Part 2

The larger Irish legendary literature divides itself into three cycles—the divine, the heroic, the Fenian. Of these three the last is so well known orally in Scotland that it has been a matter of dispute to which country it really belongs. It belongs, in fact, to both. Here, however, comes in a strange contrast with the other cycles. The first is, so far as I am aware, wholly unknown in Scotland, the second comparatively unknown. What is the explanation? Professor Zimmer not having established his late-historical view as regards Fionn, and the general opinion among scholars having tended of recent years towards the mythical view, we want to know why there is so much more community in one case than in the other. Mr. O’Grady long since seeing this difficulty, and then believing Fionn to be historical, was induced to place the latter in point of time before Cuchullin and his compeers. But this view is, of course, inadmissible when Fionn is seen not to be historical at all. There remains but one explanation. The various bodies of legend in question are, so far as Ireland is concerned, only earlier or later as they came into the island with the various races to which they belonged. The wider prevalence, then, of the Fionn Saga would indicate that it belonged to an early race occupying both Ireland and Scotland. Then entered the Aryan Gael, and for him, henceforth, as the ruler of the island, his own gods and heroes were sung by his own bards. His legends became the subject of what I may call the court poetry, the aristocratic literature. When he conquered Scotland, he took with him his own gods and heroes; but in the latter country the bardic system never became established, and hence we find but feeble echoes of the heroic cycle among the mountains of the North. That this is the explanation is shown by what took place in Ireland. Here the heroic cycle has been handed down in remembrance almost solely by the bardic literature. The popular memory retains but few traces of it. Its essentially aristocratic character is shown by the fact that the people have all but forgotten it if they ever knew it. But the Fenian cycle has not been forgotten. Prevailing everywhere, still cherished by the conquered peoples, it held its ground in Scotland and Ireland alike, forcing its way in the latter country even into the written literature, and so securing a twofold lease of existence. That it did not deserve this wider popularity is evident enough. Interesting though it be, it is not equal in interest to the heroic cycle. The tales of the latter, though fewer in number, less bulky in amount, have upon them the impress of the larger constructive sweep of the Aryan imagination. Their characters are nobler; the events are more significant. They form a much more closely compacted epic whole. The Fenian tales, in some respects more picturesque, are less organised. It would be difficult to construct out of them a coherent epic plot; and what is, perhaps, not the least in significance, they have far more numerous, more extended, more intimate connections with the folk-tale.

The Fenian cycle, in a word, is non-Aryan folk-literature partially subjected to Aryan treatment. It occupies accordingly a middle position. Above the rank of the folk-tale it has been elevated; but to the dignity of the heroic legend it has not attained.

* * * * *

The tales included in the present volume form part of a large collection, which I began to make as far back as the year 1884. All have been taken down in the same way—that is to say, word for word from the dictation of the peasant narrators, all by myself, with the exception of two taken down by Mr. Lecky in precisely similar fashion; difficult and doubtful parts being gone over again and again. Sometimes the narrators can explain difficulties. Sometimes other natives of the place can help you. But after every resource of this kind has been exhausted, a certain number of doubtful words and phrases remain, with regard to which—well, one can only do one’s best.

The districts from which the tales were obtained are three in number, each represented by two narrators. Renvyle, the most southern of the three, is situated in Connemara. It is a narrow peninsula, forming the extreme north-western point of the county of Galway, jutting out opposite Mayo. Terence Davis is a labourer pure and simple, a man of about forty-five years of age, and blind of one eye. Some of his tales he got from his mother. Michael Faherty was, when I first made his acquaintance, a lad of about seventeen. He was recommended, as the best pupil in the National School, to Mr. Lecky, who, finding him intelligent, selected him as the best person from whom, on account of his youth, the very latest development of the language could be learnt. He lived with his uncle, who had, or has still, a small holding on the Blake property, and who was also a pilot and repairer of boats. Both his tales were taken down by Mr. Lecky. Next in order, going northward, comes Achill Island, distant some twenty-five miles from Renvyle by sea, more than sixty miles by land.[1] Two narrators from that locality are also represented in the book. One of them, Pat. M’Grale, is a man of middle age, a cottier with a small holding, and besides, a Jack-of-all-trades, something of a boatman and fisherman, “a botch of a tailor,” to use his own words, and ready for any odd job. He can read Irish, but had very little literature on which to exercise his accomplishment. He knows some long poems by heart, and is possessed of various odds and ends of learning, accurate and not. John M’Ginty, a man of Donegal descent and name, has also some land; but his holding is so small that he is to a great extent a labourer for others, and was engaged on relief works when I first came to know him. He, also, is a middle-aged man. He knows many Ossianic poems by heart, which, he told me, his father taught him, verse by verse.

Glencolumkill is the extreme south-west corner of Donegal, remote, like Achill and Renvyle. It is chiefly represented by the tales of Pat. Minahan, from whom I obtained more stories than from any other one man. He said he was eighty years of age; but he was in full possession of all his faculties. He also had a holding on which he still worked industriously. He had no children; but his nephew, who lived with him, made up for all deficiencies of that nature. His style, with its short, abrupt sentences, is always remarkable, and at its best I think excellent. Jack Gillespie, known as Jack-Anne—the latter his mother’s name—to distinguish him from other Jack Gillespies, was a man of sixty or over, also a cottier.

The tales were written down in places sufficiently varied;—from the Renvyle library to the neat little farmhouse parlour at Malinmore, where I spent so many a winter’s evening, solitary but for the occasional visits of some one or other of my story-tellers;—from little smoky cabins, with inquisitive hens hopping on the table, to the unroofed freedom of rock or brae, under summer skies, by those thrice-lovely shores of Renvyle; by the scarcely less beautiful, though far more rugged, crags and cliffs of Achill; by “the wild sea-banks” of what has been described as the “grandest coast in Europe”—that of Glencolumkill.

The beauty of Scotch scenery has been discovered by one critic to be reflected in the picturesqueness of the Scotch tales. I am not without hope that a like influence has contributed something of a like quality to those now submitted to the reader.

WILLIAM LARMINIE.

[1] The Sound, very narrow, is now bridged over.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE GLOSS GAVLEN 1

_Narrator, JOHN M’GINTY, Valley, Achill Island, co. Mayo._

MORRAHA 10

_Narrator, P. M’GRALE, Dugort, Achill Island, co. Mayo._

THE GHOST AND HIS WIVES 31

_Narrator, MICHAEL FAHERTY, Renvyle, co. Galway._

THE STORY OF BIOULTACH 35

_Narrator, TERENCE DAVIS, Renvyle, co. Galway._

KING MANANAUN 64

_Narrator, P. M’GRALE, Achill._

THE CHAMPION OF THE RED BELT 85

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, Glencolumkille, co. Donegal._

JACK 106

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, Glencolumkille, co. Donegal._

THE SERVANT OF POVERTY 115

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, Glencolumkille, co. Donegal._

SIMON AND MARGARET 130

_Narrator, MICHAEL FAHERTY, Renvyle, co. Galway._

THE SON OF THE KING OF PRUSSIA 139

_Narrator, P. M’GRALE, Achill, co. Mayo._

BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 155

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, Glencolumkille, co. Donegal._

GRIG 168

_Narrator, JACK GILLESPIE, Glen, Glencolumkille, co. Donegal._

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO GOT THE BETTER OF THE GENTLEMAN 174

_Narrator, P. M’GRALE, Achill, co. Mayo._

GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS 179

_Narrator, P. M’GRALE, Dugort, Achill, co. Mayo._

THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO HELL 188

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, Glencolumkille, co. Donegal._

THE KING WHO HAD TWELVE SONS 196

_Narrator, JOHN M’GINTY, Valley, Achill Island._

THE RED PONY 211

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, co. Donegal._

THE NINE-LEGGED STEED 219

_Narrator, P. MINAHAN, Malinmore, co. Donegal._

THE PHONETIC TEXT 232

SPECIMENS OF THE TALES IN (PHONETIC) IRISH 239

NOTES 251

_THE GLOSS GAVLEN._

_Narrator, JOHN MCGINTY, Valley, Achill Island, co. Mayo._

The Gobaun Seer and his son went eastward to the eastern world to Balar Beimann to make for him a palace. “Shorten the road, my son,” said the father. The son ran out before him on the road, and the father returned home on that day. The second day they went travelling, and the father told his son to shorten the road. He ran out in front of his father the second day, and the father returned home.

“What’s the cause of your returning home like that?” said the wife of the young Gobaun.

“My father asks me to shorten the road. I run out on the road before him, and he returns.”

“Do you begin to-morrow at a story he has never heard, and I’ll go bail he will not return. And do you never be in any place that the women are not on your side.”

They went travelling the third day, and the young Gobaun began at a story his father never heard, and he returned no more till they came to the eastern world. Then they made the palace for Balar Beimann, and he did not wish to let them go back, for fear they should make for another man a palace as good as his.

“Take away the scaffolding” (said he); for he wanted to let them die on the top of the building. Balar Beimann had a girl, who went by under the building in the morning.

“Young Gobaun,” said she, “go on thy wisdom. I think it is easier to throw seven stones down than to put one up as far as you.”

“That’s true for you,” said young Gobaun.

They began to let down the work. When Balar Beimann heard that they were throwing down the works, he ordered back the scaffolding till they were down on the ground.

“Now,” said the old Gobaun Seer, “there is a crookedness in your work, and if I had three tools I left after me at home, I would straighten the work, and there would not be any work in the world to compare with it. The names of the tools are—Crooked against Crooked, Corner against Corner, and Engine against deceit;[2] and there is not a man to get them but your own son. You will find,” said he, “a woman with one hand, and a child with one eye, in the house, and a stack of corn at the door.”

The father then gave him a ship and sent him over to Erin. He was travelling ever till he found out the house; and he went into it. He asked if that was the house of young Gobaun. The woman said it was.

“He said to me there was a woman with one hand, and a child with one eye in the house, and a stack of corn at the door.”

“Don’t you see,” said she, “that I have only one hand, and don’t you see this stick in the hand of the child? I don’t know what moment he won’t put it in his eye and take the eye out of himself; and don’t you see the stack of corn outside at the door?”

He asked then for the three tools.

“What three tools?” said she.

“They are Corner against Corner, Crooked against Crooked, and Engine against deceit.”

She understood then that they (_i.e._ her husband and his father) would never come home, if she did not understand these words.

“The three tools that are called Crooked against Crooked, Corner against Corner, and Engine against deceit, they are down in this chest.”

She went then and opened the chest, and told him to stoop down to the bottom, that she was not tall enough. He stooped, and when she got him bent down, she threw him into the chest and closed it, and told him he should stay there till young Gobaun and old Gobaun came home and their pay for their service with them.

She sent word to Balar Beimann that she had his son in confinement, till young Gobaun and old Gobaun came home. He gave them a ship and sent them home with their pay; and she let Balar Beimann’s son back to him again. When they were going home, Balar asked Gobaun what smith would he get to put irons on his palace.

“There is no smith in Erin better than Gavidjeen Go.”

When the old Gobaun came home he told Gavidjeen Go to take no pay from him for putting the irons on his palace, except the Gloss:

“If twenty barrels were put under her, she would fill the twenty barrels.”

Balar Beimann then wrote to the Gavidjeen Go that he would give him the Gloss if he would make irons for his palace. But when he sent the Gloss, he did not give the byre-rope, and he knew that when he did not give that, she would go from him.

This is the bargain that Gavidjeen Go made then with every champion that came to him:—to mind the cow and bring her safe home to him at evening; he would make a sword for every champion who would mind her. She would pasture in the daytime at Cruahawn, of Connaught, and drink at Loch Ayachir-a-Guigalu, in Ulster, in the evening.

Kian, the son of Contje, came to him to have a sword made. He told him he would make it, but that the bargain would be to mind the Gloss that day.

“If she is not home with you to me in the evening, you must lay down your head on the anvil, that I may cut it off with your own sword.”

Kian, the son of Contje, went then and took hold of her by the tail. When he came home in the evening, “Here is the Gloss outside,” said he to Gavidjeen Go. There was a champion inside in the forge, whose name was the Laughing Knight. He ran out and said to Kian:

“The smith is about to put tempering on your sword, and unless you have hold of it, there will be no power in it when you wield it.”

When Kian, the son of Contje, went in, he forgot to drive in the Gloss. Gavidjeen Go asked him, “Where is the Gloss?”

“There she is, outside the door.”

“Put her in,” said he.

When he went out she was gone.

“Lay down your head upon the anvil, that I may cut it off you.”

“I am asking of you the favour of three days, to go and seek her.”

“I will give you that,” said he.

He went with himself then, and was following her tracks till he came to the sea. He was up and down on the shore, plucking his hair from his head, in trouble after the Gloss. There was a man out on the sea in a currach. He rowed in to him. It was the tawny Mananaun, the son of Lir. He asked him—

“What is the matter with you to-day?”

He told him.

“How much will you give to any one who will leave you in the place where the Gloss is?”

“I have nothing to give him.”

“I will ask nothing of you, but the half of all you gain till you come back.”

“I will give you that,” said Kian, son of Contje.

“Be into the currach.”

In the winking of an eye he left him over in the kingdoms of the cold; nor on that island was a morsel cooked ever, but they ate every kind of food raw. Kian, son of Contje, made a fire, and began to cook his food. When Balar Beimann heard the like was there, he took him to be his cook, his story-teller, and his fireman. Well, Balar Beimann had one daughter, and a prediction was made that she would have a son, who would kill his grandfather. He then put her into prison for fear a man would come near her; and it was he himself who would go to her with food, and the companion with her was a dummy woman. Mananaun left this enchantment with Kian, son of Contje, that any lock he laid his hand on would open and shut after him. He was looking at Balar Beimann going to this house, to his daughter, with food for her, and he went himself after him to the house, and he laid his hand on the lock and opened the door, and found none but the two women there. He made a fire for them. He was coming there ever, till a child happened to her. He was then going to depart, when the boy was born. He went to the king and told him he must depart.

“Why are you going?” said he.

“It is because accidents have happened to me since I came into this island. I must go.”

“What is the accident?” said he.

“A child has happened to me.”

Balar had two sons on another island learning druidism. They came home to the palace to their father.

“Father,” said a man of them, “your story-teller, your cook, and your fireman will give you your sufficiency of trouble.”

Kian, son of Contje, was listening to them speaking. He went to the daughter of Balar Beimann, and told her what her brother said.

“Well,” said she, “it is now time for you to be going. That is the byre-rope of the Gloss, hanging on the wall. She will be as quick as you; and take with you the boy.”

He went then till he came to the place where Mananaun put him out. Mananaun told him, when he was in difficulty, to think of him and he would come. He now came on the instant.

“Be in the currach,” said Mananaun, “and make haste, or Balar Beimann will drown us, if he can. But greater is my druidism than his,” said the tawny Mananaun, the son of Lir.

He jumped into the currach, and the Gloss jumped in as soon as he. Balar Beimann followed them, and raised the sea in a storm before them and behind them, nor did Mananaun aught but stretch out his hand and make the sea calm. Balar then set fire to the sea before them in hopes of burning them, but Mananaun threw out a stone, and extinguished the sea.

“Now, Kian, son of Contje, you are safe and sound home, and what will you give me for it?”

“I have nothing but the boy, and we will not go to make two halves of him, but I will give him to you entirely.”

“I am thankful to you. That is what I was wanting. There will be no champion in the world as good as he,” said Mananaun.

This is the name that Mananaun baptized him with—the Dul Dauna. He brought him up with feats of activity and championship. He and Mananaun were out one day on the sea, and they saw the fleet of Balar Beimann sailing. The Dul Dauna put a ring to his eye, and he saw his grandfather on the deck walking, but he did not know it was his grandfather. He (took) a dart from his pocket and flung it at him and killed him. The prophecy was then fulfilled.

[2] Or, perhaps, “trick against treachery.”

_MORRAHA, BRIAN MORE, SON OF THE HIGH-KING OF ERIN FROM THE WELL OF ENCHANTMENTS OF BINN EDIN._

_Narrator, P. MCGRALE, Dugort, Achill Island, co. Mayo._

Morraha rose in the morning and washed his hands and face, and said his prayers, and ate his food; and he asked God to prosper the day for him; and he went down to the brink of the sea, and he saw a currach, short and green, coming towards him; and in it there was but one youthful champion, and he playing hurly from prow to stern of the currach. He had a hurl of gold and a ball of silver; and he stopped not till the currach was in on the shore; and he drew her up on the green grass, and put fastening on her for a day and a year, whether he should be there all that time or should only be on land for an hour by the clock. And Morraha saluted the young man in words intelligent, intelligible, such as (were spoken) at that time; and the other saluted him in the same fashion, and asked him would he play a game of cards with him; and Morraha said that he had not the wherewithal; and the other answered that he was never without a candle or the making of it; and he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a table and two chairs and a pack of cards, and they sat down on the chairs and went to the card-playing. The first game Morraha won, and the slender red champion bade him make his claim; and he said that the land above him should be filled with stock of sheep in the morning. It was well; and he played no second game, but home he went.

The next day Morraha went to the brink of the sea, and the young man came in the currach and asked him would he play cards; and they played; and Morraha won. And the young man bade him make his claim; and he said that the land above should be filled with cattle in the morning. It was well; and he played no other game, but went home.

And on the third morning Morraha went to the brink of the sea, and he saw the young man coming. And he drew up his boat on the shore and asked him would he play cards. And they played, and Morraha won the game; and the young man bade him give his claim. And he said he should have a castle and of women the finest and the fairest; and they were his. It was well; and the young man went away.

On the fourth day the woman asked him how he had found himself, and he told her. “And I am going out” (said he) “to play again to-day.”

“I cross” (forbid) “you to go again to him. If you have won so much, you will lose more; and have no more to do with him.”

But he went against her will, and he saw the currach coming; and the young man was driving his balls from end to end of the currach; he had balls of silver and a hurl of gold, and he stopped not till he drew his boat on the shore, and made her fast for a year and a day. And Morraha and he saluted each other; and he asked Morraha if he would play a game of cards, and they played, and he won. And Morraha said to him, “Give your claim now.”

Said he, “You will hear it too soon. I lay on you the bonds of the art of the druid, not to sleep two nights in one house, nor finish a second meal at the one table, till you bring me the sword of light and news of the death of Anshgayliacht.”

He went home to his wife and sat down in a chair, and gave a groan, and the chair broke in pieces.

“It is the son of a king under spells you are,” said his wife; “and you had better have taken my counsel than that the spells should be on you.”

He said to her to bring news of the death of Anshgayliacht and the sword of light to the slender red champion.