In March 1895, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary fell ill, then disappeared from her cottage in rural Tipperary. Even before she vanished, rumors circulated that she was a changeling, left behind by fairies or evil spirits. The ‘real’ Bridget would return on a white horse. Then her badly burned body was discovered in a shallow grave, and her husband, father, aunt, and four cousins were arrested and charged with her murder.’ ‘This is an exquisite if disturbing book that takes no sides when it comes to judging whether a belief in the supernatural is foolish and dangerous superstition or a reality of life at the end of the nineteenth century, and which illustrates how the politicization of a crime is hardly a new product of the twentieth.
