For all practical purposes, and in spite of everything that can be brought against her, Ireland may be justly described as a moral country, even as Scotland is essentially an immoral country and England a middling one. It is true that we live in a time when morality has ceased to matter and virtue is become a reproach. The world has divided itself into two camps—the one scientific, the other artistic. Neither of them professes the smallest concern with morals. We have invented new and most blessedly euphonious names for the old wickednesses. Robbery is called competition; lying, smartness; effrontery, pluck; cowardice, courtesy; avarice, thrift; cunning, wisdom, and so forth. And when it pleases us we can e’en find hard names for the Christian graces. The faith of Ireland, for example, has been discovered to be fanaticism, bigotry, paganism, materialism, idolatry, and I know not what besides; her charity is credited to her for pusillanimity; her patience and long-suffering for indolence and apathy. What wonder, therefore, that the very chastity upon which her national morals are based should at length have been assailed. Hearken to the inspired ex-literary editor of the Daily Mail:

“The crowning achievement of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, the thing which is unparalleled elsewhere in the world, is the complete and awful (sic) chastity of the people. There is many a country district where that incident which in England and Scotland is regarded merely as a slight misfortune is unknown and unimagined by the people. I have seen a man, the father of a grown-up family, blanch and hold up his hands at the very name of it, as though even to breath it were a blasphemy. And this, in itself a good thing, has reached such a point that it has become a dreadful evil. It is no longer a virtue, it is a blight.”

And the dear young gentleman goes on to assert that it is the chastity of the Irish people which fills Irish lunatic asylums, and exclaims dithyrambically: “There may be no bastards in Ireland, but a hundred bastards would, in Ireland’s peculiar circumstances, be a more gracious and healthy sign than one lunatic.” Here surely is wisdom of the highest and most delightful type. We have already seen that the increase of lunacy in Ireland has been pronounced, by the committee which sat on the question in Dublin, to be mainly due to excessive drinking and the assimilation of adulterated spirits. The committee may not have been right; for my own part I believe it was decidedly wrong. But it delivered itself of no pronouncement which warrants either the scientific or the ribald to associate Irish lunacy with chastity, rather than with drink or other predispositions. If chastity fills the lunatic asylums how come the Irish priesthood to be at large, or for that matter the women of the English middle classes, and honest women all the world over? And if bastardy be a preventative of lunacy, how comes it that in Scotland you have as many lunatics as you have in Ireland, and about ten times as many bastards? Can it be that of two evils Caledonia, with her customary shrewdness, has chosen both? The suggestion is as ridiculous as it is abominable, and as scandalous as it is malicious. Even in the sense which our Daily Mail young person may be presumed to have in mind, it is the direct opposite of chastity that helps to people lunatic asylums, and never chastity itself, “blight” or no blight. I mention this wholly unprecedented incursion into sophistry only by way of showing what the astute censors of Ireland really can do when they set themselves to the work; and although I have no proof on the subject I should like to wager that the author of it is an Orangeman and of Scotch extraction. It is no compliment to Ireland to say that, in theory at any rate, her morals are entirely sound. In other words, Ireland believes in virtue and goodness, even though she may not always succeed in living up to her tenet, and though, for reasons which need not be discussed, she may be possessed of primal dispositions to the sorriest evil.

And it is the solemn and deplorable fact that there does exist in the Irish blood a tendency toward wickedness of the most ghastly and inhuman character. A case in point is afforded by the frightful doing to death of Mrs. Bridget Cleary at Ballyvadlea in 1895. The following account of this tragedy is abridged from Mr. M’Carthy’s Five Years in Ireland:

“Mrs. Cleary fell ill on Wednesday, the 13th of March, and sent for a doctor and a priest. The priest saw her in the afternoon. She was in bed, and ‘she did not converse with him except as a priest, and her conversation was quite coherent and intelligible.’ The doctor also saw her, thought her illness slight, prescribed for her and left.… On the morning of Thursday the 14th Father Ryan ‘was called to see Mrs. Cleary again, but he told the messenger that having administered the last rites of the Church on the previous day there was no need to see her again so soon.’… William Simpson, a near neighbor of the Clearys, living only 200 yards off, accompanied by his wife, left their own house between nine and ten o’clock on Thursday evening to visit Mrs. Cleary, having heard she was ill. When they arrived close to Cleary’s house they met Mrs. Johanna Burke, accompanied by her little daughter, Katie Burke, and inquired from her how Mrs. Cleary was. Mrs. Burke, herself a first cousin of Mrs. Cleary’s, said, ‘They are giving her herbs, got from Ganey, over the mountain, and nobody will be let in for some time.’ These four people then remained outside the house for some time, waiting to be let in. Simpson heard cries inside, and a voice shouting, ‘Take it, you b?, you old faggot, or we will burn you!’ The shutters of the windows were closed and the door locked. After some time the door was opened and from within shouts were heard: ‘Away she go! Away she go!’ As Simpson afterward learned, the door had been opened to permit the fairies to leave the house, and the adjuration was addressed to those ‘supernatural’ beings.

“In the confusion Simpson, his wife, Mrs. Burke, and her little daughter, worked their way into the house.… Simpson saw four men—John Dunne, described as an old man, Patrick Kennedy, James Kennedy, and William Kennedy, all young men, ‘big black-haired Tipperary peasants,’ brothers of Mrs. Burke and first cousins of Mrs. Cleary, ‘holding Bridget Cleary down on the bed. She was on her back, and had a night-dress on her. Her husband, Michael Cleary, was standing by the bedside.’

“Cleary called for a liquid, and said, ‘Throw it on her.’ Mary Kennedy, an old woman, mother of Mrs. Burke, and of all the other Kennedys present, brought the liquid. Michael Kennedy held the saucepan. The liquid was dashed over Bridget Cleary several times. Her father, Patrick Boland, was present. William Ahearne, described as a delicate youth of sixteen, was holding a candle. Bridget Cleary was struggling, vainly, alas! on the bed, crying out, ‘Leave me alone.’ Simpson then saw her husband give her some liquid with a spoon; she was held down by force by the men for ten minutes afterward, and one of the men kept his hand on her mouth. The men at each side of the bed kept her body swinging about the whole time, and shouting, ‘Away with you! Come back, Bridget Boland, in the name of God!’ She screamed horribly. They cried out, ‘Come home, Bridget Boland.’ From these proceedings Simpson gathered that ‘they thought Bridget Cleary was a witch,’ or had a witch in her, whom they ‘endeavored to hunt out of the house by torturing her body.’

“Some time afterward she was lifted out of the bed by the men, or rather demons, and carried to the kitchen fire by John Dunne, Patrick, William, and James Kennedy. Simpson saw red marks on her forehead, and some one present said they had to ‘use the red poker on her to make her take the medicine.’ The four men named held poor Bridget Cleary, in her night-dress, over the fire; and Simpson ‘could see her body resting on the bars of the grate where the fire was burning.’ While this was being done, we learn that the Rosary was said. Her husband put her some questions at the fire. He said if she did not answer her name three times they would burn her. She, poor thing, repeated her name three times after her father and her husband!

“‘Are you Bridget Boland, wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of God?’

“‘I am Bridget Boland, daughter of Patrick Boland, in the name of God.’

“Simpson said they showed feverish anxiety to get her answers before twelve o’clock.

“They were all speaking and saying, Do you think it is her that is there? And the answer would be ‘Yes,’ and they were all delighted.

“After she had answered the questions they put her back into bed, and ‘the women put a clean chemise on her,’ which Johanna Burke ‘aired for her.’ She was then asked to identify each person in the room, and did so successfully. The Kennedys left the house at one o’clock ‘to attend the wake of Cleary’s father,’ who was lying dead that night at Killenaule! Dunne and Ahearne left at two o’clock. It was six o’clock on the morning of the 15th, ‘about daybreak,’ when the Simpsons and Johanna Burke left the house after those hellish orgies. There had been thirteen people present in Cleary’s house on that night, yet no one outside the circle of the perpetrators themselves seems to have known, or cared, if they knew, of the devilish goings-on in that laborer’s cottage.

“At one time during that horrible night the poor victim said, ‘The police are at the window. Let ye mind me now!’ But there were no police there.

“We now come to the third day, Friday, 15th of March. Six o’clock on that morning found Michael Cleary, the chief actor, Patrick Boland and Mary Kennedy in the house with the poor victim, when the two Simpsons and the two Burkes were leaving. Simpson says, ‘Cleary then went for the priest, as he wanted to have Mass said in the house to banish the evil spirits.’ This brings us back again to the Rev. Father Ryan, who says, ‘At seven o’clock on Friday morning I was next summoned. Michael Cleary asked me to come to his house and celebrate Mass: his wife had had a very bad night.’… Father Ryan arrived at the cottage at a quarter past eight, and said Mass in that awful front room where poor Bridget Cleary was lying in bed.…

“‘She seemed more nervous and excited than on Wednesday,’ he says, and adds, ‘her husband and father were present before Mass began, but I could not say who was there during its celebration.’ He had no conversation with Michael Cleary ‘as to any incident which had occurred,’ because he suspected nothing. ‘When leaving,’ he said, ‘I asked Cleary was he giving his wife the medicine the doctor ordered? Cleary answered that he had no faith in it. I told him that it should be administered. Cleary replied that people may have some remedy of their own that could do more good than doctor’s medicine.’ Yet, Father Ryan left the house ‘suspecting nothing.’ ‘Had he any suspicion of foul play or witchcraft,’ he says, ‘he should have at once absolutely refused to say Mass in the house, and have given information to the police.’…

“After Father Ryan had said his Mass and left, Mrs. Cleary remained in bed. Simpson saw her there at midday and never saw her afterward. His excuse for his presence and non-interference on Thursday night is that ‘the door was locked, and he could not get out.’ We find the names of still more people mentioned as having visited her this day. She seems, judging from the number of visitors, to have been extremely popular. Johanna Burke seems to have been in the house the greater part of this day. At one time she tells how Cleary came up to the bedside and handed his wife a canister, and said there was £20 in it. She, poor creature, took it, tied it up, ‘and told her husband to take care of it, that he would not know the difference till he was without it.’ She was ‘in her right mind, only frightened at everything.’

“At length the night fell upon the scene; and, at eight o’clock, Cleary, who seems to have ordered all the other actors about as if they were hypnotized, sent Johanna Burke and her little daughter Katie for ‘Thomas Smith and David Hogan.’ Smith says, ‘We all went to Cleary’s, and found Michael Cleary, Mary Kennedy, Johanna Meara, Pat Leahy, and Pat Boland in the bedroom.’ The husband had a bottle in his hand, and said to the poor bewildered wife, ‘Will you take this now, as Tom Smith and David Hogan are here? In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!’ Tom Smith, a man who said ‘he had known her always since she was born,’ then inquired what was in the bottle, and Cleary told him it was holy water. Poor Bridget Cleary said ‘Yes,’ and she took it. She had to say, before taking it, ‘In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ which she did. Smith and Hogan then left the bedside and ‘went and sat at the fire.’ Cleary told them that his wife, ‘as she had company, was going to get up.’ She actually left her bed, put on ‘a frock and shawl,’ and came to the kitchen fire. The talk turned upon bishogues, or witchcraft and charms. Smith remained there till twelve o’clock, and then left the house, leaving Michael Cleary (husband), Patrick Boland (father), Mary Kennedy (aunt), Patrick, James, and William Kennedy (cousins), Johanna Burke, and her little daughter Katie (also cousins), behind him in the house. Thomas Smith never saw Bridget Cleary after that. According to Johanna Burke, they continued ‘talking about fairies,’ and poor Bridget Cleary, sitting there by the fire in her frock and shawl, wan and terrified, had said to her husband, ‘Your mother used to go with the fairies; that is why you think I am going with them.’

“‘Did my mother tell you that?’ exclaimed Cleary.

“‘She did. That she gave two nights with them,’ replied she.…

“Johanna Burke then says that she made tea and ‘offered Bridget Cleary a cup.’ But Cleary jumped up, and getting ‘three bits of bread and jam,’ said she would ‘have to eat them before she could take a sup.’ He asked her as he gave her each bit, ‘Are you Bridget Cleary, wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?’ The poor, desolate young woman answered twice and swallowed two pieces. We all know how difficult it is, when wasted by suffering and excited by fear, to swallow a bit of dry bread without a drop of liquid to soften it. It, in fact, was the task set to those in the olden days who had to undergo the ‘ordeal by bread.’ How many of them, we are told, failed to accomplish it! Poor Bridget Cleary failed now at the third bit presented to her by the demon who confronted her. She could not answer the third time.

“He ‘forced her to eat the third bit.’ He threatened her, ‘If you won’t take it, down you go!’ He flung her to the ground, put his knee on her chest, and one hand on her throat, forcing the bit of bread and jam down her throat.

“‘Swallow it, swallow it. Is it down? Is it down?’ he cried.

“The woman Burke says she said to him, ‘Mike, let her alone; don’t you see it is Bridget that is in it?’ and explains, ‘He suspected it was a fairy and not his wife.’

“Let Burke now tell how the hellish murder was accomplished: ‘Michael Cleary stripped his wife’s clothes off, except her chemise, and got a lighted stick out of the fire, and held it near her mouth. My mother (Mary Kennedy), brothers (Patrick, James, and William Kennedy), and myself wanted to leave, but Cleary said he had the key of the door, and the door would not be opened till he got his wife back.’

“They were crying in the room and wanting to get out. This crowd in the room crying, while Cleary was killing their first cousin in the kitchen!

“‘I saw Cleary throw lamp-oil on her. When she was burning, she turned to me’ (imagine that face of woe!) ‘and called out, “Oh, Han, Han!” I endeavored to get out for the peelers. My brother William went up into the other room and fell in a weakness, and my mother threw Easter water over him. Bridget Cleary was all this time burning on the hearth, and the house was full of smoke and smell. I had to go up to the room, I could not stand it. Cleary then came up into the room where we were and took away a large sack bag. He said, “Hold your tongue, Hannah, it is not Bridget I am burning. You will soon see her go up into the chimney.” My brothers, James and William, said, “Burn her if you like, but give us the key and let us get out.” While she was burning, Cleary screamed out, “She is burned now. God knows I did not mean to do it.” When I looked down into the other room again, I saw the remains of Bridget Cleary lying on the floor on a sheet. She was lying on her face and her legs turned upward, as if they had contracted in burning. She was dead and burned.’”

There is nothing which quite parallels the foregoing in the whole history of crime. At least a dozen persons, male and female, had knowledge of what was going on in that dreadful household over three days. Not one of them had bowels of compassion, not one of them lifted a little finger in the victim’s behalf. The majority of them were her blood relations, all of them were Catholics, not one of them but could have informed the priest, the doctor or the police of what was taking place had he or she been so minded. But the devilish poison raging in the blood of the woman’s husband raged also in their veins. They stood fascinated in the presence of superstitions which they had drawn in with their mother’s milk. They believed in their hearts that Cleary and themselves were righteously, if terribly, occupied. They said the Rosary. And they did all things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!