Chapter IX: Part 9

Page 29. They spent the night, &c. This brief run resembles very much a passage in the story of Iollan Arm-dearg, which runs, do rinneadar tri treana de ’n oiḋċe, an ċeud trian re h-ól agus re h-imirt, an dara trian re ceól agus re h-oirfide agus re h-ealaḋan, agus an treas trian re suan agus re sáṁ-ċodlaḋ, agus do rugadar as an oiḋċe sin _i.e._, they made three-thirds of the night; the first third with drink and play, the second third with music and melody and (feats of) science, and the third third with slumber and gentle sleep, and they passed away that night.

Page 33, line 28. This allusion to the horse and the docking is very obscure and curious. The old fellow actually blushed at the absurdity of the passage, yet he went through with it, though apparently unwillingly. He could throw no light upon it, except to excuse himself by saying that “that was how he heard it ever.”

Page 37, line 4. The sword of _three_ edges is curious; the third edge would seem to mean a rounded point, for it can hardly mean triangular like a bayonet. The sword that “never leaves the leavings of a blow behind it,” is common in Irish literature. In that affecting story of Deirdre, Naoise requests to have his head struck off with such a sword, one that Mananan son of Lir, had long before given to himself.

Page 47. The groundwork or motivating of this story is known to all European children, through Hans Andersen’s tale of the “Travelling Companion.”

[I have studied some of the features of this type of stories Arg. Tales, pp. 443-452.—A.N.]

THE ALP-LUACHRA.

Page 49. This legend of the alp-luachra is widely disseminated, and I have found traces of it in all parts of Ireland. The alp-luachra is really a newt, not a lizard, as is generally supposed. He is the lissotriton punctatus of naturalists, and is the only species of newt known in Ireland. The male has an orange belly, red-tipped tail, and olive back. It is in most parts of Ireland a rare reptile enough, and hence probably the superstitious fear with which it is regarded, on the principle of _omne ignotum pro terribli_. This reptile goes under a variety of names in the various counties. In speaking English the peasantry when they do not use the Irish name, call him a “mankeeper,” a word which has probably some reference to the superstition related in our story. He is also called in some counties a “darklooker,” a word which is probably, a corruption of an Irish name for him which I have heard the Kildare people use, dochi-luachair (daċuiḋ luaċra), a word not found in the dictionaries. In Waterford, again, he is called arc-luachra, and the Irish MSS. call him arc-luachra (earc-luaċra). The alt-pluachra of the text is a mis-pronunciation of the proper name, alp-luachra. In the Arran Islands they have another name, ail-ċuaċ. I have frequently heard of people swallowing one while asleep. The symptoms, they say, are that the person swells enormously, and is afflicted with a thirst which makes him drink canfuls and pails of water or buttermilk, or anything else he can lay his hand on. In the south of Ireland it is believed that if something savoury is cooked on a pan, and the person’s head held over it, the mankeeper will come out. A story very like the one here given is related in Waterford, but of a dar daol, or _daraga dheel_, as he is there called, a venomous insect, which has even more legends attached to him than the alp-luachra. In this county, too, they say that if you turn the alp-luachra over on its back, and lick it, it will cure burns. Keating, the Irish historian and theologian, alludes quaintly to this reptile in his Tri Biorġaoiṫe an Bháir, so finely edited in the original the other day by Dr. Atkinson. “Since,” says Keating, “prosperity or worldly store is the weapon of the adversary (the devil), what a man ought to do is to spend it in killing the adversary, that is, by bestowing it on God’s poor. The thing which we read in Lactantius agrees with this, that if an airc-luachra were to inflict a wound on anyone, what he ought to do is to shake a pinchful of the ashes of the airc-luachra upon the wound, and he will be cured thereby; and so, if worldly prosperity wounds the conscience, what you ought to do is to put a poultice of the same prosperity to cure the wound which the covetousness by which you have amassed it has made in your conscience, by distributing upon the poor of God all that remains over your own necessity.” The practice which the fourth-century Latin alludes to, is in Ireland to-day transferred to the dar-daol, or goevius olens of the naturalists, which is always burnt as soon as found. I have often heard people say:—“Kill a keerhogue (clock or little beetle); burn a dar-dael.”

Page 59. Boccuch (bacaċ), literally a lame man, is, or rather was, the name of a very common class of beggars about the beginning of this century. Many of these men were wealthy enough, and some used to go about with horses to collect the “alms” which the people unwillingly gave them. From all accounts they appear to have been regular black-mailers, and to have extorted charity partly through inspiring physical and partly moral terror, for the satire, at least of some of them, was as much dreaded as their cudgels. Here is a curious specimen of their truculence from a song called the Bacach Buidhe, now nearly forgotten:—

Is bacach mé tá air aon chois, siúbhalfaidh mé go spéifeaṁail,
Ceannóchaidh mé bréidin i g-Cill-Cainnigh do’n bhraois,
Cuirfead cóta córuiġthe gleusta, a’s búcla buidhe air m’aon chois,
A’s nach maith mo shlighe bidh a’s eudaigh o chaill mo chosa siúbhal!
Ni’l bacach ná fear-mála o Ṡligeach go Cinn-tráile
Agus ó Bheul-an-átha go Baile-buidhe na Midhe,
Nach bhfuil agam faoi árd-chíos, agus cróin anaghaidh na ráithe,
No mineóchainn a g-cnámha le bata glas daraigh.

_i.e._,

I am a boccugh who goes on one foot, I will travel airily,
I will buy frize in Kilkenny for the breeches(?)
I will put a well-ordered prepared coat and yellow buckles on my one
foot,
And isn’t it good, my way of getting food and clothes since my feet
lost their walk.
There is no boccuch or bagman from Sligo to Kinsale
And from Ballina to Ballybwee (Athboy) in Meath,
That I have not under high rent to me—a crown every quarter from them—
Or I’d pound their bones small with a green oak stick.

The memory of these formidable guests is nearly vanished, and the boccuch in our story is only a feeble old beggarman. I fancy this tale of evicting the alt-pluachra family from their human abode is fathered upon a good many people as well as upon the father of the present MacDermot. [Is the peasant belief in the Alp-Luachra the originating idea of the well-known Irish Rabelaisian 14th century tale “The Vision of McConglinny?”—A.N.]

THE WEASEL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEEAM O’ROONEY’S BURIAL.

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

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

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

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

GULLEESH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE WELL OF D’YERREE-IN-DOWAN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE COURT OF CRINNAWN.

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

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

NEIL O’CARREE.

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

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

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

TRUNK-WITHOUT-HEAD.

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

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

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

THE HAGS OF THE LONG TEETH.

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

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

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

WILLIAM OF THE TREE.

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

[Our story belongs to the group—the calumniated and exposed daughter or daughter-in-law. But in a German tale, belonging to the forbidden chamber series (Grimm’s, No. 3, Marienkind), the Virgin Mary becomes godmother to a child, whom she takes with her into heaven, forbidding her merely to open one particular door. The child does this, but denies it thrice. To punish her the Virgin banishes her from heaven into a thorny wood. Once, as she is sitting, clothed in her long hair solely, a king passes, sees her, loves and weds her, in spite of her being dumb. When she bears her first child, the Virgin appears, and promises to give her back her speech if she will confess her fault; she refuses, whereupon the Virgin carries off the child. This happens thrice, and the queen, accused of devouring her children, is condemned to be burnt. She repents, the flames are extinguished, and the Virgin appears with the three children, whom she restores to the mother. Can there have been any similar form of the forbidden chamber current in Ireland, and can there have been substitution of Grainne, Finn’s wife, for the Virgin Mary, or, _vice versa_, can the latter have taken the place of an older heathen goddess?—A.N.]

Page 169. See Campbell’s “Tales of the Western Highlands,” vol. III., page 120, for a fable almost identical with this of the two crows.

NOTES ON THE IRISH TEXT.

Page 2, line 5, abalta air a ḋeunaṁ = able to do it, a word borrowed from English. There is a great diversity of words used in the various provinces for “able to,” as abalta air (Mid Connacht); inneaṁuil ċum (Waterford); ionánn or i ndán, with infinitive (West Galway); ’niniḃ with infinitive (Donegal).

Page 4, line 18, ni leigeann siad dam = they don’t allow me. Dam is pronounced in Mid Connacht _dumm_, but daṁ-sa is pronounced _doo-sa_. Dr. Atkinson has clearly shown, in his fine edition of Keating’s “Three Shafts of Death,” that the “enclitic” form of the present tense, ending in (e)ann, should only be used in the singular. This was stringently observed a couple of hundred years ago, but now the rule seems to be no longer in force. One reason why the form of the present tense, which ends in (e)ann, has been substituted for the old present tense, in other words, why people say buaileann sé, “he strikes,” instead of the correct buailiḋ sé, is, I think, though Dr. Atkinson has not mentioned it, obvious to an Irish speaker. The change probably began at the same time that the f in the future of regular verbs became quiescent, as it is now, I may say, all over Ireland. Anyone who uses the form buailiḋ sé would now be understood to say, “he will strike,” not “he strikes,” for buailfiḋ sé, “he will strike,” is now pronounced, in Connacht, at least, and I think elsewhere, buailiḋ sé. Some plain differentiation between the forms of the tenses was wanted, and this is probably the reason why the enclitic form in (e)ann has usurped the place of the old independent present, and is now used as an independent present itself. Line 30, madra or madaḋ alla = a wolf. Cuir forán air = salute him—a word common in Connacht and the Scotch Highlands, but not understood in the South. Line 34. Ḃeiḋeaḋ sé = he would be, is pronounced in Connacht as a monosyllable, like ḃeiṫ (_veh_ or _vugh_).

Page 6, line 8, earball, is pronounced _rubbal_ not _arball_, in Connacht. Ni and níor are both used before ṫáinig at the present day.

Page 8, line 18. Go marḃfaḋ sé = that he would kill; another and commoner form is, go maróċaḋ sé, from marḃuiġ, the ḃ being quiescent in conversation. Line 31, aḃruiṫ = broth, pronounced anṫruiṫ (_anhree_), the ḃ having the sound of an _h_ only.

Page 12, line 27. An ċuma iraiḃsó is more used, and is better. Sin é an ċuma a ḃí sé = “That’s the way he was.” It will be observed that this a before the past tense of a verb is only, as Dr. Atkinson remarks, a corruption of do, which is the sign of the past tense. The do is hardly ever used now, except as contracted into d’ before a vowel, and this is a misfortune, because there is nothing more feeble or more tending to disintegrate the language than the constant use of this colourless vowel a. In these folk stories, however, I have kept the language as I found it. This a has already made much havoc in Scotch Gaelic, inserting itself into places where it means nothing. Thus, they say _tha’s again air a sin: Dinner a b fhearr na sin, etc._ Even the preposition de has with some people degenerated into this a, thus ta sé a ḋiṫ orm, “I want it,” for de ḋiṫ.

Page 14, line 9. For air read uirri. Line 12. seilg means hunting, but the reciter said, seilg, sin fiaḋ, “Shellig, that’s a deer,” and thought that Bran’s back was the same colour as a deer’s. Uaine, which usually means green, he explained by turning to a mangy-looking cur of a dull nondescript colour, and saying ta an madaḋ sin uaine.

Page 16, line 30. Bearna and teanga, and some other substantives of the same kind are losing, or have lost, their inflections throughout Connacht. Line 31. tiġeaċt is used just as frequently and in the same breath as teaċt, without any difference of meaning. It is also spelt tuiḋeaċt, but in Mid-Connacht the t is slender, that is tiġeaċt has the sound of _t’yee-ught_, not _tee-ught_.

Dr. Atkinson has shown that it is incorrect to decline teanga as an _-n_ stem: correct genitive is teangaḋ. Rearta: see rasta in O’Reilly. Used in Arran thus: Ní’l sé in rasta duit = you cannot venture to.

Page 18, line 15. Gual means a coal; it must be here a corruption of some other word. Muid is frequently used for sinn, “we,” both in Nom. and Acc. all over Connacht, but especially in the West.

Page 20, line 3. Deimuġ (d’yemmo͡o). This word puzzled me for a long time until I met this verse in a song of Carolan’s

Níor ṫuill sé diomuġaḋ aon duine.

another MS. of which reads díombuaiḋ, _i.e._, defeat, from di privitive, and buaiḋ “victory.” Deimuġ or diomuġ must be a slightly corrupt pronunciation of díombuaiḋ, and the meaning is, that the king’s son put himself under a wish that he might suffer defeat during the year, if he ate more than two meals at one table, etc. Line 15. reasta = a “writ,” a word not in the dictionaries—perhaps, from the English, “arrest.” Cúig ṗúnta. The numerals tri ceiṫre cúig and sé seem in Connacht to aspirate as often as not, and _always_ when the noun which follows them is in the singular, which it very often is. Mr. Charles Bushe, B.L., tells me he has tested this rule over and over again in West Mayo, and has found it invariable.

Page 22, line 2. cá = where, pronounced always cé (_kay_) in Central Connacht. Line 17. má ḃfáġ’ mé = If I get. In Mid-Connacht, má eclipses fáġ, as ni eclipses fuair.

Page 26, line 18. I dteaċ an ḟaṫaiġ = In the giant’s house. Tiġ, the proper Dative of teaċ, is not much used now. Line 20. cuaille cóṁraic = the pole of battle.

Page 28, line 9. Trian dí le Fiannuiġeaċt = one-third of it telling stories about the Fenians. Line 10. This phrase soirm sáiṁ suain occurs in a poem I heard from a man in the island of Achill—

“’Sí is binne meura ag seinm air teudaiḃ,
Do ċuirfeaḋ na ceudta ’nna g-codlaḋ,
Le soirm sáiṁ suain, a’s naċ mór é an t-éuċt,
Gan aon ḟear i n-Eirinn do ḋul i n-eug
Le gráḋ d’á gruaḋ.”

I have never met this word soirm elsewhere, but it may be another form of soirḃe, “gentleness.” Line 18. Colḃa, a couch, pronounced colua (_cullooa_): here it means the head of the bed. Air colḃa means, on the outside of the bed, when two sleep in it. Leabuiḋ, or leabaiḋ, “a bed,” is uninflected; but leaba, gen. leapṫan, is another common form.

Page 30, line 30. Daḃaċ, “a great vessel or vat;” used also, like soiṫeaċ, for ship. The correct genitive is dáiḃċe, but my reciter seemed not to inflect it at all.

Page 32, line 14. Haiġ-óiḃir—this is only the English word, “Hie-over.” Line 21. Copóg = a docking, a kind of a weed.

Page 36, line 2. Cloiḋeaṁ na trí faoḃar, “the sword of three edges.” In the last century both tri and the faoḃar would have been eclipsed. Cf. the song, “Go réiḋ, a ḃean na dtrí mbo.”

Page 40, line 33. Íocṡláinte = balsam. Line 25. Ḃuitse, the English word “witch.” The Scotch Gaels have also the word bhuitseachas = witchery. Gaelic organs of speech find it hard to pronounce the English _tch_, and make two syllables of it—_it-sha_.

Page 42, line 21. Srannfartaiġ = snoring.

Page 44, line 3, for srón read ṡróin. Line 16. Cruaiḋe = steel, as opposed to iron.

Page 46, line 21. Crap = to put hay together, or gather up crops.

Page 48, line 1. Greim = a stitch, sudden pain.

Page 52, line 15. “Súf!” a common expression of disgust in central Connacht, both in Irish and in English. Line 18. Uile ḋuine. This word uile is pronounced _hulla_ in central Connacht, and it probably gets this _h_ sound from the final ċ of gaċ, which used to be always put before it. Father Eugene O’Growney tells me that the guttural sound of this ċ is still heard before uile in the Western islands, and would prefer to write the word ’ċ uile. When uile follows the noun, as na daoine uile, “all the people,” it has the sound of _ellik_ or _ellig_, probably from the original phrase being uile go léir, contracted into uileg, or even, as in West Galway, into ’lig.

Page 54, line 9. Goile = “appetite,” properly “stomach.” Line 30. An ṫrioblóid = the trouble, but better written an trioblóid, since feminine nouns, whose first letter is d or t, are seldom aspirated after the article. There is even a tendency to omit the aspiration from adjectives beginning with the letters d and t. Compare the celebrated song of Bean duḃ an ġleanna, not Bean ḋuḃ.

Page 56, line 4. Aicíd = a disease. Line 24. D’ḟeiceál and d’innseaċt are usual Connacht infinitives of feic and innis. Line 21. Caise = a stream. Line 26. Strácailt = dragging along. Line 32. Luiḃearnaċ, often pronounced like _leffernugh_ = weeds.

Page 60, line 8. Tá beiseac or biseaċ orm = “I am better;” tá sé fáġail beisiġ, more rightly, bisiġ = He’s getting better. Line 22. Maiseaḋ, pronounced _musha_, not _mosha_, as spelt, or often even _mush_ in Central Connacht. Line 28. Marṫain, infinitive of mair, to live. Cuiḃlint = striving, running a race with.

Page 64, line 4. Tig liom = “it comes with me,” “I can.” This is a phrase in constant use in Connacht, but scarcely even known in parts of Munster. Line 15. Oiread agus toirt uiḃe = as much as the size of an egg. Line 23. As an nuaḋ = de novo, over again.

Page 66, line 2. Ag baint leis an uisge = touching the water.

Page 66, line 15. Moṫuiġ = “to feel.” It is pronounced in central Connacht like maoiṫiġ (mweehee), and is often used for “to hear;” ṁaoiṫiġ mé sin roiṁe seo = I heard that before. Line 20. Sgannruiġ is either active or passive; it means colloquially either to frighten or to become frightened.

Page 68, line 12. Fan mar a ḃfuil tu = wait _where_ you are, fan mar tá tu = remain _as_ you are. Line 17. Ċor air biṫ, short for air ċor air biṫ, means “at all.” In Munster they say air aon ċor.

Page 70, line 3. cad ċuige = “why;” this is the usual word in Connacht, often contracted to tuige.

Page 72, line 13. Cáṫair-na-mart = Westport.

Page 74, line 7. Lubarnuiġ, a word not in the dictionaries; it means, I think, “gambolling.” Line 20. Ceapaḋ = seize, control. Line 22. Múlaċ = black mud.

Page 76, line 2. Anaċain = “damage,” “harm.” There are a great many synonyms for this word still in use in Connacht, such as damáiste, dolaiḋ, urċóid, doċar, etc. Line 16. Breóiḋte = “destroyed.”

Page 78, line 3. Coir, a crime; is pronounced like _quirrh_. Láiḋe = a loy, or narrow spade.

Page 80, line 5. Ar ḃ leis an teaċ mór = “who owned the big house.” A raiḃ an teaċ mór aige = who had in his possession the big house. Line 21. Truscán tiġe = house furniture. Line 26. ’Niḋ Dia ḋuit, short for go mbeannuiġ Dia ḋuit. Line 27. Go mbuḋ h-éḋuit = “the same to you,” literally, “that it may be to you,” the constant response to a salutation in Connacht.

Page 84, line 22. A gan ḟios dí = “without her knowing it,” pronounced like _a gunyis dee_. I do not see what the force of this a is, but it is always used, and I have met it in MSS. of some antiquity.

Page 86, line 33. Dá’r ḋéug, pronounced dá réug, short for dá ḟear déag, “twelve men.” Stangaire = a mean fellow.

Page 92, line 10. Bóṫairín cártaċ = a cart road.

Page 94, line 22. Táir = tá tu, an uncommon form in Connacht now-a-days.

Page 66, line 13. Go dtagaiḋ another and very common form of go dtigiḋ.

Page 98, line 22. Níor ḟan an sagart aċt ċuaiḋ a ḃaile, _i.e._, ċuaiḋ sé aḃaile; the pronoun sé is, as the reader must have noticed, constantly left out in these stories, where it would be used in colloquial conversation.

Page 100, line 27. Seilḃ and seilg; are the ordinary forms of sealḃ and sealg in Connacht.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Had Lady Wilde known Irish she might have quoted from a popular ballad composed on Patrick Sarsfield, and not yet forgotten:—

A Pádruig Sáirséul is duine le Dia thu
’S beannuighthe an talamh ar siúdhail tu riamh air,
Go mbeannuigh an ghealach gheal ’s an ghrian duit,
O thug tu an lá as láimh Righ’liaim leat.
Och ochón.

—_i.e._,

Patrick Sarsfield, a man with God you are,
Blessed the country that you walk upon,
Blessing of sun and shining moon on you,
Since from William you took the day with you.
Och, och hone.

This would have made her point just as well. Unfortunately, Lady Wilde is always equally extraordinary or unhappy in her informants where Irish is concerned. Thus, she informs us that _bo-banna_ (meant for _bo-bainne_, a milch cow) is a “white cow”; that tobar-na-bo (the cow’s well) is “the well of the white cow”; that Banshee comes from _van_ “the woman”—(_bean_ means “a woman”); that Leith Brogan—_i.e._, leprechaun—is “the artificer of the brogue,” while it really means the half or one-shoe, or, according to Stokes, is merely a corruption of locharpan; that tobar-na-dara (probably the “oak-well”) is the “well of tears,” etc. Unfortunately, in Ireland it is no disgrace, but really seems rather a recommendation, to be ignorant of Irish, even when writing on Ireland.

[2] Thus he over and over again speaks of a slumber-pin as _bar an suan_, evidently mistaking the _an_ of _bioran_, “a pin,” for _an_ the definite article. So he has _slat an draoiachta_ for _slaitin_, or _statán draoigheachta_. He says _innis caol_ (narrow island) means “light island,” and that _gil an og_ means “water of youth!” &c.; but, strangest of all, he talks in one of his stories of killing and boiling a stork, though his social researches on Irish soil might have taught him that that bird was not a Hibernian fowl. He evidently mistakes the very common word _sturc_, a bullock, or large animal, or, possibly, _torc_, “a wild boar,” for the bird stork. His interpreter probably led him astray in the best good faith, for _sturck_ is just as common a word with English-speaking people as with Gaelic speakers, though it is not to be found in our wretched dictionaries.

[3] Thus: “Kill Arthur went and killed Ri Fohin and all his people and beasts—didn’t leave one alive;” or, “But that instant it disappeared—went away of itself;” or, “It won all the time—wasn’t playing fair,” etc., etc.

[4] Campbell’s “Popular Tales of the West Highlands.” Vol. iv. p. 327.

[5] Father O’Growney has suggested to me that this may be a diminutive of the Irish word _fathach_, “a giant.” In Scotch Gaelic a giant is always called “famhair,” which must be the same word as the _fomhor_ or sea-pirate of mythical Irish history.

[6] The manuscript in which I first read this story is a typical one of a class very numerous all over the country, until O’Connell and the Parliamentarians, with the aid of the Catholic prelates, gained the ear and the leadership of the nation, and by their more than indifference to things Gaelic put an end to all that was really Irish, and taught the people to speak English, to look to London, and to read newspapers. This particular MS. was written by one Seorsa MacEineircineadh, whoever he was, and it is black with dirt, reeking with turf smoke, and worn away at the corners by repeated reading. Besides this story it contains a number of others, such as “The Rearing of Cuchulain,” “The Death of Conlaoch,” “The King of Spain’s Son,” etc., with many Ossianic and elegiac poems. The people used to gather in at night to hear these read, and, I am sure, nobody who understands the contents of these MSS., and the beautiful alliterative language of the poems, will be likely to agree with the opinion freely expressed by most of our representative men, that it is better for the people to read newspapers than study anything so useless.

[7] Campbell has mistranslated this. I think it means “from the bottom of the well of the deluge.”

[8] Campbell misunderstood this also, as he sometimes does when the word is Irish. _Siogiadh_ means “fairy.”

[9] In a third MS., however, which I have, made by a modern Clare scribe, Domhnall Mac Consaidin, I find “the Emperor Constantine,” not the “Emperor of Constantinople,” written. O’Curry in his “Manuscript Materials,” p. 319, ascribes “Conall Gulban,” with some other stories, to a date prior to the year 1000; but the fighting with the Turks (which motivates the whole story, and which cannot be the addition of an ignorant Irish scribe, since it is also found in the Highland traditional version), shows that its date, in its present form, at least, is much later. There is no mention of Constantinople in the Scotch Gaelic version, and hence it is possible—though, I think, hardly probable—that the story had its origin in the Crusades.

[10] I find the date, 1749, attributed to it in a voluminous MS. of some 600 closely written pages, bound in sheepskin, made by Laurence Foran of Waterford, in 1812, given me by Mr. W. Doherty, C.E.

[11] An buaċaill do bí a ḃfad air a ṁáṫair.

[12] Prof. Rhys identifies Cuchulain with Hercules; and makes them both sun-gods. There is nothing in our story however, which points to Cuchulain, and still less to the Celtic Hercules described by Lucian.

[13] An t-éun ceól-ḃinn.

[14] Wratislaw’s Folk-Tales from Slavonic Sources.