August 2019 - Changelings
" Are you a witch? O r are you a faery? Or are you the wife o f Michael Cleary? " In my Sophomore year of college, I served as Assistant Lighting Designer for a show entitled Away with the Fairies . The play concerns the murder of Bridget Cleary in the west country of Ireland in 1895. She fell ill and her husband believed that she had been spirited away by the faeries and replaced with a changeling. While not an uncommon story, it was odd to have happened so recently. And either way the man way clearly mad. In an effort to exorcise the changeling, he ended up burning and immolating his innocent wife. The case became somewhat of a media frenzy and the locals may have even believed that there was something to it. The judge was not fooled. Her husband, Michael, was convicted of manslaughter. The mob that helped lead to the violence was also charged though only four were convicted of “wounding.” This mo...