Part 16

Page 11. This incident appears to be a version of that in “Jack the Giant-Killer.” It seems quite impossible to say whether it was always told in Ireland, or whether it may not have been borrowed from some English source. If it does come from an English source it is probably the only thing in these stories that does.

Page 13, line 6. “To take his wife off (pronounced _ov_) him again.” The preposition “from” is not often used with take, etc., in Connacht English.

Page 15, line 12. These nonsense-endings are very common in Irish stories It is remarkable that there seems little trace of them in Campbell. The only story in his volumes which ends with a piece of nonsense is the “Slender Grey Kerne,” and it, as I tried to show in my Preface, is Irish. It ends thus: “I parted with them, and they gave me butter on a coal, and kail brose in a creel, and paper shoes, and they sent me away with a cannon-ball on a highroad of glass, till they left me sitting here.” Why such endings seem to be stereotyped with some stories, and not used at all with others, I cannot guess. It seems to be the same amongst Slavonic Märchen, of which perhaps one in twenty has a nonsense-ending; but the proportion is much larger in Ireland. Why the Highland tales, so excellent in themselves, and so closely related to the Irish ones, have lost this distinctive feature I cannot even conjecture, but certain it is that this is so.

[The incident of the king’s court being destroyed at night is in the fourteenth-fifteenth century _Agallamh na Senorach_, where it is Finn who guards Tara against the wizard enemies.

I know nothing like the way in which the hero deals with the animals he meets, and cannot help thinking that the narrator forgot or mistold his story. Folk-tales are, as a rule, perfectly logical and sensible if their conditions be once accepted; but here the conduct of the hero is inexplicable, or at all events unexplained.—A.N.]

BRAN’S COLOUR.

Page 15. This stanza on Bran’s colour is given by O’Flaherty, in 1808, in the “Gaelic Miscellany.” The first two lines correspond with those of my shanachie, and the last two correspond _in sound_, if not in sense. O’Flaherty gave them thus—

“Speckled back over the loins, Two ears scarlet, equal-red.”

How the change came about is obvious. The old Irish suaiṫne, “speckled,” is not understood now in Connacht; so the word uaiṫne, “green,” which exactly rhymes with it, took its place. Though uaiṫne generally means greenish, it evidently did not do so to the mind of my reciter, for, pointing to a mangy-looking cub of nondescript greyish colour in a corner of his cabin, he said, sin uaiṫne, “that’s the colour oonya.” The words os cionn na leirge, “over the loins,” have, for the same reason—namely, that learg, “a loin,” is obselete now—been changed to words of the same sound. airḋaṫ na seilge, “of the colour of hunting,” _i.e._, the colour of the deer hunted. This, too, the reciter explained briefly by saying, seilg sin fiaḋ, “hunting, that’s a deer.” From the vivid colouring of Bran it would appear that she could have borne no resemblance whatever to the modern so-called Irish wolf-hound, and that she must in all probability have been short-haired, and not shaggy like them. Most of the Fenian poems contain words not in general use. I remember an old woman reciting me two lines of one of these old poems, and having to explain in current Irish the meaning of no less than five words in the two lines which were

Aiṫris dam agus ná can go Cionnas rinneaḋ leó an trealg,

which she thus explained conversationally, innis dam agus ná deun breug, cia an ċaoi a ndearnaḋ siad an fiaḋaċ.

Page 17, line 9. Pistrogue, or pishogue, is a common Anglo-Irish word for a charm or spell. Archbishop MacHale derived it from two words, fios siṫeóg, “knowledge of fairies,” which seems hardly probable.

Page 19. “A fiery cloud out of her neck.” Thus, in Dr. Atkinson’s Páis Partoloin, from the “Leabhar Breac,” the devil appears in the form of an Ethiopian, and according to the Irish translator, ticed lassar borb ar a bragait ocus as a shróin amal lassair shuirun tened. “There used to come a fierce flame out of his _neck_ and nose, like the flame of a furnace of fire.”

Page 19. According to another version of this story, the blind man was Ossian (whose name is in Ireland usually pronounced Essheen or Ussheen) himself, and he got Bran’s pups hung up by their teeth to the skin of a newly-killed horse, and all the pups let go their hold except this black one, which clung to the skin and hung out of it. Then Ossian ordered the others to be drowned and kept this. In this other version, the coal which he throws at the infuriated pup was tuaġ no rud icéint, “a hatchet or something.” There must be some confusion in this story, since Ossian was not blind during Bran’s lifetime, nor during the sway of the Fenians. The whole thing appears to be a bad version of Campbell’s story, No. XXXI., Vol. II., p. 103. The story may, however, have some relation to the incident in that marvellous tale called “The Fort of the little Red Yeoha” (Bruiġion Eoċaiḋ ḃig ḋeirg), in which we are told how Conan looked out of the fort, go ḃfacaiḋ sé aon óglaċ ag teaċt ċuige, agus cu ġearr ḋuḃ air slaḃra iarainn aige, ’na láiṁ, agus is ionga naċ loirġeaḋ si an bruioġion re gaċ caor teine d’á g-cuirfeaḋ si ṫar a craos agus ṫar a cúḃan-ḃeul amaċ, _i.e._, “he saw one youth coming to him, and he having a short black hound on an iron chain in his hand, and it is a wonder that it would not burn the fort with every ball of fire it would shoot out of its gullet, and out of its foam-mouth.” This hound is eventually killed by Bran, but only after Conan had taken off “the shoe of refined silver that was on Bran’s right paw” (An ḃróg airgid Aiṫ-leigṫhe to ḃí air croiḃ ḋeis Brain). Bran figures largely in Fenian literature.

[I believe this is the only place in which Finn’s _mother_ is described as a fawn, though in the prose sequel to the “Lay of the Black Dog” (Leab. na Feinne, p. 91) it is stated that Bran, by glamour of the Lochlanners, is made to slay the Fenian women and children in the seeming of deer. That Finn enjoyed the favours of a princess bespelled as a fawn is well known; also that Oisin’s mother was a fawn (see the reference in Arg. Tales, p. 470). The narrator may have jumbled these stories together in his memory.

The slaying of Bran’s pup seems a variant of Oisin’s “Blackbird Hunt” (_cf._ Kennedy, Fictions, 240), whilst the story, as a whole, seems to be mixed up with that of the “Fight of Bran with the Black Dog,”of which there is a version translated by the Rev. D. Mac Innes—“Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition,” Vol. I., p. 7, _et seq._

It would seem from our text that the Black Dog was Bran’s child, so that the fight is an animal variant of the father and son combat, as found in the Cuchullain saga. A good version of “Finn’s Visit to Lochlann” (to be printed in Vol. III. of “Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition”) tells how Finn took with him Bran’s leash; and how the Lochlanners sentenced him to be exposed in a desolate valley, where he was attacked by a savage dog whom he tamed by showing the leash. Vol. XII. of Campbell’s “MSS. of Gaelic Stories” contains a poem entitled, “Bran’s Colour.” This should be compared with our text.—A.N.]

THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON.

Page 19. The king of Ireland’s son. This title should properly be, “The son of a king in Ireland” (Mac riġ i n-Eirinn). As this name for the prince is rather cumbrous, I took advantage of having once heard him called the king of Ireland’s son (Mac riġ Eireann), and have so given it here. In another longer and more humorous version of this story, which I heard from Shamus O’Hart, but which I did not take down in writing, the short green man is the “Thin black man” (fear caol duḃ); the gunman is guinnéar, not gunnaire; the ear-man is cluas-le-h-éisteaċt; (ear for hearing), not cluasaire; and the blowman is not Séidire, but polláire-séidte (blowing nostril). This difference is the more curious, considering that the men lived only a couple of miles apart, and their families had lived in the same place for generations.

Page 27. This description of a house thatched with feathers is very common in Irish stories. On the present occasion the house is thatched with one single feather, so smooth that there was no projecting point or quill either above or below the feather-roof. For another instance, see the “Well of D’yerree in Dowan,” page 131. In a poem from “The Dialogue of the Sages,” the lady Credé’s house is described thus:—

“Of its sunny chamber the corner stones Are all of silver and precious gold, In faultless stripes its thatch is spread Of wings of brown and crimson red. Its portico is covered, too, With wings of birds both yellow and blue.”

See O’Curry’s “Man. Materials,” p. 310.

Page 27. “He drew the cooalya-coric,” _coolaya_ in the text, is a misprint. The cooalya-coric means “pole of combat.” How it was “drawn” we have no means of knowing. It was probably a pole meant to be drawn back and let fall upon some sounding substance. The word tarraing, “draw,” has, however, in local, if not in literary use, the sense of drawing back one’s arm to make a blow. A peasant will say, “he drew the blow at me,” or “he drew the stick,” in English; or “ṫarraing sé an buille,” in Irish, by which he means, he made the blow and struck with the stick. This may be the case in the phrase “drawing the cooalya-coric,” which occurs so often in Irish stories, and it may only mean, “he struck a blow with the pole of combat,” either against something resonant, or against the door of the castle. I have come across at least one allusion to it in the Fenian literature. In the story, called Macaoṁ mór mac riġ na h-Earpáine (the great man, the king of Spain’s son), the great man and Oscar fight all day, and when evening comes Oscar grows faint and asks for a truce, and then takes Finn Mac Cool aside privately and desires him to try to keep the great man awake all night, while he himself sleeps; because he feels that if the great man, who had been already three days and nights without rest, were to get some sleep on this night, he himself would not be a match for him next morning. This is scarcely agreeable to the character of Oscar, but the wiles which Finn employs to make the great man relate to him his whole history, and so keep him from sleeping, are very much in keeping with the shrewdness which all these stories attribute to the Fenian king. The great man remains awake all night, sorely against his will, telling Finn his extraordinary adventures; and whenever he tries to stop, Finn incites him to begin again, and at last tells him not to be afraid, because the Fenians never ask combat of any man until he ask it of them first. At last, as the great man finished his adventures do ḃí an lá ag éiriġe agus do ġaḃar Osgar agus do ḃuail an cuaille cóṁpaic. Do ċuala an fear mór sin agus a duḃairt, “A Finn Ṁic Cúṁail,” ar sé, “d’ḟeallair orm,” etc. _i.e._, the day was rising, and Oscar goes and struck (the word is not “drew” here) the pole of combat. The great man heard that, and he said, “Oh, Finn Mac Cool, you have deceived me,” etc. Considering that they were all inside of Finn’s palace at Allan (co. Kildare) at this time, Oscar could hardly have struck the door. It is more probable that the pole of combat stood outside the house, and it seems to have been a regular institution. In Campbell’s tale of “The Rider of Grianag,” there is mention made of a _slabhraidh comhrac_, “Chain of combat,” which answers the same purpose as the pole, only not so conveniently, since the hero has to give it several hauls before he can “take a turn out of it.” We find allusion to the same thing in the tale of Iollan arm Dearg. Illan, the hero, comes to a castle in a solitude, and surprises a woman going to the well, and she points out to him the chain, and says, “Gaċ uair ċroiṫfeas tu an slaḃra sin ar an mbile, do ġeoḃaiḋ tu ceud curaḋ caṫ-armaċ, agus ni iarrfaid ort aċt an cóṁrac is áil leat, mar atá diar no triúr no ceaṫrar, no ceud,” _i.e._, “every time that you will shake yon chain (suspended) out of the tree, you will get (call forth) a hundred champions battle-armed, and they will only ask of thee the combat thou likest thyself, that is (combat with) two, or three, or four, or a hundred.” Chains are continually mentioned in Irish stories. In the “Little Fort of Allan,” a Fenian story, we read, Ann sin d’éiriġ bollsgaire go bioṫ-urlaṁ agus do ċroiṫ slaḃra éisteaċta na bruiġne, agus d’éisteadar uile go foirtineaċ, _i.e._, “then there arose a herald with active readiness, and they shook the fort’s chain of listening, and they all listened attentively;” and in the tale of “Illan, the Red-armed,” there are three chains in the palace, one of gold, one of silver, and one of findrinny (a kind of metal, perhaps bronze), which are shaken to seat the people at the banquet, and to secure their silence; but whoever spake after the gold chain had been shaken did it on pain of his head.

[In the story of Cuchullain’s youthful feats it is related that, on his first expedition, he came to the court of the three Mac Nechtain, and, according to O’Curry’s Summary (“Manners and Customs,” II., p. 366), “sounded a challenge.” The mode of this sounding is thus described by Prof. Zimmer, in his excellent summary of the _Tain bo Cualgne_ (Zeit, f. vgl., Sprachforschung, 1887, p. 448): “On the lawn before the court stood a stone pillar, around which was a closed chain (or ring), upon which was written in Ogham, that every knight who passed thereby was bound, upon his knightly honour, to issue a challenge. Cuchullain took the stone pillar and threw it into a brook hard by.” This is the nearest analogue I have been able to find to our passage in the old Irish literature (the _Tain_, it should be mentioned, goes back in its present form certainly to the tenth, and, probably, to the seventh century). As many of the Fenian romances assumed a fresh and quasi-definite shape in the twelfth-fourteenth centuries, it is natural to turn for a parallel to the mediæval romances of chivalry. In a twelfth century French romance, the Conte de Graal, which is in some way connected with the body of Gaelic Märchen (whether the connection be, as I think, due to the fact that the French poet worked up lays derived from Celtic sources, or, as Professor Zimmer thinks, that the French romances are the origin of much in current Gaelic folk-tales), when Perceval comes to the Castle of Maidens and enters therein, he finds a table of brass, and hanging from it by a chain of silver, a steel hammer. With this he strikes three blows on the table, and forces the inmates to come to him. Had they not done so the castle would have fallen into ruins. Other parallels from the same romances are less close; thus, when Perceval came to the castle of his enemy, Partinal, he defies him by throwing down his shield, which hangs up on a tree outside the castle (v. 44,400, _et seq._). It is well known that the recognised method of challenging in tournaments was for the challenger to touch his adversary’s shield with the lance. This may possibly be the origin of the “shield-clashing” challenge which occurs several times in Conall Gulban; or, on the other hand, the mediæval practice may be a knightly transformation of an earlier custom. In the thirteenth century prose Perceval le Gallois, when the hero comes to the Turning Castle and finds the door shut, he strikes such a blow with his sword that it enters three inches deep into a marble pillar (Potvin’s edition, p. 196). These mediæval instances do not seem sufficient to explain the incident in our text, and I incline to think that our tale has preserved a genuine trait of old Irish knightly life. In Kennedy’s “Jack the Master, and Jack the Servant” (Fictions, p. 32), the hero takes hold of a “club that hangs by the door ”and uses it as a knocker.—A.N.]

Page 29. They spent the night, &c. This brief run resembles very much a passage in the story of Iollan Arm-dearg, which runs, do rinneadar tri treana de ’n oiḋċe, an ċeud trian re h-ól agus re h-imirt, an dara trian re ceól agus re h-oirfide agus re h-ealaḋan, agus an treas trian re suan agus re sáṁ-ċodlaḋ, agus do rugadar as an oiḋċe sin _i.e._, they made three-thirds of the night; the first third with drink and play, the second third with music and melody and (feats of) science, and the third third with slumber and gentle sleep, and they passed away that night.

Page 33, line 28. This allusion to the horse and the docking is very obscure and curious. The old fellow actually blushed at the absurdity of the passage, yet he went through with it, though apparently unwillingly. He could throw no light upon it, except to excuse himself by saying that “that was how he heard it ever.”

Page 37, line 4. The sword of _three_ edges is curious; the third edge would seem to mean a rounded point, for it can hardly mean triangular like a bayonet. The sword that “never leaves the leavings of a blow behind it,” is common in Irish literature. In that affecting story of Deirdre, Naoise requests to have his head struck off with such a sword, one that Mananan son of Lir, had long before given to himself.

Page 47. The groundwork or motivating of this story is known to all European children, through Hans Andersen’s tale of the “Travelling Companion.”

[I have studied some of the features of this type of stories Arg. Tales, pp. 443-452.—A.N.]

THE ALP-LUACHRA.

Page 49. This legend of the alp-luachra is widely disseminated, and I have found traces of it in all parts of Ireland. The alp-luachra is really a newt, not a lizard, as is generally supposed. He is the lissotriton punctatus of naturalists, and is the only species of newt known in Ireland. The male has an orange belly, red-tipped tail, and olive back. It is in most parts of Ireland a rare reptile enough, and hence probably the superstitious fear with which it is regarded, on the principle of _omne ignotum pro terribli_. This reptile goes under a variety of names in the various counties. In speaking English the peasantry when they do not use the Irish name, call him a “mankeeper,” a word which has probably some reference to the superstition related in our story. He is also called in some counties a “darklooker,” a word which is probably, a corruption of an Irish name for him which I have heard the Kildare people use, dochi-luachair (daċuiḋ luaċra), a word not found in the dictionaries. In Waterford, again, he is called arc-luachra, and the Irish MSS. call him arc-luachra (earc-luaċra). The alt-pluachra of the text is a mis-pronunciation of the proper name, alp-luachra. In the Arran Islands they have another name, ail-ċuaċ. I have frequently heard of people swallowing one while asleep. The symptoms, they say, are that the person swells enormously, and is afflicted with a thirst which makes him drink canfuls and pails of water or buttermilk, or anything else he can lay his hand on. In the south of Ireland it is believed that if something savoury is cooked on a pan, and the person’s head held over it, the mankeeper will come out. A story very like the one here given is related in Waterford, but of a dar daol, or _daraga dheel_, as he is there called, a venomous insect, which has even more legends attached to him than the alp-luachra. In this county, too, they say that if you turn the alp-luachra over on its back, and lick it, it will cure burns. Keating, the Irish historian and theologian, alludes quaintly to this reptile in his Tri Biorġaoiṫe an Bháir, so finely edited in the original the other day by Dr. Atkinson. “Since,” says Keating, “prosperity or worldly store is the weapon of the adversary (the devil), what a man ought to do is to spend it in killing the adversary, that is, by bestowing it on God’s poor. The thing which we read in Lactantius agrees with this, that if an airc-luachra were to inflict a wound on anyone, what he ought to do is to shake a pinchful of the ashes of the airc-luachra upon the wound, and he will be cured thereby; and so, if worldly prosperity wounds the conscience, what you ought to do is to put a poultice of the same prosperity to cure the wound which the covetousness by which you have amassed it has made in your conscience, by distributing upon the poor of God all that remains over your own necessity.” The practice which the fourth-century Latin alludes to, is in Ireland to-day transferred to the dar-daol, or goevius olens of the naturalists, which is always burnt as soon as found. I have often heard people say:—“Kill a keerhogue (clock or little beetle); burn a dar-dael.”

Page 59. Boccuch (bacaċ), literally a lame man, is, or rather was, the name of a very common class of beggars about the beginning of this century. Many of these men were wealthy enough, and some used to go about with horses to collect the “alms” which the people unwillingly gave them. From all accounts they appear to have been regular black-mailers, and to have extorted charity partly through inspiring physical and partly moral terror, for the satire, at least of some of them, was as much dreaded as their cudgels. Here is a curious specimen of their truculence from a song called the Bacach Buidhe, now nearly forgotten:—

Is bacach mé tá air aon chois, siúbhalfaidh mé go spéifeaṁail, Ceannóchaidh mé bréidin i g-Cill-Cainnigh do’n bhraois, Cuirfead cóta córuiġthe gleusta, a’s búcla buidhe air m’aon chois, A’s nach maith mo shlighe bidh a’s eudaigh o chaill mo chosa siúbhal! Ni’l bacach ná fear-mála o Ṡligeach go Cinn-tráile Agus ó Bheul-an-átha go Baile-buidhe na Midhe, Nach bhfuil agam faoi árd-chíos, agus cróin anaghaidh na ráithe, No mineóchainn a g-cnámha le bata glas daraigh.

_i.e._,

I am a boccugh who goes on one foot, I will travel airily, I will buy frize in Kilkenny for the breeches(?) I will put a well-ordered prepared coat and yellow buckles on my one foot, And isn’t it good, my way of getting food and clothes since my feet lost their walk. There is no boccuch or bagman from Sligo to Kinsale And from Ballina to Ballybwee (Athboy) in Meath, That I have not under high rent to me—a crown every quarter from them— Or I’d pound their bones small with a green oak stick.

The memory of these formidable guests is nearly vanished, and the boccuch in our story is only a feeble old beggarman. I fancy this tale of evicting the alt-pluachra family from their human abode is fathered upon a good many people as well as upon the father of the present MacDermot. [Is the peasant belief in the Alp-Luachra the originating idea of the well-known Irish Rabelaisian 14th century tale “The Vision of McConglinny?”—A.N.]

THE WEASEL.