Part 15

“Destruction on you,” said Donal, then; “it’s you’re the ungrateful man; I let you out of the coffin; I gave you a heat at the fire, and a share of my bed; and now you won’t keep quiet; but I’ll put you out of the bed.” Then the dead man spoke, and said: “You are a valiant man, and it stood you upon[31] to be so, or you would be dead.” “Who would kill me?” said Donal. “I,” says the dead man; “there never came any one here this twenty years back, that I did not kill. Do you know the man who paid you for remaining here?” “He was a gentleman,” said Donal. “He is my son,” said the dead man, “and he thinks that you will be dead in the morning; but come with me now.”

The dead man took him down into the cellar, and showed him a great flag. “Lift that flag. There are three pots under it, and they filled with gold. It is on account of the gold they killed me; but they did not get the gold. Let yourself have a pot, and a pot for my son, and the other one—divide it on the poor people.” Then he opened a door in the wall, and drew out a paper, and said to Donal: “Give this to my son, and tell him that it was the butler who killed me, for my share of gold. I can get no rest until he’ll be hanged; and if there is a witness wanting I will come behind you in the court without a head on me, so that everybody can see me. When he will be hanged, you will marry my son’s daughter, and come to live in this castle. Let you have no fear about me, for I shall have gone to eternal rest. Farewell now.”

Donal went to sleep, and he did not awake till the gentleman came in the morning, and he asked him did he sleep well, or where did the old man whom he left with him go? “I will tell you that another time; I have a long story to tell you first.” “Come to my house with me,” says the gentleman.

When they were going to the house, whom should they see coming out of the bushes, but the poor man without a thread on him, more than the night he was born, and he shaking with the cold. The gentleman got him his clothes, gave him his wages, and off for ever with him.

Donal went to the gentleman’s house, and when he ate and drank his enough, he said: “I have a story to tell you.” Then he told him everything that happened to him the night before, until he came as far as the part about the gold. “Come with me till I see the gold,” said the gentleman. He went to the castle, he lifted the flag, and when he saw the gold, he said: “I know now that the story is true.”

When he got the entire information from Donal, he got a warrant against the butler; but concealed the crime it was for. When the butler was brought before the judge, Donal was there, and gave witness. Then the judge read out of his papers, and said: “I cannot find this man guilty without more evidence.”

“I am here,” said Trunk-without-head, coming behind Donal. When the butler saw him, he said to the judge: “Go no farther, I am guilty; I killed the man, and his head is under the hearth-stone in his own room.” Then the judge gave order to hang the butler, and Trunk-without-head went away.

The day on the morrow, Donal was married to the gentleman’s daughter, and got a great fortune with her, and went to live in the castle.

A short time after this, he got ready his coach and went on a visit to his mother.

When Dermod saw the coach coming, he did not know who the great man was who was in it. The mother came out and ran to him, saying: “Are you not my own Donal, the love of my heart you are? I was praying for you since you went.” Then Dermod asked pardon of him, and got it. Then Donal gave him a purse of gold, saying at the same time: “There’s the price of the two loads of oats, of the horses, and of the cart.” Then he said to his mother: “You ought to come home with me. I have a fine castle without anybody in it but my wife and the servants.” “I will go with you,” said the mother; “and I will remain with you till I die.”

Donal took his mother home, and they spent a prosperous life together in the castle.

THE HAGS OF THE LONG TEETH.

Long ago, in the old time, there came a party of gentlemen from Dublin to Loch Glynn a-hunting and a-fishing. They put up in the priest’s house, as there was no inn in the little village.

The first day they went a-hunting, they went into the Wood of Driminuch, and it was not long till they routed a hare. They fired many a ball after him, but they could not bring him down. They followed him till they saw him going into a little house in the wood.

When they came to the door, they saw a great black dog, and he would not let them in.

“Put a ball through the beggar,” said a man of them. He let fly a ball, but the dog caught it in his mouth, chewed it, and flung it on the ground. They fired another ball, and another, but the dog did the same thing with them. Then he began barking as loud as he could, and it was not long till there came out a hag, and every tooth in her head as long as the tongs. “What are you doing to my pup?” says the hag.

“A hare went into your house, and this dog won’t let us in after him,” says a man of the hunters.

“Lie down, pup,” said the hag. Then she said: “Ye can come in if ye wish.” The hunters were afraid to go in, but a man of them asked: “Is there any person in the house with you?”

“There are six sisters,” said the old woman. “We should like to see them,” said the hunters. No sooner had he said the word than the six old women came out, and each of them with teeth as long as the other. Such a sight the hunters had never seen before.

They went through the wood then, and they saw seven vultures on one tree, and they screeching. The hunters began cracking balls after them, but if they were in it ever since they would never bring down one of them.

There came a gray old man to them and said: “Those are the hags of the long tooth that are living in the little house over there. Do ye not know that they are under enchantment? They are there these hundreds of years, and they have a dog that never lets in anyone to the little house. They have a castle under the lake, and it is often the people saw them making seven swans of themselves, and going into the lake.”

When the hunters came home that evening they told everything they heard and saw to the priest, but he did not believe the story.

On the day on the morrow, the priest went with the hunters, and when they came near the little house they saw the big black dog at the door. The priest put his conveniencies for blessing under his neck, and drew out a book and began reading prayers. The big dog began barking loudly. The hags came out, and when they saw the priest they let a screech out of them that was heard in every part of Ireland. When the priest was a while reading, the hags made vultures of themselves and flew up into a big tree that was over the house.

The priest began pressing in on the dog until he was within a couple of feet of him.

The dog gave a leap up, struck the priest with its four feet, and put him head over heels.

When the hunters took him up he was deaf and dumb, and the dog did not move from the door.

They brought the priest home and sent for the bishop. When he came and heard the story there was great grief on him. The people gathered together and asked of him to banish the hags of enchantment out of the wood. There was fright and shame on him, and he did not know what he would do, but he said to them: “I have no means of banishing them till I go home, but I will come at the end of a month and banish them.”

The priest was too badly hurt to say anything. The big black dog was father of the hags, and his name was Dermod O’Muloony. His own son killed him, because he found him with his wife the day after their marriage, and killed the sisters for fear they should tell on him.

One night the bishop was in his chamber asleep, when one of the hags of the long tooth opened the door and came in. When the bishop wakened up he saw the hag standing by the side of his bed. He was so much afraid he was not able to speak a word until the hag spoke and said to him: “Let there be no fear on you; I did not come to do you harm, but to give you advice. You promised the people of Loch Glynn that you would come to banish the hags of the long tooth out of the wood of Driminuch. If you come you will never go back alive.”

His talk came to the bishop, and he said: “I cannot break my word.”

“We have only a year and a day to be in the wood,” said the hag, “and you can put off the people until then.”

“Why are ye in the woods as ye are?” says the bishop.

“Our brother killed us,” said the hag, “and when we went before the arch-judge, there was judgment passed on us, we to be as we are two hundred years. We have a castle under the lake, and be in it every night. We are suffering for the crime our father did.” Then she told him the crime the father did.

“Hard is your case,” said the bishop, “but we must put up with the will of the arch-judge, and I shall not trouble ye.”

“You will get an account, when we are gone from the wood,” said the hag. Then she went from him.

In the morning, the day on the morrow, the bishop came to Loch Glynn. He sent out notice and gathered the people. Then he said to them: “It is the will of the arch-king that the power of enchantment be not banished for another year and a day, and ye must keep out of the wood until then. It is a great wonder to me that ye never saw the hags of enchantment till the hunters came from Dublin.—It’s a pity they did not remain at home.”

About a week after that the priest was one day by himself in his chamber alone. The day was very fine and the window was open. The robin of the red breast came in and a little herb in its mouth. The priest stretched out his hand, and she laid the herb down on it. “Perhaps it was God sent me this herb,” said the priest to himself, and he ate it. He had not eaten it one moment till he was as well as ever he was, and he said: “A thousand thanks to Him who has power stronger than the power of enchantment.”

Then said the robin: “Do you remember the robin of the broken foot you had, two years this last winter.”

“I remember her, indeed,” said the priest, “but she went from me when the summer came.”

“I am the same robin, and but for the good you did me I would not be alive now, and you would be deaf and dumb throughout your life. Take my advice now, and do not go near the hags of the long tooth any more, and do not tell to any person living that I gave you the herb.” Then she flew from him.

When the house-keeper came she wondered to find that he had both his talk and his hearing. He sent word to the bishop and he came to Loch Glynn. He asked the priest how it was that he got better so suddenly. “It is a secret,” said the priest, “but a certain friend gave me a little herb and it cured me.”

Nothing else happened worth telling, till the year was gone. One night after that the bishop was in his chamber when the door opened, and the hag of the long tooth walked in, and said: “I come to give you notice that we will be leaving the wood a week from to-day. I have one thing to ask of you if you will do it for me.”

“If it is in my power, and it not to be against the faith,” said the bishop.

“A week from to-day,” said the hag, “there will be seven vultures dead at the door of our house in the wood. Give orders to bury them in the quarry that is between the wood and Ballyglas; that is all I am asking of you.”

“I shall do that if I am alive,” said the bishop. Then she left him, and he was not sorry she to go from him.

A week after that day, the bishop came to Loch Glynn, and the day after he took men with him and went to the hags’ house in the wood of Driminuch.

The big black dog was at the door, and when he saw the bishop he began running and never stopped until he went into the lake.

He saw the seven vultures dead at the door, and he said to the men: “Take them with you and follow me.”

They took up the vultures and followed him to the brink of the quarry. Then he said to them: “Throw them into the quarry: There is an end to the hags of the enchantment.”

As soon as the men threw them down to the bottom of the quarry, there rose from it seven swans as white as snow, and flew out of their sight. It was the opinion of the bishop and of every person who heard the story that it was up to heaven they flew, and that the big black dog went to the castle under the lake.

At any rate, nobody saw the hags of the long tooth or the big black dog from that out, any more.

WILLIAM OF THE TREE.

In the time long ago there was a king in Erin. He was married to a beautiful queen, and they had but one only daughter. The queen was struck with sickness, and she knew that she would not be long alive. She put the king under _gassa_ (mystical injunctions) that he should not marry again until the grass should be a foot high over her tomb. The daughter was cunning, and she used to go out every night with a scissors, and she used to cut the grass down to the ground.

The king had a great desire to have another wife, and he did not know why the grass was not growing over the grave of the queen. He said to himself: “There is somebody deceiving me.”

That night he went to the churchyard, and he saw the daughter cutting the grass that was on the grave. There came great anger on him then, and he said: “I will marry the first woman I see, let she be old or young.” When he went out on the road he saw an old hag. He brought her home and married her, as he would not break his word.

After marrying her, the daughter of the king was under bitter misery at (the hands of) the hag, and the hag put her under an oath not to tell anything at all to the king, and not to tell to any person anything she should see being done, except only to three who were never baptised.

The next morning on the morrow, the king went out a hunting, and when he was gone, the hag killed a fine hound the king had. When the king came home he asked the old hag “who killed my hound?”

“Your daughter killed it,” says the old woman.

“Why did you kill my hound?” said the king.

“I did not kill your hound,” says the daughter, “and I cannot tell you who killed him.”

“I will make you tell me,” says the king.

He took the daughter with him to a great wood, and he hanged her on a tree, and then he cut off the two hands and the two feet off her, and left her in a state of death. When he was going out of the wood there went a thorn into his foot, and the daughter said: “That you may never get better until I have hands and feet to cure you.”

The king went home, and there grew a tree out of his foot, and it was necessary for him to open the window, to let the top of the tree out.

There was a gentleman going by near the wood, and he heard the king’s daughter a-screeching. He went to the tree, and when he saw the state she was in, he took pity on her, brought her home, and when she got better, married her.

At the end of three quarters (of a year), the king’s daughter had three sons at one birth, and when they were born, Granya Öi came and put hands and feet on the king’s daughter, and told her, “Don’t let your children be baptised until they are able to walk. There is a tree growing out of your father’s foot; it was cut often, but it grows again, and it is with you lies his healing. You are under an oath not to tell the things you saw your stepmother doing to anyone but to three who were never baptised, and God has sent you those three. When they will be a year old bring them to your father’s house, and tell your story before your three sons, and rub your hand on the stump of the tree, and your father will be as well as he was the first day.”

There was great wonderment on the gentleman when he saw hands and feet on the king’s daughter. She told him then every word that Granya Oi said to her.

When the children were a year old, the mother took them with her, and went to the king’s house.

There were doctors from every place in Erin attending on the king, but they were not able to do him any good.

When the daughter came in, the king did not recognise her. She sat down, and the three sons round her, and she told her story to them from top to bottom, and the king was listening to her telling it. Then she left her hand on the sole of the king’s foot and the tree fell off it.

The day on the morrow he hanged the old hag, and he gave his estate to his daughter and to the gentleman.

THE OLD CROW & THE YOUNG CROW.

There was an old crow teaching a young crow one day, and he said to him, “Now my son,” says he, “listen to the advice I’m going to give you. If you see a person coming near you and stooping, mind yourself, and be on your keeping; he’s stooping for a stone to throw at you.”

“But tell me,” says the young crow, “what should I do if he had a stone already down in his pocket?”

“Musha, go ’long out of that,” says the old crow, “you’ve learned enough; the devil another learning I’m able to give you.”

RIDDLES.

A great great house it is, A golden candlestick it is, Guess it rightly, Let it not go by thee.

Heaven.

There’s a garden that I ken, Full of little gentlemen, Little caps of blue they wear, And green ribbons very fair.

Flax.

I went up the boreen, I went down the boreen, I brought the boreen with myself on my back.

A Ladder.

He comes to ye amidst the brine The butterfly of the sun, The man of the coat so blue and fine, With red thread his shirt is done.

Lobster.

I threw it up as white as snow, Like gold on a flag it fell below.

Egg.

I ran and I got, I sat and I searched, If could get it I would not bring it with me, And as I got it not I brought it.

Thorn in the foot.

You see it come in on the shoulders of men, Like a thread of the silk it will leave us again.

Smoke.

He comes through the _lis_[32] to me over the sward, The man of the foot that is narrow and hard, I would he were running the opposite way, For o’er all that are living ’tis he who bears sway.

The Death.

In the garden’s a castle with hundreds within, Yet though stripped to my shirt I would never fit in.

Ant-hill.

From house to house he goes, A messenger small and slight, And whether it rains or snows, He sleeps outside in the night.

Boreen.

Two feet on the ground, And three feet overhead, And the head of the living In the mouth of the dead.

Girl with (three-legged) pot on her head.

On the top of the tree See the little man red, A stone in his belly, A cap on his head.

Haw.

There’s a poor man at rest, With a stick beneath his breast, And he breaking his heart a-crying.

Lintel on a wet day.

As white as flour and it is not flour, As green as grass and it is not grass, As red as blood and it is not blood, As black as ink and it is not ink.

Blackberry, from bud to fruit.

A bottomless barrel, It’s shaped like a hive, It is filled full of flesh, And the flesh is alive.

Tailor’s thimble.

WHERE THE STORIES CAME FROM.

The first three stories, namely, “The Tailor and the Three Beasts,” “Bran,” and “The King of Ireland’s Son,” I took down verbatim, without the alteration or addition of more than a word or two, from Seáġan O Cuinneaġáin (John Cunningham), who lives in the village of Baile-an-ṗuil (Ballinphuil), in the county of Roscommon, some half mile from Mayo. He is between seventy and eighty years old, and is, I think, illiterate.

The story of “The Alp-luachra” is written down from notes made at the time I first heard the story. It was told me by Seamus o h-Airt (James Hart), a game-keeper, in the barony of Frenchpark, between sixty and seventy years old, and illiterate. The notes were not full ones, and I had to eke them out in writing down the story, the reciter, one of the best I ever met, having unfortunately died in the interval.

The stories of “Paudyeen O’Kelly,” and of “Leeam O’Rooney’s Burial,” I got from Mr. Lynch Blake, near Ballinrobe, county Mayo, who took the trouble of writing them down for me in nearly phonetic Irish, for which I beg to return him my best thanks. I do not think that these particular stories underwent any additions at his hands while writing them down. I do not know from whom he heard the first, and cannot now find out, as he has left the locality. The second he told me he got from a man, eighty years old, named William Grady, who lived near Clare-Galway, but who for the last few years has been “carrying a bag.”

The long story of “Guleesh na Guss dhu,” was told by the same Shamus O’Hart, from whom I got the “Alp-luachra,” but, as in the case of the “Alp-luachra” story, I had only taken notes of it, and not written down the whole as it fell from his lips. I have only met one other man since, Martin Brennan, in the barony of Frenchpark, Roscommon, who knew the same story, and he told it to me—but in an abridged form—incident for incident up to the point where my translation leaves off.

There is a great deal more in the Irish version in the Leaḃar Sgeuluiġeaċta, which I did not translate, not having been able to get it from Brennan, and having doctored it too much myself to give it as genuine folk-lore.

The rest of the stories in this volume are literally translated from my Leaḃar Sgeuluiġeaċta. Neil O’Carree was taken down phonetically, by Mr. Larminie, from the recitation of a South Donegal peasant.

The Hags of the Long Teeth come from Ballinrobe, as also William of the Tree, the Court of Crinnawn, and the Well of D’Yerree-in-Dowan. See pages 239-240 of the L. S.

NOTES.

[_Notes in brackets signed A.N., by Alfred Nutt. The references to Arg. Tales are to “Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition; Argyllshire Series II.; Folk and Hero Tales from Argyllshire” collected, edited, and translated by the Rev. D. MacInnes, with Notes by the editor and Alfred Nutt. London, 1889._]

“THE TAILOR AND THE THREE BEASTS.”

Page 1. In another variant of this tale, which I got from one Martin Brennan—more usually pronounced Brannan; in Irish, O’Braonáin—in Roscommon, the thing which the tailor kills is a swallow, which flew past him. He flung his needle at the bird, and it went through its eye and killed it. This success excites the tailor to further deeds of prowess. In this variant occurred also the widely-spread incident of the tailor’s tricking the giant by pretending to squeeze water out of a stone.

Page 2. Garraun (gearrán), is a common Anglicised Irish word in many parts of Ireland. It means properly a gelding or hack-horse; but in Donegal, strangely enough, it means a horse, and coppul capáll, the ordinary word for a horse elsewhere, means there a mare. The old English seem to have borrowed this word capal from the Irish, _cf._ Percy’s version of “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne,” where the latter is thus represented—

“A sword and a dagger he wore by his side, Of manye a man the bane; And he was clad in his capull hyde, Topp and tayle and mayne.”

Page 7, line 4. The modder-alla (madra-allta, wild dog), is properly a wolf, not a lion; but the reciter explained it thus, “madar alla, sin leó ṁan,” “modder álla, that’s a l’yone,” _i.e._, “a lion,” which I have accordingly translated it.

Page 9, line 18. The giant’s shouting at night, or at dawn of day, is a common incident in these tales. In the story of “The Speckled Bull,” not here given, there are three giants who each utter a shout every morning, “that the whole country hears them.” The Irish for giant, in all these stories, is faṫaċ (pronounced fahuch), while the Scotch Gaelic word is _famhair_, a word which we have not got, but which is evidently the same as the Fomhor, or sea pirate of Irish mythical history, in whom Professor Rhys sees a kind of water god. The only place in Campbell’s four volumes in which the word _fathach_ occurs is in the “Lay of the Great Omadawn,” which is a distinctly Irish piece, and of which MacLean remarks, “some of the phraseology is considered Irish.”