An artists impression of Biddy Early with the bottle she was said to always carry with her. One of Irelands most famous witches although she is very unlikely to have called herself a witch. Biddy was a healer and much respected, she worked with herbs and natural remedies. She was also clairvoyant. Biddy was charged with witchcraft but the trial collapsed when no witnesses would testify. She was taught by her mother who died when she was sixteen. Biddys world was one where most people could neither read or write, she like so many was never taught.
She was not known to belong to a coven, through her long life she continued as all witches must to teach herself. She was charged with witchcraft but the trial collapsed when no witnesses would come forward. Biddy married three times and had one child a son. Biddy appears to have paid no attention to the church or any other authority. In almost every way she was exactly the kind of witch we all strive to become.
Apart that is from the drinking, two husbands dead apparently from drinking too much alcohol, which is not as surprising as it sounds to us now, Biddy lived at a time when barter not cash was the main means of exchange among poor people. Hers was a world of small gifts for service and many of those gifts were whisky and poteen.....
This is not intended to be a strict analytical account that would bore me. This is a small tribute to an amazing woman respected among her community and clearly very much of that community.
Respect
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