PREFACE.
 Irish and Scotch Gaelic folk-stories are, as a living form of literature, by this time pretty nearly a thing of the past. They have been trampled in the common ruin under the feet of the Zeitgeist, happily not before a large harvest has been reaped in Scotland, but, unfortunately, before anything worth mentioning has been done in Ireland to gather in the crop which grew luxuriantly a few years ago. Until quite recently there existed in our midst millions of men and women who, when their day’s work was over, sought and found mental recreation in a domain to which few indeed of us who read books are permitted to enter. Man, all the world over, when he is tired of the actualities of life, seeks to unbend his mind with the creations of fancy. We who can read betake ourselves to our favourite novelist, and as we peruse his fictions, we can almost see our author erasing this, heightening that, and laying on such-and-such a touch for effect. His book is the product of his individual brain, and some of us or of our contemporaries have been present at its genesis.
[x]
But no one can tell us with certainty of the genesis of the folk-tale, no one has been consciously present at its inception, and no one has marked its growth. It is in many ways a mystery, part of the flotsam and jetsam of the ages, still beating feebly against the shore of the nineteenth century, swallowed up at last in England by the waves of materialism and civilization combined; but still surviving unengulfed on the western coasts of Ireland, where I gathered together some bundles of it, of which the present volume is one.
The folk-lore of Ireland, like its folk-songs and native literature, remains practically unexploited and ungathered. Attempts have been made from time to time during the present century to collect Irish folk-lore, but these attempts, though interesting from a literary point of view, are not always successes from a scientific one. Crofton Croker’s delightful book, “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland,” first published anonymously in 1825, led the way. All the other books which have been published on the subject have but followed in the footsteps of his; but all have not had the merit of his light style, his pleasant parallels from classic and foreign literature, and his delightful annotations, which touch, after a fascinating manner peculiarly his own, upon all that is of interest in his text. I have written the word “text,” but that word conveys the idea of an original to be annotated upon; and Crofton Croker[xi] is, alas! too often his own original. There lies his weak point, and there, too, is the defect of all who have followed him. The form in which the stories are told is, of course, Croker’s own; but no one who knows anything of fairy lore will suppose, that his manipulation of the originals is confined to the form merely. The fact is that he learned the ground-work of his tales from conversations with the Southern peasantry, whom he knew well, and then elaborated this over the midnight oil with great skill and delicacy of touch, in order to give a saleable book, thus spiced, to the English public.
Setting aside the novelists Carleton and Lover, who only published some incidental and largely-manipulated Irish stories, the next person to collect Irish folk-lore in a volume was Patrick Kennedy, a native of the County Wexford, who published “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts,” and in 1870 a good book, entitled, “The Fireside Stories of Ireland,” which he had himself heard in Wexford when a boy. Many of the stories which he gives appear to be the detritus of genuine Gaelic folk-stories, filtered through an English idiom and much impaired and stunted in the process. He appears, however, not to have adulterated them very much. Two of the best stories in the book, “Jack, the Cunning Thief,” and “Shawn an Omadawn,” I heard myself in the adjoining county Wicklow, and the versions of them that I heard did not differ very widely from Kennedy’s. It[xii] is interesting to note that these counties, close to the Pale as they are, and under English influence for so long, nevertheless seem to have preserved a considerable share of the old Gaelic folk-tales in English dress, while in Leitrim, Longford, Meath, and those counties where Irish died out only a generation or two ago, there has been made as clean a sweep of folk-lore and Gaelic traditions as the most uncompromising “West Briton” could desire. The reason why some of the folk-stories survive in the eastern counties is probably because the Irish language was there exchanged for English at a time when, for want of education and printed books, folk-stories (the only mental recreation of the people) had to transfer themselves rightly or wrongly into English. When this first took place I cannot tell, but I have heard from old people in Waterford, that when some of their fathers or grandfathers marched north to join the Wexford Irish in ’98, they were astonished to find English nearly universally used amongst them. Kennedy says of his stories: “I have endeavoured to present them in a form suitable for the perusal of both sexes and of all ages”; and “such as they are, they may be received by our readers as obtained from local sources.” Unfortunately, the sources are not given by him any more than by Croker, and we cannot be sure how much belongs to Kennedy the bookseller, and how much to the Wexford peasant.
[xiii]
After this come Lady Wilde’s volumes;—her “Ancient Legends,” and her recently published “Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages,” in both of which books she gives us a large amount of narrative matter in a folk-lore dress; but, like her predecessors, she disdains to quote an authority, and scorns to give us the least inkling as to where such-and-such a legend, or cure, or superstition comes from, from whom it was obtained, who were her informants, whether peasant or other, in what parishes or counties the superstition or legend obtains, and all the other collateral information which the modern folk-lorist is sure to expect. Her entire ignorance of Irish, through the medium of which alone such tales and superstitions can properly, if at all, be collected, is apparent every time she introduces an Irish word. She astonishes us Irish speakers with such striking observations as this—“Peasants in Ireland wishing you good luck, say in Irish, ‘The blessing of Bel and the blessing of Samhain be with you,’ that is, of the sun and of the moon.”[1] It[xiv] would be interesting to know the locality where so curious a Pagan custom is still practised, for I confess that though I have spoken Irish in every county where it is still spoken, I have never been, nor do I expect to be, so saluted. Lady Wilde’s volumes, are, nevertheless, a wonderful and copious record of folk-lore and folk customs, which must lay Irishmen under one more debt of gratitude to the gifted compiler. It is unfortunate, however, that these volumes are hardly as valuable as they are interesting, and for the usual reason—that we do not know what is Lady Wilde’s and what is not.
Almost contemporaneously with Lady Wilde’s last book there appeared this year yet another important work, a collection of Irish folk-tales taken from the Gaelic speakers of the south and north-west, by an American gentleman, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin. He has collected some twenty tales, which are told very well, and with much less cooking and flavouring than his[xv] predecessors employed. Mr. Curtin tells us that he has taken his tales from the old Gaelic-speaking men; but he must have done so through the awkward medium of an interpreter, for his ignorance of the commonest Irish words is as startling as Lady Wilde’s.[2] He follows Lady Wilde in this, too, that he keeps us in profound ignorance of his authorities. He mentions not one name, and except that he speaks in a general way of old Gaelic speakers in nooks where the language is still spoken, he leaves us in complete darkness as to where and from whom, and how he collected these stories. In this he does not do himself justice, for, from my own knowledge of Irish folk-lore, such as it is, I can easily recognize that Mr. Curtin has approached the fountain-head more nearly than any other. Unfortunately, like his predecessors, he has a literary style of his own, for[xvi] which, to say the least of it, there is no counterpart in the Gaelic from which he has translated.[3]
We have as yet had no folk-lorist in Ireland who could compare for a moment with such a man as Iain Campbell, of Islay, in investigative powers, thoroughness of treatment, and acquaintance with the people, combined with a powerful national sentiment, and, above all, a knowledge of Gaelic. It is on this last rock that all our workers-up of Irish folk-lore split. In most circles in Ireland it is a disgrace to be known to talk Irish; and in the capital, if one makes use of an Irish word to express one’s meaning, as one sometimes does of a French or German word, one would be looked upon as positively outside the pale of decency; hence we need not be surprised at the ignorance of Gaelic Ireland displayed by littérateurs who write for the English public, and foist upon us modes of speech which we have not got, and idioms which they never learned from us.
This being the case, the chief interest in too many of our folk-tale writers lies in their individual treatment of the skeletons of the various Gaelic stories obtained through English mediums, and it is not devoid of interest[xvii] to watch the various garbs in which the sophisticated minds of the ladies and gentlemen who trifled in such matters, clothed the dry bones. But when the skeletons were thus padded round and clad, although built upon folk-lore, they were no longer folk-lore themselves, for folk-lore can only find a fitting garment in the language that comes from the mouths of those whose minds are so primitive that they retain with pleasure those tales which the more sophisticated invariably forget. For this reason folk-lore is presented in an uncertain and unsuitable medium, whenever the contents of the stories are divorced from their original expression in language. Seeing how Irish writers have managed it hitherto, it is hardly to be wondered at that the writer of the article on folk-lore in the “Encyclopedia Britanica,” though he gives the names of some fifty authorities on the subject, has not mentioned a single Irish collection. In the present book, as well as in my Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta, I have attempted—if nothing else—to be a little more accurate than my predecessors, and to give the exact language of my informants, together with their names and various localities—information which must always be the very first requisite of any work upon which a future scientist may rely when he proceeds to draw honey (is it always honey?) from the flowers which we collectors have culled for him.
[xviii]
It is difficult to say whether there still exist in Ireland many stories of the sort given in this volume. That is a question which cannot be answered without further investigation. In any other country the great body of Gaelic folk-lore in the four provinces would have been collected long ago, but the “Hiberni incuriosi suorum” appear at the present day to care little for anything that is Gaelic; and so their folk-lore has remained practically uncollected.
Anyone who reads this volume as a representative one of Irish folk-tales might, at first sight, imagine that there is a broad difference between the Gaelic tales of the Highlands and those of Ireland, because very few of the stories given here have parallels in the volumes of Campbell and MacInnes. I have, however, particularly chosen the tales in the present volume on account of their dissimilarity to any published Highland tales, for, as a general rule, the main body of tales in Ireland and Scotland bear a very near relation to each other. Most of Mr. Curtin’s stories, for instance, have Scotch Gaelic parallels. It would be only natural, however, that many stories should exist in Ireland which are now forgotten in Scotland, or which possibly were never carried there by that section of the Irish which colonized it; and some of the most modern—especially of the kind whose genesis I have called conscious—must have arisen amongst the Irish since then, while on the other[xix] hand some of the Scotch stories may have been bequeathed to the Gaelic language by those races who were displaced by the Milesian Conquest in the fifth century.
Many of the incidents of the Highland stories have parallels in Irish MSS., even incidents of which I have met no trace in the folk-lore of the people. This is curious, because these Irish MSS. used to circulate widely, and be constantly read at the firesides of the peasantry, while there is no trace of MSS. being in use historical times amongst the Highland cabins. Of such stories as were most popular, a very imperfect list of about forty is given in Mr. Standish O’Grady’s excellent preface to the third volume of the Ossianic Society’s publications. After reading most of these in MSS. of various dates, and comparing them with such folk-lore as I had collected orally, I was surprised to find how few points of contact existed between the two. The men who committed stories to paper seem to have chiefly confined themselves to the inventions of the bards or professional story-tellers—often founded, however, on folk-lore incidents—while the taste of the people was more conservative, and willingly forgot the bardic inventions to perpetuate their old Aryan traditions, of which this volume gives some specimens. The discrepancy in style and contents between the MS. stories and those of the people leads me to believe that the[xx] stories in the MSS. are not so much old Aryan folk-tales written down by scholars as the inventions of individual brains, consciously inventing, as modern novelists do. This theory, however, must be somewhat modified before it can be applied, for, as I have said, there are incidents in Scotch Gaelic folk-tales which resemble those of some of the MS. stories rather nearly. Let us glance at a single instance—one only out of many—where Highland tradition preserves a trait which, were it not for such preservation, would assuredly be ascribed to the imaginative brain of an inventive Irish writer.
The extraordinary creature of which Campbell found traces in the Highlands, the Fáchan, of which he has drawn a whimsical engraving,[4] is met with in an Irish MS. called Iollann Arm-dearg. Old MacPhie, Campbell’s informant, called him the “Desert creature of Glen Eite, the son of Colin,” and described him as having “one hand out of his chest, one leg out of his haunch, and one eye out of the front of his face;” and again, “ugly was the make of the Fáchan, there was one hand out of the ridge of his chest, and one tuft out of the top of his head, and it were easier to take a mountain from the root than to bend that tuft.” This one-legged, one-handed, one-eyed creature, unknown, as Campbell remarks, to German or Norse mythology, is thus described[xxi] in the Irish manuscript: “And he (Iollann) was not long at this, until he saw the devilish misformed element, and the fierce and horrible spectre, and the gloomy disgusting enemy, and the morose unlovely churl (moga); and this is how he was: he held a very thick iron flail-club in his skinny hand, and twenty chains out of it, and fifty apples on each chain of them, and a venomous spell on each great apple of them, and a girdle of the skins of deer and roebuck around the thing that was his body, and one eye in the forehead of his black-faced countenance, and one bare, hard, very hairy hand coming out of his chest, and one veiny, thick-soled leg supporting him and a close, firm, dark blue mantle of twisted hard-thick feathers, protecting his body, and surely he was more like unto devil than to man.” This creature inhabited a desert, as the Highlander said, and were it not for this corroborating Scotch tradition, I should not have hesitated to put down the whole incident as the whimsical invention of some Irish writer, the more so as I had never heard any accounts of this wonderful creature in local tradition. This discovery of his counterpart in the Highlands puts a new complexion on the matter. Is the Highland spectre derived from the Irish manuscript story, or does the writer of the Irish story only embody in his tale a piece of folk-lore common at one time to all branches of the Gaelic race, and now all but extinct. This last supposition is certainly the true one, for it is[xxii] borne out by the fact that the Irish writer ascribes no name to this monster, while the Highlander calls him a Fáchan,[5] a word, as far as I know, not to be found elsewhere.
But we have further ground for pausing before we ascribe the Irish manuscript story to the invention of some single bard or writer. If we read it closely we shall see that it is largely the embodiment of other folk-tales. Many of the incidents of which it is composed can be paralleled from Scotch Gaelic sources, and one of the most remarkable, that of the prince becoming a journeyman fuller, I have found in a Connacht folk-tale. This diffusion of incidents in various tales collected all over the Gaelic-speaking world, would point to the fact that the story, as far as many of the incidents go, is not the invention of the writer, but is genuine folk-lore thrown by him into a new form, with, perhaps, added incidents of his own, and a brand new dress.
But now in tracing this typical story, we come across another remarkable fact—the fresh start the story took on its being thus recast and made up new. Once the order and progress of the incidents were thus stereotyped, as it were, the tale seems to have taken a new[xxiii] lease of its life, and gone forth to conquer; for while it continued to be constantly copied in Irish manuscripts, thus proving its popularity as a written tale, it continued to be recited verbally in Scotland in something like the same bardic and inflated language made use of by the Irish writer, and with pretty nearly the same sequence of incidents, the three adventurers, whose Irish names are Ur, Artuir, and Iollann, having become transmogrified into Ur, Athairt, and Iullar, in the mouth of the Highland reciter. I think it highly improbable, however, that at the time of this story being composed—largely out of folk-tale incidents—it was also committed to paper. I think it much more likely that the story was committed to writing by some Irish scribe, only after it had gained so great a vogue as to spread through both Ireland and Scotland. This would account for the fact that all the existing MSS. of this story, and of many others like it, are, as far as I am aware, comparatively modern.[6] Another argument in favour of this[xxiv] supposition, that bardic tales were only committed to writing when they had become popular, may be drawn from the fact that both in Ireland and the Highlands we find in many folk-lore stories traces of bardic compositions easily known by their poetical, alliterative, and inflated language, of which no MSS. are found in either country. It may, of course, be said, that the MSS. have perished; and we know how grotesquely indifferent the modern Irish are about their literary and antiquarian remains; yet, had they ever existed, I cannot help thinking that some trace of them, or allusion to them, would be found in our surviving literature.
There is also the greatest discrepancy in the poetical passages which occur in the Highland oral version and the Irish manuscript version of such tales as in incident are nearly identical. Now, if the story had been propagated from a manuscript written out once for all, and then copied, I feel pretty sure that the resemblance between the alliterative passages in the two would be much closer. The dissimilarity between them seems to show that the incidents and not the language were the things to be remembered, and that every wandering bard who picked up a new story from a colleague, stereotyped the incidents in his mind, but uttered them whenever he recited[xxv] the story, in his own language; and whenever he came to the description of a storm at sea, or a battle, or anything else which the original poet had seen fit to describe poetically, he did so too, but not in the same way or the same language, for to remember the language of his predecessor on these occasions, from merely hearing it, would be well-nigh impossible. It is likely, then, that each bard or story-teller observed the places where the poetical runs should come in, but trusted to his own cultivated eloquence for supplying them. It will be well to give an example or two from this tale of Iollann. Here is the sea-run, as given in the Highland oral version, after the three warriors embark in their vessel:—
“They gave her prow to sea and her stern to shore,
They hoisted the speckled flapping bare-topped sails,
Up against the tall tough splintering masts,
And they had a pleasant breeze as they might chose themselves,
Would bring heather from the hill, leaf from grove, willow from its roots,
Would put thatch of the houses in furrows of the ridges,
The day that neither the son nor the father could do it,
That same was neither little nor much for them,
But using it and taking it as it might come.
The sea plunging and surging,
The red sea the blue sea lashing,
And striking hither and thither about her planks,
The whorled dun whelk that was down on the floor of the ocean,
Would give a snag on her gunwale and a crack on her floor,
She would cut a slender oaten straw with the excellence of her going.”
It will be observed how different the corresponding run in the Irish manuscript is, when thrown into verse,[xxvi] for the language in both versions is only measured prose:—
“Then they gave an eager very quick courageous high-spirited flood-leap
To meet and to face the sea and the great ocean.
And great was the horror....
Then there arose before them a fierceness in the sea,
And they replied patiently stoutly strongly and vigorously,
To the roar of the green sided high-strong waves,
Till they made a high quick very-furious rowing
Till the deep-margined dreadful blue-bordered sea
Arose in broad-sloping fierce-frothing plains
And in rushing murmuring flood-quick ever-deep platforms.
And in gloomy horrible swift great valleys
Of very terrible green sea, and the beating and the pounding
Of the strong dangerous waves smiting against the decks
And against the sides of that full-great full-tight bark.”
It may, however, be objected that the sea-runs are so common and so numerous, that one might easily usurp the place of another, and that this alone is no proof that the various story-tellers or professional bards, contented themselves with remembering the incidents of a story, but either extemporised their own runs after what flourish their nature would, or else had a stock of these, of their own composing, always ready at hand. Let us look, then, at another story of which Campbell has preserved the Highland version, while I have a good Irish MS. of the same, written by some northern scribe, in 1762. This story, “The Slender Grey Kerne,” or “Slim Swarthy Champion,” as Campbell translates it, is full of alliterative runs, which the Highland reciter has retained[xxvii] in their proper places, but couched in different language, while he introduces a run of his own which the Irish has not got, in describing the swift movement of the kerne. Every time the kerne is asked where he comes from, the Highlander makes him say—
“I came from hurry-skurry,
From the land of endless spring,[7]
From the loved swanny glen,
A night in Islay and a night in Man,
A night on cold watching cairns
On the face of a mountain.
In the Scotch king’s town was I born,
A soiled sorry champion am I
Though I happened upon this town.”
In the Irish MS. the kerne always says—
“In Dun Monaidh, in the town of the king of Scotland,
I slept last night,
But I be a day in Islay and a day in Cantire,
A day in Man and a day in Rathlin,
A day in Fionncharn of the watch
Upon Slieve Fuaid.
A little miserable traveller I,
And in Aileach of the kings was I born.
And that,” said he, “is my story.”
Again, whenever the kerne plays his harp the Highlander says:—
[xxviii]
“He could play tunes and oirts and orgain,
Trampling things, tightening strings,
Warriors, heroes, and ghosts on their feet,
Ghosts and souls and sickness and fever,
That would set in sound lasting sleep
The whole great world,
With the sweetness of the calming[8] tunes
That the champion would play.”
The Irish run is as follows:—
“The kerne played music and tunes and instruments of song,
Wounded men and women with babes,
And slashed heroes and mangled warriors,
And all the wounded and all the sick,
And the bitterly-wounded of the great world,
They would sleep with the voice of the music,
Ever efficacious, ever sweet, which the kerne played.”
Again, when the kerne approaches anyone, his gait is thus described half-rythmically by the Scotch narrator:—“A young chap was seen coming towards them, his two shoulders through his old coat, his two ears through his old hat, his two squat kickering tatter-y shoes full of cold roadway-ish water, three feet of his sword sideways in the side of his haunch after the scabbard was ended.”
The Irish writer makes him come thus:—“And he beheld the slender grey kerne approaching him straight, and half his sword bared behind his haunch, and old shoes full of water sousing about him, and the top of his ears out through his old mantle, and a short butt-burned javelin of holly in his hand.”
These few specimens, which could be largely multiplied,[xxix] may be sufficient for our purpose, as they show that wherever a run occurs in the Irish the same occurs in the Gaelic, but couched in quite different language, though preserving a general similarity of meaning. This can only be accounted for on the supposition already made, that when a professional bard had invented a successful story it was not there and then committed to paper, but circulated viva voce, until it became the property of every story-teller, and was made part of the stock-in-trade of professional filès, who neither remembered nor cared to remember the words in which the story was first told, but only the incidents of which it was composed, and who (as their professional training enabled them to do) invented or extemporised glowing alliterative runs for themselves at every point of the story where, according to the inventor of it, a run should be.
It may be interesting to note that this particular story cannot—at least in the form in which we find it disseminated both in Ireland and Scotland—be older than the year 1362, in which year O’Connor Sligo marched into Munster and carried off great spoil, for in both the Scotch and Irish versions the kerne is made to accompany that chieftain, and to disappear in disgust because O’Connor forgot to offer him the first drink. This story then, and it is probably typical of a great many others, had its rise in its present shape—for, of course, the germ[xxx] of it may be much older—on Irish ground, not earlier than the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, and was carried by some Irish bard or professional story-teller to the Gaeldom of Scotland, where it is told to this day without any great variations, but in a form very much stunted and shortened. As to the Irish copy, I imagine that it was not written down for a couple of centuries later, and only after it had become a stock piece all over the Scotch and Irish Gaeldom; that then some scribe got hold of a story-teller (one of those professionals who, according to the Book of Leinster, were obliged to know seven times fifty stories), and stereotyped in writing the current Irish variation of the tale, just as Campbell, two, three, or four centuries afterwards, did with the Scotch Gaelic version.
It may, of course, be alleged that the bombastic and inflated language of many of the MS. stories is due not to the oral reciter, but to the scribe, who, in his pride of learning, thought to himself, nihil quod tango non orno; but though it is possible that some scribes threw in extraneous embellishments, I think the story-teller was the chief transgressor. Here, for instance, is a verbally collected specimen from a Connemara story, which contains all the marks of the MS. stories, and yet it is almost certain that it has been transmitted purely viva voce:[xxxi]—“They journeyed to the harbour where there was a vessel waiting to take them across the sea. They struck into her, and hung up the great blowing, bellying, equal-long, equal-straight sails, to the tops of the masts, so that they would not leave a rope without straining, or an oar without breaking, plowing the seething, surging sea; great whales making fairy music and service for them, two-thirds going beneath the wave to the one-third going on the top, sending the smooth sand down below and the rough sand up above, and the eels in grips with one another, until they grated on port and harbour in the Eastern world.” This description is probably nothing to the glowing language which a professional story-teller, with a trained ear, enormous vocabulary, and complete command of the language, would have employed a couple of hundred years ago. When such popular traces of the inflated style even still exist, it is against all evidence to accredit the invention and propagation of it to the scribes alone.
The relationship between Ireland and the Scottish Gaeldom, was of the closest kind, and there must have been something like an identity of literature, nor was there any break in the continuity of these friendly relations until the plantation of Ulster cut off the high road between the two Gaelic families. Even during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it is probable that no sooner did a bardic composition win fame in Ireland than it was carried over to try its fortune in Scotland too, just as an English dramatic company will come over from London[xxxii] to Dublin. A story which throws great light on the dispersion of heroic tales amongst the Gaelic-speaking peoples, is Conall Gulban, the longest of all Campbell’s tales. On comparing the Highland version with an Irish MS., by Father Manus O’Donnell, made in 1708, and another made about the beginning of this century, by Michael O’Longan, of Carricknavar, I was surprised to find incident following incident with wonderful regularity in both versions. Luckily we have proximate data for fixing the date of this renowned story, a story that, according to Campbell, is “very widely spread in Scotland, from Beaulay on the east, to Barra on the west, and Dunoon and Paisley in the south.” Both the Irish and Gaelic stories relate the exploits of the fifth century chieftain, Conall Gulban, the son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, and his wars with (amongst others) the Turks. The Irish story begins with an account of Niall holding his court, when a herald from the Emperor of Constantinople comes forward and summons him to join the army of the emperor, and assist in putting down Christianity, and making the nations of Europe embrace the Turkish faith. We may fairly surmise that this romance took its rise in the shock given to Europe by the fall of Constantinople and the career of Mahomet the Great. This would throw back its date to the latter end of the fifteenth century at the earliest; but one might almost suppose that Constantinople had been long enough held[xxxiii] by the Turks at the time the romance was invented to make the inventor suppose that it had always belonged to them, even in the time of Niall of the Nine Hostages.[9] We know that romances of this kind continued to be invented at a much later date, but I fancy none of these ever penetrated to Scotland. One of the most popular of romantic tales with the scribes of the last century and the first half of this, was “The Adventures of Torolbh MacStairn,” and again, the “Adventures of Torolbh MacStairn’s Three Sons,” which most of the MSS. ascribe to Michael Coiminn, who lived at the beginning of the eighteenth century,[10] and whose romance was certainly not propagated by professional story-tellers, as I have tried to prove was the case with the earlier romances, but by means of numerous manuscript copies; and it is also certain that Coiminn did not relate this tale as the old bards did, but[xxxiv] wrote it down as modern novelists do their stories. But this does not invalidate my surmise, or prove that Conall Gulban, and forty or fifty of the same kind, had their origin in a written manuscript; it only proves that in the eighteenth century the old order was giving place to the new, and that the professional bards and story-tellers were now a thing of the past, they having fallen with the Gaelic nobility who were their patrons. It would be exceedingly interesting to know whether any traces of these modern stories that had their rise in written manuscripts, are to be found amongst the peasantry as folk-lore. I, certainly, have found no remnant of any such; but this proves nothing. If Ireland had a few individual workers scattered over the provinces we would know more on the subject; but, unfortunately, we have hardly any such people, and what is worse, the present current of political thought, and the tone of our Irish educational establishments are not likely to produce them. Until something has been done by us to collect Irish folk-lore in as thorough a manner as Highland tales have already been collected, no deductions can be made with certainty upon the subject of the relationship between Highland and Irish folk-tales, and the relation of both to the Irish MSS.
Irish folk-stories may roughly be divided into two classes, those which I believe never had any conscious genesis inside the shores of Ireland, and those which[xxxv] had. These last we have just been examining. Most of the longer tales about the Fenians, and all those stories which have long inflated passages full of alliterative words and poetic epithets, belong to this class. Under the other head of stories that were never consciously invented on Irish ground, we may place all such simple stories as bear a trace of nature myths, and those which appear to belong to our old Aryan heritage, from the fact of their having parallels amongst other Aryan-speaking races, such as the story of the man who wanted to learn to shake with fear, stories of animals and talking birds, of giants and wizards, and others whose directness and simplicity show them to have had an unconscious and popular origin, though some of these may, of course, have arisen on Irish soil. To this second class belong also that numerous body of traditions rather than tales, of conversational anecdotes rather than set stories, about appearances of fairies, or “good people,” or Tuatha De Danann, as they are also called; of pookas, leprechauns, ghosts, apparitions, water-horses, &c. These creations of folk-fancy seldom appear, as far as I have observed, in the folk-tale proper, or at least they only appear as adjuncts, for in almost all cases the interest of these regular tales centres round a human hero. Stories about leprechauns, fairies, &c., are very brief, and generally have local names and scenery attached to them, and are told conversationally as any other occurrence might be[xxxvi] told, whereas there is a certain solemnity about the repetition of a folk-tale proper.
After spending so much time over the very latest folk-tales, the detritus of bardic stories, it will be well to cast a glance at some of the most ancient, such as bear their pre-historic origin upon their face. Some of these point, beyond all doubt, to rude efforts on the part of primitive man to realize to himself the phenomena of nature, by personifying them, and attaching to them explanatory fables. Let us take a specimen from a story I found in Mayo, not given in this volume—“The Boy who was long on his Mother.”[11] In this story, which in Von Hahn’s classification would come under the heading of “the strong man his adventures,” the hero is a veritable Hercules, whom the king tries to put to death by making him perform impossible tasks, amongst other things, by sending him down to hell to drive up the spirits with his club. He is desired by the king to drain a lake full of water. The lake is very steep on one side like a reservoir. The hero makes a hole at this side, applies his mouth to it, and sucks down the water of the lake, with boats, fishes, and everything else it contained, leaving the lake ?o? tirm le bois do lái?e, “as dry as the palm of your hand.” Even a sceptic will be likely to confess that this tale (which has otherwise no meaning)[xxxvii] is the remains of a (probably Aryan) sun-myth, and personifies the action of the warm sun in drying up a lake and making it a marsh, killing the fishes, and leaving the boats stranded. But this story, like many others, is suggestive of more than this, since it would supply an argument for those who, like Professor Rhys, see in Hercules a sun-god. The descent of our hero into hell, and his frightening the spirits with his club, the impossible tasks which the king gives him to perform in the hopes of slaying him, and his successful accomplishment of them, seem to identify him with the classic Hercules. But the Irish tradition preserves the incident of drying the lake, which must have been the work of a sun-god, the very thing that Hercules—but on much slighter grounds—is supposed to have been.[12] If this story is not the remains of a nature myth, it is perfectly unintelligible, for no rational person could hope to impose upon even a child by saying that a man drank up a lake, ships, and all; and yet this story has been with strange conservatism repeated from father to son for probably thousands of years, and must have taken its rise at a time when our ancestors were in much the same rude and mindless[xxxviii] condition as the Australian blacks or the Indians of California are to-day.
Again, in another story we hear of a boat that sails equally swiftly over land and sea, and goes straight to its mark. It is so large that if all the men in the world were to enter it there would remain place for six hundred more; while it is so small that it folds up into the hand of the person who has it. But ships do not sail on land, nor grow large and small, nor go straight to their mark; consequently, it is plain that we have here another nature myth, vastly old, invented by pre-historic man, for these ships can be nothing but the clouds which sail over land and sea, are large enough to hold the largest armies, and small enough to fold into the hand, and which go straight to their mark. The meaning of this has been forgotten for countless ages, but the story has survived.
Again, in another tale which I found, called “The Bird of Sweet Music,”[13] a man follows a sweet singing bird into a cave under the ground, and finds a country where he wanders for a year and a day, and a woman who befriends him while there, and enables him to bring back the bird, which turns out to be a human being. At the end of the tale the narrator mentions quite casually that it was his mother whom he met down there.[xxxix] But this touch shows that the land where he wandered was the Celtic Hades, the country of the dead beneath the ground, and seems to stamp the tale at once as at least pre-Christian.
Even in such an unpretending-looking story as “The King of Ireland’s Son” (the third in this volume), there are elements which must be vastly old. In a short Czech story, “George with the Goat,” we find some of the prince’s companions figuring, only slightly metamorphosed. We have the man with one foot over his shoulder, who jumps a hundred miles when he puts it down; while the gun-man of the Irish story who performs two parts—that of seeing and shooting—is replaced in the Bohemian tale by two different men, one of whom has such sight that he must keep a bandage over his eyes, for if he removed it he could see a hundred miles, and the other has, instead of a gun, a bottle with his thumb stuck into it for a stopper, because if he took it out it would squirt a hundred miles. George hires one after the other, just as the prince does in the Irish story. George goes to try to win the king’s daughter, as the Irish prince does, and, amongst other things, is desired to bring a goblet of water from a well a hundred miles off in a minute. “So,” says the story,[14][xl] “George said to the man who had the foot on his shoulder, ‘You said that if you took the foot down you could jump a hundred miles.’ He replied: ‘I’ll easily do that.’ He took the foot down, jumped, and was there; but after this there was only a very little time to spare, and by this he ought to have been back. So George said to the second, ‘You said that if you removed the bandage from your eyes you could see a hundred miles; peep, and see what is going on.’ ‘Ah, sir, goodness gracious! he’s fallen asleep.’ ‘That will be a bad job,’ said George; ‘the time will be up. You third man, you said if you pulled your thumb out you could squirt a hundred miles. Be quick, and squirt thither, that he may get up; and you, look whether he is moving, or what.’ ‘Oh, sir, he’s getting up now; he’s knocking the dust off; he’s drawing the water.’ He then gave a jump, and was there exactly in time.” Now, this Bohemian story seems also to bear traces of a nature myth; for, as Mr. Wratislaw has remarked: “the man who jumps a hundred miles appears to be the rainbow, the man with bandaged eyes the lightning, and the man with the bottle the cloud.” The Irish story, while in every other way superior to the Bohemian, has quite obscured this point; and were it not for the striking Sclavonic parallel, people might be found to assert that the story was of recent origin. This discovery of the Czech tale, however, throws it at once three thousand years back; for the similarity of the Irish and Bohemian[xli] story can hardly be accounted for, except on the supposition, that both Slavs and Celts carried it from the original home of the Aryan race, in pre-historic times, or at least from some place where the two races were in contiguity with one another, and that it, too—little as it appears so now—was at one time in all probability a nature myth.
Such myth stories as these ought to be preserved, since they are about the last visible link connecting civilized with pre-historic man; for, of all the traces that man in his earliest period has left behind him, there is nothing except a few drilled stones or flint arrow-heads that approaches the antiquity of these tales, as told to-day by a half-starving peasant in a smoky Connacht cabin.
It is time to say a word about the narrators of these stories. The people who can recite them are, as far as my researches have gone, to be found only amongst the oldest, most neglected, and poorest of the Irish-speaking population. English-speaking people either do not know them at all, or else tell them in so bald and condensed a form as to be useless. Almost all the men from whom I used to hear stories in the County Roscommon are dead. Ten or fifteen years ago I used to hear a great many stories, but I did not understand their value. Now when I go back for them I cannot find them. They have died out, and will never again be[xlii] heard on the hillsides, where they probably existed for a couple of thousand years; they will never be repeated there again, to use the Irish phrase, while grass grows or water runs. Several of these stories I got from an old man, one Shawn Cunningham, on the border of the County Roscommon, where it joins Mayo. He never spoke more than a few words of English till he was fifteen years old. He was taught by a hedge schoolmaster from the South of Ireland out of Irish MSS. As far as I could make out from him the teaching seemed to consist in making him learn Irish poems by heart. His next schoolmaster, however, tied a piece of stick round his neck, and when he came to school in the morning the schoolmaster used to inspect the piece of wood and pretend that it told him how often he had spoken Irish when at home. In some cases the schoolmasters made the parents put a notch in the stick every time the child failed to speak English. He was beaten then, and always beaten whenever he was heard speaking a word of Irish, even though at this time he could hardly speak a word of English. His son and daughter now speak Irish, though not fluently, his grandchildren do not even understand it. He had at one time, as he expressed it, “the full of a sack of stories,” but he had forgotten them. His grandchildren stood by his knee while he told me one or two, but it was evident they did not understand a word. His son and daughter laughed at them as nonsense.[xliii] Even in Achill where, if anywhere, one ought to find folk-stories in their purity, a fine-looking dark man of about forty-five, who told me a number of them, and could repeat Ossian’s poems, assured me that now-a-days when he went into a house in the evening and the old people got him to recite, the boys would go out; “they wouldn’t understand me,” said he, “and when they wouldn’t, they’d sooner be listening to géimnea? na mbó,” “the lowing of the cows.” This, too, in an island where many people cannot speak English. I do not know whether the Achill schoolmasters make use of the notch of wood to-day, but it is hardly wanted now. It is curious that this was the device universally employed all over Connacht and Munster to kill the language. This took place under the eye of O’Connell and the Parliamentarians, and, of course, under the eye and with the sanction of the Catholic priesthood and prelates, some of whom, according to Father Keegan, of St. Louis, distinguished themselves by driving the Irish teachers out of their dioceses and burning their books. At the present day, such is the irony of fate, if a stranger talks Irish he runs a good chance of being looked upon as an enemy, this because some attempts were made to proselytize “natives” by circulating Irish bibles, and sending some Irish scripture-readers amongst them. Surely nothing so exquisitely ludicrous ever took place outside of this island of anomalies, as that a stranger[xliv] who tries to speak Irish in Ireland runs the serious risk of being looked upon as a proselytizing Englishman. As matters are still progressing gaily in this direction, let nobody be surprised if a pure Aryan language which, at the time of the famine, in ’47, was spoken by at least four million souls (more than the whole population of Switzerland), becomes in a few years as extinct as Cornish. Of course, there is not a shadow of necessity, either social or economical, for this. All the world knows that bi-linguists are superior to men who know only one language, yet in Ireland everyone pretends to believe the contrary. A few words from the influential leaders of the race when next they visit Achill, for instance, would help to keep Irish alive there in s?cula s?culorum, and with the Irish language, the old Aryan folk-lore, the Ossianic poems, numberless ballads, folk-songs, and proverbs, and a thousand and one other interesting things that survive when Irish is spoken, and die when it dies. But, from a complexity of causes which I am afraid to explain, the men who for the last sixty years have had the ear of the Irish race have persistently shown the cold shoulder to everything that was Irish and racial, and while protesting, or pretending to protest, against West Britonism, have helped, more than anyone else, by their example, to assimilate us to England and the English, thus running counter to the entire voice of modern Europe, which is in favour of extracting the best[xlv] from the various races of men who inhabit it, by helping them to develop themselves on national and racial lines. The people are not the better for it either, for one would fancy it required little culture to see that the man who reads Irish MSS., and repeats Ossianic poetry, is a higher and more interesting type than the man whose mental training is confined to spelling through an article in United Ireland.[15]
I may mention here that it is not as easy a thing as might be imagined to collect Irish stories. One hears that tales are to be had from such and such a man, generally, alas! a very old one. With difficulty one manages to find him out, only to discover, probably, that he has some work on hand. If it happens to be harvest time it is nearly useless going to him at all, unless one[xlvi] is prepared to sit up with him all night, for his mind is sure to be so distraught with harvest operations that he can tell you nothing. If it is winter time, however, and you fortunately find him unoccupied, nevertheless it requires some management to get him to tell his stories. Half a glass of ishka-baha, a pipe of tobacco, and a story of one’s own are the best things to begin with. If, however, you start to take down the story verbatim with pencil and paper, as an unwary collector might do, you destroy all, or your shanachie becomes irritable. He will not wait for you to write down your sentence, and if you call out, “Stop, stop, wait till I get this down,” he will forget what he was going to tell you, and you will not get a third of his story, though you may think you have it all. What you must generally do is to sit quietly smoking[xlvii] your pipe, without the slightest interruption, not even when he comes to words and phrases which you do not understand. He must be allowed his own way to the end, and then after judiciously praising him and discussing the story, you remark, as if the thought had suddenly struck you, “bu? ?ai? liom sin a ?ei? agam air ?áipeur,” “I’d like to have that on paper.” Then you can get it from him easily enough, and when he leaves out whole incidents, as he is sure to do, you who have just heard the story can put him right, and so get it from him nearly in its entirety. Still it is not always easy to write down these stories, for they are full of old or corrupted words, which neither you nor your narrator understand, and if you press him too much over the meaning of these he gets confused and irritable.
The present volume consists of about half the stories in the Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta, translated into English, together with some half dozen other stories given in the original together with a close English translation. It is not very easy to make a good translation from Irish into English, for there are no two Aryan languages more opposed to each other in spirit and idiom. Still, the English spoken by three-fourths of the people of Ireland is largely influenced by Gaelic idioms, for most of those expressions which surprise Englishmen are really translations from that Irish which was the language of the[xlviii] speaker’s father, grandfather, or great-grandfather—according to the part of the country you may be in—and there have perpetuated themselves, even in districts where you will scarce find a trace of an Irish word. There are, however, also hundreds of Gaelic idioms not reproduced in the English spoken by the people, and it is difficult to render these fitly. Campbell of Islay has run into rather an extreme in his translations, for in order to make them picturesque, he has rendered his Gaelic originals something too literally. Thus, he invariably translates bhain se an ceann deth, by “he reaped the head off him,” a form of speech which, I notice, a modern Irish poet and M.P. has adopted from him; but bain, though it certainly means “reap” amongst other things, is the word used for taking off a hat as well as a head. Again, he always translates thu by “thou,” which gives his stories a strange antique air, which is partly artificial, for the Gaelic “thou” corresponds to the English “you,” the second person plural not being used except in speaking of more than one. In this way, Campbell has given his excellent and thoroughly reliable translations a scarcely legitimate colouring, which I have tried to avoid. For this reason, I have not always translated the Irish idioms quite literally, though I have used much unidiomatic English, but only of the kind used all over Ireland, the kind the people themselves use. I do not translate, for instance, the Irish for “he died,” by[xlix] “he got death,” for this, though the literal translation, is not adopted into Hibernian English; but I do translate the Irish ghnidheadh se sin by “he used to do that,” which is the ordinary Anglo-Irish attempt at making—what they have not got in English—a consuetudinal tense. I have scarcely used the pluperfect at all. No such tense exists in Irish, and the people who speak English do not seem to feel the want of it, and make no hesitation in saying, “I’d speak sooner if I knew that,” where they mean, “if I had known that I would have spoken sooner.” I do not translate (as Campbell would), “it rose with me to do it,” but “I succeeded in doing it,” for the first, though the literal translation of the Irish idiom, has not been adopted into English; but I do translate “he did it and he drunk,” instead of, “he did it while he was drunk;” for the first phrase (the literal translation of the Irish) is universally used throughout English-speaking Ireland. Where, as sometimes happens, the English language contains no exact equivalent for an Irish expression, I have rendered the original as well as I could, as one generally does render for linguistic purposes, from one language into another.
In conclusion, it only remains for me to thank Mr. Alfred Nutt for enriching this book as he has done, and for bearing with the dilatoriness of the Irish printers, who find so much difficulty in setting Irish type, that many good Irishmen have of late come round to the[l] idea of printing our language in Roman characters; and to express my gratitude to Father Eugene O’Growney for the unwearying kindness with which he read and corrected my Irish proofs, and for the manifold aid which he has afforded me on this and other occasions.
POSTSCRIPT BY ALFRED NUTT.
 I had hoped to accompany these tales with as full a commentary as that which I have affixed to the Argyllshire M?rchen, collected and translated by the Rev. D. MacInnes. Considerations of business and health prevent me from carrying out this intention, and I have only been able to notice a passage here and there in the Tales; but I have gladly availed myself of my friend, Dr. Hyde’s permission, to touch upon a few points in his Introduction.
Of special interest are Dr. Hyde’s remarks upon the relations which obtain between the modern folk-tale current among the Gaelic-speaking populations of Ireland and Scotland, and the Irish mythic, heroic and romantic literature preserved in MSS., which range in date from the eleventh century to the present day.
In Ireland, more than elsewhere, the line of demarcation between the tale whose genesis is conscious, and that of which the reverse is true, is hard to draw, and students will, for a long while to come, differ concerning points of detail. I may thus be permitted to disagree at times with Dr. Hyde, although, as a rule, I am heartily at one with him.
Dr. Hyde distinguishes between an older stratum of folk-tale (the “old Aryan traditions,” of p. xix.) and the newer stratum of “bardic inventions.” He also establishes a yet younger class than these latter, the romances of the professional story-tellers of the eighteenth century, who “wrote them down as modern novelists do their stories.” Of these last he remarks (p. xxxiv.), that he has found no remnant of them among the peasantry of to-day; a valuable bit of evidence, although of course, subject to the inconclusiveness of all merely negative testimony. To revert to the second class, he looks upon the tales comprised in it as being rather the inventions of individual brains than as old Aryan folk-tales (p. xx.) It must at once be conceded, that a great number of the tales and ballads current in the Gaelic-speaking lands undoubtedly received the form under which they are now current, somewhere between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries; that the authors of that form were equally[lii] undoubtedly the professional bards and story-tellers attached to the court of every Gaelic chieftain; and that the method of their transmission was oral, it being the custom of the story-tellers both to teach their tales to pupils, and to travel about from district to district.
The style of these stories and ballads enables us to date them with sufficient precision. Dr. Hyde also notes historical allusions, such as the reference to O’Connor Sligo, in the story of the “Slim Swarthy Champion,” or to the Turks in the story of “Conall Gulban.” I cannot but think, however, that it is straining the evidence to assert that the one story was invented after 1362, or the other after the fall of Constantinople. The fact that “Bony” appears in some versions of the common English mumming play does not show that it originated in this century, merely that these particular versions have passed through the minds of nineteenth century peasants; and in like manner the Connaught fourteenth century chieftain may easily have taken the place of an earlier personage, the Turks in “Conall Gulban,” of an earlier wizard-giant race. If I cannot go as far as Dr. Hyde in this sense, I must equally demur to the assumption (p. xl.), that community of incident between an Irish and a Bohemian tale necessarily establishes the pre-historic antiquity of the incident. I believe that a great many folk-tales, as well as much else of folk-lore, has been developed in situ, rather than imported from the outside; but I, by no means, deny importation in principle, and I recognise that its agency has been clearly demonstrated in not a few cases.
The main interest of Irish folk-literature (if the expression be allowed) centres in the bardic stories. I think that Dr. Hyde lays too much stress upon such external secondary matters as the names of heroes, or allusions to historical events; and, indeed, he himself, in the case of Murachaidh MacBrian, states what I believe to be the correct theory, namely, that the Irish bardic story, from which he derives the Scotch Gaelic one, is, as far as many of its incidents go, not the invention of the writer, but genuine folk-lore thrown by him into a new form (p. xxii.)
Had we all the materials necessary for forming a judgment, such is, I believe, the conclusion that would in every case be reached. But I furthermore hold it likely that in many cases the recast story gradually reverted to a primitive folk-type in the course of passing down from the court story-teller to the humbler peasant reciters, that it sloughed off the embellishments of the ollamhs, and reintroduced the older, wilder conceptions with which the folk remained in fuller sympathy than the more cultured bard. Compare, for instance, as I compared ten years ago, “Maghach Colgar,” in Campbell’s version (No. 36), with the “Fairy Palace of the Quicken Trees.” The one tale has all the incidents in the wildest and most fantastic form possible; in the other they are rationalised to the utmost possible extent[liii] and made to appear like a piece of genuine history. I do not think that if this later version was invented right out by a thirteenth or fourteenth century ollamh, it could have given rise to the former one. Either “Maghach Colgar” descends from the folk-tale which served as the basis of the Irish story, or, what is more likely, the folk, whilst appreciating and preserving the new arrangement of certain well-known incidents, retained the earlier form of the incidents themselves, as being more consonant with the totality of its conceptions, both moral and ?sthetic. This I hold to be the vital lesson the folk-lorist may learn from considering the relations of Gaelic folk-tale and Gaelic romance (using the latter term in the sense of story with a conscious genesis): that romance, to live and propagate itself among the folk, must follow certain rules, satisfy certain conceptions of life, conform to certain conventions. The Irish bards and story-tellers had little difficulty, I take it, in doing this; they had not outgrown the creed of their countrymen, they were in substantial touch with the intellectual and artistic laws that govern their subject-matter. Re-arrange, rationalise somewhat, deck out with the questionable adornment of their scanty and ill-digested book-learning—to this extent, but to this extent only, I believe, reached their influence upon the mass of folk-conceptions and presentments which they inherited from their fathers, and which, with these modifications and additions, they handed on to their children.
But romance must not only conform to the conventions, it must also fit in with the ensemble of conditions, material, mental and spiritual, which constitute the culture (taking this much-abused word in its widest sense) of a race. An example will make this clear.
Of all modern, consciously-invented fairy tales I know but one which conforms fully to the folk-tale convention—“The Shaving of Shagpat.” It follows the formula as closely and accurately as the best of Grimm’s or of Campbell’s tales. To divine the nature of a convention, and to use its capabilities to the utmost, is a special mark of genius, and in this, as in other instances, whatever else be absent from Mr. Meredith’s work, genius is indubitably present. But I do not think that “The Shaving of Shagpat” could ever be acclimatised as a folk-tale in this country. Scenery, conduct of story, characterisation of personages, are all too distinctively Oriental. But let an Eastern admirer of Mr. Meredith translate his work into Arabic or Hindi, and let the book fall into the hands of a Cairene or Delhi story-teller (if such still exist), I can well imagine that, with judicious cuts, it should win praise for its reciter in market-place or bazaar. Did this happen, it would surely be due to the fact that the story is strictly constructed upon traditional lines, rather than to the brilliant invention and fancy displayed on every page. Strip from it the wit and philosophy of the author,[liv] and there remains a fairy tale to charm the East; but it would need to be reduced to a skeleton, and reclothed with new flesh before it could charm the folk of the West.
To bring home yet more clearly to our minds this necessity for romance to conform to convention, let us ask ourselves, what would have happened if one of the Irish story-tellers who perambulated the Western Isles as late as the seventeenth century, had carried with him a volume of Hakluyt or Purchas, or, supposing one to have lingered enough, Defoe or Gil Blas? Would he have been welcomed when he substituted the new fare for the old tales of “Finn and the Fians?” and even if welcomed, would he have gained currency for it? Would the seed thus planted have thriven, or would it not rather, fallen upon rocky places, have withered away?
It may, however, be objected that the real difference lies not so much in the subject-matter as in the mode of transmission; and the objection may seem to derive some force from what Dr. Hyde notes concerning the prevalence of folk-tales in Wicklow, and the nearer Pale generally, as contrasted with Leitrim, Longford, and Meath (p. xii.). It is difficult to over-estimate the interest and importance of this fact, and there can hardly be a doubt that Dr. Hyde has explained it correctly. It may, then, be urged that so long as oral transmission lasts the folk-tale flourishes; and only when the printed work ousts the story-teller is it that the folk-tale dies out. But this reasoning will not hold water. It is absurd to contend that the story-teller had none but a certain class of materials at his disposal till lately. He had the whole realm of intellect and fancy to draw upon; but he, and still more his hearers, knew only one district of that realm; and had it been possible for him to step outside its limits his hearers could not have followed him. I grant folk fancy has shared the fortunes of humanity together with every other manifestation of man’s activity, but always within strictly defined limits, to transgress which has always been to forfeit the favour of the folk.
What, then, are the characteristic marks of folk-fancy? The question is of special interest in connection with Gaelic folk-lore. The latter is rich in transitional forms, the study of which reveal more clearly than is otherwise possible the nature and workings of the folk-mind.
The products of folk-fancy (putting aside such examples of folk-wisdom and folk-wit as proverbs, saws, jests, etc.), may be roughly divided among two great classes:
Firstly, stories of a quasi-historical or anecdotic nature, accepted as actual fact (of course with varying degrees of credence) by narrator and hearer. Stories of this kind are very largely concerned with beings (supernatural, as we should call them) differing from man, and with their relations to and dealings[lv] with man. Not infrequently, however, the actors in the stories are wholly human, or human and animal. Gaelic folk-lore is rich in such stories, owing to the extraordinary tenacity of the fairy belief. We can hardly doubt that the Gael, like all other races which have passed through a certain stage of culture, had at one time an organised hierarchy of divine beings. But we have to piece together the Gaelic god-saga out of bare names, mere hints, and stories which have evidently suffered vital change. In the earliest stratum of Gaelic mythic narrative we find beings who at some former time had occupied divine rank, but whose relations to man are substantially, as therein presented, the same as those of the modern fairy to the modern peasant. The chiefs of the Tuatha de Danann hanker after earthly maidens; the divine damsels long for and summon to themselves earthly heroes. Though undying, very strong, and very wise, they may be overpowered or outwitted by the mortal hero. As if conscious of some source of weakness we cannot detect, they are anxious, in their internecine struggles, to secure the aid of the sons of men. Small wonder that this belief, which we can follow for at least 1,200 years, should furnish so many elements to the folk-fancy of the Gael.
In stories of the second class the action is relegated to a remote past—once upon a time—or to a distant undefined region, and the narrative is not necessarily accepted as a record of actual fact. Stories of this class, whether in prose or verse, may again be subdivided into—humorous, optimistic, tragic; and with regard to the third sub-division, it should be noted that the stories comprised in it are generally told as having been true once, though not in the immediate tangible sense of stories in the first class.
These different narrative groups share certain characteristics, though in varying proportions.
Firstly, the fondness for and adherence to a comparatively small number of set formulas. This is obviously less marked in stories of the first class, which, as being in the mind of the folk a record of what has actually happened, partake of the diversity of actual life. And yet the most striking similarities occur; such an anecdote, for instance, as that which tells how a supernatural changeling is baffled by a brewery of egg-shells being found from Japan to Brittany.
Secondly, on the moral side, the unquestioning acceptance of fatalism, though not in the sense which the Moslem or the Calvinist would attach to the word. The event is bound to be of a certain nature, provided a certain mode of attaining it be chosen. This comes out well in the large group of stories which tell how a supernatural being helps a mortal to perform certain tasks, as a rule, with some ulterior benefit to itself in view. The most disheartening carelessness and stupidity on the part of the man cannot alter the result; the skill and courage of the supernatural helper are powerless without the mortal[lvi] co-operation. In what I have termed the tragic stories, this fatalism puts on a moral form, and gives rise to the conception of Nemesis.
Thirdly, on the mental side, animism is prevalent, i.e., the acceptance of a life common to, not alone man and animals, but all manifestations of force. In so far as a distinction is made between the life of man and that of nature at large, it is in favour of the latter, to which more potent energy is ascribed.
Just as stories of the first class are less characterised by adherence to formula, so stories of the humorous group are less characterised by fatalism and animism. This is inevitable, as such stories are, as a rule, concerned solely with the relations of man to his fellows.
The most fascinating and perplexing problems are those connected with the groups I have termed optimistic and tragic. To the former belong the almost entirety of such nursery tales as are not humorous in character. “They were married and lived happily ever afterwards;” such is the almost invariable end formula. The hero wins the princess, and the villain is punished.
This feature the nursery tale shares with the god-saga; Zeus confounds the Titans, Apollo slays the Python, Lug overcomes Balor, Indra vanquishes Vritra. There are two apparent exceptions to this rule. The Teutonic god myth is tragic; the Anses are ever under the shadow of the final conflict. This has been explained by the influence of Christian ideas; but although this influence must be unreservedly admitted in certain details of the passing of the gods, yet the fact that the Iranian god-saga is likewise undecided, instead of having a frankly optimistic ending, makes me doubt whether the drawn battle between the powers of good and ill be not a genuine and necessary part of the Teutonic mythology. As is well known, Rydberg has established some striking points of contact between the mythic ideas of Scandinavia and those of Iran.
In striking contradiction to this moral, optimistic tendency are the great heroic sagas. One and all well-nigh are profoundly tragic. The doom of Troy the great, the passing of Arthur, the slaughter of the Nibelungs, the death of Sohrab at his father’s hands, Roncevalles, Gabhra, the fratricidal conflict of Cuchullain and Ferdiad, the woes of the house of Atreus; such are but a few examples of the prevailing tone of the hero-tales. Achilles and Siegfried and Cuchullain are slain in the flower of their youth and prowess. Of them, at least, the saying is true, that whom the gods love die young. Why is it not equally true of the prince hero of the fairy tale? Is it that the hero-tale associated in the minds of hearers and reciters with men who had actually lived and fought, brought down to earth, so to say, out of the mysterious wonderland in which god and fairy and old time kings have their being, becomes[lvii] thereby liable to the necessities of death and decay inherent in all human things? Some scholars have a ready answer for this and similar questions. The heroic epos assumed its shape once for all among one special race, and was then passed on to the other races who remained faithful to the main lines whilst altering details. If this explanation were true, it would still leave unsolved the problem, why the heroic epos, which for its fashioners and hearers was at once a record of the actual and an exemplar of the ideal, should, among men differing in blood and culture, follow one model, and that a tragic one. Granting that Greek and Teuton and Celt did borrow the tales which they themselves conceived to be very blood and bone of their race, what force compelled them all to borrow one special conception of life and fate?
Such exceptions as there are to the tragic nature of the heroic saga are apparent rather than real. The Odyssey ends happily, like an old-fashioned novel, but Fénélon long ago recognised in the Odyssey—“un amas de contes de vieille.”
Perseus again has the luck of a fairy-tale prince, but then the story of his fortunes is obviously a fairy-tale, with named instead of anonymous personages.
Whilst the fairy-tale is akin in tone to the god saga, the ballad recalls the heroic epos. The vast majority of ballads are tragic. Sir Patrick Spens must drown, and Glasgerion’s leman be cheated by the churl; Clerk Saunders comes from the other world, like Helge to Sigrun; Douglas dreams his dreary dream, “I saw a dead man win a fight, and that dead man was I.” The themes of the ballad are the most dire and deadly of human passions; love scorned or betrayed, hate, and revenge. Very seldom, too, do the plots of ballad and m?rchen cross or overlap. Where this does happen it will, as a rule, be found that both are common descendants of some great saga.
We find such an instance in the Fenian saga, episodes of which have lived on in the Gaelic folk memory in the double form of prose and poetry. But it should be noted that the poetry accentuates the tragic side—the battle of Gabhra, the death of Diarmaid—whilst the prose takes rather some episode of Finn’s youth or manhood, and presents it as a rounded and complete whole, the issue of which is fortunate.
The relations of myth and epos to folk-lore may thus be likened to that of trees to the soil from which they spring, and which they enrich and fertilize by the decay of their leaves and branches which mingle indistinguishably with the original soil. Of this soil, again, rude bricks may be made, and a house built; let the house fall into ruins, and the bricks crumble into dust, it will be hard to discriminate that dust from the parent earth. But raise a house of iron or stone, and, however ruined, its fragments can always be recognised.[lviii] In the case of the Irish bardic literature the analogy is, I believe, with soil and tree, rather than with soil and edifice.
Reverting once more to the characteristics of folk-fancy, let us note that they appear equally in folk-practice and folk-belief. The tough conservatism of the folk-mind has struck all observers: its adherence to immemorial formulas; its fatalistic acceptance of the mysteries of nature and heredity, coupled with its faith in the efficacy of sympathetic magic; its elaborate system of custom and ritual based upon the idea that between men and the remainder of the universe there is no difference of kind.
A conception of the Cosmos is thus arrived at which, more than any religious creed, fulfils the test of catholicity; literally, and in the fullest significance of the words, it has been held semper, ubique et ab omnibus. And of this conception of the universe, more universal than any that has as yet swayed the minds of man, it is possible that men now living may see the last flickering remains; it is well-nigh certain that our grandchildren will live in a world out of which it has utterly vanished.
For the folk-lorist the Gospel saying is thus more pregnant with meaning than for any other student of man’s history—“the night cometh wherein no man may work.” Surely, many Irishmen will take to heart the example of Dr. Hyde, and will go forth to glean what may yet be found of as fair and bounteous a harvest of myth and romance as ever flourished among any race.
 
THE TAILOR AND THE THREE BEASTS.
 There was once a tailor in Galway, and he was sewing cloth. He saw a flea springing up out of the cloth, and he threw his needle at it and killed it. Then he said: “Am I not a fine hero when I was able to kill that flea?”
Then he said that he must go to Blackleea (Dublin), to the king’s court, to see would he be able to build it. That court was a’building for a long time; but as much of it as would be made during the day used to be thrown down again during the night, and for that reason nobody could build it up. It was three giants who used to come in the night and throw it. The day on the morrow the tailor went off, and brought with him his tools, the spade and the shovel.
He had not gone far till he met a white horse, and he saluted him.
“God save you,” said the horse. “Where are you going?”
“I am going to Dublin,” said the tailor, “to build a court for the king, and to get a lady for a wife, if I am able to do it;” for the king had promised that he would give his own daughter, and a lot of money with her, to whoever would be able to build up his court.
“Would you make me a hole,” said the old white garraun (horse),[5] “where I could go a’hiding whenever the people are for bringing me to the mill or the kiln, so that they won’t see me, for they have me perished doing work for them?”
“I’ll do that, indeed,” said the tailor, “and welcome.”
He brought the spade and shovel, and he made a hole, and he said to the old white horse to go down into it till he would see if it would fit him. The white horse went down into the hole, but when he tried to come up again he was not able.
“Make a place for me now,” said the white horse, “by which I’ll come up out of the hole here, whenever I’ll be hungry.”
“I will not,” said the tailor; “remain where you are until I come back, and I’ll lift you up.”
The tailor went forward next day, and the fox met him.
“God save you,” said the fox.
“God and Mary save you.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Dublin, to try will I be able to make a court for the king.”
“Would you make a place for me where I’d go hiding?” said the fox. “The rest of the foxes do be beating me, and they don’t allow me to eat anything along with them.”
“I’ll do that for you,” said the tailor.
He took with him his axe and his saw, and he cut rods, until he made, as you would say, a thing like a cleeve (creel), and he desired the fox to get into it till he would see whether it would fit him. The fox went into it, and when the tailor got him down, he clapped his thigh on the hole that the fox got in by. When the fox was satisfied at last that he had a nice place of it within, he asked the tailor to let him out, and the tailor answered that he would not.
[7]
“Wait there until I come back again,” says he.
The tailor went forward the next day, and he had not walked very far until he met a modder-alla (lion?) and the lion greeted him, and asked him where was he going.
“I’m going to Dublin till I make a court for the king, if I’m able to make it,” said the tailor.
“If you were to make a plough for me,” said the lion, “I and the other lions could be ploughing and harrowing until we’d have a bit to eat in the harvest.”
“I’ll do that for you,” said the tailor.
He brought his axe and his saw, and he made a plough. When the plough was made, he put a hole in the beam of it, and he said to the lion to go in under the plough till he’d see was he any good of a ploughman. He placed the tail in the hole he had made for it, and then clapped in a peg, and the lion was not able to draw out his tail again.
“Loose me out now,” said the lion, “and we’ll fix ourselves and go ploughing.”
The tailor said he would not loose him out until he came back himself. He left him there then, and he came to Dublin.
When he came to Dublin he put forth a paper, desiring all the tradesmen that were raising the court to come to him, and that he would pay them; and at that time workmen used only to be getting one penny in the day. A number of tradesmen gathered the next day, and they began working for him. They were going home again after their day, when the tailor said to them “to put up that great stone upon the top of the work that they had done.” When the great stone was raised up, the tailor put some sort of contrivance under it, that he might be able to throw it down as soon as the giant would come as far as it. The work people went home then, and the tailor went in hiding behind the big stone.
[9]
When the darkness of the night was come he saw the three giants arriving, and they began throwing down the court until they came as far as the place where the tailor was in hiding up above, and a man of them struck a blow of his sledge on the place where he was. The tailor threw down the stone, and it fell on him and killed him. They went home then, and left all of the court that was remaining without throwing it down, since a man of themselves was dead.
The tradespeople came again the next day, and they were working until night, and as they were going home the tailor told them to put up the big stone on the top of the work, as it had been the night before. They did that for him, went home, and the tailor went in hiding the same as he did the evening before.
When the people had all gone to rest, the two giants came, and they were throwing down all that was before them, and as soon as they began they put two shouts out of them. The tailor was going on man?uvring until he threw down the great stone, and it fell upon the skull of the giant that was under him, and it killed him. There was only the one giant left in it then, and he never came again until the court was finished.
Then when the work was over he went to the king and told him to give him his wife and his money, as he had the court finished, and the king said he would not give him any wife, until he would kill the other giant, for he said that it was not by his strength he killed the two giants before that, and that he would give him nothing now until he killed the other one for him. Then the tailor said that he would kill the other giant for him, and welcome; that there was no delay at all about that.
The tailor went then, till he came to the place where[11] the other giant was, and asked did he want a servant-boy. The giant said he did want one, if he could get one who would do everything that he would do himself.
“Anything that you will do, I will do it,” said the tailor.
They went to their dinner then, and when they had it eaten, the giant asked the tailor “would it come with him to swallow as much broth as himself, up out of its boiling.” The tailor said: “It will come with me to do that, but that you must give me an hour before we begin on it.” The tailor went out then, and he got a sheepskin, and he sewed it up till he made a bag of it, and he slipped it down under his coat. He came in then and said to the giant to drink a gallon of the broth himself first. The giant drank that, up out of its boiling. “I’ll do that,” said the tailor. He was going on until he had it all poured into the skin, and the giant thought he had it drunk. The giant drank another gallon then, and the tailor let another gallon down into the skin, but the giant thought he was drinking it.
“I’ll do a thing now that it won’t come with you to do,” said the tailor.
“You will not,” said the giant. “What is it you would do?”
“Make a hole and let out the broth again,” said the tailor.
“Do it yourself first,” said the giant.
The tailor gave a prod of the knife, and he let the broth out of the skin.
“Do that you,” said he.
“I will,” said the giant, giving such a prod of the knife into his own stomach, that he killed himself. That is the way he killed the third giant.
He went to the king then, and desired him to send[13] him out his wife and his money, for that he would throw down the court again, unless he should get the wife. They were afraid then that he would throw down the court, and they sent the wife out to him.
When the tailor was a day gone, himself and his wife, they repented and followed him to take his wife off him again. The people who were after him were following him till they came to the place where the lion was, and the lion said to them: “The tailor and his wife were here yesterday. I saw them going by, and if ye loose me now, I am swifter than ye, and I will follow them till I overtake them.” When they heard that they loosed out the lion.
The lion and the people of Dublin went on, and they were pursuing him, until they came to the place where the fox was, and the fox greeted them, and said: “The tailor and his wife were here this morning, and if ye will loose me out, I am swifter than ye, and I will follow them, and overtake them.” They loosed out the fox then.
The lion and the fox and the army of Dublin went on then, trying would they catch the tailor, and they were going till they came to the place where the old white garraun was, and the old white garraun said to them that the tailor and his wife were there in the morning, and “loose me out,” said he; “I am swifter than ye, and I’ll overtake them.” They loosed out the old white garraun then, and the old white garraun, the fox, the lion, and the army of Dublin pursued the tailor and his wife together, and it was not long till they came up with him, and saw himself and the wife out before them.
When the tailor saw them coming he got out of the coach with his wife, and he sat down on the ground.
When the old white garraun saw the tailor sitting[15] down on the ground, he said: “That’s the position he had when he made the hole for me, that I couldn’t come up out of, when I went down into it. I’ll go no nearer to him.”
“No!” said the fox, “but that’s the way he was when he was making the thing for me, and I’ll go no nearer to him.”
“No!” says the lion, “but that’s the very way he had, when he was making the plough that I was caught in. I’ll go no nearer to him.”
They all went from him then and returned. The tailor and his wife came home to Galway. They gave me paper stockings and shoes of thick milk. I lost them since. They got the ford, and I the flash;[16] they were drowned, and I came safe.
BRAN.
 Finn had a splendid hound. That was Bran. You have heard talk of Bran. This is the colour was on him:
Yellow feet that were on Bran,
Two black sides, and belly white,
Grayish back of hunting colour,
Two ears, red, round, small, and bright.
Bran would overtake the wild-geese, she was that swift.[17] There arose some quarrel or fighting between the hounds that the Fenians had, when she was only a puppy, and
Three score hounds and twenty puppies
Bran did kill, and she a puppy,
Two wild-geese, as much as they all.
It was Finn himself who killed Bran. They went out hunting, and there was made a fawn of Finn’s mother. (Who made a fawn of her? Oh, how do I know? It was with some of their pishtrogues.) Bran was pursuing her.
“Silly fawn leave on mountain,”
said Finn. “Oh, young son,” said she, “how shall I escape?—
“If I go in the sea beneath
I never shall come back again,
And if I go in the air above
My swiftness is no match for Bran.”
“Go out between my two legs,” said Finn.
She went between his two legs, and Bran followed her; and as Bran went out under him, Finn squeezed his two knees on her and killed her.
Bran had a daughter. That pup was a black hound, and the Fenians reared it; and they told the woman who had a charge of the pup to give it the milk of a cow without a single spot, and to give it every single drop, and not to keep back one tint[17] from her. The woman did not do that, but kept a portion of the milk without giving it to the pup.
The first day that the Fenians loosed out the young hound, there was a glen full of wild-geese and other birds; and when the black hound was loosed amongst them, she caught them all except a very few that went[19] out on a gap that was in it. (And how could she catch the wild-geese? Wouldn’t they fly away in the air? She caught them, then. That’s how I heard it.) And only that the woman kept back some of the milk from her, she would have killed them all.
There was a man of the Fenians, a blind man, and when the pup was let out, he asked the people near him how did the young hound do. They told him that the young hound killed all the wild-geese and birds that were in the glen, but a few that went out on a gap. “If she had to get all the milk that came from the cow without spot,” says the blind man, “she wouldn’t let a bird at all go from her.” And he asked then “how was the hound coming home?” “She’s coming now,” said they, “and a fiery cloud out of her neck,” (How out of her neck? Because she was going so quick.) “and she coming madly.”
“Grant me my request now,” said the blind man. “Put me sitting in the chair, and put a coal[18](?) in my hand; for unless I kill her she’ll kill us.”
The hound came, and he threw the coal at her and killed her, and he blind.
But if that pup had to get all the milk, she’d come and she’d lie down quietly, the same as Bran used to lie ever.
THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON.
 There was a king’s son in Ireland long ago, and he went out and took with him his gun and his dog. There was snow out. He killed a raven. The raven fell on the snow. He never saw anything whiter than the snow,[21] or blacker than the raven’s skull, or redder than its share of blood,[19] that was a’pouring out.
He put himself under gassa[20] and obligations of the year, that he would not eat two meals at one table, or sleep two nights in one house, until he should find a woman whose hair was as black as the raven’s head, and her skin as white as the snow, and her two cheeks as red as the blood.
There was no woman in the world like that; but one woman only, and she was in the eastern world.
The day on the morrow he set out, and money was not plenty, but he took with him twenty pounds. It was not far he went until he met a funeral, and he said that it was as good for him to go three steps with the corpse. He had not the three steps walked until there came a man and left his writ down on the corpse for five pounds. There was a law in Ireland at that time that any man who had a debt upon another person (i.e., to whom another person owed a debt) that person’s people could not bury him, should he be dead, without paying his debts, or without the leave of the person to whom the dead man owed the debts. When the king of Ireland’s son saw the sons and daughters of the dead crying, and they without money to give the man, he said to himself: “It’s a great pity that these poor people have not the money,” and he put his hand in his pocket and paid the five pounds himself for the corpse. After that, he said he would go as far as the church to see it buried. Then there came another man, and left his writ on the body for five pounds more.[23] “As I gave the first five pounds,” said the king of Erin’s son to himself, “it’s as good for me to give the other five, and to let the poor man go to the grave.” He paid the other five pounds. He had only ten pounds then.
Not far did he go until he met a short green man, and he asked him where was he going. He said that he was going looking for a woman in the eastern world. The short green man asked him did he want a boy (servant), and he said he did, and [asked] what would be the wages he would be looking for? He said: “The first kiss of his wife if he should get her.” The king of Ireland’s son said that he must get that.
Not far did they go until they met another man and his gun in his hand, and he a’levelling it at the blackbird that was in the eastern world, that he might have it for his dinner. The short green man said to him that it was as good for him to take that man into his service if he would go on service with him. The son of the king of Ireland asked him if he would come on service with him.
“I will,” said the man, “if I get my wages.”
“And what is the wages you’ll be looking for?”
“The place of a house and garden.”
“You’ll get that if my journey succeeds with me.”
The king of Ireland’s son went forward with the short green man and the gunner, and it was not far they went until a man met them, and his ear left to the ground, and he listening to the grass growing.
“It’s as good for you to take that man into your service,” said the short green man.
The king’s son asked the man whether he would come with him on service.
“I’ll come if I get the place of a house and garden.”
[25]
“You will get that from me if the thing I have in my head succeeds with me.”
The son of the king of Ireland, the short green man, the gunman, and the earman, went forward, and it was not far they went until they met another man, and his one foot on his shoulder, and he keeping a field of hares, without letting one hare in or out of the field. There was wonder on the king’s son, and he asked him “What was the sense of his having one foot on his shoulder like that.”
“Oh,” says he, “if I had my two feet on the ground I should be so swift that I would go out of sight.”
“Will you come on service with me?” said the king’s son.
“I’ll come if I get the place of a house and garden.”
“You’ll get that if the thing I have in my head succeeds with me.”
The son of the king of Ireland, the short green man, the gunman, the earman, and the footman, went forward, and it was not far they went till they came to a man and he turning round a wind-mill with one nostril, and his finger left on his nose shutting the other nostril.
“Why have you your finger on your nose?” said the king of Ireland’s son.
“Oh,” says he, “if I were to blow with the two nostrils I would sweep the mill altogether out of that up into the air.”
“Will you come on hire with me?”
“I will if I get the place of a house and garden.”
“You’ll get that if the thing I have in my head succeeds with me.”
The son of the king of Ireland, the short green man, the gunman, the earman, the footman, and the blowman went forward until they came to a man who was sitting on the side of the road and he a’breaking stones with one thigh, and he had no hammer or anything else.[27] The king’s son asked him why it was he was breaking stones with his half (i.e., one) thigh.
“Oh,” says he, “if I were to strike them with the double thigh I’d make powder of them.”
“Will you hire with me?”
“I will if I get the place of a house and garden.”
“You’ll get that if the thing I have in my head succeeds with me.”
Then they all went forward together—the son of the king of Ireland, the short green man, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man that broke stones with the side of his thigh, and they would overtake the March wind that was before them, and the March wind that was behind them would not overtake them, until the evening came and the end of the day.
The king of Ireland’s son looked from him, and he did not see any house in which he might be that night. The short green man looked from him, and he saw a house, and there was not the top of a quill outside of it, nor the bottom of a quill inside of it, but only one quill alone, which was keeping shelter and protection on it. The king’s son said that he did not know where he should pass that night, and the short green man said that they would be in the house of the giant over there that night.
They came to the house, and the short green man drew the coolaya-coric (pole of combat), and he did not leave child with woman, foal with mare, pigeen with pig, or badger in glen, that he did not turn over three times with the quantity of sound he knocked out of the coolaya-coric. The giant came out, and he said: “I feel the smell of the melodious lying Irishman under (i.e., in) my little sod of country.”
“I’m no melodious lying Irishman,” said the short green man;[29] “but my master is out there at the head of the avenue, and if he comes he will whip the head off you.” The short green man was growing big, growing big, until at last he looked as big as the castle. There came fear on the giant, and he said: “Is your master as big as you?”
“He is,” says the short green man, “and bigger.”
“Put me in hiding till morning, until your master goes,” said the giant.
Then he put the giant under lock and key, and went out to the king’s son. Then the king of Ireland’s son, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh, came into the castle, and they spent that night, a third of it a’story-telling, a third of it with Fenian tales, and a third of it in mild enjoyment(?) of slumber and of true sleep.
When the day on the morrow arose, the short green man brought with him his master, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh, and he left them outside at the head of the avenue, and he came back himself and took the lock off the giant. He told the giant that his master sent him back for the black cap that was under the head of his bed. The giant said that he would give him a hat that he never wore himself, but that he was ashamed to give him the old cap. The short green man said that unless he gave him the cap his master would come back and strike the head off him.
“It’s best for me to give it to you,” said the giant; “and any time at all you will put it on your head you will see everybody and nobody will see you.” He gave him the cap then, and the short green man came and gave it to the king of Ireland’s son.
They were a’going then. They would overtake the[31] March wind that was before them, and the March wind that was behind them would not overtake them, going to the eastern world. When evening and the end of the day came, the king of Ireland’s son looked from him, and he did not see any house in which he might be that night. The short green man looked from him, and he saw a castle, and he said: “The giant that is in that castle is the brother of the giant with whom we were last night, and we shall be in this castle to-night.” They came to the castle, and he left the king’s son and his people at the head of the avenue, and he went to the door and pulled the coolaya-coric, and he did not leave child with woman, foal with mare, pigeen with pig, or badger in glen, within seven miles of him, that he did not knock three turns out of them with all the sound he knocked out of the coolaya-coric.
The giant came out, and he said, “I feel the smell of a melodious lying Irishman under my sod of country.”
“No melodious lying Irishman am I,” says the short green man; “but my master is outside at the head of the avenue, and if he comes he will whip the head off you.”
“I think you large of one mouthful, and I think you small of two mouthfuls,” said the giant.
“You won’t get me of a mouthful at all,” said the short green man, and he began swelling until he was as big as the castle. There came fear on the giant, and he said:
“Is your master as big as you?”
“He is, and bigger.”
“Hide me,” said the giant, “till morning, until your master goes, and anything you will be wanting you must get it.”
He brought the giant with him, and he put him under[33] the mouth of a douac (great vessel of some sort). He went out and brought in the son of the king of Ireland, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh, and they spent that night, one-third of it telling Fenian stories, one-third telling tales, and one-third in the mild enjoyment of slumber and of true sleep until morning.
In the morning, the day on the morrow, the short green man brought the king’s son and his people out of the castle, and left them at the head of the avenue, and he went back himself and asked the giant for the old slippers that were left under the head of his bed.
The giant said that he would give his master a pair of boots as good as ever he wore; and what good was there in the old slippers?
The short green man said that unless he got the slippers he would go for his master to whip the head off him.
Then the giant said that he would give them to him, and he gave them.
“Any time,” said he, “that you will put those slippers on you, and say ‘high-over!’ any place you have a mind to go to, you will be in it.”
The son of the king of Ireland, the short green man, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh, went forward until evening came, and the end of the day, until the horse would be going under the shade of the docking, and the docking would not wait for him. The king’s son asked the short green man where should they be that night, and the short green man said that they would be in the house of the brother of the giant with whom they spent the night before. The king’s son looked from him and he saw nothing. The short green man looked from him and he saw a[35] great castle. He left the king’s son and his people there, and he went to the castle by himself, and he drew the coolaya-coric, and he did not leave child with woman, foal with mare, pigeen with pig, or badger in glen, but he turned them over three times with all the sound he struck out of the coolaya-coric. The giant came out, and he said: “I feel the smell of a melodious lying Irishman under my sod of country.”
“No melodious lying Irishman am I,” said the short green man; “but my master is standing at the head of the avenue, and if he comes he shall strike the head off you.”
And with that the short green man began swelling until he was the size of the castle at last. There came fear on the giant, and he said: “Is your master as big as yourself?”
“He is,” said the short green man, “and bigger.”
“Oh! put me in hiding; put me in hiding,” said the giant, “until your master goes; and anything you will be asking you must get it.”
He took the giant with him, and he put him under the mouth of a douac, and a lock on him. He came back, and he brought the king of Ireland’s son, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh, into the castle with him, and they spent that night merrily—a third of it with Fenian tales, a third of it with telling stories, and a third of it with the mild enjoyment of slumber and of true sleep.
In the morning, the day on the morrow, he brought the son of the king of Ireland out, and his people with him, and left them at the head of the avenue, and he came back himself and loosed out the giant, and said to him, that he must give him the rusty sword that was[37] under the corner of his bed. The giant said that he would not give that old sword to anyone, but that he would give him the sword of the three edges that never left the leavings of a blow behind it, or if it did, it would take it with the second blow.
“I won’t have that,” said the short green man, “I must get the rusty sword; and if I don’t get that, I must go for my master, and he shall strike the head off you.”
“It is better for me to give it to you,” said the giant, “and whatever place you will strike a blow with that sword, it will go to the sand (i.e., cut to the earth) though it were iron were before it.” Then he gave him the rusty sword.
The son of the king of Ireland, the gunman, the earman, the footman, the blowman, and the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh, went forward after that, until evening came, and the end of the day, until the horse was going under the shade of the docking, and the docking would not wait for him. The March wind that was behind them would not overtake them, and they would overtake the wind of March that was before them, and they were that night (arrived) in the eastern world, where was the lady.
The lady asked the king of Ireland’s son what it was he wanted, and he said that he was looking for herself as wife.
“You must get me,” said she, “if you loose my geasa[21] off me.”
He got lodging with all his servants in the castle that evening, and in the night she came and said to him,[39] “Here is a scissors for you, and unless you have that scissors for me to-morrow morning, the head will be struck off you.”
She placed a pin of slumber under his head, and he fell into his sleep, and as soon as he did, she came and took the scissors from him and left him there. She gave the scissors to the King of Poison,[22] and she desired the king to have the scissors for her in the morning. Then she went away. When she was gone the King of Poison fell into his sleep; and when he was in his sleep the short green man came, and the old slippers on him, and the cap on his head, and the rusty sword in his hand, and wherever it was the king had left the scissors out of his hand, he found it. He gave it to the king of Ireland’s son, and when she (the lady) came in the morning, she asked; “Son of the king of Ireland, have you the scissors?”
“I have,” said he.
There were three scores of skulls of the people that went to look for her set on spikes round about the castle, and she thought that she would have his head on a spike along with them.
On the night of the next day she came and gave him a comb, and said to him unless he had that comb for her next morning when she would come, that the head should be struck off him. She placed a pin of slumber under his head, and he fell into his sleep as he fell the night before, and she stole the comb with her. She gave the comb to the King of Poison, and said to him not to lose the comb as he lost the scissors. The short green man came with the old slippers on his feet, the old cap on his head, and the rusty sword in his hand; and the king did not see him until he came behind him and took away the comb with him.
When the king of Ireland’s son rose up the next morning he began crying for the comb, which was gone[41] from him. “Don’t mind that,” said the short green man: “I have it.” When she came he gave her the comb, and there was wonder on her.
She came the third night, and said to the son of the king of Ireland to have for her the head of him who was combed with that comb, on the morrow morning. “Now,” said she, “there was no fear of you until this night; but if you lose it this time, your head is gone.”
The pin of slumber was under his head, and he fell into his sleep. She came and stole the comb from him. She gave it to the King of Poison, and she said to him that he could not lose it unless the head should be struck off himself. The King of Poison took the comb with him, and he put it into a rock of stone and three score of locks on it, and the king sat down himself outside of the locks all, at the door of the rock, guarding it. The short green man came, and the slippers and the cap on him, and the rusty sword in his hand, and he struck a stroke on the stone rock and he opened it up, and he struck the second stroke on the King of Poison, and he struck the head off him. He brought back with him then the comb to the king’s son, and he found him awake, and weeping after the comb. “There is your comb for you,” said he; “she will come this now,[23] and she will ask you have you the comb, and tell her that you have, and the head that was combed with it, and throw her the skull.”
When she came asking if he had the comb, he said he had, and the head that was combed with it, and he threw her the head of the King of Poison.
When she saw the head there was great anger on her, and she told him he never would get her to marry until he got a footman (runner) to travel with her runner for three bottles of the healing-balm out of the well of the[43] western world; and if her own runner should come back more quickly than his runner, she said his head was gone.
She got an old hag—some witch—and she gave her three bottles. The short green man bade them give three bottles to the man who was keeping the field of hares, and they were given to him. The hag and the man started, and three bottles with each of them; and the runner of the king’s son was coming back half way on the road home, while the hag had only gone half way to the well. “Sit down,” said the hag to the foot-runner, when they met, “and take your rest, for the pair of them are married now, and don’t be breaking your heart running.” She brought over a horse’s head and a slumber-pin in it, and laid it under his head, and when he laid down his head on it he fell asleep. She spilt out the water he had and she went.
The short green man thought it long until they were coming, and he said to the earman, “Lay your ear to the ground and try are they coming.”
“I hear the hag a’coming,” said he; “but the footman is in his sleep, and I hear him a’snoring.”
“Look from you,” said the short green man to the gunman, “till you see where the foot-runner is.”
The gunman looked, and he said that the footman was in such and such a place, and a horse’s skull under his head, and he in his sleeping.
“Lay your gun to your eye,” said the short green man, “and put the skull away from under his head.”
He put the gun to his eye and he swept the skull from under his head. The footman woke up, and he found that the bottles which he had were empty, and it was necessary for him to return to the well again.
The hag was coming then, and the foot-runner was[45] not to be seen. Says the short green man to the man who was sending round the windmill with his nostril: “Rise up and try would you put back that hag.” He put his finger to his nose, and when the hag was coming he put a blast of wind under her that swept her back again. She was coming again, and he did the same thing to her. Every time she used to be coming near them he would be sending her back with the wind he would blow out of his nostril. At last he blew with the two nostrils and swept the hag back to the western world again. Then the foot-runner of the king of Ireland’s son came, and that day was won.
There was great anger on the woman when she saw that her own foot-runner did not arrive first, and she said to the king’s son: “You won’t get me now till you have walked three miles, without shoes or stockings, on steel needles.” She had a road three miles long, and sharp needles of steel shaken on it as thick as the grass, and their points up. Said the short green man to the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh: “Go and blunt those.” That man went on them with one thigh, and he made stumps of them. He went on them with the double thigh, and he made powder and prashuch of them. The king of Ireland’s son came and walked the three miles, and then he had his wife gained.
The couple were married then, and the short green man was to have the first kiss. The short green man took the wife with him into a chamber, and he began on her. She was full up of serpents, and the king’s son would have been killed with them when he went to sleep, but that the short green man picked them out of her.
He came then to the son of the king of Ireland, and he told him: “You can go with your wife now. I am the man who was in the coffin that day, for whom you paid the ten pounds; and these people who are with you, they are servants whom God has sent to you.”
The short green man and his people went away then, and the king of Ireland’s son never saw them again. He brought his wife home with him, and they spent a happy life with one another.
THE ALP-LUACHRA.
 There was once a wealthy farmer in Connacht, and he had plenty of substance and a fine family, and there was nothing putting grief nor trouble on him, and you would say yourself that it’s he was the comfortable, satisfied man, and that the luck was on him as well as on e’er a man alive. He was that way, without mishap or misfortune, for many years, in good health and without sickness or sorrow on himself or his children, until there came a fine day in the harvest, when he was looking at his men making hay in the meadow that was near his own house, and as the day was very hot he drank a drink of buttermilk, and stretched himself back on the fresh cut hay, and as he was tired with the heat of the day and the work that he was doing, he soon fell asleep, and he remained that way for three or four hours, until the hay was all gathered in and his workpeople gone away out of the field.
When he awoke then, he sat up, and he did not know at first where he was, till he remembered at last that it was in the field at the back of his own house he was lying. He rose up then and returned to his house, and he felt like a pain or a stitch in his side. He made[49] nothing of it, sat down at the fire and began warming himself.
“Where were you?” says the daughter to him.
“I was asleep a while,” says he, “on the fresh grass in the field where they were making hay.”
“What happened to you, then?” says she, “for you don’t look well.”
“Muirya,[24] musha, then,” says he, “I don’t know; but it’s queer the feeling I have. I never was like it before; but I’ll be better when I get a good sleep.”
He went to his bed, lay down, and fell asleep, and never awoke until the sun was high. He rose up then and his wife said to him: “What was on you that you slept that long?”
“I don’t know,” says he.
He went down to the fire where the daughter was making a cake for the breakfast, and she said to him:
“How are you to-day, father; are you anything better?”
“I got a good sleep,” said he, “but I’m not a taste better than I was last night; and indeed, if you’d believe me, I think there’s something inside of me running back and forwards.”
“Arrah, that can’t be,” says the daughter,[51] “but it’s a cold you got and you lying out on the fresh grass; and if you’re not better in the evening we’ll send for the doctor.”
He was saying then that there was a pain on him, but that he did not know rightly what place the pain was in. He was in the same way in the evening, and they had to send for the doctor, and when the doctor was not coming quickly there was great fright on him. The people of the house were doing all they could to put courage in him.
The doctor came at last, and he asked what was on him, and he said again that there was something like a birdeen leaping in his stomach. The doctor stripped him and examined him well, but saw nothing out of the way with him. He put his ear to his side and to his back, but he heard nothing, though the poor man himself was calling out: “Now! now! don’t you hear it? Now, aren’t you listening to it jumping?” But the doctor could perceive nothing at all, and he thought at last that the man was out of his senses, and that there was nothing the matter with him.
He said to the woman of the house when he came out, that there was nothing on her husband, but that he believed himself to be sick, and that he would send her medicine the next day for him, that would give him a good sleep and settle the heat of his body. He did that, and the poor man swallowed all the medicines and got another great sleep, but when he awoke in the morning he was worse than ever, but he said he did not hear the thing jumping inside him any longer.
They sent for the doctor again, and he came; but he was able to do nothing. He left other medicines with them, and said he would come again at the end of a week to see him. The poor man got no relief from all that the doctor left with him, and when he came again he found him to be worse than before; but he was not[53] able to do anything, and he did not know what sort of sickness was on him. “I won’t be taking your money from you any more,” says he to the woman of the house, “because I can do nothing in this case, and as I don’t understand what’s on him, I won’t let on[25] to be understanding it. I’ll come to see him from time to time, but I’ll take no money from you.”
The woman of the house could hardly keep in her anger. Scarcely ever was the doctor gone till she gathered the people of the house round her and they took counsel. “That doctor braduch,” says she, “he’s not worth a traneen; do you know what he said—that he wouldn’t take any money from me any more, and he said himself he knew nothing about anything; suf on him, the behoonuch, he’ll cross this threshold no more; we’ll go to the other doctor; if he’s farther from us, itself, I don’t mind that, we must get him.” Everybody in the house was on one word with her, and they sent for the other doctor; but when he came he had no better knowledge than the first one had, only that he had knowledge enough to take their money. He came often to see the sick man, and every time he would come he would have every name longer than another to give his sickness; names he did not understand himself, nor no one else, but he had them to frighten the people.
They remained that way for two months, without anyone knowing what was on the poor man; and when that doctor was doing him no good they got another doctor, and then another doctor, until there was not a doctor in the county, at last, that they had not got, and they[55] lost a power of money over them, and they had to sell a portion of their cattle to get money to pay them.
They were that way for half a year, keeping doctors with him, and the doctors giving him medicines, and the poor man that was stout and well-fed before, getting bare and thin, until at last there was not an ounce of flesh on him, but the skin and the bones only.
He was so bad at last that it was scarcely he was able to walk. His appetite went from him, and it was a great trouble to him to swallow a piece of soft bread or to drink a sup of new milk, and everyone was saying that he was better to die, and that was no wonder, for there was not in him but like a shadow in a bottle.
One day that he was sitting on a chair in the door of the house, sunning himself in the heat, and the people of the house all gone out but himself, there came up to the door a poor old man that used to be asking alms from place to place, and he recognised the man of the house sitting in the chair, but he was so changed and so worn that it was hardly he knew him. “I’m here again, asking alms in the name of God,” said the poor man; “but, glory be to God, master, what happened to you, for you’re not the same man I saw when I was here half a year ago; may God relieve you!”
“Arrah, Shamus,” said the sick man, “it’s I that can’t tell you what happened to me; but I know one thing, that I won’t be long in this world.”
“But I’m grieved to see you how you are,” said the beggarman. “Tell me how it began with you, and what the doctors say.”
“The doctors, is it?” says the sick man,[57] “my curse on them; but I oughtn’t to be cursing and I so near the grave; suf on them, they know nothing.”
“Perhaps,” says the beggarman, “I could find you a relief myself, if you were to tell me what’s on you. They say that I be knowledgable about diseases and the herbs to cure them.”
The sick man smiled, and he said: “There isn’t a medicine man in the county that I hadn’t in this house with me, and isn’t half the cattle I had on the farm sold to pay them. I never got a relief no matter how small, from a man of them; but I’ll tell you how it happened to me first.” Then he gave him an account of everything he felt and of everything the doctors had ordered.
The beggarman listened to him carefully, and when he had finished all his story, he asked him: “What sort of field was it you fell asleep in?”
“A meadow that was in it that time,” says the sick man; “but it was just after being cut.”
“Was it wet,” says the beggarman.
“It was not,” says he.
“Was there a little stream or a brook of water running through it?” said the beggarman.
“There was,” says he.
“Can I see the field?”
“You can, indeed, and I’ll show it to you.”
He rose off his chair, and as bad as he was, he pulled himself along until he came to the place where he lay down to sleep that evening. The beggarman examined the place for a long time, and then he stooped down over the grass and went backwards and forwards with his body bent, and his head down, groping among the herbs and weeds that were growing thickly in it.
He rose at last and said: “It is as I thought,” and he stooped himself down again and began searching as[59] before. He raised his head a second time, and he had a little green herb in his hand. “Do you see this?” said he. “Any place in Ireland that this herb grows, there be’s an alt-pluachra near it, and you have swallowed an alt-pluachra.”
“How do you know that?” said the sick man. “If that was so, sure the doctors would tell it to me before now.”
“The doctors!” said the beggarman. “Ah! God give you sense, sure they’re only a flock of omadawns. I tell you again, and believe me, that it’s an alt-pluachra you swallowed. Didn’t you say yourself that you felt something leaping in your stomach the first day after you being sick? That was the alt-pluachra; and as the place he was in was strange to him at first, he was uneasy in it, moving backwards and forwards, but when he was a couple of days there, he settled himself, and he found the place comfortable, and that’s the reason you’re keeping so thin, for every bit you’re eating the alt-pluachra is getting the good out of it, and you said yourself that one side of you was swelled; that’s the place where the nasty thing is living.”
The sick man would not believe him at first, but the beggarman kept on talking and proving on him that it was the truth he was saying, and when his wife and daughter came back again to the house, the beggarman told them the same things, and they were ready enough to believe him.
The sick man put no faith in it himself, but they were all talking to him about it until they prevailed on him at last to call in three doctors together until he should tell them this new story. The three came together, and when they heard all the boccuch (beggarman) was saying, and all the talk of the women, it is what they laughed, and[61] said they were fools altogether, and that it was something else entirely that was the matter with the man of the house, and every name they had on his sickness this time was twice—three times—as long as ever before. They left the poor man a bottle or two to drink, and they went away, and they humbugging the women for saying that he had swallowed an alt-pluachra.
The boccuch said when they were gone away: “I don’t wonder at all that you’re not getting better, if it’s fools like those you have with you. There’s not a doctor or a medicine-man in Ireland now that’ll do you any good, but only one man, and that’s Mac Dermott the Prince of Coolavin, on the brink of Lough Gara, the best doctor in Connacht or the five provinces.”
“Where is Lough Gara?” said the poor man.
“Down in the County Sligo,” says he; “it’s a big lake, and the prince is living on the brink of it; and if you’ll take my advice you’ll go there, for it’s the last hope you have; and you, Mistress,” said he, turning to the woman of the house, “ought to make him go, if you wish your man to be alive.”
“Musha!” says the woman, “I’d do anything that would cure him.”
“If so, send him to the Prince of Coolavin,” says he.
“I’d do anything at all to cure myself,” says the sick man, “for I know I haven’t long to live on this world if I don’t get some relief, or without something to be done for me.”
“Then go to the Prince of Coolavin,” says the beggarman.
“Anything that you think would do yourself good, you ought to do it, father,” says the daughter.
“There’s nothing will do him good but to go to the Prince of Coolavin,” said the beggarman.
[63]
So they were arguing and striving until the night came, and the beggarman got a bed of straw in the barn, and he began arguing again in the morning that he ought to go to the prince, and the wife and daughter were on one word with him; and they prevailed at last on the sick man, and he said that he would go, and the daughter said that she would go with him to take care of him, and the boccuch said that he would go with them to show them the road; “and I’ll be on the pinch of death, for ye, with anxiety,” said the wife, “until ye come back again.”
They harnessed the horse, and they put him under the cart, and they took a week’s provision with them—bread, and bacon, and eggs, and they went off. They could not go very far the first day, for the sick man was so weak, that he was not able to bear the shaking he was getting in the cart; but he was better the second day, and they all passed the night in a farmer’s house on the side of the road, and they went on again in the morning; but on the third day, in the evening, they came to the dwelling of the prince. He had a nice house, on the brink of the lake, with a straw roof, in among the trees.
They left the horse and the cart in a little village near the prince’s place, and they all walked together, until they came to the house. They went into the kitchen, and asked, “Couldn’t they see the prince?” The servant said that he was eating his meal, but that he would come, perhaps, when he was ready.
The prince himself came in at that moment, and asked what it was they wanted. The sick man rose up and told him, that it was looking for assistance from his honour he was, and he told him his whole story.[65] “And now can your honour help me?” he said, when he had finished it.
“I hope I can,” said the prince; “anyhow, I’ll do my best for you, as you came so far to see me. I’d have a bad right not to do my best. Come up into the parlour with me. The thing that old man told you is true. You swallowed an alt-pluachra, or something else. Come up to the parlour with me.”
He brought him up to the parlour with him, and it happened that the meal he had that day was a big piece of salted beef. He cut a large slice off it, and put it on a plate, and gave it to the poor man to eat.
“Oro! what is your honour doing there?” says the poor man; “I didn’t swallow as much as the size of an egg of meat this quarter,[26] and I can’t eat anything.”
“Be silent, man,” says the prince; “eat that, when I tell you.”
The poor man eat as much as he was able, but when he left the knife and fork out of his hand, the prince made him take them up again, and begin out of the new (over again). He kept him there eating until he was ready to burst, and at last he was not able to swallow another bit, if he were to get a hundred pounds.
When the prince saw that he would not be able to swallow any more, he brought him out of the house, and he said to the daughter and the old beggarman to follow them, and he brought the man out with him to a fine green meadow that was forenent[27] the house, and a little stream of water running through it.
He brought him to the brink of the stream, and told him to lie down on his stomach over the stream, and to hold his face over the water, to open his mouth as wide[67] as he could, and to keep it nearly touching the water, and “wait there quiet and easy,” says he; “and for your life don’t stir, till you see what will happen to you.”
The poor man promised that he would be quiet, and he stretched his body on the grass, and held his mouth open, over the stream of water, and remained there without stirring.
The prince went backwards, about five yards, and drew the daughter and the old man with him, and the last word he said to the sick man was: “Be certain, and for your life, don’t put a stir out of you, whatever thing at all happens to you.”
The sick man was not lying like that more than a quarter of an hour, when something began moving inside of him, and he felt something coming up in his throat, and going back again. It came up and went back three or four times after other. At last it came to the mouth, stood on the tip of his tongue, but frightened, and ran back again. However, at the end of a little space, it rose up a second time, and stood on his tongue, and at last jumped down into the water. The prince was observing him closely, and just as the man was going to rise, he called out: “Don’t stir yet.”
The poor man had to open his mouth again, and he waited the same way as before; and he was not there a minute until the second one came up the same way as the last, and went back and came up two or three times, as if it got frightened; but at last, it also, like the first one, came up to the mouth, stood on the tongue, and when it felt the smell of the water below it, leaped down into the little stream.
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The prince said in a whisper: “Now the thirst’s coming on them; the salt that was in the beef is working them; now they’ll come out.” And before the word had left his mouth, the third one fell, with a plop, into the water; and a moment after that, another one jumped down, and then another, until he counted five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
“There’s a dozen of them now,” said the prince; “that’s the clutch; the old mother didn’t come yet.”
The poor sick man was getting up again, but the prince called to him: “Stay as you are; the mother didn’t come up.”
He remained as he was, but no other one came out, though he stayed there more than a quarter of an hour. The prince himself was getting uneasy for fear the old alt-pluachra might not stir at all. The poor man was so tired and so weak that he wished to get up; and, in spite of all the prince told him, he was trying to stand on his feet, when the prince caught him by one leg, and the boccuch by the other, and they held him down in spite of him.
They remained another quarter of an hour without speaking a word, or making a sound, and at the end of that time the poor man felt something stirring again in his side, but seven times worse than before; and it’s scarcely he could keep himself from screeching. That thing kept moving for a good while, and he thought the side was being torn out of himself with it. Then it began coming up, and it reached the mouth, and went back again. At last it came up so far that the poor man put the two fingers to his mouth and thought to catch[71] hold of it. But if he put in his fingers quick, the old alt-pluachra went back quicker.
“Oh, you behoonach!” cried the prince, “what made you do that? Didn’t I tell you not to let a stir out of you? Remain quiet if she comes up again.”
They had to remain there for half an hour, because the old mother of the alt-pluachras was scared, and she was afraid to come out. But she came up at last, perhaps, because there was too much thirst on her to let her stand the smell of the water that was tempting her, or perhaps she was lonesome after her children going from her. Anyhow, she came up to his mouth, and stood there while you would be counting about four score; and when she saw nothing, and nothing frightened her, she gave a jump down into the water, like her clutch before her; and the plop of her into the water was seven times heavier than theirs.
The prince and the other two had been watching the whole, and they scarcely dared to breathe, for fear of startling the horrid beast. As soon as ever she jumped down into the water, they pulled back the man, and put him standing again on his two feet.
He was for three hours before he could speak a word; but the first thing he said was: “I’m a new man.”
The prince kept him in his own house for a fortnight, and gave him great care and good feeding. He allowed him to go then, and the daughter and the boccuch with him; and he refused to take as much as a penny from them.
“I’m better pleased than ten pounds on my own hand,” said he, “that my cure turned out so well; and I’d be long sorry to take a farthing from you; you lost plenty with doctors before.”
They came home safely, and he became healthy and fat. He was so thankful to the poor boccuch that he kept him in his own house till his death. As long as he was alive he never lay down on green grass again; and another thing, if there was any sickness or ill-health on him, it isn’t the doctors he used to call in to him.
That was small wonder!
PAUDYEEN O’KELLY AND THE WEASEL.
 A long time ago there was once a man of the name of Paudyeen O’Kelly, living near Tuam, in the county Galway. He rose up one morning early, and he did not know what time of day it was, for there was fine light coming from the moon. He wanted to go to the fair of Cauher-na-mart to sell a sturk of an ass that he had.
He had not gone more than three miles of the road when a great darkness came on, and a shower began falling. He saw a large house among trees about five hundred yards in from the road, and he said to himself that he would go to that house till the shower would be over. When he got to the house he found the door open before him, and in with him. He saw a large room to his left, and a fine fire in the grate. He sat down on a stool that was beside the wall, and began falling asleep, when he saw a big weasel coming to the fire with something yellow in its mouth, which it dropped on the hearth-stone, and then it went away. She soon[75] came back again with the same thing in her mouth, and he saw that it was a guinea she had. She dropped it on the hearth-stone, and went away again. She was coming and going, until there was a great heap of guineas on the hearth. But at last, when he got her gone, Paudyeen rose up, thrust all the gold she had gathered into his pockets, and out with him.
He was not gone far till he heard the weasel coming after him, and she screeching as loud as a bag-pipes. She went before Paudyeen and got on the road, and she was twisting herself back and forwards, and trying to get a hold of his throat. Paudyeen had a good oak stick, and he kept her from him, until two men came up who were going to the same fair, and one of them had a good dog, and it routed the weasel into a hole in the wall.
Paudyeen went to the fair, and instead of coming home with the money he got for his old ass, as he thought would be the way with him in the morning, he went and bought a horse with some of the money he took from the weasel, and he came home and he riding. When he came to the place where the dog had routed the weasel into the hole in the wall, she came out before him, gave a leap up and caught the horse by the throat. The horse made off, and Paudyeen could not stop him, till at last he gave a leap into a big drain that was full up of water and black mud, and he was drowning and choking as fast as he could, until men who were coming from Galway came up and banished the weasel.
Paudyeen brought the horse home with him, and put him into the cows’ byre and fell asleep.
Next morning, the day on the morrow, Paudyeen rose up early and went out to give his horse hay and oats. When he got to the door he saw the weasel coming out[77] of the byre and she covered with blood. “My seven thousand curses on you,” said Paudyeen, “but I’m afraid you’ve harm done.” He went in and found the horse, a pair of milch cows, and two calves dead. He came out and set a dog he had after the weasel. The dog got a hold of her, and she got a hold of the dog. The dog was a good one, but he was forced to loose his hold of her before Paudyeen could come up. He kept his eye on her, however, all through, until he saw her creeping into a little hovel that was on the brink of a lake. Paudyeen came running, and when he got to the little hut he gave the dog a shake to rouse him up and put anger on him, and then he sent him in before himself. When the dog went in he began barking. Paudyeen went in after him, and saw an old hag (cailleach) in the corner. He asked her if she saw a weasel coming in there.
“I did not,” said she; “I’m all destroyed with a plague of sickness, and if you don’t go out quick you’ll catch it from me.”
While Paudyeen and the hag were talking, the dog kept moving in all the time, till at last he gave a leap up and caught the hag by the throat. She screeched, and said:
“Paddy Kelly, take off your dog, and I’ll make you a rich man.”
Paudyeen made the dog loose his hold, and said: “Tell me who are you, or why did you kill my horse and my cows?”
“And why did you bring away my gold that I was for five hundred years gathering throughout the hills and hollows of the world?”
“I thought you were a weasel,” said Paudyeen, “or I wouldn’t touch your gold; and another thing,” says[79] he, “if you’re for five hundred years in this world, it’s time for you to go to rest now.”
“I committed a great crime in my youth,” said the hag, “and now I am to be released from my sufferings if you can pay twenty pounds for a hundred and three score masses for me.”
“Where’s the money?” says Paudyeen.
“Go and dig under a bush that’s over a little well in the corner of that field there without, and you’ll get a pot filled with gold. Pay the twenty pounds for the masses, and yourself shall have the rest. When you’ll lift the flag off the pot, you’ll see a big black dog coming out; but don’t be afraid before him; he is a son of mine. When you get the gold, buy the house in which you saw me at first. You’ll get it cheap, for it has the name of there being a ghost in it. My son will be down in the cellar. He’ll do you no harm, but he’ll be a good friend to you. I shall be dead a month from this day, and when you get me dead put a coal under this little hut and burn it. Don’t tell a living soul anything about me—and the luck will be on you.”
“What is your name?” said Paudyeen.
“Maurya nee Keerwaun” (Mary Kerwan), said the hag.
Paudyeen went home, and when the darkness of the night came on he took with him a loy,[28] and went to the bush that was in the corner of the field, and began digging. It was not long till he found the pot, and when he took the flag off it a big black dog leaped out, and off and away with him, and Paudyeen’s dog after him.
Paudyeen brought home the gold, and hid it in the[81] cow-house. About a month after that he went to the fair of Galway, and bought a pair of cows, a horse, and a dozen sheep. The neighbours did not know where he was getting all the money; they said that he had a share with the good people.
One day Paudyeen dressed himself, and went to the gentleman who owned the large house where he first saw the weasel, and asked to buy the house of him, and the land that was round about.
“You can have the house without paying any rent at all; but there is a ghost in it, and I wouldn’t like you to go to live in it without my telling you, but I couldn’t part with the land without getting a hundred pounds more than you have to offer me.”
“Perhaps I have as much as you have yourself,” said Paudyeen. “I’ll be here to-morrow with the money, if you’re ready to give me possession.”
“I’ll be ready,” said the gentleman.
Paudyeen went home and told his wife that he had bought a large house and a holding of land.
“Where did you get the money?” says the wife.
“Isn’t it all one to you where I got it?” says Paudyeen.
The day on the morrow Paudyeen went to the gentleman, gave him the money, and got possession of the house and land; and the gentleman left him the furniture and everything that was in the house, in with the bargain.
Paudyeen remained in the house that night, and when darkness came he went down to the cellar, and he saw a little man with his two legs spread on a barrel.
“God save you, honest man,” says he to Paudyeen.
“The same to you,” says Paudyeen.
[83]
“Don’t be afraid of me at all,” says the little man. “I’ll be a friend to you, if you are able to keep a secret.”
“I am able, indeed; I kept your mother’s secret, and I’ll keep yours as well.”
“May-be you’re thirsty?” says the little man.
“I’m not free from it,” said Paudyeen.
The little man put a hand in his bosom and drew out a gold goblet. He gave it to Paudyeen, and said: “Draw wine out of that barrel under me.”
Paudyeen drew the full up of the goblet, and handed it to the little man. “Drink yourself first,” says he. Paudyeen drank, drew another goblet, and handed it to the little man, and he drank it.
“Fill up and drink again,” said the little man. “I have a mind to be merry to-night.”
The pair of them sat there drinking until they were half drunk. Then the little man gave a leap down to the floor, and said to Paudyeen:
“Don’t you like music?”
“I do, surely,” says Paudyeen, “and I’m a good dancer, too.”
“Lift up the big flag over there in the corner, and you’ll get my pipes under it.”
Paudyeen lifted the flag, got the pipes, and gave them to the little man. He squeezed the pipes on him, and began playing melodious music. Paudyeen began dancing till he was tired. Then they had another drink, and the little man said:
[85]
“Do as my mother told you, and I’ll show you great riches. You can bring your wife in here, but don’t tell her that I’m there, and she won’t see me. Any time at all that ale or wine are wanting, come here and draw. Farewell now; go to sleep, and come again to me to-morrow night.”
Paudyeen went to bed, and it wasn’t long till he fell asleep.
On the morning of the day of the morrow, Paudyeen went home, and brought his wife and children to the big house, and they were comfortable. That night Paudyeen went down to the cellar; the little man welcomed him and asked him did he wish to dance?
“Not till I get a drink,” said Paudyeen.
“Drink your ’nough,” said the little man; “that barrel will never be empty as long as you live.”
Paudyeen drank the full of the goblet, and gave a drink to the little man. Then the little man said to him:
“I am going to Doon-na-shee (the fortress of the fairies) to-night, to play music for the good people, and if you come with me you’ll see fine fun. I’ll give you a horse that you never saw the like of him before.”
“I’ll go with you, and welcome,” said Paudyeen; “but what excuse will I make to my wife?”
“I’ll bring you away from her side without her knowing it, when you are both asleep together, and I’ll bring you back to her the same way,” said the little man.
“I’m obedient,” says Paudyeen; “we’ll have another drink before I leave you.”
He drank drink after drink, till he was half drunk, and he went to bed with his wife.
When he awoke he found himself riding on a besom near Doon-na-shee, and the little man riding on another[87] besom by his side. When they came as far as the green hill of the Doon, the little man said a couple of words that Paudyeen did not understand. The green hill opened, and the pair went into a fine chamber.
Paudyeen never saw before a gathering like that which was in the Doon. The whole place was full up of little people, men and women, young and old. They all welcomed little Donal—that was the name of the piper—and Paudyeen O’Kelly. The king and queen of the fairies came up to them, and said:
“We are all going on a visit to-night to Cnoc Matha, to the high king and queen of our people.”
They all rose up then and went out. There were horses ready for each one of them and the coash-t’ya bower for the king and the queen. The king and queen got into the coach, each man leaped on his own horse, and be certain that Paudyeen was not behind. The piper went out before them and began playing them music, and then off and away with them. It was not long till they came to Cnoc Matha. The hill opened and the king of the fairy host passed in.
Finvara and Nuala were there, the arch-king and queen of the fairy host of Connacht, and thousands of little persons. Finvara came up and said:
“We are going to play a hurling match to-night against the fairy host of Munster, and unless we beat them our fame is gone for ever. The match is to be fought out on Moytura, under Slieve Belgadaun.”
The Connacht host cried out: “We are all ready, and we have no doubt but we’ll beat them.”
“Out with ye all,” cried the high king; “the men of the hill of Nephin will be on the ground before us.”
They all went out, and little Donal and twelve pipers more before them, playing melodious music. When they[89] came to Moytura, the fairy host of Munster and the fairy men of the hill of Nephin were there before them. Now, it is necessary for the fairy host to have two live men beside them when they are fighting or at a hurling-match, and that was the reason that little Donal took Paddy O’Kelly with him. There was a man they called the “Yellow Stongirya,” with the fairy host of Munster, from Ennis, in the County Clare.
It was not long till the two hosts took sides; the ball was thrown up between them, and the fun began in earnest. They were hurling away, and the pipers playing music, until Paudyeen O’Kelly saw the host of Munster getting the strong hand, and he began helping the fairy host of Connacht. The Stongirya came up and he made at Paudyeen O’Kelly, but Paudyeen turned him head over heels. From hurling the two hosts began at fighting, but it was not long until the host of Connacht beat the other host. Then the host of Munster made flying beetles of themselves, and they began eating every green thing that they came up to. They were destroying the country before them until they came as far as Cong. Then there rose up thousands of doves out of the hole, and they swallowed down the beetles. That hole has no other name until this day but Pull-na-gullam, the dove’s hole.
When the fairy host of Connacht won their battle, they came back to Cnoc Matha joyous enough, and the king Finvara gave Paudyeen O’Kelly a purse of gold, and the little piper brought him home, and put him into bed beside his wife, and left him sleeping there.
A month went by after that without anything worth mentioning, until one night Paudyeen went down to the cellar, and the little man said to him: “My mother is dead; burn the house over her.”
“It is true for you,” said Paudyeen. “She told me that she hadn’t but a month to be on the world, and the month was up yesterday.”
On the morning of the next day Paudyeen went to the hut and he found the hag dead. He put a coal under the hut and burned it. He came home and told the little man that the hut was burnt. The little man gave him a purse and said to him; “This purse will never be empty as long as you are alive. Now, you will never see me more; but have a loving remembrance of the weasel. She was the beginning and the prime cause of your riches.” Then he went away and Paudyeen never saw him again.
Paudyeen O’Kelly and his wife lived for years after this in the large house, and when he died he left great wealth behind him, and a large family to spend it.
There now is the story for you, from the first word to the last, as I heard it from my grandmother.
LEEAM O’ROONEY’S BURIAL.
 In the olden time there was once a man named William O’Rooney, living near Clare-Galway. He was a farmer. One day the landlord came to him and said: “I have three years’ rent on you, and unless you have it for me within a week I’ll throw you out on the side of the road.”
“I’m going to Galway with a load of wheat to-morrow,” said Leeam (William), “and when I get the price of it I’ll pay you.”
Next morning he put a load of wheat on the cart, and was going to Galway with it. When he was gone a[93] couple of miles from the house a gentleman met him and asked him: “Is it wheat you’ve got on the cart?”
“It is,” says Leeam; “I’m going to sell it to pay my rent.”
“How much is there in it?” said the gentleman.
“There’s a ton, honest, in it,” said Leeam.
“I’ll buy it from you,” said the gentleman, “and I’ll give you the biggest price that’s going in the market. When you’ll go as far as the cart boreen (little road) that’s on your left hand, turn down, and be going till you come to a big house in the valley. I’ll be before you there to give you your money.”
When Leeam came to the boreen he turned in, and was going until he came as far as the big house. Leeam wondered when he came as far as the big house, for he was born and raised (i.e., reared) in the neighbourhood, and yet he had never seen the big house before, though he thought he knew every house within five miles of him.
When Leeam came near the barn that was close to the big house, a little lad came out and said: “A hundred thousand welcomes to you, William O’Rooney,” put a sack on his back and went in with it. Another little lad came out and welcomed Leeam, put a sack on his back, and went in with it. Lads were coming welcoming Leeam, and putting the sacks on their backs and carrying them in, until the ton of wheat was all gone. Then the whole of the lads came round him, and Leeam said; “Ye all know me, and I don’t know ye!” Then they said to him: “Go in and eat your dinner; the master’s waiting for you.”
Leeam went in and sat down at table; but he had not the second mouthful taken till a heavy sleep came on him, and he fell down under the table. Then the enchanter[95] made a false man like William, and sent him home to William’s wife with the horse and cart. When the false man came to Leeam’s house, he went into the room, lay down on the bed and died.
It was not long till the cry went out that Leeam O’Rooney was dead. The wife put down water, and when it was hot she washed the body and put it over the board (i.e., laid it out). The neighbours came, and they keened sorrowfully over the body, and there was great pity for the poor wife, but there was not much grief on herself, for Leeam was old and she was young. The day on the morrow the body was buried, and there was no more remembrance of Leeam.
Leeam’s wife had a servant boy, and she said to him: “You ought to marry me, and to take Leeam’s place.”
“It’s too early yet, after there being a death in the house,” said the boy; “wait till Leeam is a week buried.”
When Leeam was seven days and seven nights asleep, a little boy came to him and awoke him, and said: “You’ve been asleep for a week; but we sent your horse and cart home. Here’s your money, and go.”
Leeam came home, and as it was late at night nobody saw him. On the morning of that same day Leeam’s wife and the servant lad went to the priest and asked him to marry them.
“Have you the marriage money?” said the priest.
“No,” said the wife; “but I have a sturk of a pig at home, and you can have her in place of money.”
The priest married them, and said: “I’ll send for the pig to-morrow.”
When Leeam came to his own door, he struck a blow on it. The wife and the servant boy were going to bed, and they asked:[97] “Who’s there?”
“It’s I,” said Leeam; “open the door for me.”
When they heard the voice, they knew that it was Leeam who was in it, and the wife said: “I can’t let you in, and it’s a great shame, you to be coming back again, after being seven days in your grave.”
“Is it mad you are?” said Leeam.
“I’m not mad,” said the wife; “doesn’t every person in the parish know that you are dead, and that I buried you decently. Go back to your grave, and I’ll have a mass read for your poor soul to-morrow.”
“Wait till daylight comes,” said Leeam, “and I’ll give you the price of your joking!”
Then he went into the stable, where his horse and the pig were, stretched himself in the straw, and fell asleep.
Early on the morning of the next day, the priest said to a little lad that he had: “Get up, and go to Leeam O’Rooney’s house, and the woman that I married yesterday will give you a pig to bring home with you.”
The boy came to the door of the house, and began knocking at it with a stick. The wife was afraid to open the door, but she asked: “Who’s there?”
“I,” said the boy; “the priest sent me to get a pig from you.”
“She’s out in the stable,” said the wife; “you can get her for yourself, and drive her back with you.”
The lad went into the stable, and began driving out the pig, when Leeam rose up and said: “Where are you going with my pig?”
When the boy saw Leeam he never stopped to look again, but out with him as hard as he could, and he never stopped till he came back to the priest, and his heart coming out of his mouth with terror.
“What’s on you?” says the priest.
[99]
The lad told him that Leeam O’Rooney was in the stable, and would not let him drive out the pig.
“Hold your tongue, you liar!” said the priest; “Leeam O’Rooney’s dead and in the grave this week.”
“If he was in the grave this seven years, I saw him in the stable two moments ago; and if you don’t believe me, come yourself, and you’ll see him.”
The priest and the boy then went together to the door of the stable, and the priest said: “Go in and turn me out that pig.”
“I wouldn’t go in for all ever you’re worth,” said the boy.
The priest went in, and began driving out the pig, when Leeam rose up out of the straw and said: “Where are you going with my pig, Father Patrick?”
When the priest saw Leeam, off and away with him, and he crying out: “In the name of God, I order you back to your grave, William O’Rooney.”
Leeam began running after the priest, and saying, “Father Patrick, Father Patrick, are you mad? Wait and speak to me.”
The priest would not wait for him, but made off home as fast as his feet could carry him, and when he got into the house, he shut the door. Leeam was knocking at the door till he was tired, but the priest would not let him in. At last, he put his head out of a window in the top of the house, and said: “William O’Rooney, go back to your grave.”
“You’re mad, Father Patrick! I’m not dead, and never was in a grave since I was born,” said Leeam.
“I saw you dead,” said the priest;[101] “you died suddenly, and I was present when you were put into the grave, and made a fine sermon over you.”
“The devil from me, but, as sure as I’m alive, you’re mad!” said Leeam.
“Go out of my sight now,” said the priest, “and I’ll read a mass for you, to-morrow.”
Leeam went home then, and knocked at his own door, but his wife would not let him in. Then he said to himself: “I may as well go and pay my rent now.” On his way to the landlord’s house every one who saw Leeam was running before him, for they thought he was dead. When the landlord heard that Leeam O’Rooney was coming, he shut the doors and would not let him in. Leeam began knocking at the hall-door till the lord thought he’d break it in. He came to a window in the top of the house, put out his head, and asked: “What are you wanting?”
“I’m come to pay my rent like an honest man,” said Leeam.
“Go back to your grave, and I’ll forgive you your rent,” said the lord.
“I won’t leave this,” said Leeam, “till I get a writing from you that I’m paid up clean till next May.”
The lord gave him the writing, and he came home and knocked at his own door, but the wife would not let him in. She said that Leeam O’Rooney was dead and buried, and that the man at the door was only a deceiver.
“I’m no deceiver,” said William; “I’m after paying my master three years’ rent, and I’ll have possession of my own house, or else I’ll know why.”
He went to the barn and got a big bar of iron, and it wasn’t long till he broke in the door. There was great fear on the wife, and the newly married husband. They thought they were in the time of the General Resurrection, and that the end of the world was coming.
[103]
“Why did you think I was dead?” said Leeam.
“Doesn’t everybody in the parish know you’re dead?” said the wife.
“Your body from the devil,” said Leeam, “you’re humbugging me long enough, and get me something to eat.”
The poor woman was greatly afraid, and she dressed him some meat, and when she saw him eating and drinking, she said: “It’s a miracle.”
Then Leeam told her his story from first to last, and she told him each thing that happened, and then he said: “I’ll go to the grave to-morrow, till I see the behoonuch ye buried in my place.”
The day on the morrow Leeam brought a lot of men with him to the churchyard, and they dug open the grave, and were lifting up the coffin, when a big black dog jumped out of it, and made off, and Leeam and the men after it. They were following it till they saw it going into the house in which Leeam had been asleep, and then the ground opened, and the house went down, and nobody ever saw it from that out; but the big hole is to be seen till this day.
When Leeam and the men went home, they told everything to the priest of the parish, and he dissolved the marriage that was between Leeam’s wife and the servant boy.
Leeam lived for years after that, and he left great wealth behind him, and they remember him in Clare-Galway still, and will remember him if this story goes down from the old people to the young.
GULEESH NA GUSS DHU.
 There was once a boy in the County Mayo, and he never washed a foot from the day he was born. Guleesh was his name; but as nobody could ever prevail on him to wash his feet, they used to call him Guleesh na guss dhu, or Guleesh Black-foot. It’s often the father said to him: “Get up, you strone-sha (lubber), and wash yourself,” but the devil a foot would he get up, and the devil a foot would he wash. There was no use in talking to him. Every one used to be humbugging him on account of his dirty feet, but he paid them no heed nor attention. You might say anything at all to him, but in spite of it all he would have his own way afterwards.
One night the whole family were gathered in by the fire, telling stories and making fun for themselves, and he amongst them. The father said to him: “Guleesh, you are one and twenty years old to-night, and I believe you never washed a foot from the day you were born till to-day.”
“You lie,” said Guleesh, “didn’t I go a’swimming on May day last? and I couldn’t keep my feet out of the water.”
“Well, they were as dirty as ever they were when you came to the shore,” said the father.
“They were that, surely,” said Guleesh.
“That’s the thing I’m saying,” says the father, “that it wasn’t in you to wash your feet ever.”
“And I never will wash them till the day of my death,” said Guleesh.
“You miserable behoonugh! you clown! you tinker! you good-for-nothing lubber! what kind of answer is that?” says the father; and with that he drew the hand[105] and struck him a hard fist on the jaw. “Be off with yourself,” says he, “I can’t stand you any longer.”
Guleesh got up and put a hand to his jaw, where he got the fist. “Only that it’s yourself that’s in it, who gave me that blow,” said he, “another blow you’d never strike till the day of your death.” He went out of the house then and great anger on him.
There was the finest lis, or rath, in Ireland, a little way off from the gable of the house, and he was often in the habit of seating himself on the fine grass bank that was running round it. He stood, and he half leaning against the gable of the house, and looking up into the sky, and watching the beautiful white moon over his head. After him to be standing that way for a couple of hours, he said to himself: “My bitter grief that I am not gone away out of this place altogether. I’d sooner be any place in the world than here. Och, it’s well for you, white moon,” says he, “that’s turning round, turning round, as you please yourself, and no man can put you back. I wish I was the same as you.”
Hardly was the word out of his mouth when he heard a great noise coming like the sound of many people running together, and talking, and laughing, and making sport, and the sound went by him like a whirl of wind, and he was listening to it going into the rath. “Musha, by my soul,” says he, “but ye’re merry enough, and I’ll follow ye.”
What was in it but the fairy host, though he did not know at first that it was they who were in it, but he followed them into the rath. It’s there he heard the fulparnee, and the folpornee, the rap-lay-hoota, and the roolya-boolya.[29] that they had there, and every man of[106] them crying out as loud as he could: “My horse, and bridle, and saddle! My horse, and bridle, and saddle!”
“By my hand,” said Guleesh, “my boy, that’s not bad. I’ll imitate ye,” and he cried out as well as they: “My horse, and bridle, and saddle! My horse, and bridle, and saddle!” And on the moment there was a fine horse with a bridle of gold, and a saddle of silver, standing before him. He leaped up on it, and the moment he was on its back he saw clearly that the rath was full of horses, and of little people going riding on them.
Said a man of them to him: “Are you coming with us to-night, Guleesh?”
“I am, surely,” said Guleesh.
“If you are, come along,” said the little man, and out with them altogether, riding like the wind, faster than the fastest horse ever you saw a’hunting, and faster than the fox and the hounds at his tail.
The cold winter’s wind that was before them, they overtook her, and the cold winter’s wind that was behind them, she did not overtake them. And stop nor stay of that full race, did they make none, until they came to the brink of the sea.
Then every one of them said: “Hie over cap! Hie over cap!” and that moment they were up in the air, and before Guleesh had time to remember where he was, they were down on dry land again, and were going like the wind. At last they stood, and a man of them said to Guleesh: “Guleesh, do you know where you are now?”
“Not a know,” says Guleesh.
“You’re in Rome, Guleesh,” said he;[107] “but we’re going further than that. The daughter of the king of France is to be married to-night, the handsomest woman that the sun ever saw, and we must do our best to bring her with us, if we’re only able to carry her off; and you must come with us that we may be able to put the young girl up behind you on the horse, when we’ll be bringing her away, for it’s not lawful for us to put her sitting behind ourselves. But you’re flesh and blood, and she can take a good grip of you, so that she won’t fall off the horse. Are you satisfied, Guleesh, and will you do what we’re telling you?”
“Why shouldn’t I be satisfied?” said Guleesh. “I’m satisfied, surely, and anything that ye will tell me to do I’ll do it without doubt; but where are we now?”
“You’re in Rome now, Guleesh,” said the sheehogue (fairy).
“In Rome, is it?” said Guleesh. “Indeed, and no lie, I’m glad of that. The parish priest that we had he was broken (suspended) and lost his parish some time ago; I must go to the Pope till I get a bull from him that will put him back in his own place again.”
“Oh, Guleesh,” said the sheehogue, “you can’t do that. You won’t be let into the palace; and, anyhow, we can’t wait for you, for we’re in a hurry.”
“As much as a foot, I won’t go with ye,” says Guleesh, “till I go to the Pope; but ye can go forward without me, if ye wish. I won’t stir till I go and get the pardon of my parish priest.”
“Guleesh, is it out of your senses you are? You can’t go; and there’s your answer for you now. I tell you, you can’t go.”
“Can’t ye go on, and to leave me here after ye,” said Guleesh, “and when ye come back can’t ye hoist the girl up behind me?”
[108]
“But we want you at the palace of the king of France,” said the sheehogue, “and you must come with us now.”
“The devil a foot,” said Guleesh, “till I get the priest’s pardon; the honestest and the pleasantest man that’s in Ireland.”
Another sheehogue spoke then, and said:
“Don’t be so hard on Guleesh. The boy’s a kind boy, and he has a good heart; and as he doesn’t wish to come without the Pope’s bull, we must do our best to get it for him. He and I will go in to the Pope, and ye can wait here.”
“A thousand thanks to you,” said Guleesh. “I’m ready to go with you; for this priest, he was the sportingest and the pleasantest man in the world.”
“You have too much talk, Guleesh,” said the sheehogue, “but come along now. Get off your horse and take my hand.”
Guleesh dismounted, and took his hand; and then the little man said a couple of words he did not understand, and before he knew where he was he found himself in the room with the Pope.
The Pope was sitting up late that night reading a book that he liked. He was sitting on a big soft chair, and his two feet on the chimney-board. There was a fine fire in the grate, and a little table standing at his elbow, and a drop of ishka-baha (eau-de-vie) and sugar on the little tableeen; and he never felt till Guleesh came up behind him.
“Now Guleesh,” said the sheehogue,[109] “tell him that unless he gives you the bull you’ll set the room on fire; and if he refuses it to you, I’ll spurt fire round about out of my mouth, till he thinks the place is really in a blaze, and I’ll go bail he’ll be ready enough then to give you the pardon.”
Guleesh went up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. The Pope turned round, and when he saw Guleesh standing behind him he frightened up.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Guleesh, “we have a parish priest at home, and some thief told your honour a lie about him, and he was broken; but he’s the decentest man ever your honour saw, and there’s not a man, woman, or child in Ballynatoothach but’s in love with him.”
“Hold your tongue, you bodach,” said the Pope. “Where are you from, or what brought you here? Haven’t I a lock on the door?”
“I came in on the keyhole,” says Guleesh, “and I’d be very much obliged to your honour if you’d do what I’m asking.”
The Pope cried out: “Where are all my people? Where are my servants? Shamus! Shawn! I’m killed; I’m robbed.”
Guleesh put his back to the door, the way he could not get out, and he was afraid to go near Guleesh, so he had no help for it, but had to listen to Guleesh’s story; and Guleesh could not tell it to him shortly and plainly, for he was slow and coarse in his speaking, and that angered the Pope; and when Guleesh finished his story, he vowed that he never would give the priest his pardon; and he threatened Guleesh himself that he would put him to death for his shamelessness in coming in upon him in the night; and he began again crying out for his servants. Whether the servants heard him or no, there was a lock on the inside of the door, so that they could not come in to him.
“Unless you give me a bull under your hand and seal, and the priest’s pardon in it,” said Guleesh;[110] “I’ll burn your house with fire.”
The sheehogue, whom the Pope did not see, began to cast fire and flame out of his mouth, and the Pope thought that the room was all in a blaze. He cried out: “Oh, eternal destruction! I’ll give you the pardon; I’ll give you anything at all, only stop your fire, and don’t burn me in my own house.”
The sheehogue stopped the fire, and the Pope had to sit down and write a full pardon for the priest, and give him back his old place again, and when he had it ready written, he put his name under it on the paper, and put it into Guleesh’s hand.
“Thank your honour,” said Guleesh; “I never will come here again to you, and bannacht lath (good-bye).”
“Do not,” said the Pope; “if you do I’ll be ready before you, and you won’t go from me so easily again. You will be shut up in a prison, and you won’t get out for ever.”
“Don’t be afraid, I won’t come again,” said Guleesh. And before he could say any more the sheehogue spoke a couple of words, and caught Guleesh’s hand again, and out with them. Guleesh found himself amongst the other sheehogues, and his horse waiting for him.
“Now, Guleesh,” said they, “it’s greatly you stopped us, and we in such a hurry; but come on now, and don’t think of playing such a trick again, for we won’t wait for you.”
“I’m satisfied,” said Guleesh, “and I’m thankful to ye; but tell me where are we going.”
“We’re going to the palace of the king of France,” said they; “and if we can at all, we’re to carry off his daughter with us.”
Every man of them then said, “Rise up, horse;” and the horses began leaping, and running, and prancing.[111] The cold wind of winter that was before them they overtook her, and the cold wind of winter that was behind them, she did not overtake them, and they never stopped of that race, till they came as far as the palace of the king of France.
They got off their horses there, and a man of them said a word that Guleesh did not understand, and on the moment they were lifted up, and Guleesh found himself and his companions in the palace. There was a great feast going on there, and there was not a nobleman or a gentleman in the kingdom but was gathered there, dressed in silk and satin, and gold and silver, and the night was as bright as the day with all the lamps and candles that were lit, and Guleesh had to shut his two eyes at the brightness. When he opened them again and looked from him, he thought he never saw anything as fine as all he saw there. There were a hundred tables spread out, and their full of meat and drink on each table of them, flesh-meat, and cakes and sweetmeats, and wine and ale, and every drink that ever a man saw. The musicians were at the two ends of the hall, and they playing the sweetest music that ever a man’s ear heard, and there were young women and fine youths in the middle of the hall, dancing and turning, and going round so quickly and so lightly, that it put a soorawn in Guleesh’s head to be looking at them. There were more there playing tricks, and more making fun and laughing, for such a feast as there was that day had not been in France for twenty years, because the old king had no children alive but only the one daughter, and she was to be married to the son of another king that night. Three days the feast was going on, and the third night she was to be married, and that was the night that Guleesh and the sheehogues came, hoping if[112] they could, to carry off with them the king’s young daughter.
Guleesh and his companions were standing together at the head of the hall, where there was a fine altar dressed up, and two bishops behind it waiting to marry the girl, as soon as the right time should come. Nobody could see the sheehogues, for they said a word as they came in, that made them all invisible, as if they had not been in it at all.
“Tell me which of them is the king’s daughter,” said Guleesh, when he was becoming a little used to the noise and the light.
“Don’t you see her there from you?” said the little man that he was talking to.
Guleesh looked where the little man was pointing with his finger, and there he saw the loveliest woman that was, he thought, upon the ridge of the world. The rose and the lily were fighting together in her face, and one could not tell which of them got the victory. Her arms and hands were like the lime, her mouth as red as a strawberry, when it is ripe, her foot was as small and as light as another one’s hand, her form was smooth and slender, and her hair was falling down from her head in buckles of gold. Her garments and dress were woven with gold and silver, and the bright stone that was in the ring on her hand was as shining as the sun.
Guleesh was nearly blinded with all the loveliness and beauty that was in her; but when he looked again, he saw that she was crying, and that there was the trace of tears in her eyes. “It can’t be,” said Guleesh, “that there’s grief on her, when everybody round her is so full of sport and merriment.”
“Musha, then, she is grieved,” said the little man;[113] “for it’s against her own will she’s marrying, and she has no love for the husband she is to marry. The king was going to give her to him three years ago, when she was only fifteen, but she said she was too young, and requested him to leave her as she was yet. The king gave her a year’s grace, and when that year was up he gave her another year’s grace, and then another; but a week or a day he would not give her longer, and she is eighteen years old to-night, and it’s time for her to marry; but, indeed,” says he, and he crooked his mouth in an ugly way; “indeed, it’s no king’s son she’ll marry, if I can help it.”
Guleesh pitied the handsome young lady greatly when he heard that, and he was heart-broken to think that it would be necessary for her to marry a man she did not like, or what was worse, to take a nasty Sheehogue for a husband. However, he did not say a word, though he could not help giving many a curse to the ill-luck that was laid out for himself, and he helping the people that were to snatch her away from her home and from her father.
He began thinking, then, what it was he ought to do to save her, but he could think of nothing. “Oh, if I could only give her some help and relief,” said he, “I wouldn’t care whether I were alive or dead; but I see nothing that I can do for her.”
He was looking on when the king’s son came up to her and asked her for a kiss, but she turned her head away from him. Guleesh had double pity for her then, when he saw the lad taking her by the soft white hand, and drawing her out to dance. They went round in the dance near where Guleesh was, and he could plainly see that there were tears in her eyes.
When the dancing was over, the old king, her father, and her mother, the queen, came up and said that this[114] was the right time to marry her, that the bishop was ready and the couch prepared, and it was time to put the wedding-ring on her and give her to her husband.
The old king put a laugh out of him: “Upon my honour,” he said, “the night is nearly spent, but my son will make a night for himself. I’ll go bail he won’t rise early to-morrow.”
“Musha, and maybe he would,” said the Sheehogue in Guleesh’s ear, “or not go to bed, perhaps, at all. Ha, ha, ha!”
Guleesh gave him no answer, for his two eyes were going out on his head watching to see what they would do then.
The king took the youth by the hand, and the queen took her daughter, and they went up together to the altar, with the lords and great people following them.
When they came near the altar, and were no more than about four yards from it, the little sheehogue stretched out his foot before the girl, and she fell. Before she was able to rise again he threw something that was in his hand upon her, said a couple of words, and upon the moment the maiden was gone from amongst them. Nobody could see her, for that word made her invisible. The little maneen seized her and raised her up behind Guleesh, and the king nor no one else saw them, but out with them through the hall till they came to the door.
Oro! dear Mary! it’s there the pity was, and the trouble, and the crying, and the wonder, and the searching, and the rookawn, when that lady disappeared from their eyes, and without their seeing what did it. Out on the door of the palace with them, without being stopped or hindered, for nobody saw them, and, “My horse, my bridle, and saddle!” says every man of them.[115] “My horse, my bridle, and saddle!” says Guleesh; and on the moment the horse was standing ready caparisoned before him. “Now, jump up, Guleesh,” said the little man, “and put the lady behind you, and we will be going; the morning is not far off from us now.”
Guleesh raised her up on the horse’s back, and leaped up himself before her, and, “Rise horse,” said he; and his horse, and the other horses with him, went in a full race until they came to the sea.
“Highover, cap!” said every man of them.
“Highover, cap!” said Guleesh; and on the moment the horse rose under him, and cut a leap in the clouds, and came down in Erin.
They did not stop there, but went of a race to the place where was Guleesh’s house and the rath. And when they came as far as that, Guleesh turned and caught the young girl in his two arms, and leaped off the horse.
“I call and cross you to myself, in the name of God!” said he; and on the spot, before the word was out of his mouth, the horse fell down, and what was in it but the beam of a plough, of which they had made a horse; and every other horse they had, it was that way they made it. Some of them were riding on an old besom, and some on a broken stick, and more on a bohalawn (rag weed), or a hemlock-stalk.
The good people called out together when they heard what Guleesh said:
“Oh, Guleesh, you clown, you thief, that no good may happen you, why did you play that trick on us?”
But they had no power at all to carry off the girl, after Guleesh had consecrated her to himself.
[116]
“Oh, Guleesh, isn’t that a nice turn you did us, and we so kind to you? What good have we now out of our journey to Rome and to France? Never mind yet, you clown, but you’ll pay us another time for this. Believe us you’ll repent it.”
“He’ll have no good to get out of the young girl,” said the little man that was talking to him in the palace before that, and as he said the word he moved over to her and struck her a slap on the side of the head. “Now,” says he, “she’ll be without talk any more; now, Guleesh, what good will she be to you when she’ll be dumb? It’s time for us to go—but you’ll remember us, Guleesh na Guss Dhu!”
When he said that he stretched out his two hands, and before Guleesh was able to give an answer, he and the rest of them were gone into the rath out of his sight, and he saw them no more.
He turned to the young woman and said to her: “Thanks be to God, they’re gone. Would you not sooner stay with me than with them?” She gave him no answer. “There’s trouble and grief on her yet,” said Guleesh in his own mind, and he spoke to her again: “I am afraid that you must spend this night in my father’s house, lady, and if there is anything that I can do for you, tell me, and I’ll be your servant.”
The beautiful girl remained silent, but there were tears in her eyes, and her face was white and red after each other.
“Lady,” said Guleesh, “tell me what you would like me to do now. I never belonged at all to that lot of sheehogues who carried you away with them. I am the son of an honest farmer, and I went with them without knowing it. If I’ll be able to send you back to your father I’ll do it, and I pray you make any use of me now that you may wish.”
He looked into her face, and he saw the mouth moving[117] as if she was going to speak, but there came no word from it.
“It cannot be,” said Guleesh, “that you are dumb. Did I not hear you speaking to the king’s son in the palace to-night? Or has that devil made you really dumb, when he struck his nasty hand on your jaw?”
The girl raised her white smooth hand, and laid her finger on her tongue, to show him that she had lost her voice and power of speech, and the tears ran out of her two eyes like streams, and Guleesh’s own eyes were not dry, for as rough as he was on the outside he had a soft heart, and could not stand the sight of the young girl, and she in that unhappy plight.
He began thinking with himself what he ought to do, and he did not like to bring her home with himself to his father’s house, for he knew well that they would not believe him, that he had been in France and brought back with him the king of France’s daughter, and he was afraid they might make a mock of the young lady or insult her.
As he was doubting what he ought to do, and hesitating, he chanced to put his hand in his pocket, and he found a paper in it. He pulled it up, and the moment he looked at it he remembered it was the Pope’s bull. “Glory be to God,” said he, “I know now what I’ll do; I’ll bring her to the priest’s house, and as soon as he sees the pardon I have here, he won’t refuse me to keep the lady and care her.” He turned to the lady again and told her that he was loath to take her to his father’s house, but that there was an excellent priest very friendly to himself, who would take good care of her, if she wished to remain in his house; but that if there was any other place she would rather go, he said he would bring her to it.
[118]
She bent her head, to show him she was obliged, and gave him to understand that she was ready to follow him any place he was going. “We will go to the priest’s house, then,” said he; “he is under an obligation to me, and will do anything I ask him.”
They went together accordingly to the priest’s house, and the sun was just rising when they came to the door. Guleesh beat it hard, and as early as it was the priest was up, and opened the door himself. He wondered when he saw Guleesh and the girl, for he was certain that it was coming wanting to be married they were.
“Guleesh na Guss Dhu, isn’t it the nice boy you are that you can’t wait till ten o’clock or till twelve, but that you must be coming to me at this hour, looking for marriage, you and your girshuch. You ought to know that I’m broken, and that I can’t marry you, or at all events, can’t marry you lawfully. But ubbubboo!” said he, suddenly, as he looked again at the young girl, “in the name of God, who have you here? Who is she, or how did you get her?”
“Father,” said Guleesh, “you can marry me, or anybody else, any more, if you wish; but it’s not looking for marriage I came to you now, but to ask you, if you please, to give a lodging in your house to this young lady.” And with that he drew out the Pope’s bull, and gave it to the priest to read.
The priest took it, and read it, and looked sharply at the writing and seal, and he had no doubt but it was a right bull, from the hand of the Pope.
“Where did you get this?” said he to Guleesh, and the hand he held the paper in, was trembling with wonder and joy.
“Oh, musha!” said Guleesh, airily enough,[119] “I got it last night in Rome; I remained a couple of hours in the city there, when I was on my way to bring this young lady, daughter of the king of France, back with me.”
The priest looked at him as though he had ten heads on him; but without putting any other question to him, he desired him to come in, himself and the maiden, and when they came in, he shut the door, brought them into the parlour, and put them sitting.
“Now, Guleesh,” said he, “tell me truly where did you get this bull, and who is this young lady, and whether you’re out of your senses really, or are only making a joke of me?”
“I’m not telling a word of lie, nor making a joke of you,” said Guleesh; “but it was from the Pope himself I got the paper, and it was from the palace of the king of France I carried off this lady, and she is the daughter of the king of France.”
He began his story then, and told the whole to the priest, and the priest was so much surprised that he could not help calling out at times, or clapping his hands together.
When Guleesh said from what he saw he thought the girl was not satisfied with the marriage that was going to take place in the palace before he and the sheehogues broke it up, there came a red blush into the girl’s cheek, and he was more certain than ever that she had sooner be as she was—badly as she was—than be the married wife of the man she hated. When Guleesh said that he would be very thankful to the priest if he would keep her in his own house, the kind man said he would do that as long as Guleesh pleased, but that he did not know what they ought to do with her, because they had no means of sending her back to her father again.
Guleesh answered that he was uneasy about the same thing, and that he saw nothing to do but to keep quiet[120] until they should find some opportunity of doing something better. They made it up then between themselves that the priest should let on that it was his brother’s daughter he had, who was come on a visit to him from another county, and that he should tell everybody that she was dumb, and do his best to keep everyone away from her. They told the young girl what it was they intended to do, and she showed by her eyes that she was obliged to them.
Guleesh went home then, and when his people asked him where he was, he said that he was asleep at the foot of the ditch, and passed the night there.
There was great wonderment on the neighbours when the honest priest showed them the Pope’s bull, and got his old place again, and everyone was rejoiced, for, indeed, there was no fault at all in that honest man, except that now and again he would have too much liking for a drop of the bottle; but no one could say that he ever saw him in a way that he could not utter “here’s to your health,” as well as ever a man in the kingdom. But if they wondered to see the priest back again in his old place, much more did they wonder at the girl who came so suddenly to his house without anyone knowing where she was from, or what business she had there. Some of the people said that everything was not as it ought to be, and others that it was not possible that the Pope gave back his place to the priest after taking it from him before, on account of the complaints about his drinking. And there were more of them, too, who said that Guleesh na Guss Dhu was not like the same man that was in it before, and that it was a great story (i.e., a thing to wonder at) how he was drawing every day to the priest’s house, and that the priest had a wish and a respect for him, a thing they could not clear up at all.
[121]
That was true for them, indeed, for it was seldom the day went by but Guleesh would go to the priest’s house, and have a talk with him, and as often as he would come he used to hope to find the young lady well again, and with leave to speak; but, alas! she remained dumb and silent, without relief or cure. Since she had no other means of talking she carried on a sort of conversation between herself and himself, by moving her hand and fingers, winking her eyes, opening and shutting her mouth, laughing or smiling, and a thousand other signs, so that it was not long until they understood each other very well. Guleesh was always thinking how he should send her back to her father; but there was no one to go with her, and he himself did not know what road to go, for he had never been out of his own country before the night he brought her away with him. Nor had the priest any better knowledge than he; but when Guleesh asked him, he wrote three or four letters to the king of France, and gave them to buyers and sellers of wares, who used to be going from place to place across the sea; but they all went astray, and never one came to the king’s hand.
This was the way they were for many months, and Guleesh was falling deeper and deeper in love with her every day, and it was plain to himself and the priest that she liked him. The boy feared greatly at last, lest the king should really hear where his daughter was, and take her back from himself, and he besought the priest to write no more, but to leave the matter to God.
So they passed the time for a year, until there came a day when Guleesh was lying by himself on the grass, on the last day of the last month in autumn (i.e. October), and he thinking over again in his own mind of everything that happened to him from the day that he went[122] with the sheehogues across the sea. He remembered then, suddenly, that it was one November night that he was standing at the gable of the house, when the whirlwind came, and the sheehogues in it, and he said to himself: “We have November night again to-day, and I’ll stand in the same place I was last year, until I see will the good people come again. Perhaps I might see or hear something that would be useful to me, and might bring back her talk again to Mary”—that was the name himself and the priest called the king’s daughter, for neither of them knew her right name. He told his intention to the priest, and the priest gave him his blessing.
Guleesh accordingly went to the old rath when the night was darkening, and he stood with his bent elbow leaning on a gray old flag, waiting till the middle of the night should come. The moon rose slowly, and it was like a knob of fire behind him; and there was a white fog which was raised up over the fields of grass and all damp places, through the coolness of the night after a great heat in the day. The night was calm as is a lake when there is not a breath of wind to move a wave on it, and there was no sound to be heard but the cronawn (hum) of the insects that would go by from time to time, or the hoarse sudden scream of the wild-geese, as they passed from lake to lake, half a mile up in the air over his head; or the sharp whistle of the fadogues and flibeens (golden and green plover), rising and lying, lying and rising, as they do on a calm night. There were a thousand thousand bright stars shining over his head, and there was a little frost out, which left the grass under his foot white and crisp.
He stood there for an hour, for two hours, for three hours, and the frost increased greatly, so that he heard[123] the breaking of the traneens under his foot as often as he moved. He was thinking, in his own mind, at last, that the sheehogues would not come that night, and that it was as good for him to return back again, when he heard a sound far away from him, coming towards him, and he recognised what it was at the first moment. The sound increased, and at first it was like the beating of waves on a stony shore, and then it was like the falling of a great waterfall, and at last it was like a loud storm in the tops of the trees, and then the whirlwind burst into the rath of one rout, and the sheehogues were in it.
It all went by him so suddenly that he lost his breath with it, but he came to himself on the spot, and put an ear on himself, listening to what they would say.
Scarcely had they gathered into the rath till they all began shouting, and screaming, and talking amongst themselves; and then each one of them cried out: “My horse, and bridle, and saddle! My horse, and bridle, and saddle!” and Guleesh took courage, and called out as loudly as any of them: “My horse, and bridle, and saddle! My horse, and bridle, and saddle!” But before the word was well out of his mouth, another man cried out: “Ora! Guleesh, my boy, are you here with us again? How are you coming on with your woman? There’s no use in your calling for your horse to-night. I’ll go bail you won’t play on us again. It was a good trick you played on us last year!”
“It was,” said another man, “he won’t do it again.”
“Isn’t he a prime lad, the same lad! to take a woman with him that never said as much to him as, ‘how do you do?’ since this time last year!” says the third man.
“Perhaps he likes to be looking at her,” said another voice.
[124]
“And if the omadawn only knew that there’s an herb growing up by his own door, and to boil it and give it to her and she’d be well,” said another voice.
“That’s true for you.”
“He is an omadawn.”
“Don’t bother your head with him, we’ll be going.”
“We’ll leave the bodach as he is.”
And with that they rose up into the air, and out with them of one roolya-boolya the way they came; and they left poor Guleesh standing where they found him, and the two eyes going out of his head, looking after them, and wondering.
He did not stand long till he returned back, and he thinking in his own mind on all he saw and heard, and wondering whether there was really an herb at his own door that would bring back the talk to the king’s daughter. “It can’t be,” says he to himself, “that they would tell it to me, if there was any virtue in it; but perhaps the sheehogue didn’t observe himself when he let the word slip out of his mouth. I’ll search well as soon as the sun rises, whether there’s any plant growing beside the house except thistles and dockings.”
He went home, and as tired as he was he did not sleep a wink until the sun rose on the morrow. He got up then, and it was the first thing he did to go out and search well through the grass round about the house, trying could he get any herb that he did not recognize. And, indeed, he was not long searching till he observed a large strange herb that was growing up just by the gable of the house.
He went over to it, and observed it closely, and saw that there were seven little branches coming out of the stalk, and seven leaves growing on every brancheen of them, and that there was a white sap in the leaves. “It’s very wonderful,” said he to himself,[125] “that I never noticed this herb before. If there’s any virtue in an herb at all, it ought to be in such a strange one as this.”
He drew out his knife, cut the plant, and carried it into his own house; stripped the leaves off it and cut up the stalk; and there came a thick, white juice out of it, as there comes out of the sow-thistle when it is bruised, except that the juice was more like oil.
He put it in a little pot and a little water in it, and laid it on the fire until the water was boiling, and then he took a cup, filled it half up with the juice, and put it to his own mouth. It came into his head then that perhaps it was poison that was in it, and that the good people were only tempting him that he might kill himself with that trick, or put the girl to death without meaning it. He put down the cup again, raised a couple of drops on the top of his finger, and put it to his mouth. It was not bitter, and, indeed, had a sweet, agreeable taste. He grew bolder then, and drank the full of a thimble of it, and then as much again, and he never stopped till he had half the cup drunk. He fell asleep after that, and did not wake till it was night, and there was great hunger and great thirst on him.
He had to wait, then, till the day rose; but he determined, as soon as he should wake in the morning, that he would go to the king’s daughter and give her a drink of the juice of the herb.
As soon as he got up in the morning, he went over to the priest’s house with the drink in his hand, and he never felt himself so bold and valiant, and spirited and light, as he was that day, and he was quite certain that it was the drink he drank which made him so hearty.
When he came to the house, he found the priest and the young lady within, and they were wondering greatly why he had not visited them for two days.
[126]
He told them all his news, and said that he was certain that there was great power in that herb, and that it would do the lady no hurt, for he tried it himself and got good from it, and then he made her taste it, for he vowed and swore that there was no harm in it.
Guleesh handed her the cup, and she drank half of it, and then fell back on her bed and a heavy sleep came on her, and she never woke out of that sleep till the day on the morrow.
Guleesh and the priest sat up the entire night with her, waiting till she should awake, and they between hope and unhope, between expectation of saving her and fear of hurting her.
She awoke at last when the sun had gone half its way through the heavens. She rubbed her eyes and looked like a person who did not know where she was. She was like one astonished when she saw Guleesh and the priest in the same room with her, and she sat up doing her best to collect her thoughts.
The two men were in great anxiety waiting to see would she speak, or would she not speak, and when they remained silent for a couple of minutes, the priest said to her: “Did you sleep well, Mary?”
And she answered him: “I slept, thank you.”
No sooner did Guleesh hear her talking than he put a shout of joy out of him, and ran over to her and fell on his two knees, and said: “A thousand thanks to God, who has given you back the talk; lady of my heart, speak again to me.”
The lady answered him that she understood it was he who boiled that drink for her, and gave it to her; that she was obliged to him from her heart for all the kindness he showed her since the day she first came to Ireland, and that he might be certain that she would never forget it.
[127]
Guleesh was ready to die with satisfaction and delight. Then they brought her food, and she eat with a good appetite, and was merry and joyous, and never left off talking with the priest while she was eating.
After that Guleesh went home to his house, and stretched himself on the bed and fell asleep again, for the force of the herb was not all spent, and he passed another day and a night sleeping. When he woke up he went back to the priest’s house, and found that the young lady was in the same state, and that she was asleep almost since the time that he left the house.
He went into her chamber with the priest, and they remained watching beside her till she awoke the second time, and she had her talk as well as ever, and Guleesh was greatly rejoiced. The priest put food on the table again, and they eat together, and Guleesh used after that to come to the house from day to day, and the friendship that was between him and the king’s daughter increased, because she had no one to speak to except Guleesh and the priest, and she liked Guleesh best.
He had to tell her the way he was standing by the rath when the good people came, and how he went in to the Pope, and how the sheehogue blew fire out of his mouth, and every other thing that he did till the time the good people whipt her off with themselves; and when it would be all told he would have to begin it again out of the new, and she never was tired listening to him.
When they had been that way for another half year, she said that she could wait no longer without going back to her father and mother; that she was certain that they were greatly grieved for her; and that it was a shame for her to leave them in grief, when it was in her power to go as far as them. The priest did all he[128] could to keep her with them for another while, but without effect, and Guleesh spoke every sweet word that came into his head, trying to get the victory over her, and to coax her and make her stay as she was, but it was no good for him. She determined that she would go, and no man alive would make her change her intention.
She had not much money, but only two rings that were on her hand, when the sheehogue carried her away, and a gold pin that was in her hair, and golden buckles that were on her little shoes.
The priest took and sold them and gave her the money, and she said that she was ready to go.
She left her blessing and farewell with the priest and Guleesh, and departed. She was not long gone till there came such grief and melancholy over Guleesh that he knew he would not be long alive unless he were near her, and he followed her.
(The next 42 pages in the Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta are taken up with the adventures of Guleesh and the princess, on their way to the court of France. But this portion of the story is partly taken from other tales, and part is too much altered and amplified in the writing of it, so that I do not give it here, as not being genuine folk-lore, which the story, except for a very little embellishment, has been up to this point. The whole ends as follows, with the restoration of the princess and her marriage with Guleesh.)
 
It was well, and it was not ill. They married one another, and that was the fine wedding they had, and if I were to be there then, I would not be here now; but I heard it from a birdeen that there was neither cark nor care, sickness nor sorrow, mishap nor misfortune on them till the hour of their death, and that it may be the same with me, and with us all!
 
THE WELL OF D’YERREE-IN-DOWAN.
 A long time ago—before St. Patrick’s time—there was an old king in Connacht, and he had three sons. The king had a sore foot for many years, and he could get no cure. One day he sent for the Dall Glic (wise blind man) which he had, and said to him:
“I’m giving you wages this twenty years, and you can’t tell me what will cure my foot.”
“You never asked me that question before,” said the Dall Glic; “but I tell you now that there is nothing in the world to cure you but a bottle of water from the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan” (i.e., end of the world).
In the morning, the day on the morrow, the king called his three sons, and he said to them:
“My foot will never be better until I get a bottle of water from the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan, and whichever of you will bring me that, he has my kingdom to get.”
“We will go in pursuit of it to-morrow,” says the three. The names of the three were Art, Nart (i.e., strength), and Cart[30] (i.e., right).
On the morning of the day on the morrow, the king gave to each one of them a purse of gold, and they went on their way. When they came as far as the cross-roads, Art said:
“Each one of us ought to go a road for himself, and if one of us is back before a year and a day, let him wait till the other two come; or else let him set up a stone as a sign that he has come back safe.”
They parted from one another after that, and Art and Nart went to an inn and began drinking; but Cart[130] went on by himself. He walked all that day without knowing where he was going. As the darkness of the night came on he was entering a great wood, and he was going forwards in the wood, until he came to a large house. He went in and looked round him, but he saw nobody, except a large white cat sitting beside the fire. When the cat saw him she rose up and went into another room. He was tired and sat beside the fire. It was not long till the door of the chamber opened, and there came out an old hag.
“One hundred thousand welcomes before you, son of the king of Connacht,” says the hag.
“How did you know me?” says the king’s son.
“Oh, many’s the good day I spent in your father’s castle in Bwee-sounee, and I know you since you were born,” said the hag.
Then she prepared him a fine supper, and gave it to him. When he had eaten and drunk enough, she said to him:
“You made a long journey to-day; come with me until I show you a bed.” Then she brought him to a fine chamber, showed him a bed, and the king’s son fell asleep. He did not awake until the sun was coming in on the windows the next morning.
Then he rose up, dressed himself, and was going out, when the hag asked him where he was going.
“I don’t know,” said the king’s son. “I left home to find out the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan.”
“I’m after walking a good many places,” said the hag, “but I never heard talk of the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan before.”
The king’s son went out, and he was travelling till he came to a cross-roads between two woods. He did not know which road to take. He saw a seat under the[131] trunk of a great tree. When he went up to it he found it written: “This is the seat of travellers.”
The king’s son sat down, and after a minute he saw the most lovely woman in the world coming towards him, and she dressed in red silk, and she said to him:
“I often heard that it is better to go forward than back.”
Then she went out of his sight as though the ground should swallow her.
The king’s son rose up and went forward. He walked that day till the darkness of the night was coming on, and he did not know where to get lodgings. He saw a light in a wood, and he drew towards it. The light was in a little house. There was not as much as the end of a feather jutting up on the outside nor jutting down on the inside, but only one single feather that was keeping up the house. He knocked at the door, and an old hag opened it.
“God save all here,” says the king’s son.
“A hundred welcomes before you, son of the king of the castle of Bwee-sounee,” said the hag.
“How do you know me?” said the king’s son.
“It was my sister nursed you,” said the hag, “and sit down till I get your supper ready.”
When he ate and drank his enough, she put him to sleep till morning. When he rose up in the morning, he prayed to God to direct him on the road of his luck.
“How far will you go to-day?” said the hag.
“I don’t know,” said the king’s son. “I’m in search of the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan.”
“I’m three hundred years here,” said the hag,[132] “and I never heard of such a place before; but I have a sister older than myself, and, perhaps, she may know of it. Here is a ball of silver for you, and when you will go out upon the road throw it up before you, and follow it till you come to the house of my sister.”
When he went out on the road he threw down the ball, and he was following it until the sun was going under the shadow of the hills. Then he went into a wood, and came to the door of a little house. When he struck the door, a hag opened it and said:
“A hundred thousand welcomes before you, son of the king of the castle of Bwee-sounee, who were at my sister’s house last night. You made a long journey to-day. Sit down; I have a supper ready for you.”
When the king’s son ate and drank his enough, the hag put him to sleep, and he did not wake up till the morning. Then the hag asked:
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t rightly know,” said the king’s son. “I left home to find out the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan.”
“I am over five hundred years of age,” said the hag, “and I never heard talk of that place before; but I have a brother, and if there is any such place in the world, he’ll know of it. He is living seven hundred miles from here.”
“It’s a long journey,” said the king’s son.
“You’ll be there to-night,” said the hag.
Then she gave him a little garraun (nag, gelding) about the size of a goat.
“That little beast won’t be able to carry me,” said the king’s son.
“Wait till you go riding on it,” said the hag.
The king’s son got on the garraun, and out for ever with him as fast as lightning.
When the sun was going under, that evening, he came to a little house in a wood. The king’s son got off the garraun, went in, and it was not long till an old grey man came out, and said:
[133]
“A hundred thousand welcomes to you, son of the king of the castle of Bwee-sounee. You’re in search of the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan.”
“I am, indeed,” said the king’s son.
“Many’s the good man went that way before you; but not a man of them came back alive,” said the old man; “however, I’ll do my best for you. Stop here to-night, and we’ll have sport to-morrow.”
Then he dressed a supper and gave it to the king’s son, and when he ate and drank, the old man put him to sleep.
In the morning of the day on the morrow, the old man said:
“I found out where the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan is; but it is difficult to go as far as it. We must find out if there’s any good in you with the tight loop (bow?).”
Then he brought the king’s son out into the wood, gave him the loop, and put a mark on a tree two score yards from him, and told him to strike it. He drew the loop and struck the mark.
“You’ll do the business,” said the old man.
They then went in, and spent the day telling stories till the darkness of the night was come.
When the darkness of the night was come, the old man gave him a loop (bow?) and a sheaf of sharp stings (darts), and said:
“Come with me now.”
They were going until they came to a great river. Then the old man said:
“Go on my back, and I’ll swim across the river with you; but if you see a great bird coming, kill him, or we shall be lost.”
Then the king’s son got on the old man’s back, and the old man began swimming. When they were in the middle of the river the king’s son saw a great eagle[134] coming, and his gob (beak) open. The king’s son drew the loop and wounded the eagle.
“Did you strike him?” said the old man.
“I struck him,” said the king’s son; “but here he comes again.”
He drew the loop the second time and the eagle fell dead.
When they came to the land, the old man said:
“We are on the island of the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan. The queen is asleep, and she will not waken for a day and a year. She never goes to sleep but once in seven years. There is a lion and a monster (uillphéist) watching at the gate of the well, but they go to sleep at the same time with the queen, and you will have no difficulty in going to the well. Here are two bottles for you; fill one of them for yourself, and the other for me, and it will make a young man of me.”
The king’s son went off, and when he came as far as the castle he saw the lion and the monster sleeping on each side of the gate. Then he saw a great wheel throwing up water out of the well, and he went and filled the two bottles, and he was coming back when he saw a shining light in the castle. He looked in through the window and saw a great table. There was a loaf of bread, with a knife, a bottle, and a glass on it. He filled the glass, but he did not diminish the bottle. He observed that there was a writing on the bottle and on the loaf; and he read on the bottle: “Water For the World,” and on the loaf: “Bread For the World.” He cut a piece off the loaf, but it only grew bigger.
“My grief! that we haven’t that loaf and that bottle at home,” said the king’s son, “and there’d be neither hunger nor thirst on the poor people.”
Then he went into a great chamber, and he saw the[135] queen and eleven waiting-maids asleep, and a sword of light hung above the head of the queen. It was it that was giving light to the whole castle.
When he saw the queen, he said to himself: “It’s a pity to leave that pretty mouth without kissing it.” He kissed the queen, and she never awoke; and after that he did the same to the eleven maidens. Then he got the sword, the bottle, and the loaf, and came to the old man, but he never told him that he had those things.
“How did you get on?” said the old man.
“I got the thing I was in search of,” said the king’s son.
“Did you see any marvel since you left me?” said the old man.
The king’s son told him that he had seen a wonderful loaf, bottle, and sword.
“You did not touch them?” said the old man; “shun them, for they would bring trouble on you. Come on my back now till I bring you across the river.”
When they went to the house of the old man, he put water out of the bottle on himself, and made a young man of himself. Then he said to the king’s son:
“My sisters and myself are now free from enchantment, and they are young women again.”
The king’s son remained there until most part of the year and day were gone. Then he began the journey home; but, my grief, he had not the little nag with him. He walked the first day until the darkness of the night was coming on. He saw a large house. He went to the door, struck it, and the man of the house came out to him.
“Can you give me lodgings?” said he.
“I can,” said the man of the house, “only I have no light to light you.”
“I have a light myself,” said the king’s son.
[136]
He went in then, drew the sword, and gave a fine light to them all, and to everybody that was in the island. They then gave him a good supper, and he went to sleep. When he was going away in the morning, the man of the house asked him for the honour of God, to leave the sword with them.
“Since you asked for it in the honour of God, you must have it,” said the king’s son.
He walked the second day till the darkness was coming. He went to another great house, beat the door, and it was not long till the woman of the house came to him, and he asked lodgings of her. The man of the house came and said:
“I can give you that; but I have not a drop of water to dress food for you.”
“I have plenty of water myself,” said the king’s son.
He went in, drew out the bottle, and there was not a vessel in the house he did not fill, and still the bottle was full. Then a supper was dressed for him, and when he ate and drank his enough, he went to sleep. In the morning, when he was going, the woman asked of him, in the honour of God, to leave them the bottle.
“Since it has chanced that you ask it for the honour of God,” said the king’s son, “I cannot refuse you, for my mother put me under gassa (mystic obligations), before she died, never, if I could, to refuse anything that a person would ask of me for the honour of God.”
Then he left the bottle to them.
He walked the third day until darkness was coming, and he reached a great house on the side of the road. He struck the door; the man of the house came out, and he asked lodgings of him.
“I can give you that, and welcome,” said the man;[137] “but I’m grieved that I have not a morsel of bread for you.”
“I have plenty of bread myself,” said the king’s son.
He went in, got a knife, and began cutting the loaf, until the table was filled with pieces of bread, and yet the loaf was as big as it was when he began. Then they prepared a supper for him, and when he ate his enough, he went to sleep. When he was departing in the morning, they asked of him, for the honour of God, to leave the loaf with them, and he left it with them.
The three things were now gone from him.
He walked the fourth day until he came to a great river, and he had no way to get across it. He went upon his knees, and asked of God to send him help. After half a minute, he saw the beautiful woman he saw the day he left the house of the first hag. When she came near him, she said: “Son of the king of the castle of Bwee-sounnee, has it succeeded with you?”
“I got the thing I went in search of,” said the king’s son; “but I do not know how I shall pass over this river.”
She drew out a thimble and said: “Bad is the day I would see your father’s son without a boat.”
Then she threw the thimble into the river, and made a splendid boat of it.
“Get into that boat now,” said she; “and when you will come to the other side, there will be a steed before you to bring you as far as the cross-road, where you left your brothers.”
The king’s son stepped into the boat, and it was not long until he was at the other side, and there he found a white steed before him. He went riding on it, and it went off as swiftly as the wind. At about twelve o’clock on that day, he was at the cross-roads. The king’s son looked round him, and he did not see his brothers, nor any stone set up, and he said to himself,[138] “perhaps they are at the inn.” He went there, and found Art and Nart, and they two-thirds drunk.
They asked him how he went on since he left them.
“I have found out the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan, and I have the bottle of water,” said Cart.
Nart and Art were filled with jealousy, and they said one to the other: “It’s a great shame that the youngest son should have the kingdom.”
“We’ll kill him, and bring the bottle of water to my father,” said Nart; “and we’ll say that it was ourselves who went to the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan.”
“I’m not with you there,” said Art; “but we’ll set him drunk, and we’ll take the bottle of (from) him. My father will believe me and you, before he’ll believe our brother, because he has an idea that there’s nothing in him but a half omadawn.”
“Then,” he said to Cart, “since it has happened that we have come home safe and sound we’ll have a drink before we go home.”
They called for a quart of whiskey, and they made Cart drink the most of it, and he fell drunk. Then they took the bottle of water from him, went home themselves, and gave it to the king. He put a drop of the water on his foot, and it made him as well as ever he was.
Then they told him that they had great trouble to get the bottle of water; that they had to fight giants, and to go through great dangers.
“Did ye see Cart on your road?” said the king.
“He never went farther than the inn, since he left us,” said they; “and he’s in it now, blind drunk.”
“There never was any good in him,” said the king; “but I cannot leave him there.”
Then he sent six men to the inn, and they carried[139] Cart home. When he came to himself, the king made him into a servant to do all the dirty jobs about the castle.
When a year and a day had gone by, the queen of the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan and her waiting-maidens woke up and the queen found a young son by her side, and the eleven maidens the same.
There was great anger on the queen, and she sent for the lion and the monster, and asked them what was become of the eagle that she left in charge of the castle.
“He must be dead, or he’d be here now, when you woke up,” said they.
“I’m destroyed, myself, and the waiting-maidens ruined,” said the queen; “and I never will stop till I find out the father of my son.”
Then she got ready her enchanted coach, and two fawns under it. She was going till she came to the first house where the king’s son got lodging, and she asked was there any stranger there lately. The man of the house said there was.
“Yes!” said the queen, “and he left the sword of light behind him; it is mine, and if you do not give it to me quickly I will throw your house upside down.”
They gave her the sword, and she went on till she came to the second house, in which he had got lodging, and she asked was there any stranger there lately. They said that there was. “Yes,” said she, “and he left a bottle after him. Give it to me quickly, or I’ll throw the house on ye.”
They gave her the bottle, and she went till she came to the third house, and she asked was there any stranger there lately. They said there was.
“Yes!” said she,[140] “and he left the loaf of lasting bread after him. That belongs to me, and if ye don’t give it to me quickly I will kill ye all.”
She got the loaf, and she was going, and never stopped till she came to the castle of Bwee-Sounee. She pulled the cooalya-coric, pole of combat, and the king came out.
“Have you any son?” said the queen.
“I have,” said the king.
“Send him out here till I see him,” said she.
The king sent out Art, and she asked him: “Were you at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan?”
“I was,” said Art.
“And are you the father of my son?” said she.
“I believe I am,” said Art.
“I will know that soon,” said she.
Then she drew two hairs out of her head, flung them against the wall, and they were made into a ladder that went up to the top of the castle. Then she said to Art: “If you were at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan, you can go up to the top of that ladder.”
Art went up half way, then he fell, and his thigh was broken.
“You were never at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan,” said the queen.
Then she asked the king: “Have you any other son?”
“I have,” said the king.
“Bring him out,” said the queen.
Nart came out, and she asked him: “Were you ever at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan?”
“I was,” said Nart.
“If you were, go up to the top of that ladder,” said the queen.
He began going up, but he had not gone far till he fell and broke his foot.
[141]
“You were not at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan,” said the queen.
Then she asked the king if he had any other son, and the king said he had. “But,” said he, “it’s a half fool he is, that never left home.”
“Bring him here,” said the queen.
When Cart came, she asked him: “Were you at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan?”
“I was,” said Cart, “and I saw you there.”
“Go up to the top of that ladder,” said the queen.
Cart went up like a cat, and when he came down she said: “You are the man who was at the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan, and you are the father of my son.”
Then Cart told the trick his brothers played on him, and the queen was going to slay them, until Cart asked pardon for them. Then the king said that Cart must get the kingdom.
Then the father dressed him out and put a chain of gold beneath his neck, and he got into the coach along with the queen, and they departed to the Well of D’yerree-in-Dowan.
The waiting-maidens gave a great welcome to the king’s son, and they all of them came to him, each one asking him to marry herself.
He remained there for one-and-twenty years, until the queen died, and then he brought back with him his twelve sons, and came home to Galway. Each of them married a wife, and it is from them that the twelve tribes of Galway are descended.
THE COURT OF CRINNAWN.
 A long time ago there came a lot of gentlemen to a river which is between the County Mee-òh (Mayo) and Roscommon, and they chose out a nice place for themselves on the brink of a river, and set up a court on it. Nobody at all in the little villages round about knew from what place these gentlemen came. MacDonnell was the name that was on them. The neighbours were for a long time without making friendship with them, until there came a great plague, and the people were getting death in their hundreds.
One day there was the only son of a poor widow dying from the destructive plague, and she had not a drop of milk to wet his tongue. She went to the court, and they asked her what she was looking for. She told them that the one son she had was dying of the plague and that she had not a drop of milk to wet his tongue.
“Hard is your case,” says a lady that was in the court to her. “I will give you milk and healing, and your son will be as well at the end of an hour as ever he was.” Then she gave her a tin can, and said: “Go home now, this can will never be empty as long as you or your son is alive, if you keep the secret without telling anybody that you got it here. When you will go home put a morsel of the Mary’s shamrock (four-leaved shamrock?) in the milk and give it to your son.”
The widow went home. She put a bit of four-leaved shamrock in the milk, and gave it to her son to drink, and he rose up at the end of an hour as well as ever he was. Then the woman went through the villages round about with the can, and there was no one at all to whom she gave a drink that was not healed at the end of an hour.
[143]
It was not long till the fame of Maurya nee Keerachawn (Mary Kerrigan), that was the name of the widow, went through the country, and it was not long till she had the full of the bag of gold and silver.
One day Mary went to a pattern at Cultya Bronks, drank too much, fell on drunkenness, and let out the secret.
There came the heavy sleep of drunkenness on her, and when she awoke the can was gone. There was so much grief on her that she drowned herself in a place called Pull Bawn (the White Hole), within a mile of Cultya Bronks.
Everybody thought now that they had the can of healing to get at the Court of Crinnawn if they would go there. In the morning, the day on the morrow, there went plenty of people to the court, and they found every one who was in it dead. The shout went out, and the hundreds of people gathered together, but no man could go in, for the court was filled with smoke; and lightning and thunder coming out of it.
They sent a message for the priest, who was in Ballaghadereen, but he said: “It is not in my parish, and I won’t have anything to do with it.” That night the people saw a great light in the court, and there was very great fear on them. The day on the morrow they sent word to the priest of Lisahull, but he would not come, as the place was not in his parish. Word was sent to the priest of Kilmovee, then, but he had the same excuse.
There were a lot of poor friars in Cultya Mawn, and when they heard the story they went to the court without a person with them but themselves.
When they went in they began saying prayers, but they saw no corpse. After a time the smoke went, the[144] lightning and thunder ceased, a door opened, and there came out a great man. The friars noticed that he had only one eye, and that it was in his forehead.
“In the name of God, who are you?” said a man of the friars.
“I am Crinnawn, son of Belore, of the Evil Eye. Let there be no fear on ye, I shall do ye no damage, for ye are courageous, good men. The people who were here are gone to eternal rest, body and soul. I know that ye are poor, and that there are plenty of poor people round about ye. Here are two purses for ye, one of them for yourselves, and the other one to divide upon the poor; and when all that will be spent, do ye come again. Not of this world am I, but I shall do no damage to anyone unless he does it to me first, and do ye keep from me.”
Then he gave them two purses, and said: “Go now on your good work.” The friars went home; they gathered the poor people and they divided the money on them. The people questioned them as to what it was they saw in the court. “It is a secret each thing we saw in the court, and it is our advice to ye not to go near the court, and no harm will come upon ye.”
The priests were covetous when they heard that the friars got plenty of money in the court, and the three of them went there with the hope that they would get some as the friars got it.
When they went in they began crying aloud: “Is there any person here? is there any person here?” Crinnawn came out of a chamber and asked: “What are ye looking for?” “We came to make friendship with you,” said the priests. “I thought that priests were not given to telling lies,” said Crinnawn;[145] “ye came with a hope that ye would get money as the poor friars got. Ye were afraid to come when the people sent for ye, and now ye will not get a keenogue (mite?) from me, for ye are not worth it.”
“Don’t you know that we have power to banish you out of this place,” said the priests, “and we will make use of that power unless you will be more civil than you are.”
“I don’t care for your power,” said Crinnawn, “I have more power myself than all the priests that are in Ireland.”
“It’s a lie you’re speaking,” said the priests.
“Ye will see a small share of my power to-night,” said Crinnawn; “I will not leave a wattle over your heads that I will not sweep into yonder river, and I could kill ye with the sight of my eye, if I chose. Ye will find the roofs of your houses in the river to-morrow morning. Now put no other questions on me, and threaten me no more, or it will be worse for ye.”
There came fear on the priests, and they went home; but they did not believe that their houses would be without a roof before morning.
About midnight, that night, there came a blast of wind under the roof of the houses of the priests, and it swept them into the river forenent the court. There was not a bone of the priests but was shaken with terror, and they had to get shelter in the houses of the neighbours till morning.
In the morning, the day on the morrow, the priests came to the river opposite the court, and they saw the roofs that were on all their houses swimming in the water. They sent for the friars, and asked them to go to Crinnawn and proclaim a peace, and say to him that they would put no more trouble on him. The friars went to the court, and Crinnawn welcomed them, and asked them[146] what they were seeking. “We come from the priests to proclaim a peace on you, they will trouble you no more.” “That is well for them,” said Crinnawn, “come with me now until ye see me putting back the roofs of the houses.” They went with him as far as the river, and then he blew a blast out of each nostril. The roofs of the houses rose up as well as they were when they were first put on. There was wonder on the priests, and they said: “The power of enchantment is not yet dead, nor banished out of the country yet.” From that day out neither priest nor anyone else would go near the Court of Crinnawn.
A year after the death of Mary Kerrigan, there was a pattern in Cultya Bronks. There were plenty of young men gathered in it, and amongst them was Paudyeen, the son of Mary Kerrigan. They drank whiskey till they were in madness. When they were going home, Paudyeen O’Kerrigan said: “There is money in plenty in the court up there, and if ye have courage we can get it.” As the drink was in them, twelve of them said: “We have courage, and we will go to the court.” When they came to the door, Paudyeen O’Kerrigan said: “Open the door, or we will break it.” Crinnawn came out and said: “Unless ye go home I will put a month’s sleep on ye.” They thought to get a hold of Crinnawn, but he put a blast of wind out of his two nostrils that swept the young men to a lis (old circular rath) called Lisdrumneal, and put a heavy sleep on them, and a big cloud over them, and there is no name on the place from that out, but Lis-trum-nail (the fort of the heavy cloud).
On the morning, the day on the morrow, the young men were not to be found either backwards or forwards, and there was great grief amongst the people. That day[147] went by without any account from the young men. People said that it was Crinnawn that killed them, for some saw them going to the court. The fathers and mothers of the young men went to the friars, and prayed them to go to Crinnawn and to find out from him where the young men were, dead or alive.
They went to Crinnawn, and Crinnawn told them the trick the young men thought to do on him, and the thing he did with them. “If it be your will, bestow forgiveness on them this time,” said the friars; “they were mad with whiskey, and they won’t be guilty again.” “On account of ye to ask it of me, I will loose them this time; but if they come again, I will put a sleep of seven years on them. Come with me now till you see them.”
“It’s bad walkers, we are,” said the friars, “we would be a long time going to the place where they are.”
“Ye won’t be two minutes going to it,” said Crinnawn, “and ye will be back at home in the same time.”
Then he brought them out, and put a blast of wind out of his mouth, and swept them to Lisdrumneal, and he himself was there as soon as they.
They saw the twelve young men asleep under a cloud in the lis, and there was great wonder on them. “Now,” said Crinnawn, “I will send them home.” He blew upon them, and they rose up like birds in the air, and it was not long until each one of them was at home, and the friars as well, and you may be certain that they did not go to the Court of Crinnawn any more.
Crinnawn was living in the court years after that. One day the friars went on a visit to him, but he was not to be found. People say that the friars got great riches after Crinnawn. At the end of a period of time the roof fell off the court, as everyone was afraid to go[148] and live in it. During many years after that, people would go round about a mile, before they would go near the old court. There is only a portion of the walls to be found now; but there is no name on the old court from that day till this day, but Coort a Chrinnawn (Crinnawn’s Court).
 
NEIL O’CARREE.
 There was no nicety about him. He said to his wife that he would go to the forge to get a doctoring instrument. He went to the forge the next day. “Where are you going to to-day?” said the smith. “I am going till you make me an instrument for doctoring.” “What is the instrument I shall make you?” “Make a crumskeen and a galskeen” (crooked knife and white knife?). The smith made that for him. He came home.
When the day came—the day on the morrow—Neil O’Carree rose up. He made ready to be going as a doctor. He went. He was walking away. A red lad met him on the side of the high road. He saluted Neil O’Carree; Neil saluted him. “Where are you going?” says the red man. “I am going till I be my (i.e., a) doctor.“ ”It’s a good trade,” says the red man, “’twere best for you to hire me.” “What’s the wages you’ll be looking for?” says Neil. “Half of what we shall earn till we shall be back again on this ground.” “I’ll give you that,” says Neil. The couple walked on.
“There’s a king’s daughter,” says the red man, “with the (i.e., near to) death; we will go as far as her, till we see will we heal her.” They went as far as the gate. The porter came to them. He asked them where were they going. They said that it was coming to look at the[149] king’s daughter they were, to see would they do her good. The king desired to let them in. They went in.
They went to the place where the girl was lying. The red man went and took hold of her pulse. He said that if his master should get the price of his labour he would heal her. The king said that he would give his master whatever he should award himself. He said, “if he had the room to himself and his master, that it would be better.” The king said he should have it.
He desired to bring down to him a skillet (little pot) of water. He put the skillet on the fire. He asked Neil O’Carree: “Where is the doctoring instrument?” “Here they are,” says Neil, “a crumskeen and a galskeen.”
He put the crumskeen on the neck of the girl. He took the head off her. He drew a green herb out of his pocket. He rubbed it to the neck. There did not come one drop of blood. He threw the head into the skillet. He knocked a boil out of it. He seized hold on the two ears. He took it out of the skillet. He struck it down on the neck. The head stuck as well as ever it was. “How do you feel yourself now?” “I am as well as ever I was,” said the king’s daughter.
The big man shouted. The king came down. There was great joy on him. He would not let them go away for three days. When they were going he brought down a bag of money. He poured it out on the table. He asked of Neil O’Carree had he enough there. Neil said he had, and more than enough, that they would take but the half. The king desired them not to spare the money.
“There’s the daughter of another king waiting for us to go and look at her.” They bade farewell to the king and they went there.
They went looking at her. They went to the place where she was lying, looking at her in her bed, and it was[150] the same way this one was healed. The king was grateful, and he said he did not mind how much money Neil should take of him. He gave him three hundred pounds of money. They went then, drawing on home. “There’s a king’s son in such and such a place,” said the red man, “but we won’t go to him, we will go home with what we have.”
They were drawing on home. The king (had) bestowed half a score of heifers on them, to bring home with them. They were walking away. When they were in the place where Neil O’Carree hired the red man, “I think,” says the red man, “that this is the place I met you the first time.” “I think it is,” says Neil O’Carree. “Musha, how shall we divide the money?” “Two halves,” says the red man, “that’s the bargain was in it.” “I think it a great deal to give you a half,” says Neil O’Carree, “a third is big enough for you; I have a crumskeen and a galskeen (says Neil) and you have nothing.” “I won’t take anything,” said the red man, “unless I get the half.” They fell out about the money. The red man went and he left him.
Neil O’Carree was drawing home, riding on his beast. He was driving his share of cattle. The day came hot. The cattle went capering backwards and forwards. Neil O’Carree was controlling them. When he would have one or two caught the rest would be off when he used to come back. He tied his garrawn (gelding) to a bit of a tree. He was a-catching the cattle. At the last they were all off and away. He did not know where they went. He returned back to the place where he left his garrawn and his money. Neither the garrawn nor the money were to be got. He did not know then what he should do. He thought he would go to the house of the king whose son was ill.
[151]
He went along, drawing towards the house of the king. He went looking on the lad in the place where he was lying. He took a hold of his pulse. He said he thought he would heal him. “If you heal him,” said the king, “I will give you three hundred pounds.” “If I were to get the room to myself, for a little,” says he. The king said that he should get that. He called down for a skillet of water. He put the skillet on the fire. He drew his crumskeen. He went to take the head off him as he saw the red man a-doing. He was a-sawing at the head, and it did not come with him to cut it off the neck. The blood was coming. He took the head off him at last. He threw it into the skillet. He knocked a boil out of it. When he considered the head to be boiled enough he made an attempt on the skillet. He got a hold of the two ears. The head fell in gliggar (a gurgling mass?), and the two ears came with him. The blood was coming greatly. It was going down, and out of the door of the room. When the king saw it going down he knew that his son was dead. He desired to open the door. Neil O’Carree would not open the door. They broke the door. The man was dead. The floor was full of blood. They seized Neil O’Carree. He was to hang the next day. They gathered a guard till they should carry him to the place where he was to hang. They went the next day with him. They were walking away, drawing towards the tree where he should be hanged. They stopped his screaming. They see a man stripped making a running race. When they saw him there was a fog of water round him with all he was running. When he came as far as them (he cried),[152] “what are ye doing to my master?” “If this man is your master, deny him, or you’ll get the same treatment.” “It’s I that it’s right should suffer; it’s I who made the delay. He sent me for medicine, and I did not come in time, loose my master, perhaps he would heal the king’s son yet.”
They loosed him. They came to the king’s house. The red man went to the place where the dead man was. He began gathering the bones that were in the skillet. He gathered them all but only the two ears.
“What did you do with the ears?”
“I don’t know,” said Neil O’Carree, “I was so much frightened.”
The red man got the ears. He put them all together. He drew a green herb out of his pocket. He rubbed it round on the head. The skin grew on it, and the hair, as well as ever it was. He put the head in the skillet then. He knocked a boil out of it. He put the head back on the neck as well as ever it was. The king’s son rose up in the bed.
“How are you now?” says the red man.
“I am well,” says the king’s son, “but that I’m weak.”
The red man shouted again for the king. There was great joy on the king when he saw his son alive. They spent that night pleasantly.
The next day when they were going away, the king counted out three hundred pounds. He gave it to Neil O’Carree. He said to Neil that if he had not enough he would give him more. Neil O’Carree said he had enough, and that he would not take a penny more. He bade farewell and left his blessing, and struck out, drawing towards home.
When they saw that they were come to the place where they fell out with one another, “I think,” says the red man, “that this is the place where we differed before.” “It is, exactly,” said Neil O’Carree. They sat down and they divided the money. He gave a half to the red man,[153] and he kept another half himself. The red man bade him farewell, and he went. He was walking away for a while. He returned back. “I am here back again,” said the red man, “I took another thought, to leave all your share of money with yourself. You yourself were open-handed. Do you mind the day you were going by past the churchyard. There were four inside in the churchyard, and a body with them in a coffin. There were a pair of them seeking to bury the body. There were debts on the body (i.e., it owed debts). The two men who had the debts on it (i.e., to whom it owed the debts), they were not satisfied for the body to be buried. They were arguing. You were listening to them. You went in. You asked how much they had on the body (i.e., how were they owed by the body). The two men said that they had a pound on the body, and that they were not willing the body to be buried, until the people who were carrying it would promise to pay a portion of the debts. You said, ‘I have ten shillings, and I’ll give it to ye, and let the body be buried.’ You gave the ten shillings, and the corpse was buried. It’s I who was in the coffin that day. When I saw you going a-doctoring, I knew that you would not do the business. When I saw you in a hobble, I came to you to save you. I bestow the money on you all entirely. You shall not see me until the last day, go home now. Don’t do a single day’s doctoring as long as you’ll be alive. It’s short you’ll walk until you get your share of cattle and your garrawn.”
Neil went, drawing towards home. Not far did he walk till his share of cattle and his nag met him. He went home and the whole with him. There is not a single day since that himself and his wife are not thriving on it.
I got the ford, they the stepping stones. They were drowned, and I came safe.
 
TRUNK-WITHOUT-HEAD.
 Long ago there was a widow woman living in the County Galway, and two sons with her, whose names were Dermod and Donal. Dermod was the eldest son, and he was the master over the house. They were large farmers, and they got a summons from the landlord to come and pay him a year’s rent. They had not much money in the house, and Dermod said to Donal, “bring a load of oats to Galway, and sell it.” Donal got ready a load, put two horses under the cart, and went to Galway. He sold the oats, and got a good price for it. When he was coming home, he stopped at the half-way house, as was his custom, to have a drink himself, and to give a drink and oats to the horses.
When he went in to get a drink for himself, he saw two boys playing cards. He looked at them for a while, and one of them said: “Will you have a game?” Donal began playing, and he did not stop till he lost every penny of the price of the oats. “What will I do now?” says Donal to himself, “Dermod will kill me. Anyhow, I’ll go home and tell the truth.”
When he came home, Dermod asked him: “Did you sell the oats?” “I sold, and got a good price for it,” says Donal. “Give me the money,” says Dermod. “I haven’t it,” says Donal; “I lost every penny of it playing cards at the house half-way.” “My curse, and the curse of the four-and-twenty men on you,” says Dermod. He went and told the mother the trick Donal did. “Give him his pardon this time,” says the mother, “and he won’t do it again.” “You must sell another load to-morrow,” says Dermod,[155] “and if you lose the price, don’t come here.”
On the morning, the day on the morrow, Donal put another load on the cart, and he went to Galway. He sold the oats, and got a good price for it. When he was coming home, and near the half-way house, he said to himself: “I will shut my eyes till I go past that house, for fear there should be a temptation on me to go in.” He shut his eyes; but when the horses came as far as the inn, they stood, and would not go a step further, for it was their custom to get oats and water in that place every time they would be coming out of Galway. He opened his eyes, gave oats and water to the horses, and went in himself to put a coal in his pipe.
When he went in he saw the boys playing cards. They asked him to play, and (said) that perhaps he might gain all that he lost the day before. As there is a temptation on the cards, Donal began playing, and he did not stop until he lost every penny of all that he had. “There is no good in my going home now,” says Donal; “I’ll stake the horses and the cart against all I lost.” He played again, and he lost the horses and the cart. Then he did not know what he should do, but he thought and said: “Unless I go home, my poor mother will be anxious. I will go home and tell the truth to her. They can but banish me.”
When he came home, Dermod asked him: “Did you sell the oats? or where are the horses and the cart?” “I lost the whole playing cards, and I would not come back except to leave ye my blessing before I go.” “That you may not ever come back, or a penny of your price,” said Dermod, “and I don’t want your blessing.”
He left his blessing with his mother then, and he went travelling, looking for service. When the darkness of the night was coming, there was thirst and hunger on him. He saw a poor man coming to him, and a bag on[156] his back. He recognised Donal, and said: “Donal, what brought you here, or where are you going?” “I don’t know you,” said Donal.
“It’s many’s the good night I spent in your father’s house, may God have mercy upon him,” said the poor man; “perhaps there’s hunger on you, and that you would not be against eating something out of my bag?”
“It’s a friend that would give it to me,” says Donal. Then the poor man gave him beef and bread, and when he ate his enough, the poor man asked him: “Where are you going to-night?”
“Musha, then, I don’t know,” says Donal.
“There is a gentleman in the big house up there, and he gives lodging to anyone who comes to him after the darkness of night, and I’m going to him,” says the poor man.
“Perhaps I would get lodgings with you,” says Donal. “I have no doubt of it,” says the poor man.
The pair went to the big house, and the poor man knocked at the door, and the servant opened it. “I want to see the master of this house,” says Donal.
The servant went, and the master came. “I am looking for a night’s lodging,” said Donal.
“I will give ye that, if ye wait. Go up to the castle there above, and I will be after ye, and if ye wait in it till morning, each man of ye will get five score ten-penny pieces, and ye will have plenty to eat and drink as well; and a good bed to sleep on.”
“That’s a good offer,” said they; “we will go there.”
The pair came to the castle, went into a room, and put down a fire. It was not long till the gentleman came, bringing beef, mutton, and other things to them. “Come with me now till I show ye the cellar, there’s plenty of wine and ale in it, and ye can draw your enough.” When[157] he showed them the cellar, he went out, and he put a lock on the door behind him.
Then Donal said to the poor man: “Put the things to eat on the table, and I’ll go for the ale.” Then he got a light, and a cruiskeen (jug), and went down into the cellar. The first barrel he came to he stooped down to draw out of it, when a voice said: “Stop, that barrel is mine.” Donal looked up, and he saw a little man without a head, with his two legs spread straddle-wise on a barrel.
“If it is yours,” says Donal, “I’ll go to another.” He went to another; but when he stooped down to draw, Trunk-without-head said: “That barrel is mine.” “They’re not all yours,” says Donal, “I’ll go to another one.” He went to another one; but when he began drawing out of it, Trunk-without-head said: “That’s mine.” “I don’t care,” said Donal, “I’ll fill my cruiskeen.” He did that, and came up to the poor man; but he did not tell him that he saw Trunk-without-head. Then they began eating and drinking till the jug was empty. Then said Donal: “It’s your turn to go down and fill the jug.” The poor man got the candle and the cruiskeen, and went down into the cellar. He began drawing out of a barrel, when he heard a voice saying: “That barrel is mine.” He looked up, and when he saw Trunk-without-head, he let cruiskeen and candle fall, and off and away with him to Donal. “Oh! it’s little but I’m dead,” says the poor man; “I saw a man without a head, and his two legs spread out on the barrel, and he said it was his.” “He would not do you any harm,” said Donal, “he was there when I went down; get up and bring me the jug and the candle.” “Oh, I wouldn’t go down again if I were to get Ireland without a division,” says the poor man. Donal went down, and he brought up the jug filled. “Did you see Trunk-without-head?” says the poor man.[158] “I did,” says Donal; “but he did not do me any harm.”
They were drinking till they were half drunk, then said Donal: “It’s time for us to be going to sleep, what place would you like best, the outside of the bed, or next the wall?”
“I’ll go next the wall,” said the poor man. They went to bed leaving the candle lit.
They were not long in bed till they saw three men coming in, and a bladder (football) with them. They began beating bayrees (playing at ball) on the floor; but there were two of them against one. Donal said to the poor man: “It is not right for two to be against one,” and with that he leaped out and began helping the weak side, and he without a thread on him. Then they began laughing, and walked out.
Donal went to bed again, and he was not long there till there came in a piper playing sweet music. “Rise up,” says Donal, “until we have a dance; it’s a great pity to let good music go to loss.” “For your life, don’t stir,” says the poor man.
Donal gave a leap out of the bed, and he fell to dancing till he was tired. Then the piper began laughing, and walked out.
Donal went to bed again; but he was not long there till there walked in two men, carrying a coffin. They left it down on the floor, and they walked out. “I don’t know who’s in the coffin, or whether it’s for us it’s meant,” said Donal; “I’ll go till I see.” He gave a leap out, raised the board of the coffin, and found a dead man in it. “By my conscience, it’s the cold place you have,” says Donal; “if you were able to rise up, and sit at the fire, you would be better.” The dead man rose up and warmed himself. Then said Donal,[159] “the bed is wide enough for three.” Donal went in the middle, the poor man next the wall, and the dead man on the outside. It was not long until the dead man began bruising Donal, and Donal bruising in on the poor man, until he was all as one as dead, and he had to give a leap out through the window, and to leave Donal and the dead man there. The dead man was crushing Donal then until he nearly put him out through the wall.
“Destruction on you,” said Donal, then; “it’s you’re the ungrateful man; I let you out of the coffin; I gave you a heat at the fire, and a share of my bed; and now you won’t keep quiet; but I’ll put you out of the bed.” Then the dead man spoke, and said: “You are a valiant man, and it stood you upon[31] to be so, or you would be dead.” “Who would kill me?” said Donal. “I,” says the dead man; “there never came any one here this twenty years back, that I did not kill. Do you know the man who paid you for remaining here?” “He was a gentleman,” said Donal. “He is my son,” said the dead man, “and he thinks that you will be dead in the morning; but come with me now.”
The dead man took him down into the cellar, and showed him a great flag. “Lift that flag. There are three pots under it, and they filled with gold. It is on account of the gold they killed me; but they did not get the gold. Let yourself have a pot, and a pot for my son, and the other one—divide it on the poor people.” Then he opened a door in the wall, and drew out a paper, and said to Donal:[160] “Give this to my son, and tell him that it was the butler who killed me, for my share of gold. I can get no rest until he’ll be hanged; and if there is a witness wanting I will come behind you in the court without a head on me, so that everybody can see me. When he will be hanged, you will marry my son’s daughter, and come to live in this castle. Let you have no fear about me, for I shall have gone to eternal rest. Farewell now.”
Donal went to sleep, and he did not awake till the gentleman came in the morning, and he asked him did he sleep well, or where did the old man whom he left with him go? “I will tell you that another time; I have a long story to tell you first.” “Come to my house with me,” says the gentleman.
When they were going to the house, whom should they see coming out of the bushes, but the poor man without a thread on him, more than the night he was born, and he shaking with the cold. The gentleman got him his clothes, gave him his wages, and off for ever with him.
Donal went to the gentleman’s house, and when he ate and drank his enough, he said: “I have a story to tell you.” Then he told him everything that happened to him the night before, until he came as far as the part about the gold. “Come with me till I see the gold,” said the gentleman. He went to the castle, he lifted the flag, and when he saw the gold, he said: “I know now that the story is true.”
When he got the entire information from Donal, he got a warrant against the butler; but concealed the crime it was for. When the butler was brought before the judge, Donal was there, and gave witness. Then the judge read out of his papers, and said: “I cannot find this man guilty without more evidence.”
“I am here,” said Trunk-without-head, coming behind Donal. When the butler saw him, he said to the judge:[161] “Go no farther, I am guilty; I killed the man, and his head is under the hearth-stone in his own room.” Then the judge gave order to hang the butler, and Trunk-without-head went away.
The day on the morrow, Donal was married to the gentleman’s daughter, and got a great fortune with her, and went to live in the castle.
A short time after this, he got ready his coach and went on a visit to his mother.
When Dermod saw the coach coming, he did not know who the great man was who was in it. The mother came out and ran to him, saying: “Are you not my own Donal, the love of my heart you are? I was praying for you since you went.” Then Dermod asked pardon of him, and got it. Then Donal gave him a purse of gold, saying at the same time: “There’s the price of the two loads of oats, of the horses, and of the cart.” Then he said to his mother: “You ought to come home with me. I have a fine castle without anybody in it but my wife and the servants.” “I will go with you,” said the mother; “and I will remain with you till I die.”
Donal took his mother home, and they spent a prosperous life together in the castle.
THE HAGS OF THE LONG TEETH.
 Long ago, in the old time, there came a party of gentlemen from Dublin to Loch Glynn a-hunting and a-fishing. They put up in the priest’s house, as there was no inn in the little village.
The first day they went a-hunting, they went into the Wood of Driminuch, and it was not long till they routed[162] a hare. They fired many a ball after him, but they could not bring him down. They followed him till they saw him going into a little house in the wood.
When they came to the door, they saw a great black dog, and he would not let them in.
“Put a ball through the beggar,” said a man of them. He let fly a ball, but the dog caught it in his mouth, chewed it, and flung it on the ground. They fired another ball, and another, but the dog did the same thing with them. Then he began barking as loud as he could, and it was not long till there came out a hag, and every tooth in her head as long as the tongs. “What are you doing to my pup?” says the hag.
“A hare went into your house, and this dog won’t let us in after him,” says a man of the hunters.
“Lie down, pup,” said the hag. Then she said: “Ye can come in if ye wish.” The hunters were afraid to go in, but a man of them asked: “Is there any person in the house with you?”
“There are six sisters,” said the old woman. “We should like to see them,” said the hunters. No sooner had he said the word than the six old women came out, and each of them with teeth as long as the other. Such a sight the hunters had never seen before.
They went through the wood then, and they saw seven vultures on one tree, and they screeching. The hunters began cracking balls after them, but if they were in it ever since they would never bring down one of them.
There came a gray old man to them and said:[163] “Those are the hags of the long tooth that are living in the little house over there. Do ye not know that they are under enchantment? They are there these hundreds of years, and they have a dog that never lets in anyone to the little house. They have a castle under the lake, and it is often the people saw them making seven swans of themselves, and going into the lake.”
When the hunters came home that evening they told everything they heard and saw to the priest, but he did not believe the story.
On the day on the morrow, the priest went with the hunters, and when they came near the little house they saw the big black dog at the door. The priest put his conveniencies for blessing under his neck, and drew out a book and began reading prayers. The big dog began barking loudly. The hags came out, and when they saw the priest they let a screech out of them that was heard in every part of Ireland. When the priest was a while reading, the hags made vultures of themselves and flew up into a big tree that was over the house.
The priest began pressing in on the dog until he was within a couple of feet of him.
The dog gave a leap up, struck the priest with its four feet, and put him head over heels.
When the hunters took him up he was deaf and dumb, and the dog did not move from the door.
They brought the priest home and sent for the bishop. When he came and heard the story there was great grief on him. The people gathered together and asked of him to banish the hags of enchantment out of the wood. There was fright and shame on him, and he did not know what he would do, but he said to them: “I have no means of banishing them till I go home, but I will come at the end of a month and banish them.”
The priest was too badly hurt to say anything. The big black dog was father of the hags, and his name was Dermod O’Muloony. His own son killed him, because he found him with his wife the day after their marriage, and killed the sisters for fear they should tell on him.
[164]
One night the bishop was in his chamber asleep, when one of the hags of the long tooth opened the door and came in. When the bishop wakened up he saw the hag standing by the side of his bed. He was so much afraid he was not able to speak a word until the hag spoke and said to him: “Let there be no fear on you; I did not come to do you harm, but to give you advice. You promised the people of Loch Glynn that you would come to banish the hags of the long tooth out of the wood of Driminuch. If you come you will never go back alive.”
His talk came to the bishop, and he said: “I cannot break my word.”
“We have only a year and a day to be in the wood,” said the hag, “and you can put off the people until then.”
“Why are ye in the woods as ye are?” says the bishop.
“Our brother killed us,” said the hag, “and when we went before the arch-judge, there was judgment passed on us, we to be as we are two hundred years. We have a castle under the lake, and be in it every night. We are suffering for the crime our father did.” Then she told him the crime the father did.
“Hard is your case,” said the bishop, “but we must put up with the will of the arch-judge, and I shall not trouble ye.”
“You will get an account, when we are gone from the wood,” said the hag. Then she went from him.
In the morning, the day on the morrow, the bishop came to Loch Glynn. He sent out notice and gathered the people. Then he said to them:[165] “It is the will of the arch-king that the power of enchantment be not banished for another year and a day, and ye must keep out of the wood until then. It is a great wonder to me that ye never saw the hags of enchantment till the hunters came from Dublin.—It’s a pity they did not remain at home.”
About a week after that the priest was one day by himself in his chamber alone. The day was very fine and the window was open. The robin of the red breast came in and a little herb in its mouth. The priest stretched out his hand, and she laid the herb down on it. “Perhaps it was God sent me this herb,” said the priest to himself, and he ate it. He had not eaten it one moment till he was as well as ever he was, and he said: “A thousand thanks to Him who has power stronger than the power of enchantment.”
Then said the robin: “Do you remember the robin of the broken foot you had, two years this last winter.”
“I remember her, indeed,” said the priest, “but she went from me when the summer came.”
“I am the same robin, and but for the good you did me I would not be alive now, and you would be deaf and dumb throughout your life. Take my advice now, and do not go near the hags of the long tooth any more, and do not tell to any person living that I gave you the herb.” Then she flew from him.
When the house-keeper came she wondered to find that he had both his talk and his hearing. He sent word to the bishop and he came to Loch Glynn. He asked the priest how it was that he got better so suddenly. “It is a secret,” said the priest, “but a certain friend gave me a little herb and it cured me.”
Nothing else happened worth telling, till the year was gone. One night after that the bishop was in his chamber when the door opened, and the hag of the long tooth walked in, and said:[166] “I come to give you notice that we will be leaving the wood a week from to-day. I have one thing to ask of you if you will do it for me.”
“If it is in my power, and it not to be against the faith,” said the bishop.
“A week from to-day,” said the hag, “there will be seven vultures dead at the door of our house in the wood. Give orders to bury them in the quarry that is between the wood and Ballyglas; that is all I am asking of you.”
“I shall do that if I am alive,” said the bishop. Then she left him, and he was not sorry she to go from him.
A week after that day, the bishop came to Loch Glynn, and the day after he took men with him and went to the hags’ house in the wood of Driminuch.
The big black dog was at the door, and when he saw the bishop he began running and never stopped until he went into the lake.
He saw the seven vultures dead at the door, and he said to the men: “Take them with you and follow me.”
They took up the vultures and followed him to the brink of the quarry. Then he said to them: “Throw them into the quarry: There is an end to the hags of the enchantment.”
As soon as the men threw them down to the bottom of the quarry, there rose from it seven swans as white as snow, and flew out of their sight. It was the opinion of the bishop and of every person who heard the story that it was up to heaven they flew, and that the big black dog went to the castle under the lake.
At any rate, nobody saw the hags of the long tooth or the big black dog from that out, any more.
WILLIAM OF THE TREE.
 In the time long ago there was a king in Erin. He was married to a beautiful queen, and they had but one only daughter. The queen was struck with sickness, and she knew that she would not be long alive. She put the king under gassa (mystical injunctions) that he should not marry again until the grass should be a foot high over her tomb. The daughter was cunning, and she used to go out every night with a scissors, and she used to cut the grass down to the ground.
The king had a great desire to have another wife, and he did not know why the grass was not growing over the grave of the queen. He said to himself: “There is somebody deceiving me.”
That night he went to the churchyard, and he saw the daughter cutting the grass that was on the grave. There came great anger on him then, and he said: “I will marry the first woman I see, let she be old or young.” When he went out on the road he saw an old hag. He brought her home and married her, as he would not break his word.
After marrying her, the daughter of the king was under bitter misery at (the hands of) the hag, and the hag put her under an oath not to tell anything at all to the king, and not to tell to any person anything she should see being done, except only to three who were never baptised.
The next morning on the morrow, the king went out a hunting, and when he was gone, the hag killed a fine hound the king had. When the king came home he asked the old hag “who killed my hound?”
“Your daughter killed it,” says the old woman.
“Why did you kill my hound?” said the king.
[168]
“I did not kill your hound,” says the daughter, “and I cannot tell you who killed him.”
“I will make you tell me,” says the king.
He took the daughter with him to a great wood, and he hanged her on a tree, and then he cut off the two hands and the two feet off her, and left her in a state of death. When he was going out of the wood there went a thorn into his foot, and the daughter said: “That you may never get better until I have hands and feet to cure you.”
The king went home, and there grew a tree out of his foot, and it was necessary for him to open the window, to let the top of the tree out.
There was a gentleman going by near the wood, and he heard the king’s daughter a-screeching. He went to the tree, and when he saw the state she was in, he took pity on her, brought her home, and when she got better, married her.
At the end of three quarters (of a year), the king’s daughter had three sons at one birth, and when they were born, Granya ?i came and put hands and feet on the king’s daughter, and told her, “Don’t let your children be baptised until they are able to walk. There is a tree growing out of your father’s foot; it was cut often, but it grows again, and it is with you lies his healing. You are under an oath not to tell the things you saw your stepmother doing to anyone but to three who were never baptised, and God has sent you those three. When they will be a year old bring them to your father’s house, and tell your story before your three sons, and rub your hand on the stump of the tree, and your father will be as well as he was the first day.”
There was great wonderment on the gentleman when he saw hands and feet on the king’s daughter. She told him then every word that Granya Oi said to her.
[169]
When the children were a year old, the mother took them with her, and went to the king’s house.
There were doctors from every place in Erin attending on the king, but they were not able to do him any good.
When the daughter came in, the king did not recognise her. She sat down, and the three sons round her, and she told her story to them from top to bottom, and the king was listening to her telling it. Then she left her hand on the sole of the king’s foot and the tree fell off it.
The day on the morrow he hanged the old hag, and he gave his estate to his daughter and to the gentleman.
 
THE OLD CROW & THE YOUNG CROW.
 There was an old crow teaching a young crow one day, and he said to him, “Now my son,” says he, “listen to the advice I’m going to give you. If you see a person coming near you and stooping, mind yourself, and be on your keeping; he’s stooping for a stone to throw at you.”
“But tell me,” says the young crow, “what should I do if he had a stone already down in his pocket?”
“Musha, go ’long out of that,” says the old crow,[170] “you’ve learned enough; the devil another learning I’m able to give you.”
 
RIDDLES.
 A great great house it is,
A golden candlestick it is,
Guess it rightly,
Let it not go by thee.
Heaven.
There’s a garden that I ken,
Full of little gentlemen,
Little caps of blue they wear,
And green ribbons very fair.
Flax.
I went up the boreen, I went down the boreen,
I brought the boreen with myself on my back.
A Ladder.
He comes to ye amidst the brine
The butterfly of the sun,
The man of the coat so blue and fine,
With red thread his shirt is done.
Lobster.
I threw it up as white as snow,
Like gold on a flag it fell below.
Egg.
I ran and I got,
I sat and I searched,
If could get it I would not bring it with me,
And as I got it not I brought it.
Thorn in the foot.
You see it come in on the shoulders of men,
Like a thread of the silk it will leave us again.
Smoke.
[171]
He comes through the lis[32] to me over the sward,
The man of the foot that is narrow and hard,
I would he were running the opposite way,
For o’er all that are living ’tis he who bears sway.
The Death.
In the garden’s a castle with hundreds within,
Yet though stripped to my shirt I would never fit in.
Ant-hill.
From house to house he goes,
A messenger small and slight,
And whether it rains or snows,
He sleeps outside in the night.
Boreen.
Two feet on the ground,
And three feet overhead,
And the head of the living
In the mouth of the dead.
Girl with (three-legged) pot on her head.
On the top of the tree
See the little man red,
A stone in his belly,
A cap on his head.
Haw.
There’s a poor man at rest,
With a stick beneath his breast,
And he breaking his heart a-crying.
Lintel on a wet day.
[172]
As white as flour and it is not flour,
As green as grass and it is not grass,
As red as blood and it is not blood,
As black as ink and it is not ink.
Blackberry, from bud to fruit.
A bottomless barrel,
It’s shaped like a hive,
It is filled full of flesh,
And the flesh is alive.
Tailor’s thimble.
 
WHERE THE STORIES CAME FROM.
 The first three stories, namely, “The Tailor and the Three Beasts,” “Bran,” and “The King of Ireland’s Son,” I took down verbatim, without the alteration or addition of more than a word or two, from Seá?an O Cuinnea?áin (John Cunningham), who lives in the village of Baile-an-?uil (Ballinphuil), in the county of Roscommon, some half mile from Mayo. He is between seventy and eighty years old, and is, I think, illiterate.
The story of “The Alp-luachra” is written down from notes made at the time I first heard the story. It was told me by Seamus o h-Airt (James Hart), a game-keeper, in the barony of Frenchpark, between sixty and seventy years old, and illiterate. The notes were not full ones, and I had to eke them out in writing down the story, the reciter, one of the best I ever met, having unfortunately died in the interval.
The stories of “Paudyeen O’Kelly,” and of “Leeam O’Rooney’s Burial,” I got from Mr. Lynch Blake, near Ballinrobe, county Mayo, who took the trouble of writing them down for me in nearly phonetic Irish, for which I beg to return him my best thanks. I do not think that these particular stories underwent any additions at his hands while writing them down. I do not know from whom he heard the first, and cannot now find out, as he has left the locality. The second he told me he got from a man, eighty years old, named William Grady, who lived near Clare-Galway, but who for the last few years has been “carrying a bag.”
The long story of “Guleesh na Guss dhu,” was told by the same Shamus O’Hart, from whom I got the “Alp-luachra,” but, as in the case of the “Alp-luachra” story, I had only taken notes of it, and not written down the whole as it fell from his lips. I have only met one other man since, Martin Brennan,[174] in the barony of Frenchpark, Roscommon, who knew the same story, and he told it to me—but in an abridged form—incident for incident up to the point where my translation leaves off.
There is a great deal more in the Irish version in the Lea?ar Sgeului?ea?ta, which I did not translate, not having been able to get it from Brennan, and having doctored it too much myself to give it as genuine folk-lore.
The rest of the stories in this volume are literally translated from my Lea?ar Sgeului?ea?ta. Neil O’Carree was taken down phonetically, by Mr. Larminie, from the recitation of a South Donegal peasant.
The Hags of the Long Teeth come from Ballinrobe, as also William of the Tree, the Court of Crinnawn, and the Well of D’Yerree-in-Dowan. See pages 239-240 of the L. S.

The End