An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) by Walter A Crisp

Book Review
By Michelle Montovio

Although An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) is the first foray by Walter A Crisp into the realm of historical fiction, having made his debut as an author in 2012 when he published The Call of Duty - A History of Gibraltar and the Wars in Europe 1757-1815.

That meticulously researched work focuses on the connection between Gibraltar and the conflicts in Europe as a result of the Rock's association with the British navy.
Although many admirals were linked to Gibraltar, Horatio Nelson is considered to be by far the most illustrious and inspirational of naval heroes, having led the British Navy to victory against the French in the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October 1805.

Crisp's The Call of Duty explores the close relationship between Nelson and the Rock.

Although An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) is a work of fiction inspired by Percy Bysshe Percy's poem The Witch of Atlas and is mostly set in Ireland and London, Gibraltar takes centre stage when the sequence of events in the plot brings two main characters to the Rock for the final déroulement.

The novel is divided into two sections. The first of these is Beyond the Pale. The Pale was a region in medieval Ireland that was under English control, particularly around Dublin.

The area within the Pale was deemed to be more civilised whereas areas outside the Pale, like County Donegal where the action commences in 1483 at the time of the Plantations, were regarded as uncivilised.

It was a place where people embraced different beliefs including paganism due to their Celtic and Druid heritage and Christianity.

It is here that we meet the novel's central protagonist, the red-haired Claire with her bewitching emerald green eyes known as 'that wild Atlantic Celtic girl.”

She could hear the voices of spirits and possessed extraordinary healing powers. Her unwavering devotion to the 5th century saint, St Abigail, the patron saint of bees manifests itself in an affinity for them.

These powers are shared by her descendants and are alluded to throughout the novel to foreshadow what is to come. Claire stows away in her fisherman father's boat and is found and violated by him and his nephews. A mysterious storm causes them to perish in the high seas. The only survivor is Claire, who having conceived a child on the night she was raped, is washed up on a beach in Cardiff.

She is found by a young man who takes her to London. There, Claire becomes a regular visitor to Blackfriars monastery (a print of which appears on the cover of the novel).

Blackfriars is central to the action of the first part of the novel, Beyond the Pale, and the author goes to great lengths to describe the contribution monasteries made to society, the symbiotic relationship between monasteries and the poor, and the terrible consequences of their subsequent dissolution during the reign of Henry VIII.
In spite of the altruism and kindness Claire shows others, her life is about to be put in jeopardy by the Church's desire to crackdown on witchcraft.

Branded an evil witch, it is not long before Claire, already a mother to two girls, the younger of whom has inherited her characteristic green eyes and red hair, disappears and a body is washed up by the River Thames, its face unrecognisable.

Although no longer physically present, her spirit imbues the entire novel, which spans just under four centuries and follows the lives of several generations of women descended from her all of whom have inherited her red hair, mesmerising green eyes and an enlightened awareness of their spirituality for, in the words of the narrator, "through her offspring her spirits and her powers lived on, for the daughters of witches are witches too".

A recurring theme in the novel is that the dead co-exist, support and are ever-present in the lives of the living.

Considered witches by the unenlightened, these women are worlds removed from the widows making a living as healers using herbal medicines and superstition. They are in tune with the forces of nature, divinity, the universe and the supernatural all of which are inextricably intertwined.

The second and final part of An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch), entitled While the Moon Waxes and Wanes, is set initially in an impoverished Dublin in the 1800s. Over a million people have died as a consequence of the Irish potato blight in 1847.

Born on 17th March of that same year, the Saint Day of St Patrick, we meet Patricia, like Claire born almost four hundred years before, she has emerald green eyes and red hair.

Patricia is possessed by the spirits of her mother and grandmother before her. Having lost her mother at a young age, Patricia is taken to Saint Mary's Work House and Orphanage.

It is here that she befriends an epileptic young man who is in solitary confinement due to his condition which was considered to be a form of demonic possession.

Although unable to speak, the young man whose name is Danny, draws childlike paintings of the view from his window. The remarkable feature of his paintings however is the picture of the moon depicted in different stages of waxing and waning. These paintings acquire a magical and symbolic significance as the novel unfolds. It soon becomes apparent to the reader that there is a special connection between Danny and Patricia.

By far my favourite parts of An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) are those set in Gibraltar.

In Part II, the action moves away momentarily from Dublin and focuses on Stuart Ballantyne, an army surgeon working in the Naval Hospital and his family.

It is at this stage of the novel that the reader is transported back in time to life for military personnel in Gibraltar in the 1800s. There are references to The Gibraltar Chronicle, The King's Chapel, The Garrison Library and even to La Calle Comedia where prostitutes plied their trade.

Powerful forces are at work to draw together the lives of lan, living hundreds of miles away in the British colony of Gibraltar to Patricia in an orphanage in faraway Dublin.

There are no such things as coincidences in the An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) universe - spirits of the past acting as guardians shape the life path of the characters. After a series of events in lan's life, he resolves to go to Ireland to serve the poor and meets Patricia as he tends to a dying Danny at the orphanage. He falls madly in love with her.

When they decide to return to Gibraltar, life is not easy for Patricia who is pregnant with her first child.

In the Cathedral of St Mary the Crowned, an apparition of her late mother warns her daughter that the road ahead is paved with evil. There is a strong sense of ominous foreboding as we approach the climax of the novel. Patricia has yet another vision of her mother who informs her that her baby is about to be born and that finally all the spirits of their departed loved ones would rest. The novel has come full circle and the cycle has finally been completed with the birth of Patricia's baby, a daughter with emerald green eyes. Her chosen name, takes our breath away - Claire.

There is one final episode at the end of the novel that reminds us that daughters of witches will always be witches and it is at this climactic moment that An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) concludes.

Although I had a personal desire to read this novel (the author is my father after all), I feel that An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) is a mesmerising tale which seamlessly binds historical realism and fiction. Written with an incredible attention to factual detail (even the street names are historically accurate), it is packed with a plethora of information on four centuries of British and Gibraltarian history. Because a significant part of this novel is set in Gibraltar in the 1800s, it will appeal all the more so to the local reader.

Crisp succeeds in recreating the harsh reality of life on the disease-ridden Rock, the abject poverty of its inhabitants and the huge class difference between the English and the natives.

Interspersing Spanish phrases into his narrative as the novel reaches its climax is a nod to our unique bilingual identity and our shared history. The author could not have chosen a more meaningful backdrop than the Rock of Gibraltar to end his novel.

An Cailleach Gaeilge (The Irish Witch) is printed by Gibraltar Chronicle Printing Ltd Available at BOOKgem Bookshop and the Gibraltar Heritage Trust.