Burning of Bridget Cleary - Angela Bourke AUTHOR: PRICE: IRP£ 12.00 pbk PUBLISHER: Pimlico ‘99

In 1895, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her home in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby hill, from where she would emerge, riding a white horse. But then her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. her husband, father, aunt, and four cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers in nearby Clonmel, and then in Dublin, Cork, London and further afield attempted to make sense out of what happened. In this lurid and fascinating episode, set in the last decade of the 19th century, we witness the collision of town and countryside, of storytelloing and science, of old and new. The tortute and buring of Bridget Cleary caused a sensation which continues to reverberate more than one hundred years later.