The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 5

_A Druid Enchantment._--After this strange psychical narrative, there followed the most weird legend I have heard in Celtic lands about Druids and magic. One afternoon Patrick Waters pointed out to me the field, near the sea-coast opposite Innishmurray, in which the ancient menhir containing the 'enchantment' used to stand; and, at another time, he said that a bronze wand covered with curious marks (or else interlaced designs) was found not far from the ruined dolmen and _allee couverte_ on the farm of Patrick Bruan, about two miles southward. This last statement, like the story itself, I have been unable to verify in any way.

'In times before Christ there were Druids here who enchanted one another with Druid rods made of bra.s.s, and metamorphosed one another into stone and lumps of oak. The question is, Where are the spirits of these Druids now? Their spirits are wafted through the air, and the man or beast they meet is smitten, while their own bodies are still under enchantment. I had such a Druid enchantment in my hand; it wasn't stone, nor marble, nor flint, and had human shape. It was found in the centre of a big rock on Innis-na-Gore; and round this rock light used to appear at night. The man who owned the stone decided to blast it up, and he found at its centre the enchantment--just like a man, with head and legs and arms.[18] Father Healy took the enchantment away, when he was here on a visit, and said that it was a Druid enchanted, and that to get out of the rock was one part of the releas.e.m.e.nt, and that there would be a second and complete releas.e.m.e.nt of the Druid.'

_The Fairy Tribes Cla.s.sified._--Finally I asked Patrick to cla.s.sify, as far as he could, all the fairy tribes he had ever heard about, and he said:--'The leprechaun is a red-capped fellow who stays round pure springs, generally shoemaking for the rest of the fairy tribes. The lunantishees are the tribes that guard the blackthorn trees or sloes; they let you cut no stick on the eleventh of November (the original November Day), or on the eleventh of May (the original May Day). If at such a time you cut a blackthorn, some misfortune will come to you.

Pookas are black-featured fellows mounted on good horses; and are horse-dealers. They visit racecourses, but usually are invisible. The _gentry_ are the most n.o.ble tribe of all; and they are a big race who came from the planets--according to my idea; they usually appear white.

The _Daoine Maithe_ (though there is some doubt, the same or almost the same as the _gentry_) were next to Heaven at the Fall, but did not fall; they are a people expecting salvation.'

BRIDGET O'CONNER'S TESTIMONY

Our next witness is Bridget O'Conner, a near neighbour to Patrick Waters, in Cloontipruckilish. When I approached her neat little cottage she was cutting sweet-pea blossoms with a pair of scissors, and as I stopped to tell her how pretty a garden she had, she searched out the finest white bloom she could find and gave it to me. After we had talked a little while about America and Ireland, she said I must come in and rest a few minutes, and so I did; and it was not long before we were talking about fairies:--

_The Irish Legend of the Dead._--'Old Peggy Gillin, dead these thirty years, who lived a mile beyond Grange, used to cure people with a secret herb shown to her by her brother, dead of a fairy-stroke. He was drowned and _taken_ by the fairies, in the big drowning here during the herring season. She would pull the herb herself and prepare it by mixing spring water with it. Peggy could always talk with her dead relatives and friends, and continually with her brother, and she would tell everybody that they were with the fairies. Her daughter, Mary Short, who inherited some of her mother's power, died here about three or four years ago.

'I remember, too, about Mary Leonard and her daughter, Nancy Waters.

Both of them are dead now. The daughter was the first to die, as it happened, and in child-birth. When she was gone, her mother used to wail and cry in an awful manner; and one day the daughter appeared to her in the garden, and said, "The more you wail for me, the more I am in torment. Pray for me, but do not wail."'

_A Midwife Story._--'A country nurse was requested by a strange man on horseback to go with him to exercise her profession; and she went with him to a castle she didn't know. When the baby was born, every woman in the place where the event happened put her finger in a basin of water and rubbed her eyes, and so the nurse put her finger in and rubbed it on one of her eyes. She went home and thought no more about it. But one day she was at the fair in Grange and saw some of the same women who were in the castle when the baby was born; though, as she noticed, she only could see them with the one eye she had wet with the water from the basin. The nurse spoke to the women, and they wanted to know how she recognized them; and she, in reply, said it was with the one eye, and asked, "How is the baby?" "Well," said one of the fairy women; "and what eye do you see us with?" "With the left eye," answered the nurse. Then the fairy woman blew her breath against the nurse's left eye, and said, "You'll never see me again." And the nurse was always blind in the left eye after that.'

THE SPIRIT WORLD AT CARNS

The Carns or Mount Temple country, about three miles from Grange, County Sligo, has already been mentioned by witnesses as a 'gentry' haunt, and so now we shall hear what one of its oldest and most intelligent native inhabitants says of it. John McCann had been referred to, by Patrick Waters, as one who knows much about the 'gentry' at first hand, and we can be sure that what he offers us is thoroughly reliable evidence. For many years, John McCann, born in 1830, by profession a carpenter and boat-builder, has been official mail-carrier to Innishmurray; and he knows quite as much about the strange little island and the mainland opposite it as any man living. His neat little cottage is on the sh.o.r.e of the bay opposite the beautiful fairy-haunted Darnish Island; and, as we sat within it beside a brilliant peat fire, and surrounded by all the family, this is what was told me:--

_A 'Gentry' Medium._--'Ketty Rourk (or Queenan) could tell all that would happen--funerals, weddings, and so forth. Sure some spirits were coming to her. She said they were the _gentry_; that the _gentry_ are everywhere; and that my drowned uncles and grandfather and other dead are among them. A drowned man named Pat Nicholson was her adviser. He used to live just a mile from here; and she knew him before he was drowned.'

Here we have, clearly enough, a case of 'mediumship', or of communication with the dead, as in modern Spiritualism. And the following story, which like this last has numerous Irish parallels, ill.u.s.trates an ancient and world-wide animistic belief, that in sickness--as in dreams--the soul goes out of the body as at death, and meets the dead in their own fairy world.

_The Clairvoyance of Mike Farrell._--'Mike Farrell, too, could tell all about the _gentry_, as he lay sick a long time. And he told about Father Brannan's youth, and even the house in Roscommon in which the Father was born; and Father Brannan never said anything more against Mike after that. Mike surely saw the _gentry_; and he was with them during his illness for twelve months. He said they live in _forts_ and at Alt Darby ("the Big Rock"). After he got well, he went to America, at the time of the famine.'

_The 'Gentry' Army._--'The _gentry_ were believed to live up on this hill (Hill of the Brocket Stones, _Cluach-a-brac_), and from it they would come out like an army and march along the road to the strand. Very few persons could see them. They were thought to be like living people, but in different dress. They seemed like soldiers, yet it was known they were not living beings such as we are.'

_The Seership of Dan Quinn._--'On Connor's Island (about two miles southward from Carns by the mainland) my uncle, Dan Quinn, often used to see big crowds of the _gentry_ come into his house and play music and dance. The house would be full of them, but they caused him no fear.

Once on such an occasion, one of them came up to him as he lay in bed, and giving him a green leaf told him to put it in his mouth. When he did this, instantly he could not see the _gentry_, but could still hear their music. Uncle Dan always believed he recognized in some of the _gentry_ his drowned friends. Only when he was alone would the _gentry_ visit him. He was a silent old man, and so never talked much; but I know that this story is as true as can be, and that the _gentry_ always took an interest in him.'

UNDER THE SHADOW OF BEN BULBIN AND BEN WASKIN

I was driving along the Ben Bulbin road, on the ocean side, with Michael Oates, who was on his way from his mountain-side home to the lowlands to cut hay; and as we looked up at the ancient mountain, so mysterious and silent in the shadows and fog of a calm early morning of summer, he told me about its invisible inhabitants:--

_The 'Gentry' Huntsmen._--'I knew a man who saw the _gentry_ hunting on the other side of the mountain. He saw hounds and hors.e.m.e.n cross the road and jump the hedge in front of him, and it was one o'clock at night. The next day he pa.s.sed the place again, and looked for the tracks of the huntsmen, but saw not a trace of tracks at all.'

_The 'Taking' of the Turf-Cutter._--After I had heard about two boys who were drowned opposite Innishmurray, and who afterwards appeared as apparitions, for the _gentry_ had them, this curious story was related:--'A man was cutting turf out on the side of Ben Bulbin when a strange man came to him and said, "You have cut enough turf for to-day.

You had better stop and go home." The turf-cutter looked around in surprise, and in two seconds the strange man had disappeared; but he decided to go home. And as soon as he was home, such a feeling came over him that he could not tell whether he was alive or dead. Then he took to his bed and never rose again.'

_Hearing the 'Gentry' Music._--At this Michael said to his companion in the cart with us, William Barber, 'You tell how you heard the music'; and this followed:--'One dark night, about one o'clock, myself and another young man were pa.s.sing along the road up there round Ben Bulbin, when we heard the finest kind of music. All sorts of music seemed to be playing. We could see nothing at all, though we thought we heard voices like children's. It was the music of the _gentry_ we heard.'

My next friend to testify is Pat Ruddy, eighty years old, one of the most intelligent and prosperous farmers living beside Ben Bulbin. He greeted me in the true Irish way, but before we could come to talk about fairies his good wife induced me to enter another room where she had secretly prepared a great feast spread out on a fresh white cloth, while Pat and myself had been exchanging opinions about America and Ireland.

When I returned to the kitchen the whole family were a.s.sembled round the blazing turf fire, and Pat was soon talking about the 'gentry':--

_Seeing the 'Gentry' Army._--'Old people used to say the _gentry_ were in the mountains; that is certain, but I never could be quite sure of it myself. One night, however, near midnight, I did have a sight: I set out from Bantrillick to come home, and near Ben Bulbin there was the greatest army you ever saw, five or six thousand of them in armour shining in the moonlight. A strange man rose out of the hedge and stopped me, for a minute, in the middle of the road. He looked into my face, and then let me go.'

_An Ossianic Fragment._--'A man went away with the _good people_ (or _gentry_), and returned to find the townland all in ruins. As he came back riding on a horse of the _good people_, he saw some men in a quarry trying to move a big stone. He helped them with it, but his saddle-girth broke, and he fell to the ground. The horse ran away, and he was left there, an old man'[19] (cf. pp. 346-7).

A SCHOOLMASTER'S TESTIMONY

A schoolmaster, who is a native of the Ben Bulbin country, offers this testimony:--'There is implicit belief here in the _gentry_, especially among the old people. They consider them the spirits of their departed relations and friends, who visit them in joy and in sorrow. On the death of a member of a family, they believe the spirits of their near relatives are present; they do not see them, but feel their presence.

They even have a strong belief that the spirits show them the future in dreams; and say that cases of affliction are always foreshown in a dream.

'The belief in changelings is not now generally prevalent; but in olden times a mother used to place a pair of iron tongs over the cradle before leaving the child alone, in order that the fairies should not change the child for a weakly one of their own. It was another custom to take a wisp of straw, and, lighting one end of it, make a fiery sign of the cross over a cradle before a babe could be placed in it.'

WITH THE IRISH MYSTICS IN THE _SIDHE_ WORLD

Let us now turn to the Rosses Point country, which, as we have already said, is one of the very famous places for seeing the 'gentry', or, as educated Irish seers who make pilgrimages thither call them, the _Sidhe_. I have been told by more than one such seer that there on the hills and Greenlands (a great stretch of open country, treeless and gra.s.s-grown), and on the strand at Lower Rosses Point--called Wren Point by the country-folk--these beings can be seen and their wonderful music heard; and a well-known Irish artist has shown me many drawings, and paintings in oil, of these _Sidhe_ people as he has often beheld them at those places and elsewhere in Ireland. They are described as a race of majestic appearance and marvellous beauty, in form human, yet in nature divine. The highest order of them seems to be a race of beings evolved to a superhuman plane of existence, such as the ancients called G.o.ds; and with this opinion, strange as it may seem in this age, all the educated Irish seers with whom I have been privileged to talk agree, though they go further, and say that these highest _Sidhe_ races still inhabiting Ireland are the ever-young, immortal divine race known to the ancient men of Erin as the Tuatha De Danann.

Of all European lands I venture to say that Ireland is the most mystical, and, in the eyes of true Irishmen, as much the Magic Island of G.o.ds and Initiates now as it was when the Sacred Fires flashed from its purple, heather-covered mountain-tops and mysterious round towers, and the Greater Mysteries drew to its hallowed shrines neophytes from the West as well as from the East, from India and Egypt as well as from Atlantis;[20] and Erin's mystic-seeing sons still watch and wait for the relighting of the Fires and the restoration of the old Druidic Mysteries. Herein I but imperfectly echo the mystic message Ireland's seers gave me, a pilgrim to their Sacred Isle. And until this mystic message is interpreted, men cannot discover the secret of Gaelic myth and song in olden or in modern times, they cannot drink at the ever-flowing fountain of Gaelic genius, the perennial source of inspiration which lies behind the new revival of literature and art in Ireland, nor understand the seeming reality of the fairy races.

AN IRISH MYSTIC'S TESTIMONY

Through the kindness of an Irish mystic, who is a seer, I am enabled to present here, in the form of a dialogue, very rare and very important evidence, which will serve to ill.u.s.trate and to confirm what has just been said above about the mysticism of Ireland. To anthropologists this evidence may be of more than ordinary value when they know that it comes from one who is not only a cultured seer but who is also a man conspicuously successful in the practical life of a great city:--

_Visions._--

Q.--Are all visions which you have had of the same character?

A.--'I have always made a distinction between pictures seen in the memory of nature and visions of actual beings now existing in the inner world. We can make the same distinction in our world: I may close my eyes and see you as a vivid picture in memory, or I may look at you with my physical eyes and see your actual image. In seeing these beings of which I speak, the physical eyes may be open or closed: mystical beings in their own world and nature are never seen with the physical eyes.'

_Otherworlds._--

Q.--By the inner world do you mean the Celtic Otherworld?

A.--'Yes; though there are many Otherworlds. The _Tir-na-nog_ of the ancient Irish, in which the races of the _Sidhe_ exist, may be described as a radiant archetype of this world, though this definition does not at all express its psychic nature. In _Tir-na-nog_ one sees nothing save harmony and beautiful forms. There are other worlds in which we can see horrible shapes.'

_Cla.s.sification of the 'Sidhe'._--

Q.--Do you in any way cla.s.sify the _Sidhe_ races to which you refer?

A.--'The beings whom I call the _Sidhe_, I divide, as I have seen them, into two great cla.s.ses: those which are shining, and those which are opalescent and seem lit up by a light within themselves. The shining beings appear to be lower in the hierarchies; the opalescent beings are more rarely seen, and appear to hold the positions of great chiefs or princes among the tribes of Dana.'

_Conditions of Seership._--

Q.--Under what state or condition and where have you seen such beings?

A.--'I have seen them most frequently after being away from a city or town for a few days. The whole west coast of Ireland from Donegal to Kerry seems charged with a magical power, and I find it easiest to see while I am there. I have always found it comparatively easy to see visions while at ancient monuments like New Grange and Dowth, because I think such places are naturally charged with psychical forces, and were for that reason made use of long ago as sacred places. I usually find it possible to throw myself into the mood of seeing; but sometimes visions have forced themselves upon me.'