Part 3

Did I know any one that was taken by them? Well, I never knew one that was brought back again. Himself went one time to Biddy Early for his uncle, Donohue, that was sick, and he found her there and her fingers all covered with big gold rings, and she gave him a bottle, and she said: "Go in no house on your way home, or stop nowhere, or you'll lose it." But going home he had a thirst on him and he came to a public-house, and he wouldn't go in, but he stopped and bid the boy bring him out a drink. But a little farther on the road the horse got a fall, and the bottle was broke.

_Mrs. Cregan:_

It's I was with this woman here to Biddy Early. And when she saw me, she knew it was for my husband I came, and she looked in her bottle and she said, "It's nothing put upon him by my people that's wrong with him." And she bid me give him cold oranges and some other things--herbs. He got better after.

_Daniel Curtin:_

Did I ever hear of Biddy Early? There's not a man in this countryside over forty year old that hasn't been with her some time or other. There's a man living in that house over there was sick one time, and he went to her, and she cured him, but says she, "You'll have to lose something, and don't fret after it." So he had a grey mare and she was going to foal, and one morning when he went out he saw that the foal was born, and was lying dead by the side of the wall. So he remembered what she said to him and he didn't fret.

There was one Dillane in Kinvara, Sir William knew him well, and he went to her one time for a cure. And Father Andrew came to the house and was mad with him for going, and says he, "You take the cure out of the hands of God." And Mrs. Dillane said, "Your Reverence, none of us can do that." "Well," says Father Andrew, "then I'll see what the devil can do and I'll send my horse tomorrow, that has a sore in his leg this long time, and try will she be able to cure him."

So next day he sent a man with his horse, and when he got to Biddy Early's house she came out, and she told him every word that Father Andrew had said, and she cured the sore. So after that, he left the people alone; but before it, he'd be dressed in a frieze coat and a riding whip in his hand, driving away the people from going to her.

She had four or five husbands, and they all died of drink one after another. Maybe twenty or thirty people would be there in the day looking for cures, and every one of them would bring a bottle of whiskey. Wild cards they all were, or they wouldn't have married her. She'd help too to bring the butter back. Always on the first of May, it used to be taken, and maybe what would be taken from one man would be conveyed to another.

_Mr. McCabe:_

Biddy Early? Not far from this she lived, above at Feakle. I got cured by her myself one time. Look at this thumb--I got it hurted one time, and I went out into the field after and was ploughing all the day, I was that greedy for work. And when I went in I had to lie on the bed with the pain of it, and it swelled and the arm with it, to the size of a horse's thigh. I stopped two or three days in the bed with the pain of it, and then my wife went to see Biddy Early and told her about it, and she came home and the next day it burst, and you never seen anything like all the stuff that came away from it. A good bit after I went to her myself, where it wasn't quite healed, and she said, "You'd have lost it altogether if your wife hadn't been so quick to come." She brought me into a small room, and said holy words and sprinkled holy water and told me to believe. The priests were against her, but they were wrong. How could that be evil doing that was all charity and kindness and healing?

She was a decent looking woman, no different from any other woman of the country. The boy she was married to at the time was lying drunk in the bed. There were side-cars and common cars and gentry and country people at the door, just like Gort market, and dinner for all that came, and everyone would bring her something, but she didn't care what it was. Rich farmers would bring her the whole side of a pig. Myself, I brought a bottle of whiskey and a shilling's worth of bread, and a quarter of sugar and a quarter pound of tea. She was very rich, for there wasn't a farmer but would give her the grass of a couple of bullocks or a filly. She had the full of a field of fillies if they'd all been gathered together. She left no children, and there's no doubt at all that the reason of her being able to do cures was that she was _away_ seven years. She didn't tell me about it but she spoke of it to others.

When I was coming away I met a party of country people on a cart from Limerick, and they asked where was her house, and I told them: "Go on to the cross, and turn to the left, and follow the straight road till you come to the little humpy bridge, and soon after that you'll come to the house."

But the priests would be mad if they knew that I told any one the way.

She died about twelve year ago; I didn't go to the wake myself, or the funeral, but I heard that her death was natural.

No, Mrs. Early is no relation to Biddy Early--the nuns asked her the same thing when she was married. A cousin of hers had her hand cut with a jug that was broke, and she went up to her and when she got there, Biddy Early said: "It's a thing you never should do, to beat a child that breaks a cup or a jug." And sure enough it was a child that broke it, and she beat her for doing it. But cures she did sure enough.

_Bartley Coen:_

There was a neighbour of my own, Andrew Dennehy:

I was knocked up by him one night to go to the house, because he said _they_ were calling to him. But when they got there, there was nothing to be found. But some see these things, and some can't. It's against our creed to believe in them. And the priests won't let on that they believe in them themselves, but they are more in dread of going about at night than any of us. They were against, Biddy Early too. There was a man I knew living near the sea, and he set out to go to her one time. And on his way he went into his brother-in-law's house, and the priest came in there, and bid him not to go on. "Well, Father," says he, "cure me yourself if you won't let me go to her to be cured." And when the priest wouldn't do that (for the priests can do many cures if they like to), he went on to her. And the minute he came in, "Well," says she, "you made a great fight for me on the way." For though it's against our creed to believe it, she could hear any earthly thing that was said in every part, miles off. But she had two red eyes, and some used to say, "If she can cure so much, why can't she cure her own eyes?"

No, she wasn't _away_ herself. It is said it was from a son of her own she got the knowledge, a little chap that was astray. And one day when he was lying sick in the bed he said: "There's such and such a woman has a hen down in the pot, and if I had the soup of the hen, I think it would cure me." So the mother went to the house, and when she got there, sure enough, there was a hen in the pot on the fire. But she was ashamed to tell what she came for, and she let on to have only come for a visit, and so she sat down. But presently in the heat of the talking she told what the little chap had said. "Well," says the woman, "take the soup and welcome, and the hen too if it will do him any good." So she brought them with her, and when the boy saw the soup, "It can't cure me," says he, "for no earthly thing can do that. But since I see how kind and how willing you are, and did your best for me, I'll leave you a way of living." And so he did, and taught her all she knew. That's what's said at any rate.

_Mr. Fahy:_

Well, that's what's believed, that it's from her son Biddy Early got it. After his death always lamenting for him she was, till he came back, and gave her the gift of curing.

She had no red eyes, but was a fresh clean-looking woman; sure any one might have red eyes when they'd got a cold.

She wouldn't refuse even a person that would come from the very bottom of the black North.

* * * * *

"I was with Biddy Early myself one time, and got a cure from her for my little girl that was sick. A bottle of whiskey I brought her, and the first thing she did was to open it and to give me a glass out of it. "For," says she, "you'll maybe want it my poor man." But I had plenty of courage in those days."

The priests were against her; often Father Boyle would speak of her in his sermons. They can all do those cures themselves, but that's a thing it's not right to be talking about.

_The Little Girl of Biddy Early's House:_

The people do be full of stories of all the cures she did. Once after we came to live here a carload of people came, and asked was Biddy Early here, and my mother said she was dead. When she told the priest he said she had a right to shake a bottle and say she was her, and get something from them. It was by the bottle she did all, to shake it, and she'd see everything when she looked in it. Sometimes she'd give a bottle of some cure to people that came, but if she'd say to them, "You'll never bring it home," break it they should on the way home, with all the care they'd take of it.

She was as good, and better, to the poor as to the rich. Any poor person passing the road, she'd call in and give a cup of tea or a glass of whiskey to, and bread and what they wanted.

She had a big chest within in that room, and it full of pounds of tea and bottles of wine and of whiskey and of claret, and all things in the world. One time she called in a man that was passing and gave him a glass of whiskey, and then she said to him, "The road you were going home by, don't go by it." So he asked why not, and she took the bottle--a long shaped bottle it was--and looked into it, holding it up, and then she bid him look through it, and he'd see what would happen him. But her husband said, "Don't show it to him, it might give him a fright he wouldn't get over." So she only said, "Well, go home by another road." And so he did and got home safe, for in the bottle she had seen a party of men that wouldn't have let him pass alive. She got the rites of the Church when she died, but first she had to break the bottle.

It was from her brother that she got the power, when she had to go to the workhouse, and he came back, and gave her the way of doing the cures.

_The Blacksmith I met near Tulla:_

I know you to be a respectable lady and an honourable one because I know your brothers, meeting them as I do at the fair of Scariff. No fair it would be if they weren't there. I knew Biddy Early well, a nice fresh-looking woman she was. It's to her the people used to be flocking, to the door and even to the window, and if they'd come late in the day, they'd have no chance of getting to her, they'd have to take lodgings for the night in the town. She was a great woman. If any of the men that came into the house had a drop too much drink taken, she'd turn them out if they said an unruly word. And if any of them were fighting or disputing or going to law, she'd say, "Be at one, and ye can rule the world." The priests were against her and used to be taking the cloaks and the baskets from the country people to keep them back from going to her.

I never went to her myself--for you should know that no ill or harm ever comes to a blacksmith.

_An Old Midwife:_

Tell me now is there anything wrong about you or your son that you went to that house? I went there but once myself, when my little girl that was married was bad, after her second baby being born. I went to the house and told her about it, and she took the bottle and shook it and looked in it, and then she turned and said something to himself [her husband] that I didn't hear--and she just waved her hand to me like that, and bid me go home, for she would take nothing from me. But himself came out and told that what she was after seeing in the bottle was my little girl, and the coffin standing beside her. So I went home, and sure enough on the tenth day after, she was dead.

* * * * *

_The lodge people came rushing out to see the picture of Biddy Early's house and ask, "Did she leave the power to any one else?" and I told of the broken bottle. But Mr. McCabe said, "She only had the power for her own term, and-no one else could get it from her."_

* * * * *

_I asked old Mr. McCabe if he had lost anything when she cured him, and he said: "Not at that time, but sometimes I thought afterwards it came on my family when I lost so many of my children. A grand stout girl went from me, stout and broad, what would ail her to go?"_

_I was told by Mat King:_

Biddy Early surely did thousands of cures. Out in the stable she used to go, where her _friends_ met her, and they told her all things. There was a little priest long ago used to do cures,--Soggarthin Mina, they used to call him,--and once he came in this house he looked up and said, "There--it's full of them--there they are."

* * * * *

There was a man, one Flaherty, came to his brother-in-law's house one day to borrow a horse. And the next day the horse was sent back, but he didn't come himself. And after a few days more they went to ask for him, but he had never come back at all. So the brother-in-law went to Biddy Early's and she and some others were drinking whiskey, and they were sorry that they were near at the bottom of the bottle. And she said: "That's no matter, there's a man on his way now, there'll soon be more." And sure enough there was, for he brought a bottle with him. So when he came in, he told her about Flaherty having disappeared. And she described to him a corner of a garden at the back of a house and she said, "Go look and you'll find him there," and so they did, dead and buried.

Another time a man's cattle was dying, and he went to her and she said, "Is there such a place as Benburb, having a forth up on the hill beyond there? for it's there they're gone." And sure enough, it was towards that forth they were straying before they died.

_An Old Man on the Beach:_

The priests were greatly against Biddy Early. And there's no doubt it was from the faeries she got the knowledge. But who wouldn't go to hell for a cure if one of his own was sick? And the priests don't like to be doing cures themselves. Father Flynn said to me (rather incoherent in the high wind), if I do them, I let the devil into me. But there was Father Carey used to do them, but he went wrong, with the people bringing too much whiskey to pay him--and Father Mahony has him stopped now.

_Maher of Slieve Echtge:_

I knew a man went to Biddy Early, and while she was in the other room he made the tongs red hot and laid them down, and when she came back she took them up and burned herself. And he said, if she had known anything she'd have known not to touch it, that it was red hot. So he walked off and asked for no cure.

_The Spinning-Woman:_

Biddy Early was a witch, wherever she got it. There was a priest at Feakle spoke against her one time, and soon after he was passing near her house and she put something on the horse so that he made a bolt into the river and stopped there in the middle, and wouldn't go back or forward. Some people from the neighbourhood went to her, and she told them all about the whole place, and that one time there was a great battle about the castle, and that there is a passage going from here to the forth beyond on Dromore Hill, and to another place that's near Maher's house. And she said that there is a cure for all sicknesses hidden between the two wheels of Ballylee mill. And how did she know that there was a mill here at all? Witchcraft wherever she got it; away she may have been in a trance. She had a son, and one time he went to the hurling beyond at some place in Tipperary, and none could stand against him; he was like a deer.

* * * * *

I went to Biddy Early one time myself, about my little boy that's now in America that was lying sick in the house. But on the way to her I met a sergeant of police and he asked where was I going, and when I told him, he said, to joke with me, "Biddy Early's dead." "May the devil die with her," says I. Well, when I got to the house, what do you think, if she didn't know that, and what I said. And she was vexed and at the first, she would do nothing for me. I had a pound for her here in my bosom. But when I held it out she wouldn't take it, but she turned the rings on her fingers, for she had a ring for every one, and she said, "A shilling for this one, sixpence for another one." But all she told me was that the boy was nervous, and so he was, she was right in that, and that he'd get well, and so he did.

There was a man beyond in Cloon, was walking near the gate the same day and his little boy with him, and he turned his foot and hurt it, and she knew that. She told me she slept in Ballylee mill last night, and that there was a cure for all things in the world between the two wheels there. Surely she was _away_ herself, and as to her son, she brought him back with her, and for eight or nine year he lay in the bed in the house. And he'd never stir so long as she was in it, but no sooner was she gone away anywhere than he'd be out down the village among the people, and then back again before she'd get to the house.

She had three husbands, I saw one of them when I was there, but I knew by the look of him he wouldn't live long. One man I know went to her and she sent him on to a woman at Kilrush--one of her own sort, and they helped one another. She said to some woman I knew: "If you have a bowl broke or a plate throw it out of the door, and don't make any attempt to mend it, it vexes _them_."

_Mrs. McDonagh:_

Our religion doesn't allow us to go to fortune tellers. They don't get the knowledge from God, and so it must be from demons.

The priests took the bottle from Biddy Early before she died, and they found black things in it.

* * * * *

I never went to Biddy Early myself. I think there was a good deal of devilment in the things she did. The priests can do cures as well as she did, but they don't like to do them, unless they're curates that like to get the money.

* * * * *

There was a man in Cloughareeva and his wife was that bad she would go out in her shift at night into the field. And he went to Biddy Early and she said, "Within three days a disgraced priest will come to you and will cure her."

And after three days the disgraced priest that had been put out for drink came bowling into the house, and they reached down from the shelf a bottle of whiskey. Father Boyle was mad when he heard of it, but he cured her all the same.

* * * * *

There was a man on this estate, and he sixty years, and he took to the bed, and his wife went to Biddy Early and she said, "It can't be by _them_ he's taken, what use would it be to them, he being so old." And Biddy Early is the one that should surely know. I went to her myself one time, to get a cure for myself when I fell coming down that hill up there, and got a hurt on my knee. And she gave me one and she told me all about the whole place, and that there was a bowl broken in the house, and so there was. The priests can do cures by the same power that she had, but those that have much stock don't like to be doing them; for they're sure to lose all.

* * * * *

I knew one went to Biddy Early about his wife, and as soon as she saw him, she said, "On the fourth day a discarded priest will call in and cure your wife"; and so he did--one Father James.

_Mrs. Nelly:_

The old man here that lost his hair went to Biddy Early but he didn't want to go, and we forced him and persuaded him. And when he got to the house she said, "It wasn't of your own free will you came here," and she wouldn't do anything for him.

She didn't like either for you to go too late. Dolan's sister was sick a long time, and when the brother went at the last to Biddy Early she gave him a bottle with a cure. But on the way home the bottle was broke, and the car, and the horse got a fright and ran away. She said to him then, "Why did you go to cut down the bush of white thorn you see out of the window?" And then she told him an old woman in the village had overlooked him--Murphy's sister--and she gave him a bottle to sprinkle about her house. I suppose she didn't like that bush being interfered with, she had too much charms.

And when Doctor Folan was sent for to see her he was led astray, and it is beyond Ballylee he found himself. And surely she was _taken_ if ever any one was.

_An Old Woman:_

I went up to Biddy Early's one time with another woman. A fine stout woman she was, sitting straight up on her chair. She looked at me and she told me that my son was worse than what I was, and for myself she bid me to take what I was taking before, and that's dandelions. Five leaves she bid me pick and lay them out on the table with three pinches of salt on the three middle ones. As to my son, she gave me a bottle for him but he wouldn't take it and he got better without.

The priests were against her, but there was one of them passed near her house one day, and his horse fell forward. And he sent his boy to her and she said, "Tell him to spit on the horse and to say, 'God bless it,'" and he did and it rose again. He had looked at it proud-like without saying "God bless it" in his heart.

_Daniel Shea:_

It was all you could do to get to Biddy Early with your skin whole, the priests were so set against her. I went to her one time myself, and it was hard when you got near to know the way, for all the people were afraid to tell it.

It was about a little chap of my own I went, that some strange thing had been put upon. When I got to her house there were about fifty to be attended to before me, and when my turn came she looked in the bottle, a sort of a common greenish one that seemed to have nothing in it. And she told me where I came from, and the shape of the house and the appearance of it, and of the lake you see there, and everything round about. And she told me of a lime-kiln that was near, and then she said, "The harm that came to him came from the forth beyond that." And I never knew of there being a forth there, but after I came home I went to look, and there sure enough it was.

And she told me how it had come on him, and bid me remember a day that a certain gentleman stopped and spoke to me when I was out working in the hayfield, and the child with me playing about. And I remembered it well, it was old James Hill of Creen, that was riding past, and stopped and talked and was praising the child. And it was close by that forth beyond that James Hill was born.

It was soon after that day that the mother and I went to Loughrea, and when we came back, the child had slipped on the threshold of the house and got a fall, and he was screeching and calling out that his knee was hurt, and from that time he did no good, and pined away and had the pain in the knee always.