Part 10

There was a girl saw it one time in the same way, drawn by horses that were without heads. She got a great fright and she ran home. And in the morning when she got up, she that had been a dark-haired girl was as white as snow, and her hair grey. She is living yet and is up to nearly a hundred years.

_Mrs. Roche:_

My father would never believe in anything till one time he was walking near Seanmor with another smith, and he stopped and said "I can't go on with all the people that's in that field." And my father said "I don't see any people." And the other said "Put your right foot on my right foot, and your hand on my right shoulder." And he did, and he saw a great many in the field, but not so many as the other saw; fine men and all dressed in white shirts, shining they were so white. He told us about it when he came home, and he said he wished he didn't see them. He was dead within the twelvemonth, and the man that was with him was dead before that, not much time between them.

VIII

BUTTER

VIII

BUTTER

_I have been told:_

Butter, that's a thing that's very much meddled with. On the first of May before sunrise it's very apt to be all taken away out of the milk. And if ever you lend your churn or your dishes to your neighbour, she'll be able to wish away your butter after that. There was a woman used to lend a drop of milk to the woman that lived next door, and one day she was churning, churning, and no butter came. And at last some person came into the house and said, "It's hard for you to have butter here, and if you want to know where it is, look into the next house." So she went in and there was her neighbour letting on to be churning in a quart bottle, and rolls of butter beside her. So she made as if to choke her, and the woman run out into the garden and picked some mullein leaves, and said, "Put these leaves in under your churn, and you'll find your butter come back again." And so she did. And she found it all in the churn after.

To sprinkle a few drops of holy water about the churn, and to put a coal of fire under it, that you should always do--as was always done in the old time--and the _others_ will never touch it.

* * * * *

There was a woman in the town was churning, and when the butter came she went out of the house to bring some water for to wash it and to make it up. And there was a tailor sitting sewing on the table. And the woman from next door came in and asked the loan of a coal of fire, and that's a thing that's never refused from one poor person to another in the morning. So he bid her take it. And presently she came in again and said that the coal of fire had gone out, and asked another, and this she did the third time. But the tailor knew well what she was doing, and that every coal of fire she brought away, there was a roll of butter out of the churn went with it. So whatever prayers he said is not known, but he brought the butter all back again, and into a can on the floor, and no hands ever touched it. So when the woman of the house came back, "There's your butter in the can," said he. And she wondered how it came out of the churn to be in three rolls in the can. And then he told her all that had happened.

* * * * *

There was a man was churning, churning, every day and no butter would come only froth. So some wise woman told him to go before sunrise to a running stream and bring a bottle of the water from it. And so he did before sunrise, and had to go near four miles to it. And from that day he had rolls and rolls of butter coming every time he churned.

* * * * *

There was one Burke, he knew how to bring it back out of some old Irish book that has disappeared since he died. There was a woman a herd's wife lived beyond, and one time Burke had his own butter taken, and he said he knew a way to find who had done it, and he brought in the coulter of the plough and put it in the fire. And when it began to get red hot, this woman came running, and fell on her knees, for it was she did it. And after that he never lost his butter again. But she took to her bed and was there for years until her death. And she couldn't turn from one side to another without some person to lift her. Her son is now living in Dublin, and is the President of some Association.

* * * * *

If a woman in Aran is milking a cow and the milk is spilled, she says, "There's some are the better for it," and I think it a very nice thought, that they don't grudge it if there is any one it does good to.

* * * * *

There was a man, one Finnegan, had the knowledge how to bring it back. And one time Lanigan that lives below at Kilgarvan had all his butter taken and the milk nothing but froth rising to the top of the pail like barm. So he went to Finnegan and he bid him get the coulter of the plough, and a shoe of the wickedest horse that could be found and some other thing, I forget what. So he brought in the coulter of the plough, and his brother-in-law chanced to have a horse that was so wicked it took three men to hold him, and no one could get on his back. So he got a shoe off of him. But just at that time, Lanigan's wife went to confession, and what did she do but to tell the priest what they were doing to get back the butter. So the priest was mad with them, and bid them to leave such things alone. And when Finnegan heard it he said, "What call had she to go and confess that? Let her get back her own butter for herself any more, for I'll do nothing to help her."

* * * * *

Grass makes a difference? So it may, but believe me that's not all. I've been myself in the County Limerick, where the grass is that rich you could grease your boots in it, and I heard them say there, one quart of cream ought to bring one pound of butter. And it never does. _And where does the rest go to?_

IX

THE FOOL OF THE FORTH

IX

THE FOOL OF THE FORTH

_We had, before our quest began, heard of faeries and banshees and the walking dead; but neither Mr. Yeats in Sligo nor I in Galway had ever heard of "the worst of them all," the Fool of the Forth, the Amadán-na-Briona, he whose stroke is, as death, incurable. As to the fool in this world, the pity for him is mingled with some awe, for who knows what windows may have been opened to those who are under the moon's spell, who do not give in to our limitations, are not "bound by reason to the wheel." It is so in the East also, and I remember the surprise of the European doctor who had charge of an hospital in one of the Native States of India, because when the ruler of the State came one day to visit it, he and his high officials, while generous and pitiful to the bodily sick, bowed down and saluted a young lad who had lost his wits, as if recognizing an emissary from a greater kingdom._

_In one of my little comedies "The Full Moon," the cracked woman comforts her half-witted brother, saying of his commonsense critics, "It is as dull as themselves you would be maybe, and the world to be different and the moon to change its courses with the sun." Those commonsense people of Cloon describe a fool as "one that is laughing and mocking, and that would not have the same habits as yourself, or to have no fear of things you would be in dread of, or to be using a different class of food." May it not be the old story of the deaf man thinking all his fellow guests had suddenly lost their reason when they began to dance, and he alone could not hear the call of the pipes?_

_There is perhaps sometimes a confusion in the mind between things seen and unseen, for an old woman telling me she had often heard of the Amadán-na-Briona went on "And I knew one too, and he's not dead a twelvemonth. It's at night he used to be away with them, and they used to try to bring people away into the forth where he was._

"_Was he a fool in this world too? Well, he was mostly, and I think I know another that's living now_."

I was told by:

_A Woman Bringing Oysters from the Strand:_

There was a boy, one Rivers, got the touch last June, from the Amadán-na-Briona, the Fool of the Forth, and for that touch there is no cure. It came to the house in the night-time and knocked at the door, and he was in bed and he did not rise to let it in. And it knocked the second time, and even then, if he had answered it, he might have escaped. But when it knocked the third time he fell back on the bed, and one side of him as if dead, and his jaw fell on the pillow.

He knew it was the Amadán-na-Briona did it, but he did not see him--he only felt him. And he used to be running in every place after that and trying to drown himself, and he was in great dread his father would say he was mad, and bring him away to Ballinasloe. He used to be asking me could his father do that to him. He was brought to Ballinasloe after and he died there, and his body was brought back and buried at Drumacoo.

_Mrs. Murphy:_

Cnoc-na-Briona is full of them, near Cappard. The Amadán-na-Briona is the master of them all, I heard the priest say that.

There was a man of the MacNeills passing by it one night coming back from the bog, and they brought him in, and when he came out next day--God save the mark--his face was turned to his poll. They sent then to Father Jordan, and he turned it right again. The man said they beat him while he was with them, and he saw there a great many of his friends that were dead.

_The Spinning Woman:_

There are fools among them, and the fools we see like that Amadán at Ballymore go away with them at night. And so do the women fools, that we call _lenshees_, that means, an ape.

It's true enough there is no cure for the stroke of the Amadán-na-Briona. There was an old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what disease you had with measuring you, and he knew many things. And he said to me one time "What month of the year is the worst?" And I said, "The month of May, of course." "It is not," he said, "but the month of June, for that's the month that the Amadán gives his stroke." They say he looks like any other man, but he's _leathan_--wide--and not smart. I know a boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall at him, and it with a big beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadán, for it was the month of June. And they brought him to that man I was telling you about, that had the tape. And when he saw him he said "Send for the priest and get a Mass said over him." And so they did, and what would you say but he's living yet, and has a family.

_A Seaside Man:_

The stroke of the Fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets that is gone. The Amadán-na-Briona we call him. It's said they are mostly good neighbours. I suppose the reason of the Amadán being wicked is he not having his wits, he strikes out at all he meets.

_A Clare Man:_

They, the other sort of people, might be passing you close and they might touch you; but any one that gets the touch of the Amadán-na-Briona is done for. And it's true enough that it's in the month of June he's most likely to give the touch. I knew one that got it, and told me about it himself.

He was a boy I knew well, and he told me that one night a gentleman came to him, that had been his landlord, and that was dead. And he told him to come along with him, for he wanted to fight another man. And when he went he found two great troops of them, and the other troop had a living man with them too, and he was put to fight him. And they had a great fight and at last he got the better of the other man, and then the troop on his side gave a great shout, and he was left home again.

But about three years after that he was cutting bushes in a wood, and he saw the Amadán coming at him. He had a big vessel in his arms, and it shining, so that the boy could see nothing else, but he put it behind his back then, and came running; and he said he looked wide and wild, like the side of a hill.

And the boy ran, and the Amadán threw the vessel after him, and it broke with a great noise, and whatever came out of it, his head was gone then and there. He lived for a while after and used to be telling us many things, but his wits were gone. He thought they mightn't have liked him to beat the other man, and he used to be afraid something would come on him.

_Mrs. Staunton:_

A friend of mine saw the Amadán one time in Poul-na-shionac, low-sized and very wide, and with a big hat on him, very high, and he'd make shoes for you if you could get a hold of him. But there are some say "No, that is not the Amadán-na-Briona, that is the leprechaun."

_An Old Woman:_

The Amadán-na-Briona is a bad one to meet. If you don't say, "The Lord be between us and harm," when you meet him, you are gone for ever and always. What does he look like? I suppose like any fool in a house--a sort of a clown.

_A Man near Athenry:_

Biddy Early could cure nearly all things, but she said that the only thing that she could do no cure for was the touch of the Amadán.

_Another:_

Biddy Early couldn't do nothing for the touch of the Amadán, because its power was greater than hers.

_In the Workhouse:_

The Amadán-na-Briona, he changes his shape every two days. Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he'll come like the worst of beasts. Trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of late that he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him.

_Ned Meehan of Killinane:_

The Amadán is the worst; I saw him myself one time, and I'd be swept if I didn't make away on the moment. It was on a race-course at Ballybrit, and no one there but myself, and I sitting with my back to the wall and smoking my pipe. And all at once the Amadán was all around me, in every place, and I ran and got out of the field or I'd be swept. And I saw others of them in the field; it was full of them, red scarfs they had on them.

I came home as quick as I could, and I didn't get over the fright for a long time, but there he was all about me.

_Meehan's wife says_: I remember you well coming in that night, and you trembling with the fright you got. And you told me the appearance he had, like a jockey he was, on a grey horse.

"That is true indeed," _says Ned, and he goes on_:

And one night I was up in that field beyond, watching sheep that were near their time to drop, and I saw a light moving through the fields beside me, and down the road and no one with it. It stopped for a while where the water is and went on again.

And there was a woman in Ballygra the same night heard the coach-a-baur passing, and she not hearing at all about the lights I saw.

_A Man at Kilcolgan:_

Father Callaghan that used to be in Esker was able to do great cures; he could cure even a man that had met the Amadán-na-Briona. But to meet the Amadán is to be in prison for ever.

X

FORTHS AND SHEOGUEY PLACES

X

FORTHS AND SHEOGUEY PLACES

_When as children we ran up and down the green entrenchments of the big round raths, the lisses or forths, of Esserkelly or Moneen, we knew they had been made at one time for defence, and that is perhaps as much as is certainly known. Those at my old home have never been opened, but in some of their like I have gone down steps to small stone-built chambers that look too low for the habitation of any living race._

_Had we asked questions of the boys who led our donkeys they would in all likelihood have given us, from tradition or vision, news of the shadowy inhabitants, the Sidhe, whose name in the Irish is all one with a blast of wind, and of the treasures they guard. And the old writings tell us that when blessed Patrick of the Bells walked Ireland, he did not refuse the promise of heaven to some among those spirits in prison, the old divine race for whom Mannanan himself had chosen these hidden dwellings, after the great defeat in battle by the human invaders, the Gaels, or to some they had brought among them from the face of the green earth. It was one of their musicians who played to the holy Clerks till Patrick himself said, "But for some tang of the music of the Sidhe that is in it, I never heard anything nearer to the music of heaven." That music is heard yet from time to time; and it was into one of those hill dwellings that the father of McDonough the Galway piper, my friend, was taken till the Sidhe had taught him all their wild tunes and so bewitched his pipes that they would play of themselves if he threw them up among the rafters. There were great treasures there also in Saint Patrick's time, golden vats and horns, and crystal cups, and silks of the colour of the foxglove. It may be of these treasures that so many dreams are told._

_As to the women of the Sidhe, some who have seen them, as old Mrs. Sheridan, tell of their white skin and yellow hair, for age has not come on them through the centuries. When one of them came claiming the fulfilment of an old promise from Caoilte of the Fianna, Patrick wondered at her young beauty, while the man who had been her lover was withered and bent and grey. But Caoilte said that was no wonder "for she is of the Tuatha de Danaan who are unfading and whose life is lasting, while I am of the sons of Milesius who are perishable and fade away." Yet then as now, notwithstanding their beauty and grandeur, those swept away into the hill dwellings would rather have the world they know. One of Finn's men meeting a comely young man who had been his comrade but was now an inhabitant of one of those hidden houses, asked how he fared. And for all his fine clothing and his blue weapons and the hound he held in a silver chain, the young man gave the names of three drudges "who had the worst life of any who were with the Fianna," and then he said, "I would rather be living their life than the life I am leading now."_

_The name of these tribes of the goddess Dana is often confused with that of the northern invaders who were afterwards a terror to Ireland. And so it was of those unearthly tribes an old basket-maker was thinking when he said, in telling of the defeat of the Irish under James, "The Danes were dancing in the raths around Aughrim the night after the battle. Their ancestors were driven out of Ireland before, and they were glad when they saw those that had put them out put out themselves, and everyone of them skivered."_

_Many of the stories I have gathered tell how those tribes still protect their own; and even today, March 21, 1916, I have read in the "Irish Times" that "a farmer who was summoned by a road contractor for having failed to cut a portion of a hedge on the roadside, told the magistrates at Granard Petty Sessions that he objected to cutting the hedge as it grew in a fort or rath. He however had no objection to the contractor's men cutting the hedge. The magistrates allowed the case to stand till the next Court."_

_As to Knockmaa, or Cruachmaa, or, as it is called today, Castle Hacket Hill, that overlooks Lough Corrib and the plain of Moytura, and that we see as a blue cloud from our roads, it was in Saint Patrick's time the habitation of Finnbarr a king among the Sidhe and his seventeen sons, and it is to this day spoken of as "a very Sheoguey place."_

_It was in these enchanted hills that the ale of Goibniu the Smith kept whoever tasted it from sickness and from death, and there is some memory of this in a story told me by an old farmer. "There was a man one time set out from Ireland to go to America or some place; a common man looking for work he was. And something happened to the ship on the way, and they had to put to land to mend it. And in the country where they landed he saw a forth, and he went into it, and there he saw the smallest people he ever saw, and they were the Danes that went out of Ireland; and it was foxes they had for dogs, and weasels were their cats._

_"Then he went back to get into the ship, but it was gone away, and he left behind. So he went back into the forth, and a young man came to meet him, and he told him what had happened. And the young man said 'Come into the room within where my father is in the bed, for he is out of his health and you might be able to serve him.' So they went in and the father was lying in the bed, and when he heard it was a man from Ireland was in it he said, 'I will give you a great reward if you will go back and bring me a thing I want out of Castle Hacket Hill. For if I had what is there,' he said, 'I would be as young as my son.' So the man consented to go, and they got a sailing ship ready, and it is what the old man told him, to go back to Ireland. 'And buy a little pig in Galway,' he said, 'and bring it to the mouth of the forth of Castle Hacket and roast it there. And inside the forth is an enchanted cat that is keeping guard there, and it will come out; and here is a shot-gun and some cross-money that will kill any faery or any enchanted thing. And within in the forth,' he said, 'you will find a bottle and a rack-comb, and bring them back here to me.'_

_"So the man did as he was told and he bought the pig and roasted it at the mouth of the forth, and out came the enchanted cat, and it having hair seven inches long. And he fired the cross-money out of the shot-gun, and the cat went away and he saw it no more. And he got the bottle and the rack-comb and brought them back to the old man. And he drank what was in the bottle and racked his hair with the rack, and he got young again, as young as his own son."_

_It may be some of those faery treasures are still given out; for of the family who have been for a good while owners of the hill, one at least had the gift of genius. And I remember being told in childhood, and I have never known if it were fact or folk-tale, that her mother having as a bride gone to listen to some debate or royal speech in the House of Lords at Westminster, the whole assembly had stood up in homage to her beauty._

_I was told by a Miller:_

It was the Danes built these forths. They were a fair-haired race, and they married with the Irish that were dark-haired, just like those linen weavers your own great-grandfather brought up from the North, the Hevenors and the Glosters and others, married with the Roman Catholics. There was a king of the Danes called Trevenher that had a daughter that was a great beauty. And she gave a feast, and the young men of the other race dressed like girls and came to it, and sat at it till midnight, and then they threw off the women's clothes and killed all the generals and the king himself. So the Danes were driven out, that's why we have the fires and the wisps on St. John's Eve. And as for Herself there, she wouldn't for all the world let St. Martin's Day pass without killing of cocks--one for the woman and another for the man.

* * * * *

As to the three lisses at Ryanrush, there must have been a great deal of fighting there in the old time. There are some bushes growing on them and no one, man or woman, will ever put a hand to cut them, no more than they would touch the little bush by the well beyond, that used to have lights shining out of it.

And if any one was to fall asleep within the liss himself, he would be taken away and the spirit of some old warrior would be put in his place, and it's he would know everything in the whole world. There's no doubt at all but that there's the same sort of things in other countries. Sure _these_ can go through and appear in Australia in one minute. But you hear more about them in these parts, because the Irish do be more familiar in talking of them.

* * * * *

Enchanters and magicians they were in the old times, and could make the birds sing and the stones and the fishes speak.

* * * * *

It's in the forths they mostly live. The last priest that was here told us a lot about them, but he said not to be anyway afraid of them, for they are but poor souls doing their penance.

_Mary Nagle:_