MORALS
For all practical purposes, and in spite of everything that can be
brought against her, Ireland may be justly described as a moral country,
even as Scotland is essentially an immoral country and England a middling
one. It is true that we live in a time when morality has ceased to
matter and virtue is become a reproach. The world has divided itself
into two camps—the one scientific, the other artistic. Neither of them
professes the smallest concern with morals. We have invented new and most
blessedly euphonious names for the old wickednesses. Robbery is called
competition; lying, smartness; effrontery, pluck; cowardice, courtesy;
avarice, thrift; cunning, wisdom, and so forth. And when it pleases
us we can e’en find hard names for the Christian graces. The faith of
Ireland, for example, has been discovered to be fanaticism, bigotry,
paganism, materialism, idolatry, and I know not what besides; her charity
is credited to her for pusillanimity; her patience and long-suffering for
indolence and apathy. What wonder, therefore, that the very chastity upon
which her national morals are based should at length have been assailed.
Hearken to the inspired ex-literary editor of the _Daily Mail_:
“The crowning achievement of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, the
thing which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world, is the complete and
awful (_sic_) chastity of the people. There is many a country district
where that incident which in England and Scotland is regarded merely as
a slight misfortune is unknown and unimagined by the people. I have seen
a man, the father of a grown-up family, blanch and hold up his hands at
the very name of it, as though even to breath it were a blasphemy. And
this, in itself a good thing, has reached such a point that it has become
a dreadful evil. It is no longer a virtue, it is a blight.”
And the dear young gentleman goes on to assert that it is the chastity
of the Irish people which fills Irish lunatic asylums, and exclaims
dithyrambically: “There may be no bastards in Ireland, but a hundred
bastards would, in Ireland’s peculiar circumstances, be a more gracious
and healthy sign than one lunatic.” Here surely is wisdom of the highest
and most delightful type. We have already seen that the increase of
lunacy in Ireland has been pronounced, by the committee which sat on
the question in Dublin, to be mainly due to excessive drinking and the
assimilation of adulterated spirits. The committee may not have been
right; for my own part I believe it was decidedly wrong. But it delivered
itself of no pronouncement which warrants either the scientific or the
ribald to associate Irish lunacy with chastity, rather than with drink
or other predispositions. If chastity fills the lunatic asylums how come
the Irish priesthood to be at large, or for that matter the women of
the English middle classes, and honest women all the world over? And if
bastardy be a preventative of lunacy, how comes it that in Scotland you
have as many lunatics as you have in Ireland, and about ten times as
many bastards? Can it be that of two evils Caledonia, with her customary
shrewdness, has chosen both? The suggestion is as ridiculous as it is
abominable, and as scandalous as it is malicious. Even in the sense which
our _Daily Mail_ young person may be presumed to have in mind, it is
the direct opposite of chastity that helps to people lunatic asylums,
and never chastity itself, “blight” or no blight. I mention this wholly
unprecedented incursion into sophistry only by way of showing what the
astute censors of Ireland really can do when they set themselves to the
work; and although I have no proof on the subject I should like to wager
that the author of it is an Orangeman and of Scotch extraction. It is no
compliment to Ireland to say that, in theory at any rate, her morals are
entirely sound. In other words, Ireland believes in virtue and goodness,
even though she may not always succeed in living up to her tenet, and
though, for reasons which need not be discussed, she may be possessed of
primal dispositions to the sorriest evil.
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.
“At one time during that horrible night the poor victim said, ‘The police
are at the window. Let ye mind me now!’ But there were no police there.
“We now come to the third day, Friday, 15th of March. Six o’clock on that
morning found Michael Cleary, the chief actor, Patrick Boland and Mary
Kennedy in the house with the poor victim, when the two Simpsons and the
two Burkes were leaving. Simpson says, ‘Cleary then went for the priest,
as he wanted to have Mass said in the house to banish the evil spirits.’
This brings us back again to the Rev. Father Ryan, who says, ‘At seven
o’clock on Friday morning I was next summoned. Michael Cleary asked me
to come to his house and celebrate Mass: his wife _had had a very bad
night_.’… Father Ryan arrived at the cottage at a quarter past eight, and
_said Mass_ in that awful front room where poor Bridget Cleary _was lying
in bed_.…
“‘She seemed more nervous and excited than on Wednesday,’ he says, and
adds, ‘her husband and father were present before Mass began, but I could
not say who was there during its celebration.’ He had no conversation
with Michael Cleary ‘as to any incident which had occurred,’ because he
suspected nothing. ‘When leaving,’ he said, ‘I asked Cleary was he giving
his wife the medicine the doctor ordered? Cleary answered that he _had no
faith in it_. I told him that it should be administered. Cleary replied
that _people may have some remedy of their own that could do more good
than doctor’s medicine_.’ Yet, Father Ryan left the house ‘suspecting
nothing.’ ‘Had he any suspicion of foul play or witchcraft,’ he says, ‘he
should have at once _absolutely refused to say Mass_ in the house, and
have _given information to the police_.’…
“After Father Ryan had said his Mass and left, Mrs. Cleary remained in
bed. Simpson saw her there at midday and never saw her afterward. His
excuse for his presence and non-interference on Thursday night is that
‘the door was locked, and he could not get out.’ We find the names of
still more people mentioned as having visited her this day. She seems,
judging from the number of visitors, to have been extremely popular.
Johanna Burke seems to have been in the house the greater part of this
day. At one time she tells how Cleary came up to the bedside and handed
his wife a canister, and said there was £20 in it. She, poor creature,
took it, tied it up, ‘and told her husband to take care of it, that he
would not know the difference till he was without it.’ She was ‘in her
right mind, only frightened at everything.’
“At length the night fell upon the scene; and, at eight o’clock, Cleary,
who seems to have ordered all the other actors about as if they were
hypnotized, sent Johanna Burke and her little daughter Katie for ‘Thomas
Smith and David Hogan.’ Smith says, ‘We all went to Cleary’s, and found
Michael Cleary, Mary Kennedy, Johanna Meara, Pat Leahy, and Pat Boland
in the bedroom.’ The husband had a bottle in his hand, and said to the
poor bewildered wife, ‘Will you take this now, as Tom Smith and David
Hogan are here? In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!’ Tom
Smith, a man who said ‘he had known her always since she was born,’ then
inquired what was in the bottle, and Cleary told him it was holy water.
Poor Bridget Cleary said ‘Yes,’ and she took it. She had to say, before
taking it, ‘In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ which she
did. Smith and Hogan then left the bedside and ‘went and sat at the
fire.’ Cleary told them that his wife, ‘as she had company, was going
to get up.’ She actually left her bed, put on ‘a frock and shawl,’ and
came to the kitchen fire. The talk turned upon _bishogues_, or witchcraft
and charms. Smith remained there till twelve o’clock, and then left the
house, leaving Michael Cleary (husband), Patrick Boland (father), Mary
Kennedy (aunt), Patrick, James, and William Kennedy (cousins), Johanna
Burke, and her little daughter Katie (also cousins), behind him in the
house. Thomas Smith never saw Bridget Cleary after that. According to
Johanna Burke, they continued ‘talking about fairies,’ and poor Bridget
Cleary, sitting there by the fire in her frock and shawl, wan and
terrified, had said to her husband, ‘Your mother used to go with the
fairies; that is why you think I am going with them.’
“‘Did my mother tell you that?’ exclaimed Cleary.
“‘She did. That she gave two nights with them,’ replied she.…
“Johanna Burke then says that she made tea and ‘offered Bridget Cleary a
cup.’ But Cleary jumped up, and getting ‘three bits of bread and jam,’
said she would ‘have to eat them before she could take a sup.’ He asked
her as he gave her each bit, ‘Are you Bridget Cleary, wife of Michael
Cleary, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?’ The poor,
desolate young woman answered twice and swallowed two pieces. We all know
how difficult it is, when wasted by suffering and excited by fear, to
swallow a bit of dry bread without a drop of liquid to soften it. It, in
fact, was the task set to those in the olden days who had to undergo the
‘ordeal by bread.’ How many of them, we are told, failed to accomplish
it! Poor Bridget Cleary failed now at the third bit presented to her by
the demon who confronted her. She could not answer the third time.
“He ‘forced her to eat the third bit.’ He threatened her, ‘If you won’t
take it, down you go!’ He flung her to the ground, put his knee on her
chest, and one hand on her throat, forcing the bit of bread and jam down
her throat.
“‘Swallow it, swallow it. Is it down? Is it down?’ he cried.
“The woman Burke says she said to him, ‘Mike, let her alone; don’t you
see it is Bridget that is in it?’ and explains, ‘He suspected it was a
fairy and not his wife.’
“Let Burke now tell how the hellish murder was accomplished: ‘Michael
Cleary stripped his wife’s clothes off, except her chemise, and got a
lighted stick out of the fire, and held it near her mouth. My mother
(Mary Kennedy), brothers (Patrick, James, and William Kennedy), and
myself _wanted to leave_, but Cleary said he had the key of the door, and
the door would not be opened till he got his wife back.’
“_They were crying in the room_ and wanting to get out. This crowd in
the room crying, while Cleary was killing their first cousin in the
kitchen!
“‘I saw Cleary throw lamp-oil on her. When she was burning, she turned
to me’ (imagine that face of woe!) ‘and called out, “Oh, Han, Han!” I
endeavored to get out for the peelers. My brother William went up into
the other room and fell in a weakness, and my mother threw Easter water
over him. _Bridget Cleary was all this time burning on the hearth_, and
the house was full of smoke and smell. I had to go up to the room, I
could not stand it. Cleary then came up into the room where we were and
took away a large sack bag. He said, “Hold your tongue, Hannah, it is
not Bridget I am burning. You will soon see her go up into the chimney.”
My brothers, James and William, said, “Burn her if you like, but give us
the key and let us get out.” While she was burning, Cleary screamed out,
“_She is burned now. God knows I did not mean to do it._” When I looked
down into the other room again, _I saw the remains_ of Bridget Cleary
lying on the floor on a sheet. She was lying on _her face and her legs
turned upward_, as if they had contracted in burning. She was dead and
burned.’”
There is nothing which quite parallels the foregoing in the whole history
of crime. At least a dozen persons, male and female, had knowledge of
what was going on in that dreadful household over three days. Not one of
them had bowels of compassion, not one of them lifted a little finger
in the victim’s behalf. The majority of them were her blood relations,
all of them were Catholics, not one of them but could have informed the
priest, the doctor or the police of what was taking place had he or
she been so minded. But the devilish poison raging in the blood of the
woman’s husband raged also in their veins. They stood fascinated in the
presence of superstitions which they had drawn in with their mother’s
milk. They believed in their hearts that Cleary and themselves were
righteously, if terribly, occupied. They said the Rosary. And they did
all things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!