Dame Alice Kyteler

The Witch of Kilkenny

Born 1280 in Kyteler's House, Kilkenny, Ireland, the only child of a wealthy banker.

Replica Of Dame Alice Kyteler in the basement of her old house Kysteler's Inn.

She was married four times, to William Outlawe, Adam le Blund, Richard de Valle and, finally, Sir John le Poer who suspected he was being poisoned. On his death, the children of her four husbands accused her of using poison and sorcery against their fathers and of favouring her first-born son William Outlawe.

A verse from WB Yeats Poem

Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen comes to mind.
There lurches past his great eyes without thought
Under the shadow of straw-pale locks;
Thart insolent Fiend Robert Artisson,
To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
Bronze peacock feathers,
red combs of her cocks.

The ‘narrative' is a Latin manuscript which was written during the time of the ‘Kyteler Excommunication'. The manuscript was published in 1843 under the title Contemporary Narrative of the Proceeding Against Dame Alice Kyteler, Prosecuted for Sorcery in, 1324 by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossary.

The case of Dame Alice Kyteler was one of the first European witchcraft trials,and followed closely on the election of Pope John XXII to the Papacy, and his addition of witchcraft to the list of heresies in 1320. Kytler herself escaped, but others in her household were less fortunate.


References
http://www.irishidentity.com/extras/supernat/stories/banshee.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Kyteler
http://www.nancymonaghan.com/dame.html
http://www.kytelers.ie/history.asp
http://www.witchcraftandwitches.com/witches_kyteler.html