The Witches of Dysart Parish 

           If you take the Timahoe road out of Portlaoise, after about three miles you come to a turn where the road rises, and just there if you glance upwards and to the left you may see the majestic tower of the ruin of Old Dysart Church. And if you decide to explore that ruin, and stand beneath the tower, and look out at the stunning vista before you, take a deep breath of the pure air scented by the wild flowers in the meadow, and you will wonder why people could ever have abandoned this site.

           Miss Sophia is one of the few people who could tell you that story. Sophia was a petite, anxious, elderly little Witch who lives a cottage nearby and every time she looks up at that ruin her heart breaks a little, because all Witches carry their foremothers’ memories in their hearts so she knows about Dysart’s  glory days when it was the hub of the local community’s commerce and social life. And she knows what happened there.

          So on that bright September morning, as she sipped her morning coffee and caught sight of that ruin again she felt she had to do something about that sad derelict looking site, but couldn’t think what, so she decided to pay her old friend, Miss Beatrice, the Chair of the local Coven a visit, as she rarely acted without the blessing of her friend. So, after breakfast, she reversed her  broom out the door of her cottage and flew over the hill to Ratheniska.

          Sophia parked her broom against the holly bush in Beatrice’s garden, brushed up against the lavender growing near the back door and with a light tap on the back door she entered with a cheery “it’s only me.” She smiled as she drank in the smell of baking. Tall, stately Beatrice, was a gifted baker, and usually made her scones at this hour. With a warm smile the hospitable Beatrice, invited her to sit down while she boiled the kettle for tea and scones. “Thank you,  Beatrice, that would be lovely,” said Sophia and she took a seat at the kitchen table, and  while Beatrice made the tea,  she took a deep breath and started, “You know, I woke up this morning, thinking about Dysart and wondered what we might do …”. 

          “Oh, for goodness sake, Sophia, just let it go, there is nothing that can be done to restore that place!” interrupted  Beatrice, putting the tea pot down with a thump, annoyed that Sophia was spoiling her lovely morning by harping on about Dysart yet again.

         Sophia, was a natural people pleaser, but her feeling about Dysart were such that she just couldn’t let things rest there, but she gave a pained smile and took a sip of her tea, and waited for Beatrice to take the scones out of the oven before she continued, “but we’ve got to do something, Beatrice, we haven’t had a day’s good luck since that Church was abandoned and the Sisterhood scattered. The strange goings on in the world today could all be related to that—Brexit, Trump, Boris, Climate change, the Hadron Collider…” 

           “Oh for heavens sake, Sophia, I never heard anything so ridiculous! Where on earth did you come by such a notion?” Beatrice  interrupted again, sharp enough this time. Sophia was hurt by Beatrice’s attitude, but didn’t argue with her old friend. She had always assumed that Beatrice felt the same as she did about making Dysart great again. Well, she would have to revise her opinion about that! Still she saw no point in arguing about it this early in the morning! She would just have to change her plans and look for other allies to restore the fortunes of that old ruin. So in her usual honeyed voice she changed the topic and said, “Just think, it’s that time of year again, the local music festival is in town. Are you going to the Electric Picnic, by any chance?”  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the thought occurred to her: “of course, the Electric Picnic, that’s  where I might find descendants of the original Dysart Coven!”

         A frisson of excitement washed through Sophia as she drank her tea, a plan was evolving in her head, but she maintained a gentle flow of local gossip while as she and Beatrice enjoyed their morning tea and scones. Afterwards she waved Beatrice goodbye and  let herself out the way she came in, helping herself to a few lavender flowers before getting on her broom and flying back to her cottage. 

        This was Sophia’s plan: she would go to the Music festival, seek out descendants of the original Dysart coven and rally them in a campaign to restore that old Dysart. How she would recognise them or how she would rally them to her cause she had no plan for that. She was sure something would occur to her. Anyway, she prepared for an evening of music and fun and headed over to Stradbally that evening.

          Sophia tingled with excitement as she alighted from her broom at the Festival, in the cool breeze that Friday evening. The beat of the music, the laughter of the revellers with their brightly painted faces and scanty clothes, swaying to the music, all added to the alcohol- fuelled festival atmosphere. She almost glided along on an air of euphoria soaking up the atmosphere when suddenly her attention was caught by the sight of a Witches Wagon in the field. “Bingo” she thought “I’ve hit the jackpot” but as she got closer, and read the billboard outside this wagon, she stopped in her tracks. It read; “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble etc…”  A typical 17th century Witches spell, in short!  Nowadays, of course, Witches took the Wiccan equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, all spells were for good and they ended them with the words “…and this be done that it harm no one,” so seeing something as malevolent sounding as this was quite a surprise.

          Sophia’s curiosity got the better of her and she entered the wagon. She gasped when she saw who was inside, a Witch with the Blanche Deformity! The very image of Blanche of Loughteague with the mark of the stocks on her feet! Witches never forget what happened to their foremothers. It’s imprinted on their hearts, and all local Witches knew the story of Blanche of Loughteague. Sophia clutched at her neck with fright and felt weak and dizzy as  the events of that awful day in 1769 started playing out in her head as though it was happening in the present. Holding on to a bar in the wagon, she managed to stop herself from falling as  in her mind’s eye she could see Blanche of Loughteague as she had been on that frightful day, imprisoned in the stocks outside Dysart church!  And the look on the faces of all the Sisterhood, terrified of opening their mouths, no one stepping forward to support Blanche! 

         Sophia could feel the  eyes of the witch in front of her boring through her skull, her knees jellied and she could no longer support herself as she sank to the ground of the wagon and she felt herself transported back in time to 1769. “Do you remember it, Sophia, remember it all, everything that happened to Blanche” said the witch and tears came to Sophia’s eyes at the memory of all Blanche’s suffering, and her cheeks burned with shame. How could the sisterhood have allowed it to happen without as much as a protest? She tried to open her mouth to protest “but they were different times, and who are you anyway?” But no sound came, it was as though she was trapped back in the eighteenth century and the trauma of the events around young Blanche of Loughteague was happening right here and right now. As she lay on the floor of the caravan, her surroundings changed and she could see only Dysart with its cottages and hovels and the Church standing proud on the hill. She could see Blanche, her hair wild and the sound of her wailing piercing the air, being dragged to the stocks outside the church.

        And what was Blanche’s crime?- she had buried her dead baby in the Dysart Church grounds without paying the £5 fee to the vicar! How shameful not to have supported a Sister in those circumstances.

                Pretty, vivacious Blanche was widowed when her husband died following a fall from a horse, leaving his wife and baby son almost destitute. The Sisterhood of the Parish sympathized and supported as best they could and Blanche managed fairly well until her little boy John, contracted Typhoid fever. Doctoring back then was done by Sophia’s foremother, another Sophia, a stout, elderly lady who was skilled with herbs and healing and Blanche turned to her for help. Sophia came and did her best, but baby John passed away to his mother’s inexpressible grief.

                Now, in 1768, the year prior to the baby’s death the Parish Vestry Committee agreed to the vicar’s request that a 5£ fee be levied on anyone wanting burial for their loved ones in Dysart.

 Poor folk couldn’t afford this but naturally wanted their loved ones to rest in hollowed ground so they buried their dead at night under cover of darkness, but the anger and humiliation at having to resort to this was keenly felt.  Local women, who thought that the fee was unjust, helped the mourners as much as they could, by providing food and  lookout for the church warden. They also helped dig the grave, and these ladies also came to help Blanche in her grief. 

            And so the women of Dysart Parish accompanied Blanche up Dysart hill, softly chanting their ancient lament as  they carried  the corpse of little John wrapped in an old cloak on a cold dark night. Blanche carried with her thirteen crocus bulbs which she intended planting on her baby’s  grave.

          They dug the grave close to the tower and John’s little body, wrapped in the cloak was gently laid in the cold earth, the women covered it with the freshly dug clay and Blanche, pale and grieving,  thrust her cold hands into the earth and  planted those bulbs, on that cold moonlit night.

The group silently dispersed, old Sophia accompanied Blanche back to her cottage, a witness to the young woman’s distress and devastation.

           Next morning, the Church Warden opened the Church as usual and saw the freshly dug  grave, and thought, “Here’s another one avoiding the  5£ charge!” and filled with righteous indignation  he resolved to sort out the matter once and for all.  So he set off to the vicarage to report the matter. 

           The vicar was a greedy man, his big red nose spoke to his love of good food and brandy. It was he who had insisted on the 5£ charge as a necessary fund-raiser to support his lifestyle. He was disgusted at the Warden’s tale. “Well, this time we’ll catch them and this time they’ll pay”, he said to the Warden through clenched teeth and he instructed the Warden to erect the old stocks outside the tower of the Church. This old fashioned instrument of punishment and public humiliation had long been discontinued by the Parish as cruel and unjustified.

             As they entered the church the following Sunday the congregation were surprised to see the stocks outside, but took their places in the pews never the less. The service commenced but when it came time for the vicar to deliver his sermon he took his place behind the lectern, and instead of the usual commentary on the Gospel, he thundered, “Someone in this congregation has cheated me of my 5£ fee, and others have colluded with that person! I believe the women of the Parish with their misguided soft-heartedness have allowed my authority to be flouted in this disgraceful manner. Proceed Warden and dig up that grave,” and he pointed to the freshly dug grave beside the wall of the tower.

          And with that Blanche, who had come to church that morning seeking solace for her aching heart, shot out of her seat and flung herself on the grave of her baby, screaming “no, no don’t touch him, leave him be.” She was grabbed by two members of the parish council, and dragged out of the Church and put in the stocks still begging the warden to stop and leave her baby alone. And the women of the parish, to their eternal shame, kept silent and uttered not a word of protest. Not so much as a murmur.

           These memories flooded poor Sophia as she lay helpless on the caravan floor at the Musical Festival in 2019 and she  had no control over the intensity of the images of that awful day in 1769.  She pressed her hands to her temples to try and suppress them, but the memories  heat coming. She tried to shout stop as she the sound of the shovels pummelled the ears as the grave was dug up until the corpse of the baby was exposed and grasped with big rough hands and flung out to land near the stocks but just out of Blanche’s reach.

           And Sophia could hear Blanche’s  screams as she writhed, locked in those stocks in a desperate attempt to reach her child’s body, while the preacher sneered at her and snarled, “there will be no resting place here for your little  bastard!” and with that he made ready to leave the church,  mounting his horse which was tethered to a nearby hazel tree  and he rode away. The congregation slinked away in silence, leaving Blanche alone.

          And then the scene changed to starry night in Sophia’s mind’s eye and she could see several Dysart women return to the scene and release Blanche. They found her demented and disoriented with grief and hatred. Babbling, Blanche picked up the body of her child, and gently cradled him and then she  hobbled away,  down the hill towards the Derry road, the stocks having distorted her feet enough to leave her with a slight limp, a deformity. But as she limped away she screamed at the women huddled under their shawls and cursed their cowardice.

          It was at the threshold of the cold season that Blanche left Dysart, carrying her belongings, and the corpse of he baby, and as she left, she vowed trouble and strife on the women of the Parish and on Dysart itself until those  women learned courage.

         The ghastly scene faded from Sophia’s mind, her breathing slowed and gradually she reorientated herself to the surroundings in the wagon. But she knew what happened in Dysart subsequent to Blanche’s departure. Her grandmother had told her. How the women had gathered up the crocus bulbs, given them to Sophia who planted them in her gardens in memory of Blanche, how they never bloomed. And she knew that for years after the traumatic event, the women involved : Aurora, Abigail, Amelia, Charlotte, Clarissa, Clementine, Dorothy, Edith, Georgette, Harriet, Marjorie, and Beatrice used to gather in the parlour of her fore-mother’s cottage for a “sewing circle” afternoon to discuss what happened.

          As they sat around the table with their needlework, they each spoke of their sorrow and shame  at being unable to stand up for young  Blanche, how they felt oppressed by the Vicar’s influence and authority. “Look at us, we all know why we are here really but we pretend to be having a ‘sewing circle’, instead of just calling a meeting like men would do!” exclaimed Sophia.

 “Will we ever be able to take our rightful place in affairs of Church and State I wonder?!”  And with that Old Sophia produced the crocus bulbs and gave one to each of them. She told them that she had planted them yearly to no avail, that she believed that Blanche had put a spell on them so that they would only grow for women who put the Sisterhood above the Patriarchy. 

They each vowed to pass on the story to their daughters and continue to plant their bulb until someone could get it to grow. 

           Time passed, and one by one the daughters of this group left the district for work or marriage or adventure, but each carried their foremother’s memory with them together with the special bulbs. Few descendants of the original thirteen Coven members live in Dysart nowadays but Sophia was one of them and all this passed like a flash through her  mind as she stood in that Witches Wagon at the Electric Picnic in 2019, two hundred and fifty years after the original trauma. 

            Sophia pulled herself upright in the wagon and stared stupefied at the Witch who was apparently the reincarnation of Blanche of Loughteague! 

             She could only think to say, “Why have you returned, Blanche?” and the Witch replied; “Of course I’m not Blanche, she was my three times great grandmother and I’m here to lay down her burden and bury the bones”.  Sophia gasped, tottered from the wagon and fled to where she had left her broom and flew back to Ratheniska as fast as it could carry her. 

            Jumping off her broom, she rattled at Beatrice’s kitchen window and shouted for her to open the door.  Beatrice was still up, she couldn’t sleep from the sound of the music coming from Stradbally and she hardly had the door unlocked before Sophia started to pour out her story, leaving out no detail of her distressful encounter with the Witch at the music festival.

          Of course Beatrice knew about Blanche of Loughteague, she was also a descendant of the original thirteen and she too carried her foremothers’ memories, and indeed had one of the magic crocus bulbs, which had never bloomed for her! 

          The two women sat at the kitchen table and considered what to do. They thought that perhaps the two of them should accompany this Witch and help her to bury the bones in the grounds of the ruins of old Dysart, but that just didn’t seem right. The path their foremothers had tread all those years ago was gone, part of someone’s farm now. They knew they needed to organize something special.  “ You know, she is probably here to check if we have learnt our lesson and if we have developed sufficient courage to stand with the Sisterhood,” said Beatrice slowly.

 “Well we personally haven’t done much to progress the affairs of the Sisterhood, but maybe some of the other descendants have!” cried Sophie. “But how on earth can we find them at this stretch of time?” 

 “Maybe we should try and follow the trail of the bulbs rather than the trail of the women”, said Beatrice, as she stirred her tea, “I’ll bet those those bulbs only bloom for women who have found their voice and made a stand for something. I’ll bet they bloom for them out of season. We’ll look for out of season blooming crocuses. At least it’s somewhere to start!”

             “Or, it could be just global warming”, said Sophia. 

             “Please, Sophia, if you haven’t a better idea I suggest we follow this line. We can bring back some of those flowers and invite the Witch to meet us in Dysart where she can bury the bones and lay down her burden of anger and hate and we can ask her forgiveness on behalf of our foremothers and show her that things  have changed”.

         “But you and I haven’t changed, Beatrice”, said Sophia.

  “Embarking on this pilgrimage will certainly be a change inducing experience for us, I’d imagine!” replied Beatrice.

 And with that Beatrice put away the supper things and went through a mental list of all the things she needed to do before she went crocus hunting. 

          Of course, Sophia accompanied her, as she didn’t want to face the anger and hatred of Blanche’s descendant alone. She left a note on her kitchen table for the Witch, inviting her to make herself at home until she returned, as she suspected the Witch would make her way there after the music festival.

          It did occur to Beatrice that some of the descendants of the original thirteen might have emigrated and some of these flowers might be blooming far from Ireland, let alone Dysart. She wondered if she should put out a call to The United Witches Federation Worldwide (Horticultural Division) asking for information concerning crocuses growing out of season, but she was already airborne when this thought occurred to her so she decided to leave that for the present, and settled for doing a thorough search of the island of Ireland for those flowers.