Chapter 8
'Sorra care, I care,' says the dhraggin; 'for you're as good as ready money in my pocket this minit, for I'll lie undher this three,' says he, 'and sooner or later you must fall to my share'; and sure enough he sot down, and began to pick his teeth with his tail, afther the heavy brekquest he made that mornin' (for he ate a whole village, let alone the horse), and he got dhrowsy at last, and fell asleep; but before he wint to sleep, he wound himself all round about the three, all as one as a lady windin' ribbon round her finger, so that the waiver could not escape.
Well, as soon as the waiver knew he was dead asleep, by the snorin' of him--and every snore he let out of him was like a clap o' thunder--that minit the waiver began to creep down the three, as cautious as a fox; and he was very nigh hand the bottom, when, bad cess to it, a thievin' branch he was dipindin' an bruk, and down he fell right a-top o' the dhraggin; but if he did, good luck was an his side, for where should he fall but with his two legs right acrass the dhraggin's neck, and, my jew'l, he laid howlt o' the baste's ears, and there he kept his grip, for the dhraggin wakened and endayvoured for to bite him; but, you see, by rayson the waiver was behind his ears, he could not come at him, and, with that, he endayvoured for to shake him off; but the divil a stir could he stir the waiver; and though he shuk all the scales an his body, he could not turn the scale agin the waiver.
'By the hokey, this is too bad intirely,' says the dhraggin; 'but if you won't let go,' says he, 'by the powers o' wildfire, I'll give you a ride that 'ill astonish your siven small sinses, my boy'; and, with that, away he flew like mad; and where do you think he did fly?--bedad, he flew sthraight for Dublin, divil a less. But the waiver bein' an his neck was a great disthress to him, and he would rather have had him an _inside passenger_; but, anyway, he flew and he flew till he kem _slap_ up agin the palace o' the king; for, bein' blind with the rage, he never seen it, and he knocked his brains out--that is, the small thrifle he had--and down he fell spacheless. An' you see, good luck would have it, that the King o' Dublin was lookin' out iv' his dhrawin'-room windy, for divarshin, that day also, and whin he seen the waiver ridin' an the fiery dhraggin (for he was blazin' like a tar-barrel), he called out to his coortyers to come and see the show. 'By the powdhers o' war, here comes the knight arriant,' says the king, 'ridin' the dhraggin that's all afire, and if he gets _into the palace_, yiz must be ready wid the _fire ingines_,' says he, 'for to _put him out_.' But when they seen the dhraggin fall outside, they all run downstairs and scampered into the palace-yard for to circumspect the _curosity_; and by the time they got down, the waiver had got off o' the dhraggin's neck, and runnin' up to the king, says he, 'Plaze your holiness,' says he, 'I did not think myself worthy of killin' this facetious baste, so I brought him to yourself for to do him the honour of decripitation by your own royal five fingers. But I tamed him first, before I allowed him the liberty for to _dar'_ to appear in your royal prisince, and you'll oblige me if you'll just make your mark with your own hand upon the onruly baste's neck.' And with that the king, sure enough, dhrew out his swoord and took the head aff the _dirty_ brute as _clane_ as a new pin. Well, there was great rejoicin' in the coort that the dhraggin was killed; and says the king to the little waiver, says he, 'You are a knight arriant as it is, and so it would be of no use for to knight you over agin; but I will make you a lord,' says he.
'O Lord!' says the waiver, thunder-struck like at his own good luck.
'I will,' says the king; 'and as you are the first man I ever heer'd tell of that rode a dhraggin, you shall be called Lord _Mount_ Dhraggin,' says he.
'And where's my estates, plaze your holiness?' says the waiver, who always had a sharp look-out afther the main chance.
'Oh, I didn't forget that,' says the king; 'it is my royal pleasure to provide well for you, and for that rayson I make you a present of all the dhraggins in the world, and give you power over them from this out,' says he.
'Is that all?' says the waiver.
'All!' says the king. 'Why, you ongrateful little vagabone, was the like ever given to any man before?'
'I b'lieve not, indeed,' says the waiver; 'many thanks to your majesty.'
'But that is not all I'll do for you,' says the king; 'I'll give you my daughther too in marriage,' says he. Now, you see, that was nothin' more than what he promised the waiver in his first promise; for, by all accounts, the king's daughther was the greatest dhraggin ever was seen, and had the divil's own tongue, and a beard a yard long, which she _purtended_ was put an her by way of a penance by Father Mulcahy, her confissor; but it was well known it was in the family for ages, and no wondher it was so long, by rayson of that same.
APPENDIX
CLASSIFICATION OF IRISH FAIRIES
Irish Fairies divide themselves into two great classes: the sociable and the solitary. The first are in the main kindly, and the second full of all uncharitableness.
THE SOCIABLE FAIRIES
These creatures, who go about in troops, and quarrel, and make love, much as men and women do, are divided into land fairies or Sheoques (Ir. _Sidheog_, 'a little fairy,') and water fairies or Merrows (Ir. _Moruadh_, 'a sea maid'; the masculine is unknown). At the same time I am inclined to think that the term Sheoque may be applied to both upon occasion, for I have heard of a whole village turning out to hear two red-capped water fairies, who were very 'little fairies' indeed, play upon the bagpipes.
1. _The Sheoques._--The Sheoques proper, however, are the spirits that haunt the sacred thorn bushes and the green raths. All over Ireland are little fields circled by ditches, and supposed to be ancient fortifications and sheep-folds. These are the raths, or forts, or 'royalties,' as they are variously called. Here, marrying and giving in marriage, live the land fairies. Many a mortal they are said to have enticed down into their dim world. Many more have listened to their fairy music, till all human cares and joys drifted from their hearts and they became great peasant seers or 'Fairy Doctors,' or great peasant musicians or poets like Carolan, who gathered his tunes while sleeping on a fairy rath; or else they died in a year and a day, to live ever after among the fairies. These Sheoques are on the whole good; but one most malicious habit have they--a habit worthy of a witch. They steal children and leave a withered fairy, a thousand or maybe two thousand years old, instead. Three or four years ago a man wrote to one of the Irish papers, telling of a case in his own village, and how the parish priest made the fairies deliver the stolen child up again. At times full-grown men and women have been taken. Near the village of Coloney, Sligo, I have been told, lives an old woman who was taken in her youth. When she came home at the end of seven years she had no toes, for she had danced them off. Now and then one hears of some real injury being done a person by the land fairies, but then it is nearly always deserved. They are said to have killed two people in the last six months in the County Down district where I am now staying. But then these persons had torn up thorn bushes belonging to the Sheoques.
2. _The Merrows._--These water fairies are said to be common. I asked a peasant woman once whether the fishermen of her village had ever seen one. 'Indeed, they don't like to see them at all,' she answered, 'for they always bring bad weather.' Sometimes the Merrows come out of the sea in the shape of little hornless cows. When in their own shape, they have fishes' tails and wear a red cap called in Irish _cohuleen driuth_ (p. 79). The men among them have, according to Croker, green teeth, green hair, pigs' eyes, and red noses; but their women are beautiful, and sometimes prefer handsome fishermen to their green-haired lovers. Near Bantry, in the last century, lived a woman covered with scales like a fish, who was descended, as the story goes, from such a marriage. I have myself never heard tell of this grotesque appearance of the male Merrows, and think it probably a merely local Munster tradition.
THE SOLITARY FAIRIES
These are nearly all gloomy and terrible in some way. There are, however, some among them who have light hearts and brave attire.
1. _The Lepricaun_ (Ir. _Leith bhrogan_, _i.e._ the one shoe maker).--This creature is seen sitting under a hedge mending a shoe, and one who catches him can make him deliver up his crocks of gold, for he is a miser of great wealth; but if you take your eyes off him the creature vanishes like smoke. He is said to be the child of an evil spirit and a debased fairy, and wears, according to McAnally, a red coat with seven buttons in each row, and a cocked-hat, on the point of which he sometimes spins like a top. In Donegal he goes clad in a great frieze coat.
2. _The Cluricaun_ (Ir. _Clobhair-cean_ in O'Kearney).--Some writers consider this to be another name for the Lepricaun, given him when he has laid aside his shoe-making at night and goes on the spree. The Cluricauns' occupations are robbing wine-cellars and riding sheep and shepherds' dogs for a livelong night, until the morning finds them panting and mud-covered.
3. _The Gonconer or Ganconagh_ (Ir. _Gean-canogh_, _i.e._ love-talker).--This is a creature of the Lepricaun type, but, unlike him, is a great idler. He appears in lonely valleys, always with a pipe in his mouth, and spends his time in making love to shepherdesses and milkmaids.
4. _The Far Darrig_ (Ir. _Fear Dearg_, _i.e._ red man).--This is the practical joker of the other world. The wild Sligo story I give of 'A Fairy Enchantment' was probably his work. Of these solitary and mainly evil fairies there is no more lubberly wretch than this same Far Darrig. Like the next phantom, he presides over evil dreams.
5. _The Pooka_ (Ir. _Púca_, a word derived by some from _poc_, a he-goat).--The Pooka seems of the family of the nightmare. He has most likely never appeared in human form, the one or two recorded instances being probably mistakes, he being mixed up with the Far Darrig. His shape is usually that of a horse, a bull, a goat, eagle, or ass. His delight is to get a rider, whom he rushes with through ditches and rivers and over mountains, and shakes off in the gray of the morning. Especially does he love to plague a drunkard: a drunkard's sleep is his kingdom. At times he takes more unexpected forms than those of beast or bird. The one that haunts the Dun of Coch-na-Phuca in Kilkenny takes the form of a fleece of wool, and at night rolls out into the surrounding fields, making a buzzing noise that so terrifies the cattle that unbroken colts will run to the nearest man and lay their heads upon his shoulder for protection.
6. _The Dullahan._--This is a most gruesome thing. He has no head, or carries it under his arm. Often he is seen driving a black coach called coach-a-bower (Ir. _Coite-bodhar_), drawn by headless horses. It rumbles to your door, and if you open it a basin of blood is thrown in your face. It is an omen of death to the houses where it pauses. Such a coach not very long ago went through Sligo in the gray of the morning, as was told me by a sailor who believed he saw it. In one village I know its rumbling is said to be heard many times in the year.
7. _The Leanhaun Shee_ (Ir. _Leanhaun sidhe_, _i.e._ fairy mistress).--This spirit seeks the love of men. If they refuse, she is their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding one to take their place. Her lovers waste away, for she lives on their life. Most of the Gaelic poets, down to quite recent times, have had a Leanhaun Shee, for she gives inspiration to her slaves and is indeed the Gaelic muse--this malignant fairy. Her lovers, the Gaelic poets, died young. She grew restless, and carried them away to other worlds, for death does not destroy her power.
8. _The Far Gorta_ (man of hunger).--This is an emaciated fairy that goes through the land in famine time, begging and bringing good luck to the giver.
9. _The Banshee_ (Ir. _Bean-sidhe_, _i.e._ fairy woman).--This fairy, like the Fear Gorta, differs from the general run of solitary fairies by its generally good disposition. She is perhaps not really one of them at all, but a sociable fairy grown solitary through much sorrow. The name corresponds to the less common Far Shee (Ir. _Fear Sidhe_), a man fairy. She wails, as most people know, over the death of a member of some old Irish family. Sometimes she is an enemy of the house and screams with triumph, but more often a friend. When more than one Banshee comes to cry, the man or woman who is dying must have been very holy or very brave. Occasionally she is most undoubtedly one of the sociable fairies. Cleena, once an Irish princess and then a Munster goddess, and now a Sheoque, is thus mentioned by the greatest of Irish antiquarians.
O'Donovan, writing in 1849 to a friend, who quotes his words in the _Dublin University Magazine_, says: 'When my grandfather died in Leinster in 1798, Cleena came all the way from Ton Cleena to lament him; but she has not been heard ever since lamenting any of our race, though I believe she still weeps in the mountains of Drumaleaque in her own country, where so many of the race of Eoghan More are dying of starvation.' The Banshee on the other hand who cries with triumph is often believed to be no fairy but a ghost of one wronged by an ancestor of the dying. Some say wrongly that she never goes beyond the seas, but dwells always in her own country. Upon the other hand, a distinguished writer on anthropology assures me that he has heard her on 1st December 1867, in Pital, near Libertad, Central America, as he rode through a deep forest. She was dressed in pale yellow, and raised a cry like the cry of a bat. She came to announce the death of his father. This is her cry, written down by him with the help of a Frenchman and a violin.
He saw and heard her again on 5th February 1871, at 16 Devonshire Street, Queen's Square, London. She came this time to announce the death of his eldest child; and in 1884 he again saw and heard her at 28 East Street, Queen's Square, the death of his mother being the cause.
The Banshee is called _badh_ or _bowa_ in East Munster, and is named _Bachuntha_ by Banim in one of his novels.
_Other Fairies and Spirits._--Besides the foregoing, we have other solitary fairies, of which too little definite is known to give them each a separate mention. They are the House Spirits, of whom 'Teigue of the Lee' is probably an instance; the Water Sherie, a kind of will-o'-the-wisp; the Sowlth, a formless luminous creature; the Pastha (_Piast-bestia_), the lake dragon, a guardian of hidden treasure; and the Bo men fairies, who live in the marshes of County Down and destroy the unwary. They may be driven away by a blow from a particular kind of sea-weed. I suspect them of being Scotch fairies imported by Scotch settlers. Then there is the great tribe of ghosts called Thivishes in some parts.
These are all the fairies and spirits I have come across in Irish folklore. There are probably many others undiscovered.
W. B. YEATS.
CO. DOWN, _June 1891_.
AUTHORITIES ON IRISH FOLKLORE
Croker's _Legends of the South of Ireland_; Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends of Ireland_, and _Ancient Charms_; Sir William Wilde's _Irish Popular Superstitions_; McAnally's _Irish Wonders_; _Irish Folklore_, by Lageniensis (Father O'Hanlan); Curtins's _Myths and Folklore of Ireland_; Douglas Hyde's _Beside the Fire_ and his _Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta_; Patrick Kennedy's _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Peasantry_, his _Banks of the Boro_, his _Evenings on the Duffrey_, and his _Legends of Mount Leinster_; the chap-books, _Royal Fairy Tales_, and _Tales of the Fairies_. There is also much folklore in Carleton's _Traits and Stories_; in Lover's _Legends and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_; in Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's _Ireland_; in Lady Chatterton's _Rambles in the South of Ireland_; in Gerald Griffen's _Tales of a Jury Room_ in particular, and in his other books in general. It would repay the trouble if some Irish magazine would select from his works the stray legends and scraps of fairy belief. There is much in the _Collegians_. There is also folklore in the chap-book _Hibernian Tales_, and a Banshee story or two will be found in Miss Lefanu's _Memoirs of my Grandmother_, and in Barrington's _Recollections_. There are also stories in Donovan's introduction to the _Four Masters_. The best articles are those in the _Dublin and London Magazine_ ("The Fairy Greyhound" is from this collection) for 1827 and 1829, about a dozen in all, and David Fitzgerald's various contributions to the _Review Celtique_ in our own day, and Miss M'Clintock's articles in the _Dublin University Magazine_ for 1878. There are good articles also in the _Dublin University Magazine_ for 1839, and much Irish folklore is within the pages of the _Folklore Journal_ and the _Folklore Record_, and in the proceedings of the _Kilkenny Archæological Society_. The _Penny Journal_, the _Newry Magazine_, _Duffy's Sixpenny Magazine_, and the _Hibernian Magazine_, are also worth a search by any Irish writer on the look-out for subjects for song or ballad. My own articles in the _Scots Observer_ and _National Observer_ give many gatherings from the little-reaped Connaught fields. I repeat this list of authorities from my _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_,--a compilation from some of the sources mentioned,--bringing it down to date and making one or two corrections. The reader who would know Irish tradition should read these books above all others--Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends_, Douglas Hyde's _Beside the Fire_, and a book not mentioned in the foregoing list, for it deals with the bardic rather than the folk literature, Standish O'Grady's _History of Ireland, Heroic Period_--perhaps the most imaginative book written on any Irish subject in recent decades.
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