Part 17

Page 73. The weasel, like the cat, is an animal that has many legends and superstitions attaching to it. I remember hearing from an old shanachie, now unfortunately dead, a long and extraordinary story about the place called Chapelizod, a few miles from Dublin, which he said was Séipeul-easóg, the “weasel’s chapel,” in Irish, but which is usually supposed to have received its name from the Princess Iseult of Arthurian romance. The story was the account of how the place came by this name. How he, who was a Connachtman, and never left his native county except to reap the harvest in England, came by this story I do not know; but I imagine it must have been told him by some one in the neighbourhood, in whose house he spent the night, whilst walking across the island on his way to Dublin or Drogheda harbour. The weasel is a comical little animal, and one might very well think it was animated with a spirit. I have been assured by an old man, and one whom I have always found fairly veracious, that when watching for ducks beside a river one evening a kite swooped down and seized a weasel, with which it rose up again into the air. His brother fired, and the kite came down, the weasel still in its claws, and unhurt. The little animal then came up, and stood in front of the two men where they sat, and nodded and bowed his head to them about twenty times over; “it was,” said the old man, “thanking us he was.” The weasel is a desperate fighter, and always makes for the throat. What, however, in Ireland is called a weazel, is really a stoat, just as what is called a crow in Ireland is really a rook, and what is called a crane is really a heron.

Cáuher-na-mart, to which Paudyeen (diminutive of Paddy) was bound, means the “city of the beeves,” but is now called in English Westport, one of the largest towns in Mayo. It was _apropos_ of its long and desolate streets of ruined stores, with nothing in them, that some one remarked he saw Ireland’s characteristics there in a nutshell—“an itch after greatness and nothingness;” a remark which was applicable enough to the squireocracy and bourgeoisie of the last century.

Page 79. The “big black dog” seems a favourite shape for the evil spirit to take. He appears three times in this volume.

Page 81. The little man, with his legs astride the barrel, appears to be akin to the south of Ireland spirit, the clooricaun, a being who is not known, at least by this name, in the north or west of the island. See Crofton Croker’s “Haunted Cellar.”

Page 87. “The green hill opened,” etc. The fairies are still called Tuatha de Danann by the older peasantry, and all the early Irish literature agrees that the home of the Tuatha was in the hills, after the Milesians had taken to themselves the plains. Thus in the story of the “Piper and the Pooka,” in the Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta, not translated here, a door opens in the hill of Croagh Patrick, and the pair walk in and find women dancing inside. Dónal, the name of the little piper, is now Anglicised into Daniel, except in one or two Irish families which retain the old form still. The _coash-t’ya bower_, in which the fairy consorts ride, means literally “the deaf coach,” perhaps from the rumbling sound it is supposed to make, and the banshee is sometimes supposed to ride in it. It is an omen of ill to those who meet it. It seems rather out of place amongst the fairy population, being, as it is, a gloomy harbinger of death, which will pass even through a crowded town. Cnoc Matha, better Magha, the hill of the plain, is near the town of Tuam, in Galway. Finvara is the well-known king of the fairy host of Connacht. In Lady Wilde’s “Ethna, the Bride,” Finvara is said to have carried off a beautiful girl into his hill, whom her lover recovers with the greatest difficulty. When he gets her back at last, she lies on her bed for a year and a day as if dead. At the end of that time he hears voices saying that he may recover her by unloosing her girdle, burning it, and burying in the earth the enchanted pin that fastened it. This was, probably, the slumber-pin which we have met so often in the “King of Ireland’s Son.” Nuala, the name of the fairy queen, was a common female name amongst us until the last hundred years or so. The sister of the last O’Donnell, for whom Mac an Bhaird wrote his exquisite elegy, so well translated by Mangan—

“Oh, woman of the piercing wail, That mournest o’er yon mound of clay”—

was Nuala. I do not think it is ever used now as a Christian name at all, having shared the unworthy fate of many beautiful Gaelic names of women common a hundred years ago, such as Mève, Una, Sheelah, Moreen, etc.

Slieve Belgadaun occurs also in another story which I heard, called the Bird of Enchantment, in which a fairy desires some one to bring a sword of light “from the King of the Firbolg, at the foot of Slieve Belgadaun.” Nephin is a high hill near Crossmolina, in North Mayo.

Page 89. Stongirya (stangaire), a word not given in dictionaries, means, I think, “a mean fellow.” The dove’s hole, near the village of Cong, in the west of the county Mayo, is a deep cavity in the ground, and when a stone is thrown down into it you hear it rumbling and crashing from side to side of the rocky wall, as it descends, until the sound becomes too faint to hear. It is the very place to be connected with the marvellous.

LEEAM O’ROONEY’S BURIAL.

Page 95. Might not Spenser have come across some Irish legend of an imitation man made by enchantment, which gave him the idea of Archimago’s imitation of Una:

“Who all this time, with charms and hidden artes, Had made a lady of that other spright, And framed of liquid ayre her tender partes, So lively and so like in all men’s sight That weaker sence it could have ravished quite,” etc.

I never remember meeting this easy _deus ex machinâ_ for bringing about a complication before.

Page 101. Leeam imprecates “the devil from me,” thus skilfully turning a curse into a blessing, as the Irish peasantry invariably do, even when in a passion. _H’onnam one d’youl_—“my soul _from_ the devil” is an ordinary exclamation expressive of irritation or wonderment.

GULLEESH.

Page 104. When I first heard this story I thought that the name of the hero was Goillís, the pronunciation of which in English letters would be Gul-yeesh; but I have since heard the name pronounced more distinctly, and am sure that it is Giollaois, g’yulleesh, which is a corruption of the name Giolla-íosa, a not uncommon Christian name amongst the seventeenth century Gaels. I was, however, almost certain that the man (now dead) from whom I first got this story, pronounced the word as Gulyeesh, anent which my friend Mr. Thomas Flannery furnished me at the time with the following interesting note:—Ní cosṁúil gur Giolla-íosa atá ’san ainm Goillís, nír ḃ’ ḟeidir “Giolla-íosa” do ḋul i n “Goillis.” Saoilim gur b’ionann Goillís agus Goill-ġéis no Gaill-ġéis, agus is ionann “géis” agus “eala.” Is cuiṁne liom “Muirġéis” ’sna h-“Annalalaiḃ,” agus is iomḋa ainm duine ṫigeas o anmannaiḃ eun ċoṁ maiṫ le ó anmannaiḃ beaṫaċ, mar ata bran, fiaċ, lon, loinin, seaḃac, ⁊c. ’Sé Goillís na g-cor duḃ fós. Naċ aiṫne ḋuit gur leas-ainm an eala “cos-duḃ” i mórán d’áitiḃ i n-Eirinn. Tá neiṫe eile ’san sceul sin do ḃeir orm a ṁeas gur de na sgeultaiḃ a ḃaineas le h-ealaiḃ no géisiḃ é. Naċ aisteaċ an ni go dtug bainṗrionnsa taiṫneaṁ do ḃuaċaill cos-duḃ cos-salaċ leisceaṁuil mar é? Naċ ait an niḋ fós naċ dtugṫar an leas-ainm dó arís, tar éis beagáin focal air dtús ó sin amaċ go deireaḋ. Dearmadṫar an leas-ainm agus an fáṫ fá ḃfuair sé é. _i.e._, “It is not likely that the name Goillis is Giolla-iosa; the one could not be changed into the other. I think that Goillis is the same as Goill-ghéis, or Gaill-ghéis (_i.e._, foreign swan). Géis means swan. I remember a name Muirgheis (sea swan) in the Annals; and there is many a man’s name that comes from the names of birds as well as from the names of animals, such as Bran (raven), Fiach (scald crow), Lon and Loinin (blackbird), Seabhac (falcon), etc. Moreover, he is Goillis _of the black feet_. Do you not know that the black-foot is a name for the swan in many parts of Ireland. There are other things in this story which make me believe that it is of those tales which treat of swans or géises. Is it not a strange thing that the princess should take a liking to a dirty-footed, black-footed, lazy boy like him? Is it not curious also that the nickname of black-foot is not given to him, after a few words at the beginning, from that out to the end? The nickname is forgotten, and the cause for which he got it.”

This is certainly curious, as Mr. Flannery observes, and is probably due to the story being imperfectly remembered by the shanachie. In order to motivate the black feet at all, Guleesh should be made to say that he would never wash his feet till he made a princess fall in love with him, or something of that nature. This was probably the case originally, but these stories must be all greatly impaired during the last half century, since people ceased to take an interest in things Irish.

There are two stories in Lady Wilde’s book that somewhat resemble this. “The Midnight Ride,” a short story of four pages, in which the hero frightens the Pope by pretending to set his palace on fire; but the story ends thus, as do many of Crofton Croker’s—“And from that hour to this his wife believed that he dreamt the whole story as he lay under the hayrick on his way home from a carouse with the boys.” I take this, however, to be the sarcastic nineteenth century touch of an over-refined collector, for in all my experience I never knew a shanachie attribute the adventures of his hero to a dream. The other tale is called the “Stolen Bride,” and is a story about the “kern of Querin,” who saves a bride from the fairies on November Eve, but she will neither speak nor taste food. That day year he hears the fairies say that the way to cure her is to make her eat food off her father’s table-cloth. She does this, and is cured. The trick which Gulleesh plays upon the Pope reminds us of the fifteenth century story of Dr. Faustus and his dealings with his Holiness.

[Cf. also the story of Michael Scott’s journey to Rome, “Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition,” Vol. I., p. 46. The disrespectful way in which the Pope is spoken of in these tales does not seem due to Protestantism, as is the case with the Faustus story, although, as I have pointed out, there are some curious points of contact between Michael Scott and Faustus. Guleesh seems to be an early Nationalist who thought more of his village and friend than of the head of his religion.—A.N.]

The description of the wedding is something like that in Crofton Croker’s “Master and Man,” only the scene in that story is laid at home.

The story of Gulleesh appears to be a very rare one. I have never been able to find a trace of it outside the locality (near where the counties of Sligo, Mayo, and Roscommon meet) in which I first heard it.

[It thus seems to be a very late working-up of certain old incidents with additions of new and incongruous ones.—A.N.]

Page 112. “The rose and the lily were fighting together in her face.” This is a very common expression of the Irish bards. In one of Carolan’s unpublished poems he says of Bridget Cruise, with whom he was in love in his youth:—“In her countenance there is the lily, the whitest and the brightest—a combat of the world—madly wrestling with the rose. Behold the conflict of the pair; the goal—the rose will not lose it of her will; victory—the lily cannot gain it; oh, God! is it not a hard struggle!” etc.

Page 115. “I call and cross (or consecrate) you to myself,” says Gulleesh. This is a phrase in constant use with Irish speakers, and proceeds from an underlying idea that certain phenomena are caused by fairy agency. If a child falls, if a cow kicks when being milked, if an animal is restless, I have often heard a woman cry, goirim a’s castraicim ṫu, “I call and cross you,” often abbreviated into goirim, goirim, merely, _i.e._, “I call, I call.”

THE WELL OF D’YERREE-IN-DOWAN.

Page 129. There are two other versions of this story, one a rather evaporated one, filtered through English, told by Kennedy, in which the Dall Glic is a wise old hermit; and another, and much better one, by Curtin. The Dall Glic, wise blind man, figures in several stories which I have got, as the king’s counsellor. I do not remember ever meeting him in our literature. Bwee-sownee, the name of the king’s castle, is, I think, a place in Mayo, and probably would be better written Buiḋe-ṫaṁnaiġ.

Page 131. This beautiful lady in red silk, who thus appears to the prince, and who comes again to him at the end of the story, is a curious creation of folk fancy. She may personify good fortune. There is nothing about her in the two parallel stories from Curtin and Kennedy.

Page 133. This “tight-loop” (lúb teann) can hardly be a bow, since the ordinary word for that is _bógha_; but it may, perhaps, be a name for a cross-bow.

Page 136. The story is thus invested with a moral, for it is the prince’s piety in giving what was asked of him in the honour of God which enabled the queen to find him out, and eventually marry him.

Page 137. In the story of Cailleaċ na fiacaile fada, in my Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta, not translated in this book, an old hag makes a boat out of a thimble, which she throws into the water, as the handsome lady does here.

Page 141. This incident of the ladder is not in Curtin’s story, which makes the brothers mount the queen’s horse and get thrown. There is a very curious account of a similar ladder in the story of the “Slender Grey Kerne,” of which I possess a good MS., made by a northern scribe in 1763. The passage is of interest, because it represents a trick something almost identical with which I have heard Colonel Olcott, the celebrated American theosophist lecturer, say he saw Indian jugglers frequently performing. Colonel Olcott, who came over to examine Irish fairy lore in the light of theosophic science, was of opinion that these men could bring a person under their power so as to make him imagine that he saw whatever the juggler wished him to see. He especially mentioned this incident of making people see a man going up a ladder. The MS., of which I may as well give the original, runs thus:—

Iar sin ṫug an ceiṫearnaċ mála amaċ ó na asgoill, agus ṫug ceirtle ṡíoda amaċ as a ṁála, agus do ṫeilg suas i ḃfriṫing na fiormamuinte í, agas do rinne drémire ḋí, agus ṫug gearrḟiaḋ amaċ arís agus do leig suas annsa dréimire é. Ṫug gaḋar cluais-dearg amaċ arís agus do leig suas anḋiaiġ an ġearrḟiaḋ é. Tug cu faiteaċ foluaimneaċ amaċ agus do leig suas anḋiaiġ an ġearrḟiaḋ agus an ġaḋair í, agus a duḃairt, is ḃao(ġ)laċ liom, air sé, go n-íosfaiḋ an gaḋar agus an cú an gearrḟiaḋ, agus ni mór liom anacal do ċur air an gearrḟiaḋ. Ṫug ann sin ógánaċ deas a n-eideaḋ ró ṁaiṫ amaċ as an mála agus do leig suas anḋiaiġ an ġearrfiaḋ agus an ġaḋair agus na con é. Ṫug cailín áluind a n-éidead ró ḋeas amaċ as an mála agus do leig suas anḋiaiġ an ġearrḟaiḋ an ġaḋair an ógánaiġ agus na con í.

Is dona do éiriġ ḋaṁ anois, ar an Ceiṫearnaċ óir atá an t-óganaċ aig dul ag pógaḋ mo ṁná agus an cú aig creim an ġearrḟiaḋ. Do ṫarraing an Ceiṫearnaċ an dréimire anuas, agus do fuair an t-ógánaċ fairre(?) an mnaoi agus an cu aig creim an ġearrḟiaḋ aṁuil a duḃairt, i.e., after that the kerne took out a bag from under his arm-pit and he brought out a ball of silk from the bag, and he threw it up into the expanse(?) of the firmament, and it became a ladder; and again he took out a hare and let it up the ladder. Again he took out a red-eared hound and let it up after the hare. Again he took out a timid frisking dog, and he let her up after the hare and the hound, and said, “I am afraid,” said he, “the hound and the dog will eat the hare, and I think I ought to send some relief to the hare.” Then he took out of the bag a handsome youth in excellent apparel, and he let him up after the hare and the hound and the dog. He took out of the bag a lovely girl in beautiful attire, and he let her up after the hare, the hound, the youth, and the dog.

“It’s badly it happened to me now,” says the kerne, “for the youth is going kissing my woman, and the dog gnawing the hare.” The kerne drew down the ladder again and he found the youth “going along with the woman, and the dog gnawing the hare,” as he said.

The English “Jack and the Beanstalk” is about the best-known ladder story.

Page 141. This story was not invented to explain the existence of the twelve tribes of Galway, as the absence of any allusion to them in all the parallel versions proves; but the application of it to them is evidently the brilliant afterthought of some Galwegian shanachie.

THE COURT OF CRINNAWN.

Page 142. The court of Crinnawn is an old ruin on the river Lung, which divides the counties of Roscommon and Mayo, about a couple of miles from the town of Ballaghadereen. I believe, despite the story, that it was built by one of the Dillon family, and not so long ago either. There is an Irish prophecy extant in these parts about the various great houses in Roscommon. Clonalis, the seat of the O’Connor Donn—or Don, as they perversely insist on spelling it; Dungar, the seat of the De Freynes; Loughlinn, of the Dillons, etc.; and amongst other verses, there is one which prophecies that “no roof shall rise on Crinnawn,” which the people say was fulfilled, the place having never been inhabited or even roofed. In the face of this, how the story of Crinnawn, son of Belore, sprang into being is to me quite incomprehensible, and I confess I have been unable to discover any trace of this particular story on the Roscommon side of the river, nor do I know from what source the shanachie, Mr. Lynch Blake, from whom I got it, become possessed of it. Balor of the evil eye, who figures in the tale of “The Children of Tuireann,” was not Irish at all, but a “Fomorian.” The _pattern_, accompanied with such funest results for Mary Kerrigan, is a festival held in honour of the _patron_ saint. These patterns were common in many places half a century ago, and were great scenes of revelry and amusement, and often, too, of hard fighting. But these have been of late years stamped out, like everything else distinctively Irish and lively.

[This story is a curious mixture of common peasant belief about haunted raths and houses, with mythical matter probably derived from books. Balor appears in the well-known tale of MacKineely, taken down by O’Donovan, in 1855, from Shane O’Dugan of Tory Island (Annals. I. 18, and cf. Rhys, Hibbert Lect., p. 314), but I doubt whether in either case the appearance of the name testifies to a genuine folk-belief in this mythological personage, one of the principal representatives of the powers of darkness in the Irish god-saga.—A.N.]

NEIL O’CARREE.

Page 148. The abrupt beginning of this story is no less curious than the short, jerky sentences in which it is continued. Mr. Larminie, who took down this story phonetically, and word for word, from a native of Glencolumkille, in Donegal, informed me that all the other stories of the same narrator were characterized by the same extraordinary style. I certainly have met nothing like it among any of my shanachies. The _crumskeen_ and _galskeen_ which Neil orders the smith to make for him, are instruments of which I never met or heard mention elsewhere. According to their etymology they appear to mean “stooping-knife” and “bright-knife,” and were, probably, at one time, well-known names of Irish surgical instruments, of which no trace exists, unless it be in some of the mouldering and dust-covered medical MSS. from which Irish practitioners at one time drew their knowledge. The name of the hero, if written phonetically, would be more like Nee-al O Corrwy than Neil O Carree, but it is always difficult to convey Gaelic sounds in English letters. When Neil takes up the head out of the skillet (a good old Shaksperian word, by-the-by, old French, _escuellette_, in use all over Ireland, and adopted into Gaelic), it falls in a _gliggar_ or _gluggar_. This Gaelic word is onomatopeic, and largely in vogue with the English-speaking population. Anything rattling or gurgling, like water in an india-rubber ball, makes a _gligger_; hence, an egg that is no longer fresh is called a glugger, because it makes a noise when shaken. I came upon this word the other day, raised proudly aloft from its provincial obscurity, in O’Donovan Rossa’s paper, the _United Irishman_, every copy of which is headed with this weighty _spruch_, indicative of his political faith:

“As soon will a goose sitting upon a glugger hatch goslings, as an Irishman, sitting in an English Parliament, will hatch an Irish Parliament.”

This story is motivated like “The King of Ireland’s Son.” It is one of the many tales based upon an act of compassion shown to the dead.

TRUNK-WITHOUT-HEAD.

Page 157. This description of the decapitated ghost sitting astride the beer-barrel, reminds one of Crofton Croker’s “Clooricaun,” and of the hag’s son in the story of “Paudyeen O’Kelly and the Weasel.” In Scotch Highland tradition, there is a “trunk-without-head,” who infested a certain ford, and killed people who attempted to pass that way; he is not the subject, however, of any regular story.

In a variant of this tale the hero’s name is Labhras (Laurence) and the castle where the ghost appeared is called Baile-an-bhroin (Ballinvrone). It is also mentioned, that when the ghost appeared in court, he came in streaming with blood, as he was the day he was killed, and that the butler, on seeing him, fainted.

It is Donal’s courage which saves him from the ghost, just as happens in another story which I got, and which is a close Gaelic parallel to Grimm’s “Man who went out to learn to shake with fear.” The ghost whom the hero lays explains that he had been for thirty years waiting to meet some one who would not be afraid of him. There is an evident moral in this.

THE HAGS OF THE LONG TEETH.

Page 162. Long teeth are a favourite adjunct to horrible personalities in folk-fancy. There is in my “Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta,” another story of a hag of the long tooth; and in a story I got in Connacht, called the “Speckled Bull,” there is a giant whose teeth are long enough to make a walking-staff for him, and who invites the hero to come to him “until I draw you under my long, cold teeth.”

Loughlinn is a little village a few miles to the north-west of Castlerea, in the county Roscommon, not far from Mayo; and Drimnagh wood is a thick plantation close by. Ballyglas is the adjoining townland. There are two of the same name, upper and lower, and I do not know to which the story refers.

[In this very curious tale a family tradition seems to have got mixed up with the common belief about haunted raths and houses. It is not quite clear why the daughters should be bespelled for their father’s sin. This conception could not easily be paralleled, I believe, from folk-belief in other parts of Ireland. I rather take it that in the original form of the story the sisters helped, or, at all events, countenanced their father, or, perhaps, were punished because they countenanced the brother’s parricide. The discomfiture of the priest is curious.—A.N.]

WILLIAM OF THE TREE.

Page 168. I have no idea who this Granya-Öi was. Her appearance in this story is very mysterious, for I have never met any trace of her elsewhere. The name appears to mean Granya the Virgin.