieval Fairies as Other
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Medieval Fairies as Other
MacAllister Stone has been posting a series about the roles of the other in spec fic. I wanted to pick up on two observations MacAllister makes that particularly intrigued me because they deal with the role of fairies as the øther in medieval literature. It’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot. First, MacAllister Stone defines Other as a term to describe the phenomenon of the outsider, particularly in fiction, who represents some kind of threat to the community—but often, also serves as the agent for the community’s salvation/redemption. The best example of medieval fairy Other I know of is the c. 1400 Middle English anonymous poem Sir Gawain…
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Bridget Cleary: Fairy Intrusion in Nineteenth Century Ireland