Fairy impostors in County Longford in the Great Famine*

SIMON YOUNG

It might be thought impossible, as one nineteenth-century Limerick journalist put it, ‘to make [fairies], who are supposed to be a privileged class, amenable to the laws of this sublunary world’.1 Yet from 1800 to1900 there are about fifty records of ‘fairy crimes’- crimes (for the most part dealt with by the Irish courts) where fairy belief caused or informed those involved in an ‘outrage’ against the state or their neighbours.2 These fairy crimes cover every imaginable subject from insurgency to dog bites, from slander to larceny, and, as largely unstudied acts – the only well-known instance is the burning of Bridget Cleary3 – they are potentially valuable sources for historians and folklorists. Yet, there are two crimes from county Longford dating from the 1840s that stand out for their sheer peculiarity. Using an extralegal term, the MacDonough and Lally cases, for such were the names of the criminals, might best be described as crimes of ‘fairy imposture’.4

1 ‘Pallasgrean petty sessions’, Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1838.2 See appendix for a list of fairy swindling crimes, including the present two. Further

publications by the author will deal with other fairy crimes.3 Angela Bourke, The burning of Bridget Cleary: a true story (London, 1999), to

be read with Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates, The cooper’s wife is missing: the ritual murder of Bridget Cleary (New York, 2000) and Michael McCarthy, Five years in Ireland, 1895-1900 (London, 1901), 141-174.

4 The main source for MacDonough is ‘Extraordinary case: a fairy turned swindler!’, Freeman’s Journal, 1 Jan. 1849, 4; this was excerpted by Belfast News-Letter, 5 Jan. 1849, 1. There is also a letter: ‘To the editor of the Freeman’, Freeman’s Journal, 16 Jan. 1849, 3; and two satirical pieces: ‘Multum in parvo’, Liverpool Mercury, 16 Jan. 1849, 1 and ‘Gleanings’, Preston Guardian, 20 Jan. 1849, 3. There is some confusion over Bryan MacDonough’s name: it appears in this form in ‘Extraordinary case’ court report, and as Bryan Maconachy in ‘To the editor of the Freeman’. For consistency we have used MacDonough even in quotations. The main source for Lally is the article: ‘Extraordinary credulity in the nineteenth century’, Freeman’s Journal, 1 July 1848, 1; this article was excerpted from the Westmeath Guardian and also carried in Manchester Times, 11 July 1848, 6; and the Preston Guardian, 15 July 1848, 5. There is also a digest of the piece in Liverpool Mercury, 18 July 1848, 2. There is some confusion too over Matthew Lally’s name, which appears in Liverpool Mercury as Lolley and Lolly. For the sake of consistency we have used Lally throughout.

*The author would like to thank Pauline Prior, Mike Dash, Andrew Sneddon and Chris Woodyard for help and comments on this article.

181

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 181 16/04/2013 11:28

182 SIMON YOUNG

The following words, in a letter published in the Freeman’s Journal on 16 January 1849 serve as a useful summary of the MacDonough case, which took place in the wealthy parish of Clonbroney5 at Kiltyclogh (Ballinalee, county Longford):

About the middle of May, 1847, a farmer named James Lyons, in the parish of Clonbrorry [sic], died and was buried with all the respect and veneration due to his memory by his afflicted wife and friends. In the latter end of the same month, or the beginning of June in the same year, a wretch, named Bryan MacDonough, bent with age, and leaning on a staff, presented himself to the poor family, and gravely told them that he was their father, James Lyons, who was taken away by the fairies, and that after next New Year’s Day he would resume his pristine form and shuffle off the fairy coil, when the mark or assumed form enveloping his real body would be removed by the Elfin King, whose power over him would cease on that day.

This MacDonough enjoined the most strict secrecy on the family, none of whom, with the exception of two, ever believed his incoherent romantic story. He was, however, permitted to live in the family awaiting the eventful New Year’s Day. Nearly a year afterwards another young fellow, a friend and accomplice of MacDonough arrived, and said that he was nephew of the deceased James Lyons, who was taken away by the fairies seven or eight years ago, and that his period of servitude was expired. The family, alarmed at the wonderful stories told, gave them some money, and were just preparing to sell a load of oats to pay off these two strange visitors, who promised, by getting a certain sum, to never trouble them again.You may imagine the terror of the family, and the strict observance of secrecy imposed upon them, when it was only a few weeks ago that the whole diabolical conspiracy was accidentally revealed to the respected curate of the parish, the Rev. Francis Kiernan, who immediately gave information to the authorities and got those infamous

5 James Farrell, History of the county Longford (Dublin, 1891), 289. For the history of the area – though with no mention of this crime, see Ann Donohoe, Clonbroney with Ballínalee (Longford, 1997), 21-39.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 182 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 183

impostors committed to prison. Great credit is due to the clergyman for his manly and energetic exertions in detecting the fraud, and peremptorily compelling the reluctant family to give testimony against those men whose supernatural power they greatly dreaded. The impostors had sworn most solemnly to destroy by their invisible legions, not only the entire family but the priest himself who exposed their concocted villainy. One of them, MacDonough, is sentenced to seven years’ transportation.6

Compare this with the case of Matthew Lally: the fact that his crime was committed in the much poorer area of the Callows,7 Rathcline, county Longford – about twenty five miles distant – suggests that Lally may have been inspired by MacDonough. The following, in any case, is a digest of the crime from the Liverpool Mercury. It is unclear exactly over what time period Lally operated, though Corrigan died in May 1848, and this article was published in June of that year:8

Matthew Lally, a private of the 2nd Queen’s Royal Regiment, gained the affections and the confidence of the inhabitants of Callows, Westmeath, while his regiment was quartered there. After they left he obtained a furlough,

6 ‘To the editor’, Freeman’s Journal, 16 Jan. 1849.7 Also written ‘Callons’ in the reports: the correct spelling is Callows, which is used

throughout. The parish is described in William Shaw Mason, A statistical account, or parochial survey of Ireland (Dublin, 1819), 290-291: ‘From the militia returns, and a census lately made, the number of families in this parish amounts to 360, making a population of about 1800. The land is generally of very inferior quality, which is the principal cause of the poverty of the lower classes of its inhabitants: other causes might also be assigned, which may not be either prudent or proper to touch upon at present. A great part of this parish goes by the name of the Callows, so called, probably from the rocky sterile nature of its soil. The labouring poor here are much employed on the line of the Royal Canal, which runs within two miles of this parish. Potatoes are the general food of the labouring classes, rarely do they enjoy the luxury of milk … The English language is universally spoken, and the Irish rather on the decline; at least it is not so much in use as the English. Here are no particular customs, religious assemblies, peculiar festivals, or observances, excepting only the veneration paid to a well, called St. Martin’s, whither the poor at some times in the year go to pray.’ The author draws attention to a lack of schooling in the area.

8 Lally’s chronology is impossible to establish because of the virtual absence of either relative or absolute chronological marks, but his imposture postdates MacDonough: a terminus post quem is provided by the 2nd Queen’s Royal Regiment’s arrival in Ireland early in 1848: John Davis et al., The history of the Second Queen’s Royal Regiment (9 vols, London, 1887-1961), v, 103. The headquarters of the regiment moved from Templemore (county Tipperary) to Athlone (county Westmeath) in February, from Athlone to Dublin in July, and from Dublin to Waterford ‘after Christmas’.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 183 16/04/2013 11:28

184 SIMON YOUNG

and returned to Callows, where he introduced himself to a family as their son whom they supposed had been dead sixteen years. Lally said that he had been spirited away by the fairies with whom he had lived thirteen years, after which, they allowed him to return to earth. And, in proof that he was their son, he had the grave and coffin opened in which they supposed that their son had been buried, and instead of their son’s body they found in the coffin a log of wood. One day, his mother, as he called her, desired him to help his father who was planting cabbage. He replied that he could not, as he did not know how soon the ‘good people’ would again require him.

Lally vanished for several months, claiming later that he had been in Mexico training Mexican troops. He, then, returned to the Callows with money, and from there he proceeded to the head-quarters of his regiment, where he was tried for desertion, but was discharged [from] the regiment, as it was supposed he was mad. After his discharge, he went to Longford, where he became acquainted with Corrigan steward to Mr Rorke, a magistrate. Corrigan married a widow Killian, who died soon after Lally’s arrival. Killian’s daughter, aware of the fellow’s repute for his acquaintance with the fairies, consulted him regarding her father’s fate. He told her that he saw him with the fairies, and that he would be released from them as soon as Corrigan was sent in his place, which substitution he could easily effect. Corrigan, hearing of this, brought Lally into a public-house to question him on the subject, where [Corrigan] drank to such excess, that on his way home he fell from a load of hay, and received such injuries that he died in a few days. Corrigan’s death has, beyond question, strengthened, in the opinion of the peasantry, Lally’s power with the fairies.9

It is necessary to reflect, for a moment, on fairy belief among the nineteenth-century Irish. Humans went to live with fairies in two different moments: as changelings, or as dead spirits. In the case of changelings, a boy child or a young woman (typically a newly-wed

9 ‘Extraordinary credulity’, Liverpool Mercury, 18 July 1848, 2. The break here with additional information comes because this piece – a digest – misses out one stage of the account.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 184 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 185

bride or a nursing mother) would be replaced with a fairy cuckoo, a double of themselves, often a sick and wizened fairy or even a piece of wood or a log in human form. If a wily family member realised that a changeling swap has been made a series of rituals could bring the missing child, wife or mother home. However, these swaps involved great risk and daring.10

Then, some humans – though this often blurs with the changeling tradition – went to live with the fairies when they died: confusingly, some dead bodies were changelings. The ‘theology’ of the dead and fairy world was never systematised in Irish tradition, possibly because systematisation would have led to greater conflict with the Catholic Church; as it was, relations between the fairies and priests were tetchy.11 Moreover, Catholics were sometimes criticised by Protestants for facilitating fairy beliefs. It is notable that the MacDonough case led to a Protestant polemic in the newspapers claiming that Catholic belief in purgatory had led to the Lyons scam.12 The dead, it should also be noted, remained with the fairies for an unspecified length of time – a number of years, or for ever.

MacDonough seems to have borrowed from both traditions: this might reflect confusion on his part, necessity, or more likely their merging in Irish storytelling. MacDonough and his accomplice both claimed to have escaped from fairyland – something recognisable from changeling tradition. In the MacDonough case, however, we have a dead man returning – and grown men were rarely taken as changelings. MacDonough’s ‘nephew’ was a child, which would fit with changeling patterns. It is not clear whether the real nephew had died, had disappeared, or whether it was believed a changeling had taken his place and was still living in the area. MacDonough took on the role of a dead man as well: at one point he asks his wife for money as he ‘was going to a blessed place to have masses said for him’. Lally fits more cleanly into the changeling tradition. His original was presumably young when he died and the coffin had a

10 Carole G. Silver, Strange and secret peoples: fairies and Victorian consciousness (Oxford, 1999), 59-87.

11 Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, ‘The fairy belief and official religion in Ireland’ in Peter Narváez (ed.), The good people: new fairylore essays (Lexington, Ky, 1991), 199-214; for the best modern guide to traditional belief see Michael Carroll, ‘Popular Catholicism in pre-Famine Ireland’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34 (1995), 354-365.

12 An interesting if provocative reflection: T.O. Moore, ‘To the Roman Catholic parishioners of Clonbroney’, The Longford Journal, 6 Jan. 1849. For a connection between purgatory and ‘the good people’ in folklore see J.J. Doyle, ‘Irish popular superstitions’, The Irish Monthly 50 (1922), 76-80 at 79. Much has been written about the relations between the Catholic Church and the fairies; there is no study of Anglican and Presbyterian attitudes to the fairies in Ireland.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 185 16/04/2013 11:28

186 SIMON YOUNG

trunk inside: a motif from changeling kidnappings.13 If the theory behind the impostures is reasonably clear the actual

mechanics of how these two men worked their crimes are not. In the case of MacDonough we do not know why he chose the Lyons family: perhaps a combination of relative wealth, and a lack of adult males to see him off? There seems to have been, in any case, no resemblance between him and farmer Lyons. MacDonough was a ‘low-sized, forbidden-looking, dark-complexioned man, about 45 years’, though he pretended to be bent over with age and walked with a staff. He claimed that his true form would be returned at New Year ‘by the Elfin King’. It should also be remembered that not all the Lyons family were convinced: ‘none …, with the exception of two, ever believed his incoherent romantic story’. The mother Anne Lyons, ‘an elderly, rather stupid-looking woman’, was perhaps one of the believers: another may have been one of her two daughters. The widow certainly asked MacDonough to reveal himself in his true form, but he put her off by saying that if he did so prematurely the family would be in danger from the fairies. MacDonough ‘enjoined the most strict secrecy on the family’, and, perhaps more importantly, frightened them. He threatened ‘that he’d make parables [sic!] of the children, by the fairies’ and was ‘greatly dreaded’. When the priest stepped in, the family was in the process of selling oats to pay the two to disappear, hardly the expected response to a much-loved father back from the dead.14

Lally was more successful than MacDonough as he never, in so far as can be established, appeared at the assizes. The best source of information on him is an outraged article in the Westmeath Guardian: ‘the authorities ought to interfere with this impostor as he is obtaining money under false pretences and reviving in the country an almost exploded superstition which for centuries held possession of the minds of the lower orders of the people of Ireland’.15 Lally’s imposture fits much more easily into the classic model of a grown child returning from supposed death to a surprised family.16 In Lally’s case we can partially reconstruct how he pulled off this act of imposture. He belonged to the 2nd Queens Royal that had

13 There are several examples of logs or brooms or sawdust being found in coffins. For a ‘lived’ fairy tale: ‘Curious case of superstition’, Nenagh Guardian, 13 Sept. 1843, 4.

14 All quotations in this paragraph from ‘Extraordinary case’ and ‘To the editor of the Freeman’: see note 4.

15 Freeman's Journal, 1 July 1848, carrying a regret originally in Westmeath Guardian, June 1848.

16 For this, see Jan Bondeson, The great pretender: the true stories behind famous historical mysteries (London, 2004).

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 186 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 187

been stationed at Lanesboro’: ‘during his stay there it is thought he made himself intimately acquainted with the occurrences that had taken place among the small farmers and landholder in a district called the Callows, in the parish of Rathcline’.17 His plan was well thought out, and he presumably chose the family because of the special knowledge that he had been able to amass about them and a physiological coincidence:

On [his supposed parents] expressing their credulity [sic] he asked them if their son, whom they supposed dead, had not a mark on him? They said he had, on his breast, on which opened his clothes and showed them such a mark. Some of the neighbours coming in, he called them by their names, and told them of circumstances attending his mock funeral, and of the exact ‘offerings’ each of them gave for masses to be said for the repose of his soul. But to make assurance doubly sure, he insisted on his grave being searched, his coffin taken out, which, when opened, contained not ‘the remains of humanity crumbling into dust and ashes’, but a log of wood.18

The tomb and the log are a mystery. Possibly Lally’s double – whose name we do not even know – was replaced unbeknownst to his parents. Another case of fairy crime concerns grave robbing;19 did Lally know of some resurrection men in the area, who had taken a body, replacing it with a log before burial? Or did Lally dig up the coffin and arrange for a log to be placed inside before beginning his visit? As this information was not sworn to in court, there is the possibility that it was local myth: much as, after the Bridget Cleary’s burning in 1895, it was said that an imprisoned fairy doctor had escaped from his prison cell by passing through a key hole.20 It is worth noting that the different character of the MacDonough case may be due simply to the fact that, because it was picked apart forensically, we do not have to rely on hearsay.

Lally later disappeared from his adopted family – claiming to have gone back to the fairies:

17 For the facts in this paragraph and the two following derive see ‘Extraordinary credulity’, Freeman’s Journal, 1 July 1848, 1, Liverpool Mercury, 18 July 1848, 2.

18 Ibid. 19 ‘Dublin Sept 26: difference between ghosts and good people’, Morning Chronicle,

30 Sept. 1829, 420 Bourke, Bridget Cleary, 151.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 187 16/04/2013 11:28

188 SIMON YOUNG

Months rolled on, the fairy man was nearly forgotten, when, to the surprise and delight of all, he again darkened his afflicted parents’ door; he then stated that he had gone a long journey over the seas, with his patrons the fairies, and that to his surprise he found himself in Mexico, teaching the soldiers of that kingdom the Light Infantry exercise, to resist the better the Americans then invading them; for ‘it was told him he should be rich by the fairies’.21

So satisfied were the Mexicans with his instruction that they ‘loaded him with riches’ to enable him to ‘return to his regiment with money to purchase his discharge’. There are claims that the Irish fairies took sides in various conflicts, but not, to the best of our knowledge, in the American-Mexican war [1846-1848]!22 Lally went to his regiment, secured his removal from its lists and returned to Westmeath where he tangled with Corrigan and then disappeared from history.23

This is the sum of what we know of these two extraordinary crimes. But, of course, both arose in a context – the Great Famine, which struck Longford with force in the 1840s.24 Indeed, as the Catholic author who described the context of MacDonough’s crime, notes:

We have passed through a purgatorial ordeal of nearly three years, devising, suggesting, and proposing remedies for the alleviation of the miseries of our famine-stricken

21 As note 17.22 Curiously there are some records of fairies taking part in wider world affairs:

Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, The fairy faith in Celtic countries ([London, New York, 1911], Gerrards Cross, 1977), 46, quotes a perhaps atypical Irish ‘seer’: ‘The gentry take a great interest in the affairs of men, and they always stand for justice and right. Any side they favour in our wars that side wins. They favoured the Boers, and the Boers did get their rights. They told me they favoured the Japanese and not the Russians, because the Russians are tyrants.’

23 There are no records of these events in the regimental archives of the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment at the Surrey History Centre. It is possible that some relevant records may be found in The National Archive (Kew): office of the commander-in-chief: letters to Ireland, Apr. 1847 – Oct. 1849 (WO 3/138, 139); letters relating to courts martial, Aug. 1847 – June 1849 (WO 3/561, 562); out-letters: deputy adjutant general of the forces in Ireland, June 1839 – Sept. 1850 (WO 35/28); courts martial proceedings: papers, Jan. – Dec. 1848 (WO 71/331-334); judge advocate general’s office: courts martial correspondence and papers, 1843-1850 (WO 72/102).

24 Longford was a mid-ranking county in terms of Famine mortality, particularly in 1848: see S.H. Cousens, ‘The regional variation in mortality during the Great Irish Famine’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 63C (1962-1964), 147 (summary graphic), though it was one of the countries most affected by emigration: S.H. Cousens, ‘The regional pattern of emigration during the Great Irish Famine, 1846-51’, Transactions and Papers of the Institute of British Geographers 28 (1960), 121 (graphic of percentage emigration).

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 188 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 189

people … Our Protestant neighbours, to their great credit as Christians, were indefatigable in their exertions co-operating with and assisting us in every possiblee [sic] manner with their purses and persons from morning until night in the damp, cold, cheerless room, their clothes often dripping rain, where we were all encircled with crowds of spectral, naked, starving wretches, crying aloud for food or labour.I have seen the chivalrous, good-hearted chairman of our committee, Captain Hill, R.M. – whose cheek never blenched in the battle field, and whose impartiality on the bench flings a halo of respect around the name of magistrate, sitting in the midst of this motley group for weeks and months, using all his energies which are vast and various for the benefit of the suffering poor.

I have seen the manly tear bedew his warrior face, on beholding the ruin and desolation of his proverbially unfortunate countrymen …25

The Famine affected all areas of life including traditional belief. As Ó Giolláin has observed: ‘The scope and the pace of social and economic change coupled with the enormous catastrophe of the Famine undoubtedly caused a sort of moral and intellectual breakdown of the old worldview and a spiritual chaos which encouraged people to desperately cling to new religious truths,’26 truths that would ultimately come from Catholic teaching. It was in this period of flux and devastation that MacDonough and Lally committed their novel crimes.

But if their crimes were novel then they can also usefully be compared to crimes committed before and crimes that came after. There are some interesting equivalents in Irish assize reports and in Irish writing from the nineteenth-century. The closest parallel is to be found in a work by Thomas Crofton Croker. In 1820, Crofton Croker received a letter from a friend detailing an extraordinary happening at Castle Town on the Shannon:

The day before I left Island Bawn, says the writer, I heard of an Irish Kilmeny,27 in the person of the wife

25 ‘To the Editor’, Freeman’s Journal, 16 Jan. 1849, 3.26 Ó Giolláin, ‘The fairy belief’, 205.27 The reference is to the Scottish ‘away with the fairies’ poem ‘Kilmeny’ published

by James Hogg in 1813. For more on ‘Kilmeny’, see Silver, Strange and secret peoples, 16-17.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 189 16/04/2013 11:28

190 SIMON YOUNG

of a labouring cottager, who, having died about twenty years since, and been buried with the usual ceremonies, the poor man allowed a reasonable period to elapse, and subsequently took unto himself another helpmate, with whom he had since continued to live; when one night last winter (1820), they were disturbed by a woman vociferously claiming admission into their cabin, and asserting her right to the full and undisturbed sovereignty of the same, inasmuch as she was the owner’s true and lawful wife, whom he supposed deceased and interred, whereas she had only been with the fairies, from whose power she had now emancipated herself. So minute and clear (if not satisfactory) did she make out her title, that both the husband and his second spouse quailed before this unwelcomed visitant from the ‘good people’. The first wife allowed her locum tenens to remain in the house while she behaved herself respectfully, and all went on smoothly for some time, the stranger supporting the truth of her story by mysteriously telling the fortunes of those who flocked to see so wonderful a woman.28

The impostor29 ‘talked in a common gypsy strain’ and, interviewed by another, described her ordeal:

I am twenty years from home, and my husband is married again. This is my son’s house. When I came home Paddy would not own me, but I soon made him sinsible, (convinced him) I was his wife. I have suffered more than I can tell any one while I was with the ‘good people’; and I promised the Blessed Virgin, if she would release me, to do six months’ pinnance (penance) at a holy well in the King’s County, where I am going next week; if I live to return, my son will let me pass the rest of my days with him should my husband not allow me.30

28 T. Crofton Croker, Researches in the south of Ireland illustrative of the scenery, architectural remains, and the manners and superstitions of the peasantry with an appendix containing a private narrative of the rebellion of 1798 (London, 1824), 87-88.

29 The letter-writer hints at this view with her ‘if not satisfactory’, and to believe that this really was the wife would be either to demand a Lazarus miracle or the plot of a Dumas novel.

30 Crofton Croker, Researches, 88 and 90.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 190 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 191

We have found no other convincing example of such fairy imposture though there are many instances in folklore of family members returning from the fairies after long intervals.31 But we do have thirteen examples from nineteenth-century Ireland of what might be called ‘fairy swindling’ (see appendix). In these crimes, women32 attempted to gain goods and money from gullible ‘dupes’, as the newspapers insisted on calling their victims. Some of these women seem to be what were known in nineteenth-century Ireland as ‘fairy women’, who specialised in giving cures, particularly for maladies associated with the fairies.33

Of course, the fairy woman was not a criminal. She offered traditional solutions to traditional problems, along with the fairy doctor, the charmer, the bonesetter, and the cattle doctor, all of whose roles overlapped, and who were an important part of the rural Irish scene at this date. However, she might find herself in trouble with the authorities for two reasons: first, if her ‘traditional solutions’ damaged the health of patients – as happened particularly in changeling cases;34 and, second, if the fairy woman, operating in an area of trust, chose to abuse those who came to her for help.

31 For example, Lady Gregory, Visions and beliefs in the west of Ireland collected and arranged by Lady Gregory: with two essays and notes by W.B. Yeats (2 vols, New York, 1920), i, 214; ‘John Phelan’ or ‘The Fairies of Rahonain and Elizabeth Shea, a failed rescue’ in Jeremiah Curtin, Tales of the fairies and of the ghost world collected from oral tradition in south-west Munster (London, 1895), 23-28, which is particularly interesting as it is allegedly narrated by a witness; Crofton Croker, Researches, 90: ‘Dr. Neilson gives us, with every appearance of authenticity, a more intricate matrimonial case than the foregoing, where the woman, on her return from Fairyland, finding her first husband married, marries again herself.’ This refers to a tale in William Neilson, An introduction to the Irish language in three parts (Achill, 1845), 54-68, which is not ‘authentic’ in anything but a folklore sense.

32 There are no examples of adult males undertaking this line of work – except one woman with a male assistant dressed in women’s clothes and a boy: ‘The fairy woman … had … two companions, one a person who was called Peggy Fitzgerald, having black hair, cut short behind, wearing an old patched petticoat, with white pockets, and who is supposed to be a man in woman’s clothes; the other called Peter Fitzgerald, a boy about twelve years of age …’ (‘Curious fact – a fairy tale’, The Morning Chronicle, 3 Mar. 1834, 1, excerpted from the Dublin Register).

33 There is still no complete modern study: for an introduction see Bourke, Bridget Cleary, 31-16; James Mooney, ‘The medical mythology of Ireland’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 24 (1887), 136-166, is still useful. See Catherine Cox, ‘The medical marketplace and medical tradition in nineteenth-century Ireland’ in Stuart McClean and Ronnie Moore (eds), Folk healing and health care practices in Britain and Ireland: stethoscopes, wands and crystals (Oxford, 2010), 55-79 at 55-58, for the choice between modern and traditional medicine.

34 Two examples will serve: ‘Tipperary assizes (North Riding)’, Belfast News-Letter, 28 Mar. 1851, 4, in which a fairy doctor brought on a ‘changeling’s death’; and the self-explanatory ‘A female quack: gross superstition: another Johnny Mahony’, Nenagh Guardian, 4 May 1844, 4, excerpted from the Tipperary Constitution.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 191 16/04/2013 11:28

192 SIMON YOUNG

There are several instances of both in the Irish courts in the nineteenth century. However, as only the second is relevant here, we quote from a Tipperary case from 1834, which serves as an introduction to the modus operandi of a fairy woman ‘gone bad’.

Anastatia Carthy … [r]emembered the eldest of the prisoners, Johanna Galvin, coming to her house in January last; it was towards evening, and having told witness that she was from the Iron Mills in Tipperary, and a daughter of Mrs Jackson (a celebrated fairy-woman and charm-maker of the last age), she asked for lodgings for the night. Having consented that she should remain, she then told her that her daughters, the two other prisoners, were at a short distance, and witness having desired that they also should lodge with her for that night, the elder prisoner desired her to send for them, as she was wholly unable to walk … The eldest woman took a tea-cup, and having poured in some water, placed therein an herb which she took from her pocket. The cup was laid on a shelf, and in a short time, when the prisoner went again to the cup, she appeared to be much concerned, and called the witness to inspect the contents of the cup – the witness observed that the water appeared as if tinged with blood. Galvin then communed with the two younger women, when some mysterious signs and words passed between them. The prisoner next asked witness if any thing ailed her daughter, who was present. The witness hesitated to tell her, but she observed it was useless to conceal the matter; and that she could do her a service if made acquainted with the fact. Witness then acknowledged that her daughter was afflicted by a swelling of the neck and a throat when she caught cold … The old crone then at once affected to see the daughter’s berrin in the cup and its bloody tinge – but she intimated that, if proper means were used, the calamity might be averted. She went on conjuring them to effect this desirable object, till the hen fell off the roost with the power of her charm … The next proceeding was to compose the philtre which was to effect [sic] the restoration of her daughter from those ill favoured spirits which had nearly possessed her. A skillet was put upon the fire – water from the confluence of three streams was procured, poured into the skillet, placed over the fire, and quan. suf. of herbs having been added to the liquid, the ‘hell broth’ was in process of decoction, stirred up by the old beldame. Suddenly the hag stopped, and declared

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 192 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 193

that she could not proceed in the composition unless she had yellow money with a cross on it (a gold guinea) to aid her in the process. The witness assured her that she had none. ‘Could she not procure it?’ ‘No.’ ‘What a pity – she could have the charm completed in a very short time indeed with such help – but in the absence of gold she would be enabled to do the cure with the aid of some white money (silver); and with the assi-tance [sic] of more prayers.’35

This case proved painful for the family. The three fairy women convinced their hosts to bring them to a graveyard in their search for a special herb and vanished wearing their hosts’ clothes. The family then compounded their error by prosecuting their erstwhile guests and, while the thieves were found guilty and transported, the Carthy family were mocked by the judge and in their local newspaper. The greatest protection for fairy swindler’s was the general hilarity caused by fairy stories in the courts, which was enough to silence most victims.36

What characterised these fairy swindlers, and how do they compare with the MacDonough, the Lally, and the Castle Town case? Looking at the different fairy swindlers, three points stand out: (i) ‘the swindling personality’; (ii) ‘knowledge of the fairies’; and (iii), particularly important in the context of the Great Famine, ‘knowledge of the dead’.

The swindling personalityThe first point, which is demonstrated in the passage cited above,

is that the swindler must possess exceptional guile and self-assurance to pull off a ‘con’.37 The following account from Nenagh, dating from 1840, is of a fairy woman introducing herself to her latest target, the cook in a big house. This larger-than-life personality is replicated again and again:

35 ‘Unparalleled imposture! Witchcraft’, Belfast News-letter, 11 Apr. 1834, 1.36 As evinced by the following exchange dating from 1834: ‘Chief Justice: Did they

leave the hen after them when they left you? – McCarthy: No, your honour, they carried it wid [sic] them – (laughter). – Chief Justice: So I thought. They did not wish to leave you so diseased a bird – (laughter). – McCarthy: My wife then said, my Lord, that they should have the best supper she had, and said she’d kill the goose for them – (laughter) – and then they said they wanted the goose’s foot to pull the herb with. – Chief Justice: what, and did your wife part with you – (roars of laughter). – McCarthy: No, your honor, ‘twas only the goose she parted with – (laughter)’, Belfast News-Letter, 11 Apr. 1834.

37 Conmen and swindlers are classed by psychologists as having narcissistic personality disorder, essentially an exaggerated self of sense, a vivid fantasy life, and a lack of empathy for others, particularly their victims.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 193 16/04/2013 11:28

194 SIMON YOUNG

About a fortnight ago a low-sized wretched old woman was observed lurking about the rere of the residence of a highly respectable solicitor, in the neighbourhood of this town. One of the domestics, the cook, desired her to go around to the master at the hall-door if she wanted charity. ‘Charity!’ retorted the old crone, with an indignant toss of the head; ‘I want no charity. Instead of looking for any thing of that nature, it is in my power to make any one I choose as wealthy as a Queen. Don’t you know me?’ ‘In troth, I don’t’, said the astonished cook; ‘how would I know you’. [sic] ‘Well,’ continued the old woman, ‘I don’t wonder at that, for I have been so long among the fairies; and I am so strangely altered, that, bad scran to me! if I knew myself this morning when I was looking at my face in St Winifred’s Well at Wales’. ‘In Wales!’ Ejaculated the cook. ‘Aye, in Wales!’ retorted the old woman. ‘Is there anything extraordinary in it? Didn’t I dine with the Queen of Spain last Friday: but no matter about that; I am inclined to be a great friend of yours and to do you some trifling service. Do you see this spot on which I am now standing?’ Here the cook closed up to the old crone with an air of intense interest, saying, ‘I do’. ‘Well’, continued the frequenter of St. Winifred’s Well ‘there is a ‘crock of gold’ buried there’; … The cook here commenced rummaging her deep pockets, and made motions as if she was about bestowing some pecuniary reward on her communicative companion. ‘Don’t attempt it’, said the old woman, ‘for it wasn’t for the likes of that I came here at all’. ‘Come into the kitchen at any rate’, said the cook, using one of her most interesting smiles. ‘I can’t go into the house at all, at all, this turn,’ said the old woman. ‘I’m to take tay with the Queen of Amerikay to-morrow morning; so you see I have a long journey before me: at all events, I will be with you next Sunday … so trust nobody with the secret, for the fairies would be amazing angry with you if you told anybody about your good fortune.’38

38 ‘The Rockite emissary from fairy land: plunder of fire-arms’, Nenagh Guardian, 5 Feb. 1840, 3.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 194 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 195

Knowledge of the fairiesAs well as charisma and audacity there was the need to convince

others that the swindler has a connection with the fairies.39 Lally and MacDonough claimed to have actually lived among the ‘wee folk’. And many fairy women did this as well. Indeed, their authority was based in part on their cohabitation with the ‘good people’: much as the unnamed woman above established her authority with her flying from Wales – in another place she speaks of her broomstick – and her being so long ‘among the fairies’. One other swindler has a small fairy familiar ‘little Mick’;40 another claimed that she had ‘constant intercourse and communication with the good people: that she had come from the next fort, where she spent an hour each day with them’;41 another was in regular communication with the ‘queen of the fairies’;42 another still claimed to be the queen of the fairies;43 and then there was Ellen English who explained with some impatience to the bench at the Limerick Petty Sessions in 1835 that she was a fairy and that they should leave well alone.44

Knowledge of the deadFairy swindlers also played on their knowledge of the dead,

something that emerges in the cases of both MacDonough and Lally. One fairy woman announced, ‘I am sent by the fairies to make you a present of [some gold]. Your brother is in the ‘good people … and so are a great number of your friends and relations’.45 Another fairy swindler explained how ‘she had been sent by certain deceased members of [the victim’s] family to tell her that certain good fortune would happen to her’.46 In other cases the relations with the dead were more immediate. One Mary Mack, in 1834, claimed to know the haunts of ‘the good people’, and that she was able to raise the dead:

39 Sometimes the fairy doctors were themselves believed to be changelings, i.e. fairies; cf. Lageniensis [John O’Hanlon], Irish folk lore: traditions and superstitions of the country with humorous tales (Glasgow, 1870), 48.

40 ‘Extraordinary credulity in the nineteenth century’, Belfast News-Letter, 11 Feb. 1861, 4.

41 ‘Assize intelligence’, Freeman’s Journal, 9 July 1880, 3.42 ‘Superstition’, Belfast News-Letter, 24 June 1842, 2.43 ‘The Queen of the Fairies’, Freeman’s Journal, 16 June 1849, 4.44 ‘A Fairy’, Belfast News-Letter, 20 Feb. 1835, 2: ‘Informations were ordered

against her, on hearing which she said no human being had power over her, as she was a fairy, and told the bench, in plain terms, that it was surer for them not to meddle with her. This caution, however, was disregarded.’

45 ‘The Rockite emissary’, 3.46 ‘Assize Intelligence’, Freeman’s Journal, 9 Jul 1880, 3.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 195 16/04/2013 11:28

196 SIMON YOUNG

This wretch, by the story of her gifts, so influenced the mind of [a young girl, Mary Kearns], that she believed Mary Mac to possess all the powers she boasted of. In a conversation with the young girl one day, she told her that her father was not dead; that she knew he was with the fairies, and asked the girl if she would wish then to see her father. The young girl replied she was afraid; but the fairy woman spoke to some accomplice who was concealed, and an answer was given in the hearing of the young girl. A voice was heard to declare, ‘I am your father’. The girl asked him would he not remain with them. ‘No,’ exclaimed the voice, ‘I cannot leave the fairies yet, but I shall be home with you in four days.’ This appeared to be glorious news to the deluded girl, and the fairy woman then told her they would have to go to a place that it would require them two days to walk to, and two to return; and that it would be necessary for them to procure some money, which she would have to pay in a certain place before the father could be got back. Under this persuasion, the girl left the house with the fairy woman. The mother was absent at the time, and on her return she discovered that her only child was taken from her, and their little home stripped of every article of value.47

Compare this to another case, this time from Laois in 1842. The rath was the traditional home of the fairies, and note, in that light, the fairy name Knockshegoura.48

A young woman, who stated that she was familiar with the fairies, came to the family of a young man named Skelly, who had left the country for Sydney about two years ago, but had since died in England; she told them that she had seen him among the fairies, and that if they followed her advice he would be restored to them. The poor people believed her, and started off to a hill called Knockshegoura, but missed him there. The impostor then took them to a rath near Durrow, but pretended that she was informed by the queen of the fairies that she should

47 ‘Curious fact – a fairy tale’, The Morning Chronicle, 3 March 1834, 1, excerpted from the Dublin Register.

48 For the relationship between raths and fairies, see Máirín Ní Cheallaigh, ‘Going astray in the fort field: “traditional” attitudes towards ringforts in nineteenth-century Ireland’, The Journal of Irish Archaeology 15 (2006), 105-115.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 196 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 197

go the following night, without a single article of her own dress, and unaccompanied by any person, save the sister of the deceased. The Skellys provided her with whatever clothes she required, and she set out for a rath at Knockshegoura, near Borris; but Skelly’s sister being unable to keep up with her, the pretended ‘wise woman’ was soon out of sight, and has not since been heard of.49

A still more extraordinary case is that of a woman named Doheny who, in 1864, convinced a small Cork town that she was able to conjure up the dead. So convincing was she that she tricked a local policeman – a Mr Reeves – and his family: who caused the judiciary much anguish by swearing that they had come face to face with deceased relations.50

These swindling crimes and the Castle Town case are the only ones to which MacDonough’s and Lally’s bear any resemblance. The swindler, as indicated above, was required to have a remarkable personality, to be able to improvise and invent; she must establish her authority in relation to the fairies; she should also establish a link with the dead. These three points were all present in the MacDonough’s and Lally’s swindles, particularly the knowledge of the departed. Lally, for example, talks to the step-daughter of one Corrigan who: ‘aware of [Lally’s] acquaintance with the fairies, consulted him regarding her father’s fate. He told her that he saw him with the fairies, and that he would be released from them as soon as Corrigan was sent in his place.’ Lally too ‘related to the assembled multitude [of his parents and their neighbours] the fate of many of their friends and relatives whom he had met “in the hours of fairy revel”’.51 We have fewer details in MacDonough’s case but given ‘the wonderful stories told’52 there were quite possibly references to dead family members: certainly the ‘nephew’ James Lyon came back from the fairy world either as an escaped child or as a dead boy returned to life.

However, differences must also be taken into account. First, these are the only identified cases from nineteenth-century Ireland where men partake in ‘fairy swindling’: two male cases against one female

49 ‘Superstition’, Belfast News-Letter, 24 June 1842, 2.50 A fascinating instance that deserves study is ‘A strange case of witchery in

Tipperary’, Freeman’s Journal, 9 Sept. 1864, 4. This does not appear in St John D. Seymour, Witchcraft and demonology (Dublin 1913) or in any other work on Irish witchcraft. It seems also to include elements of fairy lore.

51 ‘Extraordinary credulity in the nineteenth century’, Freeman’s Journal, 1 July 1848, 1.

52 ‘To the editor’, Freeman’s Journal , 16 Jan. 1849, 3.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 197 16/04/2013 11:28

198 SIMON YOUNG

fairy impostor and thirteen fairy swindlers, where the swindlers are women. Gender divisions in crimes are often striking, and this is particularly true of crimes concerning fairy belief. For example, of five adults killed as changelings in nineteenth-century Ireland, four murders were committed by men and the single female murder charge may have been a miscarriage of justice.53 Second, MacDonough’s and Lally’s claim to be the dead (or changelings) returned to the human realm to their own family was far more daring than merely claiming to be a fairy or a friend of the fairies, something, indeed, with which only the Castle Town case can compare. These were then variants on ‘fairy swindling’ where the gender of the criminal and his modus operandi changed. Why? Given the central place of death in these swindles and remembering the traumas of 1847-1848, it is tempting to speculate that the Great Famine had, as was noted above, created ‘a moral and intellectual breakdown of the old worldview and a spiritual chaos’, giving space to new forms of credulity and, with this, new forms of crime.

53 These five include the Bridget Cleary killing – see note 2 above; The Morning Chronicle, 19 Sept 1829, 3; ‘The Lisowran murder case’, Nenagh Guardian, 8 Dec. 1883, 3; ‘Horrible occurrence in county Roscommon: alleged shocking murder: a whole family arrested: affray with the police’, Freeman’s Journal, 9 Mar. 1896, 5. The only female killer and the possible miscarriage of justice is described by Pauline Prior, ‘Roasting a man alive: the case of Mary Reilly, criminal lunatic’, Eire-Ireland, 41 (2006), 169-191.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 198 16/04/2013 11:28

FAIRY IMPOSTORS IN CO. LONGFORD IN THE GREAT FAMINE 199

Appendix: chronological handlist of fairy swindlers in nineteenth-century Ireland

1820, Castle Town, Limerick (?): Thomas Crofton Croker, Researches in the south of Ireland illustrative of the scenery, architectural remains, and the manners and superstitions of the peasantry with an appendix containing a private narrative of the rebellion of 1798 (London, 1824), 87-88.

1834 (Apr.), Limerick: ‘Unparalleled imposture! Witchcraft’, Belfast News-Letter, 11 Apr. 1834, 1. Anon.

1834 (Mar.), Toomevara, Tipperary: ‘Curious fact – a fairy tale’, The Morning Chronicle, 3 Mar. 1834, 1. Anon.

1835, Limerick: ‘A fairy’, Belfast News-Letter, 20 Feb. 1835, 2. Anon.

1840, Nenagh, Tipperary: ‘The Rockite emissary from fairyland: plunder of fire-arms’, Nenagh Guardian, 5 Feb. 1840, 3. Anon.

1842, Laois: ‘Superstition’, Belfast News-Letter, 24 June 1842, 2. Anon.

1843, Tipperary (Carrick-on-Suir): ‘Curious case of superstition’, Nenagh Guardian, 13 Sept. 1843, 4. Anon.

1847, Rathcline, Longford: ‘Extraordinary case: a fairy turned swindler!’, Freeman’s Journal, 1 Jan. 1849, 4. Anon.

1848, Callows, Westmeath: ‘Extraordinary credulity in the nineteenth century’, Freeman’s Journal, 1 July 1848, 1. Anon.

1849, Sandycove, Dublin: ‘The queen of the fairies’, Freeman’s Journal, 16 June 1849, 4. Anon.

1858, Clonegal,Carlow (Anon.), ‘Witchcraft and horse curing’, Belfast News-Letter, 23 Mar. 1858, 4.

1860, Brookboro, Fermanagh (Anon.): ‘Extraordinary credulity in the nineteenth century’, Belfast News-Letter, 11 Feb. 1861, 4.

1862, Cork (Anon.): ‘A perfect cure – extraordinary credulity’, Belfast News-Letter, 11 August 1862, 4.

1864, Tipperary (Anon.): ‘A strange case of witchery in Tipperary’, Freeman’s Journal, 9 Sept. 1864, 4.

1869, Athenry, Galway (Anon.): ‘The fairies: stealing’, Nation, 27 Mar. 1869, 6.

1880, Sligo (Anon.): ‘Assize intelligence’, Freeman’s Journal, 9 July 1880, 3.

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 199 16/04/2013 11:28

200 SIMON YOUNG

006_Chapter 6_SH38.indd 200 16/04/2013 11:28