Biddy is a woman of great mystery, and with our name must be part of our story, a story worth the telling - in Kilbarron, Clare, the tales of Biddy Early are still told. Born Bridget Ellen Connors in lower Faha in 1798, the daughter of John Thomas Connors and Ellen Early, she married four times but was always known by her mother's maiden name, because it was believed that her gifts were inherited through the female line. She gained a wide reputation as a herb-healer with an ability to remotely control animals and to see the future. Her parents died when she was sixteen, and following her wanderings, eviction from her home in Carheen, working in 'the House of Industry' in Ennis, she eventually met and married widower Pat Mally from Gurteenreagh. She had a son Pat, and on her husband's death married her stepson John Mally. Many sought her advice - a gypsy 'Queen' from County Kerry; Daniel O'Connell, candidate for Clare in 1828 - and she became known as 'The Wise Woman'. John Mally died in 1840 and she then married Tom Flannery of Finley, Clare and moved to a cottage on Dromore Hill, overlooking a lake which became known as Biddy Early's Lake. This home in Kilbarron is identified with Biddy 'The Healer', 'The Wise Woman', 'The Witch'. She was known to possess a 'magic' bottle, and many stories relate how she came by it. Her son Paddy won it playing hurley for a team of strangers who then disappeared; she was given it by a strange child, cradlebound but player of strange melodies on a violin; the best known is of her cousin taken to a dance by strangers met at a crossroads who had entranced and held a beautiful girl in a deserted house. He got the bottle to cure her, took her home to her father (a rich Limerick merchant), then married her and gave Biddy the bottle. Biddy kept it wrapped in a red shawl. One cousin of Biddy's was member of a secret society during the Penal period in Ireland, the late 50s and 60s - 'Mick the Moonlighter'. He was evicted and his house razed to the ground. He took his revenge and shot the landlord. On the run, Biddy set him on the road to America, but her husband Tom was arrested on suspicion of being implicated in the death. Newspapers referred to 'Flannery, husband of the 'witch' Biddy Early'. The case was dropped when it was learned that the man solely responsible was in America.
Her husband Tom died in 1868 but Biddy, now over seventy, 'looked only about fifty or less' and married her fourth husband, Thomas Meaney. He got sick and died within the year in 1870. She slowly deteriorated, and died in April 1874 with her rosary around her neck and her bottle in its red shawl beside her. The priest took the bottle and hurled it into Kilbarron Lake.
Before she died at Kilbarron side A booklet 'Biddy Early - Wise Woman of Clare' by Meda Ryan (Mercier Press, Dublin 1978) gives an exhaustive account of her life and times. You must visit the Biddy Early Brewery
music ©Dufada - 'Paisley' |
There are many stories of the opposition of the clergy, and in 1865 she was in Ennis charged with witchcraft under the 1586 statute. The case was dismissed 'due to lack of sufficient evidence against the accused'; those who were to give evidence remained strangely silent!