A reprint of one of Kilkenny’s most fabled stories

The story of Alice Kyteler and her maid Petronilla has captured the imaginations of generations of tourists who visit Kilkenny and are enthralled by this ancient story of witchcraft and betrayal.

Author Hugh Fitzgerald Ryan published The Devil To Pay in 2010 which tells the true story of Alice and Petronilla – portrayed against a backdrop of the struggles between Norman and Irish – bringing to life a remarkable tapestry of this pivotal era in Irish history.

The author started out his teaching career in Kilkenny in 1964 and became fascinated with the story.

"I taught Latin at CBS Kilkenny from 1964 to 1966. I enjoyed my time in Kilkenny, especially in investigating the rich historical legacy of the city. I used to walk past Alice Kyteler's house, several times a day," he said.

Hugh and his wife Margaret lived at Green's Hill during their time in Kilkenny.

"We rented a flat from Toby Strong, who was very kind to us. It was delightful to hear the bells of Saint Canice's Cathedral ringing out over the meadow by the river on a Sunday morning. I tried fishing in the Nore with no great success. I also swam in the river, which gave me some interesting perspectives on the city. 

"Toby secured permission for me to climb to the bell loft, which was spectacular, as was the round tower.

"I asked the bishop, in later years, if I might go up there again. He said No. Nobody is permitted to go higher than 30 feet, not even the bishop. Health and safety. Fortunately I had taken a lot of photographs and made some sketches in the early days, which subsequently fed my imagination when I came to writing the story of Alice. The history contained in the cathedral was a mine that I could use in re-imagining the story of Alice. I was charmed to find in the old maps of Kilkenny, that we were living on Brogue-makers Hill, another component for the story..

"The view of the river, the castle weir and the purple blur of the cathedral at sunset, as viewed from the Dublin Road, gave me a picture of the young Petronilla of Meath, arriving at a city of churches, a city of God, as she thought," he added. 

The author said that he originally read the story of Alice in an old manuscript edited by the Reverend Butler in 1847, in Latin.

"It took me 44 years to write the story and get it published--- in English. Full marks to the Reverend Butler for doing all the hard work. The character of Petronilla appealed to me as the chief victim of the tragedy. 

"This gave me licence to imagine what he might have written. It was the time of the end of the Crusades, the suppression of the Templars,  the disastrous invasion of Edward Bruce, the beginnings of science and the hysteria about heresy and witchcraft. Don't forget the dispossessed Irish outside the walls and the arrival of the poetic, musical and utterly implacable Bishop Ledrede, with his ambition to build  a cathedral to rival those of France and eliminate heresy and all witches. I was spoiled for choice.

The author recently reprinted the book which is now called In Barefoot as I Go. The book was first published in 2010 as The Devil to Pay.

The story is set in Kilkenny in 1324. Alice Kyteler, the outspoken daughter of a wealthy Flemish banker, has survived four husbands and is beset by the gossip and rivalry of a medieval Anglo-Norman town.

Her beautiful maid is Petronilla, child of an itinerant shoemaker, her lover Sir Arnaud le Poer is seneschal and Lord of South Leinster.

Her nemesis is Richard de Ledrede, English Fransciscan, scholar, poet and now bishop of Ossory, determined to reassert clerical power and restore the dilapidated cathedral. To him Alice embodies the moral laxity of the age, her irreverence and knowlege of healing feeding his anger and obsession with witchcraft.

Outside the city walls the native Irish are resurgent after 150 years of dispossession. In the streets of Kilkenny, crowds gather around the stake.

Hugh Fitzgerald Ryan is the author of six other novels, set variously in Napoleonic Ireland and seventeenth-century Uruguay. In 2024 he published Under the Rainbow, a collection of observations and reminiscences of a long life. He is a native of Skerries in north County Dublin and is an accomplished artist whose drawings form the headpieces in Barefoot as I Go. He spent two years living and working in Kilkenny and was inspired by the story of Alice and Petronilla.

"My wife Margaret and I spent two very happy years in Kilkenny and made some life-long friends. We often went back in later years, to walk the streets  and ponder the events that took place there. It was appropriate that when at last, the book was completed, we went back with some of our children and grandchildren to launch it in the house of Alice herself.  Afterwards, they scampered up the tower, while we followed at a more sedate pace. It was exhilarating to look down on the city by the gliding Nore, which had nurtured a major part of our life together."

Barefoot as I Go is available in the Medieval Mile Museum and The Book Centre in Kilkenny.