Biddy
Early (1798-1874).
Biddy Early was a famous Irish seer and healer, a
wise woman of the nineteenth century often identified as ‘Biddy the Healer’.
‘The Wise Woman’ or ‘The Witch’. Much of
what we know of her has been passed down in the oral tradition and has now
become part of Irish Myth and Folklore. However, because of this there has been
a certain amount of ‘poetic licence’ taken when describing her life. It seems
certain though that Biddy Early did have at least some genuine powers of
healing and clairvoyance as she was widely consulted for her knowledge of cures
and her council. It was also believed that she was one of the fairies.
Born Bridget Ellen Connors in Lower Faha near
Kilanena, County Clare in 1798. Biddy
was the daughter of a small land farmer, John Thomas Connors and his wife Ellen
Early. Biddy was described as small in
stature and pretty, a woman who kept her good looks throughout her life.
Although she married four times, Biddy always used her mother’s maiden name,
believing that her gifts were inherited through the female line. Her mother taught her all about herbs and how
to make potions, just as her mother before her had taught her.
At the age of 16 when her parents died, Biddy was
evicted from their home and forced to take work as a serving girl in the nearby
towns of Feakle and Ennis. At another time, her name went on the books in the
workhouse in Ennis known as the House of Industry. If Biddy later gained a
reputation for being a hard woman, it's not really surprising given the harsh
nature of her early life. Biddy would
have worked long hours at menial tasks, but it was here that she was taught to
read and write by another worker.
In 1817 she
met and married widower Pat Mally, a middle-aged man from Gurteenreagh, who
died a short time later. After the death of her first husband, she married his
son (her stepson), John Mally with whom she had a son called Paddy.
Unfortunately her son Paddy died when he was just eight years old of the fever
(Typhus), a common illness in those times.
It was after this tragedy that Biddy began to use her healing powers.
She began to hand out herbal cures tied up in small sachets, and liquid potions
in small bottles with strict instructions to how they should be used.
Biddy’s powers of clairvoyance are credited to a
mysterious dark bottle, and it was reported that the politician Daniel O
Connell visited her in 1828 to ask her advice on seeking election in
Clare. How this ‘magic’ bottle came into
her possession has become part of her myth and legend. Some believe that her late husband Pat Mally
gave it to her before he died or it may have been given to her by her son John
before he died; others believe that it was given to her by the fairies. There are some stories that suggest that she
lived among the fairies for a time when she was a child. It was also said that Biddy could see and
talk to the fairies in their language and it was then that they taught her how
to use her gifts.
Biddy was instructed that by looking into the bottle
with one eye and keeping the other eye open, she would be able to see what
ailed people and view the future. In exchange for this ability, she was never
to charge money for her services, or it would result in her losing her
power. She could accept gifts, but was
to give away whatever was left over from her own needs. She must never allow others to look into the
bottle, or else they would go mad or die.
By using the bottle, Biddy always knew when a person was about to visit
her, and whether they had gone to a doctor or a priest first. If they had, then she usually refused to
treat them unless she was in a very good mood.
In 1840, her second husband died of a liver ailment,
most likely due to an excess consumption of alcohol. Biddy quickly married again, her third
husband was Tom Flannery from Carrowroe in County Clare. They moved into a cottage on Dromore Hill in
Kilbarron, overlooking Kilbarron Lake and it soon became known locally as Biddy
Early’s Lake. By this time Biddy’s
reputation as a healer and seer had spread, for it was here on Dromore Hill
that she created many of her most powerful cures. Hundreds of people came to
seek her out and it was said that the road to her cottage was always full of
those travelling to see her.
However, it wasn’t just humans that Biddy helped,
for she also brought relief to animals and treated them with great care. In the
time of Biddy Early, the death of an animal could bring particular hardship to
people living in a mainly rural farming community. Animals were relied upon for everyday living,
and to lose one could lead to eviction if farm work could not be
completed. Many of the stories about
Biddy include tales of her healing a family’s most important horse or cow. She also helped many people restore their
wells, often the only source of clean drinking water or to solve problems that
women ran into while churning their butter.
Water and butter were also vital to a peasant’s everyday life.
During the nineteenth century, superstitious belief
in fairies and all things apparently supernatural was very strong and when
something happened that appeared to be miraculous, without the aid of the church,
it was commonly and easily attributed to witchcraft and the devil. As such the local church viewed Biddy with
suspicion, and all the local clergy were totally opposed to her. As her fame spread they even tried to warn
people off who went to visit her. One
such story concerning the churches opposition to her occurred in 1865.
While visiting friends in Ennis, Biddy was charged
with witchcraft under the 1586 statute; however, the case was dismissed due to
a lack of sufficient evidence. Many of the local people stood their ground
against the clergy, maintaining that Biddy did nothing but good works.
In 1868, her third husband died, by this time Biddy
was seventy years old, although she still looked fifty, and a year later she
married her fourth husband Thomas Meaney.
However, he too got sick and died within the year (aged in his
30s). Many believed that he too died
from alcohol abuse, as there was much whiskey and other strong drink (poteen)
brought to Biddy as payment. Her
husband’s never needed to work as Biddy provided them with everything through
her healing work. After her last husband
died, Biddy’s own health started to deteriorate, she died in April 1874 with a
rosary around her neck and her mysterious dark bottle wrapped in a red shawl
beside her.
Before her death and despite their many differences,
Biddy was befriended by one of the local priests, Fr Andrew Connellan who
anointed her on her death bed. She asked
him not to let her bottle fall into the wrong hands when she died, according to
her last wishes; the priest took her bottle and hurled it into Kilbarron
Lake. Since that time, such was the
strong belief in Biddy’s legend, many attempts have been made to trawl the lake
in search of the bottle but to this day it has never been found.
Is
this fact or fiction?
That Biddy Early was a real person is beyond doubt,
but living in an age when education was minimal (except for the genteel and
priestly class); most of the folk that knew Biddy were illiterate so no
reliable record of her life was written down.
However, such was her reputation; stories about her life were passed
down through the local oral tradition.
Twenty years after her death, Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory (a good friend
of W.B. Yeats), was said to be the first person to seek people out who had
known Biddy and she recorded their stories in her study of Irish Folklore: Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland
(1920).
A modern story presumably started by poor losers
concerns Clare hurling team. It was suggested that the reason the team kept
losing out in the final was due to a curse put on the Clare team by Biddy
Early. The curse was supposed to be
responsible for stopping them from winning the All-Ireland for more that eighty
years. It took a letter to the Irish
Times, written by an Ennis man called Bill Loughnane, to finally put this
rubbish to rest.
It was after Clare ‘broke’ the curse by winning the
1995 championship. He wrote, “Biddy Early
is fondly remembered in Co Clare as an extraordinary woman who devoted her time
to comforting and healing the sick. She is not known ever to have cursed
anyone. She experienced some difficulty with one local clergyman of the day
who, for reasons of his own, would have her labelled a 'witch' ... Biddy Early
died in 1874 before the foundation of the GAA and long before there was any
inter-county competition!"
