Research Talk - September 28th, 2022

On September 28th the first research talk that members of our course were invited to took place. The talk was held online, through Microsoft Teams and was conducted by Holly May Walker-Dunseith who is a PhD researcher in Irish Literature at UCC.

Holly May Walker-Dunseith’s research areas are medicine and medical humanities. The title of her PhD project is “Revival Traditional Medicine in the Work of W.B Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory and J.M Synge and it is a thesis on traditional medicine in Revival-era Irish Literature.

The talk centred around her most recent publication, an academic article drawn from her doctoral research, entitled “The healer in the tower: Biddy Early and discourses of healing in the work of W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory which was published in the Irish Studies Review”

Biddy Early - Image from History Ireland

Walker-Dunseith began by discussing Biddy Early . Biddy Early, 1798-1874, was a herbalist and folk healer who practised in the area around Coole Park and Ballylee in County Galway. Presently, she is best remembered for a mythical curse on the Clare Hurling team. The talk went on to explore her practices, her life and her legacy. Early held a significant place in the thoughts of Yeats and Gregory as seen through the writings of both W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory. These key revivalists and their collaborative work, testify to the continuing and ambivalent presence of Early’s memory in the decades after her death. Lady Gregory and Yeats spread the fable of Early as part of their revivalist project and the latter rebuilt the tower, he christened Thoor Ballylee. Early’s fame is usually attributed to Yeats’ work, although Lady Gregory supplied him with much of the information, he accumulated about the healer from Co. Clare.

One of the aspects I found most interesting and arguably the most notably feature of Biddy Early’s legacy in popular culture is her alleged curse. Most GAA fans in Ireland and internationally are familiar with the curse that she cast over the team. It was believed to hang over the Clare hurling team until 1995, when the “curse of Biddy Early” was said to have at last been lifted following the team's victory in the All-Ireland hurling final that September. Walker-Dunseith describes a perspective that I hadn’t considered stating;

“it is easy to see how the story about Early is rooted in misogyny: an archetypal tale of a female figure who (rather than the team’s male manager and players) can be blamed for misfortune. This story might also be read as one rooted in unease at the leaving behind of the traditional, an unease that was figured in the image of the abandonment of the local witch at the roadside. It is possible, therefore, that the popular tale and Yeats’s and Gregory’s revivalist interests are linked”.

I think that Irish people and hurling fans always saw the curse as an interesting tale and perhaps never looked deeper into the reasoning behind it and how the story was born.

Walker-Dunseith further discussed the role of Thoor Ballylee as a panacea and an area of great importance for both Yeats and Gregory. This can be seen in Yeats revisions and additions to a poem written by his friend AE (born George William Russell), “The Well of All-Healing,” which was published in the periodical A Celtic Christmas in 1897. Yeats remedies the line “[t]here’s a cure for all things in the well at Ballylee”, replacing “all things” with “every evil”. She also details the medical properties that could be found in the local landscape. Remedies could be found in nature such as in the moss that Biddy Early was known to pick tufts of it. It was known for its curative properties. In his writing, Yeats tried to capture the image of the Celtic Twilight, of a woman and culture with its own distinctive beliefs, culture and medical practices as shown by Biddy Early.

Walker-Dunseith further discussed the role of Thoor Ballylee as a panacea and an area of great importance for both Yeats and Gregory. This can be seen in Yeats revisions and additions to a poem written by his friend AE (born George William Russell), “The Well of All-Healing,” which was published in the periodical A Celtic Christmas in 1897. Yeats remedies the line “[t]here’s a cure for all things in the well at Ballylee”, replacing “all things” with “every evil”. Cures could be found in the landscape such as in the moss that Biddy Early was known to pick tufts of it as it was known for its curative properties. In his writing, Yeats tried to capture the image of the Celtic Twilight, of a woman and culture with its own distinctive beliefs, culture and medical practices. However, Yeats and Gregory have a shared negative view of Biddy Early. Gregory collected accounts where people described her as a “mercenary character intent on making financial profit from patients”. Though not everyone agrees with this viewpoint and Early has many defenders. It seems there was a mixed interpretation of Biddy Early who was both venerated and feared it appears. Walker-Dunseith concludes with reiterating the importance of Thoor Ballylee and Biddy Early to Yeats and his work stating that; “these mill boards have associations that bring Yeats back to his earliest days in Ballylee, to his early collaborations with Augusta Gregory and, further, to the magical folk culture of the area”.

Thoor Ballylee - Image from Google Images

Here is a link to the article "The healer in the tower: Biddy Early and discourses of healing in the work of W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory which was published in the Irish Studies Review" by Holly May Walker-Dunseith

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