Biddy Early
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Biddy Early (1798-1874) was an Irish healer who helped peasants. She acted against the wishes of Catholic priests and landlords and was accused of witchcraft.
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[edit] Childhood
Biddy Early was born in 1798 to a poor farmer, John Thomas ‘Tom’ Connors and his wife Ellen Early. She was baptized Bridget Ellen Connors. Her mother often went by her maiden name of Early, and once Biddy grew older, this is something she also adopted. Biddy played in clothes her mother made for her from woven flax grown nearby and usually went barefooted.
As a child, Bidday was often seen talking to ‘the fairies’ and spent most of her time alone. She was good humored and showed a keen intellect, but like most people of her time, she did not learn to read or write. With her family and friends, she spoke Irish, but she also had some knowledge of English. It is said that she also spoke Shelta, the language of ancient mystics and gypsies in Ireland, but it is unknown where or how she learned it.
During their time together, Biddy’s mother taught her recipes for certain cures. These recipes were regarded as a family secret, as was common for the time. Biddy’s mother was known for her exceptional cures, while nearly everyone at the time was experimenting with herbs.
When Biddy was just 16 years old, her under-nourished mother died, leaving her with the household duties. Just six months after her mother died, her father got "the fever" (typhus) and also passed away.
Unable to pay rent, Biddy had no choice but to leave her childhood home. Little is known about this time in her life, and for two years she probably wondered the county roads, working where she could along the way, and experimenting with natural herbs.
[edit] Adult life
Once she was 18, she began working for a landlord in Carheen near Limerick, where she was often taunted for her aloof behavior. She left after a short time and went to live in the ‘Poor House’, a place set up for peasants like her who had lost everyone and everything. Treatment while living in the poor house was also very bad. During this period, she would often walk into Gurteenreagh on market days. It was here that she met her first husband, Pat Malley of Feakle. Although he was twice her age, Biddy knew the security he could offer her. She had no dowry to offer. Pat already had a son, John, and Biddy gave birth to a son they named Paddy. This would be Biddy’s only child. The family lived in a three room cottage in Feakle, and here Biddy began to earn a reputation for her healing powers.
It is said that Biddy never accepted money for her cures, but the decision of giving rested with the receiver. Whiskey and poteen (moonshine) were especially common those days, so her house was frequently stocked with an abundance of alcohol. For this reason, her home was known as a place many of the men went to drink and play cards. However, because alcohol was so available to him, her husband died five years into the marriage from abuse of the low grade whiskey and illegally distilled poteen that her callers had brought as gifts. Thus Biddy became a widow for the first time at age 25.
She remarried her step-son, John Malley, shortly after Pat’s death. John was closer to her age than Pat had been, and it was no secret that the two got along well. During this marriage, Biddy was enjoying her increasing fame, but her family life was frequently disrupted by so many people coming at various times of the day and night. Her only son left home some years after her marriage to John and was not heard from again. John died in 1840 due to a liver ailment developed from over consumption of alcohol.
Biddy married a third time, to a man younger than her named Tom Flannery. Tom was a laborer and native of Finley, Quinn, Co. Clare. They moved into a two room cottage on Dromore Hill in Kilbarron, perched on top of a lake, which came to be known then, as it is now, as Biddy Early’s lake. It was here that she created her most powerful cures and hundreds, if not thousands, of people came to know her. It is said the road to her house was always full of those traveling to see her.
Sometime in her life, Biddy acquired a bottle, which became as famous as she did. She would frequently look into the bottle, which contained some sort of dark liquid, when conceiving possible cures for her visitors. The bottle went with her everywhere, and was with her when she died.
Oftentimes, if someone needed help, the priests would claim they had the power but would refuse to give aid. Doctors were beyond the resource of the peasantry, and so naturally people turned to Biddy. She was always able to tell if the harm done was reparable. Many say that she was able to tell if someone had visited a doctor first, and to her this displayed a lack of faith in her abilities, so she would not be able to treat them.
But it wasn’t only people that Biddy served. She also brought relief to animals, and treated them with great care. In her time, the death of an animal could spell inability to complete the chores and farming, which led to eviction and, in turn, frequently, loss of life. 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 spring well, a source of clean water, and helped to solve problems that women ran into while churning butter. These items of water and butter were also vital to a peasant’s everyday life.
Though the Catholic church, which had as much influence in the life of the peasants as the landlord did, looked askance at Biddy’s activities, she still encouraged people to follow the priest. The priests made it no secret that they didn’t want people to visit Biddy and called her names at the altar, yet went to visit her in secret. In one story, the priest disguises himself and goes to visit her, in hopes that he can learn some of her secret cures. She, however, knows the minute she sees him coming up the path who he is and what he is there for, and dismisses him immediately.
The peasantry knew in their hearts that Biddy was good, and many realized perhaps the real reason the priests didn’t like her, as recounted by P. Minogue: “[the priests] thought if Biddy wasn’t [practicing medicine] the people’d be going with five shillings an’ ten shillings to theirselves” (Lenihan 91). This is a prevalent notion, as it was repeated again and again in interviews for the collected stories. Another contributing factor must have been the lore and mysticism that surrounded her. While Biddy was from a class of small tenant farmers, the priests were usually from comfortable farmers and placed emphasis on education, so they were “only too anxious to leave behind them the half-lit world of peasant lore and herbal medicine” (Lenihan 88).
In the years around 1847, Ireland lost half of its population to famine, disease, and emigration. Biddy was 50 at this time, yet showed no gray hair. In 1865 she was accused of witchcraft under the 1586 Statute and brought before a court in Ennis. The few who had earlier agreed to testify against her, backed out, and she was released due to lack of sufficient evidence. Most of the peasant population was on her side: “In many ways, what Biddy is purported to have done is what an oppressed peasantry would themselves wish to have done if they had dared” (Lenihan 8), for she was independent and refused to be “browbeaten by [the priests’ and landord’s] authoritarian ways” (Lenihan 87).
Biddy’s cures are the declared reason she became well-known, but stories of her strong personality make their way into all of the stories of her healing. And her cures did not always consist of applying or feeding a recipe to the sick. She was insightful and understood the world in a way that those around her could not.
In 1868, Tom died, leaving her widowed for the third time. In 1869, she married for the fourth and final time. Thomas Meaney married her in exchange for a cure. She was in her 70s and he was in his 30s, but she still outlived him. They lived together in her cottage in Kilbarron, where he also died, within a year of marriage, due to over consumption of alcohol. Then in April of 1874, Biddy died as she lived: below the poverty line.
A priest was present at her death, and she had to depend on her friend and neighbor, Pat Loughnane, for a decent burial. It is rumored that her funeral was poorly attended, at which Fr Connellan and Fr Dore of Feakle said, “We thought we had a demon amongst us in poor Biddy Early, but we had a saint, and we did not know it”. Most people at this time were still afraid that their presence at her funeral would be misunderstood. Even for years after her death, people in Co. Clare rarely spoke of her.
The last generation of people who had personal contact with Biddy died out in the 1950’s. The stories today come from those passed down through the strong oral tradition on the west coast of Ireland. Lady Gregory put together a great resource of collected stories just 20 years after Biddy’s Death, and Meda Ryan and Edmund Lenihan talked with many people whose parents or grandparents had personal contact with Biddy. This is how her story is preserved.
Biddy accomplished a lifetime of greatness in the face of oppression and hardship, during a time when her religion and heritage were the subject of harsh racism by the rulers of Ireland. To stand out amongst the long history of Ireland’s many healers requires a truly remarkable person.
[edit] References
- Gregory, Lady Augusta. Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1920.
- Lenihan, Edmund. In Search Of Biddy Early. The Mercier Press. Cork. 1987.
- Ryan, Meda. Biddy Early: The Wise Woman of Clare. Mercier Press, Dublin; 1978.
- Yeats, William Butler. Witches and Wizards and Irish Folk-Lore. Printed in Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, collected and arranged by Lady Gregory (1920; rpt. New York: Oxford Univ. Press,1970).
