The cooper's wife is missing : the trials of Bridget Cleary
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 445-450) and index.

"On March 15, 1895, twenty-eight year old Bridget Cleary, a cooper's wife, disappeared from her cottage in rural County Tipperary. Swirling amid rumors was the barely whispered, but widely held, belief that Bridget had gone with no mortal man; rather, she had gone off with the fairies." "The mystery deepened when seven days later her body was discovered, bent, broken and badly burned in a shallow grave. Within a few days, the unimaginable truth came to light: for almost a week before her death Bridget had been confined, ritually starved, threatened, physically and verbally abused, exorcised, and, finally, burned to death by her husband, Michael Cleary, her father, and extended family who confused bronchitis with a "fairy dart."" "In The Cooper's Wife Is Missing, Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates make sense of this ancient, rarely publicized, ritual exorcism and explain how the incident went on to become a national and international incident."--BOOK JACKET.