The Priest Hunter

In the early 1700s a conniving man in Ireland could earn a mighty wage betraying his friends, his family, and his faith. Priest hunters they were called, bounty hunters scouring the countryside for Catholic clergy. Countryside like the Burren, a desolate, treeless landscape of unrelenting stone.

In Irish a wolf is called ‘mac tíre’, which means literally, ‘son of the countryside’. But the Burren is no country for wolves.

A priest hunter couldn’t run into a wolf there.

He’d have to cross paths with something much more dangerous.

A daughter of the countryside.

This story originally appeared in “Fiction River: Past Crime (Kobo Edition).”