The Glories Of Ireland Part 22

We have seen that Goldsmith was removed from an Irish atmosphere at a tender age, and this is not the only instance of the frowning of fortune upon the native literature. When the fame of the ancient bards of the Gael was noised from end to end of Europe, it was through the medium of Macpherson's forgeries. _Fingal_ caught the fleeting fancy of the moment in a manner never achieved by the true Ossianic lays of Ireland. The _Reliques of Irish Poetry_, published by Miss Brooke by subscription in Dublin in 1789 to vindicate the antiquity of the literature of Erin, never went into a second edition. And although some of the pieces contained in that volume have been reprinted in such undertakings of a learned character as the volumes of the Dublin Ossianic Society, J.F. Campbell's _Leabhar na Feinne_, and Cameron's _Reliquiae Celticae_, they have aroused little interest amongst those ignorant of the Irish tongue.

During the nineteenth century, the number of poets who drew upon Ireland's past for their themes increased considerably. The most popular of all is unquestionably the author of the _Irish Melodies_.

But, here again, the poet owes little or nothing to vernacular poetry, the mould is English, the sentiments are those of the poet's age. Moore's acquaintance with the native language can have been but of the slightest, and in the case of Mangan we are told that he had to rely upon literal versions of Irish pieces furnished him by O'Donovan or O'Curry. Of the numerous attempts to reproduce the overelaboration of rhyme to which Irish verse has ever been p.r.o.ne, Father Prout's _Bells of Shandon_ is perhaps the only one that is at all widely known. When the legendary lore of Ireland became accessible to men of letters, owing to the labors of O'Curry, O'Donovan, and Hennessy, and the publication of various ancient texts by the Irish Archaeological Society, it was to be expected that an attempt would be made by some poet of Erin to do for his native land what the Wizard of the North had accomplished for Scotland. The task was undertaken by Sir Samuel Ferguson, who met with conspicuous success. His most ambitious effort, _Congal_, deals in epic fashion with the story of the battle of Moyra. Others in similar strain treat the story of Conaire Mor and Deirdre, whilst others such as the _Tain-Quest_ are more in the nature of ballads. Ferguson did more to introduce the English reading public to Irish story than would have been accomplished by any number of bald translations. His diction is little affected by the originals, and he sometimes treats his materials with great freedom, but his achievement was a notable one, and he has not infrequently been acclaimed as the national poet.

Is it perhaps invidious to single out any living author for special mention, but this brief survey cannot close without noticing the dramatic poems of W.B. Yeats, the latest poet who attempts to present the old stories in an English dress. His plays _On Baile's Strand, Deirdre_, and others, have become familiar to English audiences through the excellent acting of the members of the Abbey Theatre Company. The original texts are now much better known than they were in Ferguson's day, and Mr. Yeats consequently cannot permit himself the same liberties. Similarly, it is only during the last twenty-five years that the language of Irish poetry has been carefully studied, and Mr. Yeats has this advantage over his predecessors that on occasion, e.g., in certain pa.s.sages in _The King's Threshold_, he is able to introduce with great effect reminiscences of the characteristic epithets and imagery which formed so large a part of the stock-in-trade of the medieval bard.

REFERENCES:

Friedel and Meyer: La Vision de Tondale (Paris, 1907); Boswell: An Irish Precursor of Dante (London, 1908); Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. I, chaps, xii and xvi; Windisch: _Das Keltische Brittannien_ (Leipzig, 1912), more especially chap. x.x.xvii; Dictionary of National Biography; Gwynn: Thos. Moore ("English Men of Letters" Series, London, 1905).

IRISH FOLKLORE

By ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES.

Among savage peoples there is at first no distinction of a definite kind between good and bad spirits, and when a distinction has been reached, a great advance in a spiritual direction has been made. For the key to the religion of savages is fear, and until such terror has been counteracted by belief in beneficent powers, civilization will not follow. But the elimination of the fear of the unseen is a slow process; indeed, it will exist side by side with the belief in Christianity itself, after a modification through various stages of better pagan belief.

Ireland still presents, in its more out-of-the-way districts, evidence of that strong persistence in the belief in maleficent or malicious influences of the pre-Christian powers of the air, which it seems difficult to eradicate from the Celtic imagination. In the celebrated poem ent.i.tled _The Breastplate of St. Patrick_, there is much the same att.i.tude on the part of Patrick towards the Druids and their powers of concealing and changing, of paralyzing and cursing, as was shown by Moses towards the magicians of Egypt. Indeed, in Patrick's time a belief in a world of fairies existed even in the king's household, for "when the two daughters of King Leary of Ireland, Ethnea the fair and Fedelma the ruddy, came early one morning to the well of Clebach to wash, they found there a synod of holy bishops with Patrick. And they knew not whence they came, or in what form, or from what people, or from what country; but they supposed them to be _Duine Sidh_, or G.o.ds of the earth, or a phantasm."

Colgan explains the term _Duine Sidh_ thus: "Fantastical spirits," he writes, "are by the Irish called men of the _Sidh_, because they are seen, as it were, to come out of the beautiful hills to infest men, and hence the vulgar belief that they reside in certain subterranean habitations: and sometimes the hills themselves are called, by the Irish, _Sidhe_ or _Siodha_."

No doubt, when the princesses spoke of the G.o.ds of the earth, reference was made to such pagan deities as Beal; Dagda the great or the good G.o.d; Aine, the Moon, G.o.ddess of the water and of wisdom; Manannan macLir, the Irish Neptune; Crom, the Irish Ceres; and Iphinn, the benevolent, whose relations to the Irish Oirfidh resembled those of Apollo towards Orpheus; and to the allegiance they owed to the Elements, the Wind, and the Stars. But besides these pagan divinities and powers, and quite apart from them, the early Irish believed in two cla.s.ses of fairies: in the first place, a hierarchy of fairy beings, well and ill disposed, not differing in appearance, to any great degree at any rate, from human beings--good spirits and demons, rarely visible during the daytime; and, in the second place, there was the magic race of the De Danann, who, after conquest by the Milesians, transformed themselves into fairies, and in that guise continued to inhabit the underworld of the Irish hills, and to issue thence in support of Irish heroes, or to give their aid against other fairy adversaries.

There is another theory to account for the fairy race. It is that they are angels who revolted with Satan and were excluded from heaven for their unworthiness, but were not found evil enough for h.e.l.l, and therefore were allowed to occupy that intermediate s.p.a.ce which has been called "the Other World." It is still a moot point with the Irish peasantry, as it was with the Irish saints of old, whether, after being compelled to dwell without death among rocks and hills, lakes and seas, bushes and forest, till the day of judgment, the fairies then have the chance of salvation. Indeed, the fairies are themselves believed to have great doubts of a future existence, though, like many men, entertaining undefined hopes of happiness; and hence the enmity which some of them have for mankind, who, they acknowledge, will live eternally. Thus their actions are balanced between generosity and vindictiveness towards the human race.

Mr. W.Y. Evans Wentz, A.M., of Leland Stanford University, California, and Jesus College, Oxford, has received an honorary degree from the latter university for his thesis, "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries: Its Psychical Origin and Nature", a most laborious as well as ingenious work, whose object is to prove "that the origin of the fairy faith is psychical, and that fairyland, being thought of as an invisible world within which the visible world is immersed as an island in an unexplored ocean, actually exists, and that it is peopled by more species of living beings than this world, because incomparably more vast and varied in its possibilities." This may be added as a fourth theory to account for the existence of fairies, and it may be further stated here that the Irish popular belief in ghosts attributes to some of their departed spirits much of the same violence and malice with which fairies are credited. Mr. Jeremiah Curtin gives striking instances of this kind in his book, the _Folk Lore of West Kerry_.

It became necessary, therefore, for the Gaels who believed in the preternatural powers of the fairies for good and ill to propitiate them as far as possible. On May eve, accordingly, cattle were driven into raths and bled there, some of the blood being tasted, the rest poured out in sacrifice. Men and women were also bled on these occasions. The seekers for buried treasure, over which fairies were supposed to have influence, immolated a black c.o.c.k or a black cat to propitiate them. Again, a cow, suffering from sickness believed to be due to fairy malice, was bled and then devoted to St. Martin. If it recovered, it was never sold or killed. The first new milk of a cow was poured out on the ground to propitiate the fairies, and especially on the ground within a fairy rath. The first drop of any drink is also thrown out by old Irish people. If a child spills milk, the mother says, "that's for the fairies, leave it to them and welcome." Slops should never be thrown out of doors without the warning, "Take care of water!" lest fairies should be pa.s.sing invisibly and get soiled by the discharge. Eddies of dust upon the road are supposed to be caused by the fairies, and tufts of gra.s.s, sticks, and pebbles are thrown into the centre of the eddy to propitiate the unseen beings. Some fairies of life size, who live within the green hills or under the raths, are supposed to carry off healthy babes to be made fairy children, their abstractors leaving weak changelings in their place. Similarly, nursing mothers are sometimes supposed to be carried off to give the breast to fairy babes, and handsome young men are spirited away to become bridegrooms to fairy brides. Again, folk suffering from falling sickness are supposed to be in that condition owing to the fatigue caused by nocturnal rides through the air with the fairies, whose steeds are bewitched rushes, blades of gra.s.s, straws, fern roots, and cabbage stalks. The latter, to be serviceable for the purpose, should be cut into the rude shapes of horses before the metamorphosis can take place.

Iron of every kind keeps away malignant fairies: thus, a horseshoe nailed to the bottom of the churn prevents b.u.t.ter from being bewitched. Here is a form of charm against the fairies who have bewitched the b.u.t.ter: "Every window should be barred, a great turf fire should be lit upon which nine irons should be placed, the bystanders chanting twice over in Irish, 'Come, b.u.t.ter, come; Peter stands at the gate waiting for a b.u.t.tered cake.' As the irons become heated the witch will try to break in, asking the people to take the irons, which are burning her, off the fire. On their refusing, she will go and bring back the b.u.t.ter to the churn. The irons may then be removed from the fire and all will go well."

If a neighbor or stranger should enter a cottage during the churning, he should put his hand to the dash, or the b.u.t.ter will not come. A small piece of iron should be sewed into an infant's clothes and kept there until the child is baptized, and salt should be sprinkled over his cradle to preserve the babe from abduction. The fairies are supposed to have been conquered by an iron-weaponed race, and hence their dread of the metal.

To recover a spell-bound friend, stand on All Hallows' eve at cross roads or at a spot pointed out by a wise woman or fairy doctor. When you have rubbed fairy ointment on your eyelids, the fairies will become visible as the host sweeps by with its captive, whom the gazer will then be able to recognize. A sudden gust announces their approach. Stooping down, you will then throw dust or milk at the procession, whose members are then obliged to surrender your spell-bound friend. If a man leaves home after his wife's confinement, some of his clothes should be spread over the mother and infant, or the fairies may carry them off. It is good for a woman, but bad for a man, to dream of fairies. It betokens marriage for a girl, misfortune for a man, who should not undertake serious business for some time after such dreaming.

Fairy changelings may be recognized by tricky habits, constant crying, and other unusual characteristics. It was customary to recover the true child in the following way: The changeling was placed upon an iron shovel over the fire, when it would go shrieking up the chimney, and the _bona fide_ human child would be restored. It was believed that fairy changelings often produced a set of small bagpipes from under the clothes and played dance music upon them, till the inmates of the cottage dropped with exhaustion from the effects of the step dancing they were compelled to engage in.

On Samain eve, the night before the first of November, or, as it is now called, All Hallows' night or Hallowe'en, all the fairy hills or _shees_ are thrown wide open and the fairy host issues forth, as mortals who are bold enough to venture near may see. Naturally therefore people keep indoors so as not to encounter the spectral host. The superst.i.tion that the fairies are abroad on Samain night still exists in Ireland and Scotland, and there is a further belief, no doubt derived from it, that the graves are open on that night and that the spirits of the dead are abroad.

Salt, as already suggested, is regarded to be so lucky that if a child falls, it should always be given three pinches of salt, and if a neighbor calls to borrow salt, it should not be refused, even though it be the last grain in the house.

An infant born with teeth should have them drawn by the nearest smith, and the first teeth when shed should be thrown into the fire, lest the fairies should get hold of what had been part of you.

Those who hear fairy music are supposed to be haunted by the melody, and many are believed to go mad or commit suicide in consequence.

The fairies are thought to engage in warfare with one another, and in the year 1800 a specially sanguinary battle was believed to have been fought between two clans of the fairies in county Kilkenny. In the morning the hawthorns along the fences were found crushed to pieces and drenched with blood.

In popular belief fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the hunters is said to resemble in sound the humming of bees.

Besides the life-sized fairies who are reputed to have these direct dealings with human beings, there are diminutive preternatural beings who are also supposed to come into close touch with men. Among these is the Luchryman (_Leithphrogan_), or brogue maker, otherwise known as Leprechaun. He is always found mending or making a shoe, and, if grasped firmly and kept constantly in view, will disclose hidden treasure to you, or render up his _sparan na sgillinge_, or purse of the (inexhaustible) shilling. He can only be bound by a plough chain or woolen thread. He is the symbol of industry which, if steadily faced, leads to fortune, but, if lost sight of, is followed by its forfeiture.

Love in idleness is personified by another pigmy, the _Geancanach_ (love-talker). He does not appear, like the Leprechaun, with a purse in one of his pockets, but with his hands in both of them, and a _dudeen_ (short pipe) in his mouth, as he lazily strolls through lonely valleys making love to the foolish country la.s.ses and "gostering" with the idle "boys." To meet him meant bad luck, and whoever was ruined by ill-judged love was said to have been with the _Geancanach_.

Another evil sprite was the _Clobher-ceann_, "a jolly, red-faced, drunken little fellow," always "found astride of a wine-b.u.t.t" singing and drinking from a full tankard in a hard drinker's cellar, and bound by his appearance to bring its owner to speedy ruin.

Then there were the _Leannan-sighes_, or native Muses, to be found in every place of note to inspire the local bard, and the _Beansighes_ (Banshees, fairy women) attached to each of the old Irish families and giving warning of the death of one of its members with piteous lamentations.

Black Joanna of the Boyne (_Siubhan Dubh na Boinne_) appeared on Hallowe'en in the shape of a great black fowl, bringing luck to the home whose _Banithee_ (woman of the house) kept the dwelling constantly clean and neat.

The Pooka, who appeared in the shape of a horse, and whom Shakespeare is by many believed to have adapted as "Puck," was a goblin who combined "horse-play" with viciousness, but also at times helped with the housework.

The _Dullaghan_ was a churchyard demon whose head was of a movable kind. Dr. Joyce writes: "You generally meet him with his head in his pocket, under his arm, or absent altogether; or if you have the fortune to light upon a number of _Dullaghans_, you may see them amusing themselves by flinging their heads at one another or kicking them for footb.a.l.l.s."

An even more terrible churchyard demon is the fascinating phantom that waylays the widower at his wife's very tomb, and poisons him by her kiss when he has yielded to her blandishments.

Of monsters the Irish had, and still believe in, the _Piast_ (Latin _bestia_), a huge dragon or serpent confined to lakes by St. Patrick till the day of judgment, but still occasionally seen in their waters. In old Fenian times, namely, the days of Finn and his companion knights, the _Piasts_, however, roamed the country, devouring men and women and cattle in large numbers, and some of the early heroes are recorded to have been swallowed alive by them and then to have hewed their way out of their entrails.

Merrows, or Mermaids, are also still believed in, and many folk tales exist describing their intermarriage with mortals.

According to Nicholas O'Kearney, "It is the general opinion of many old persons versed in native traditional lore, that, before the introduction of Christianity, all animals possessed the faculties of human reason and speech; and old story-tellers will gravely inform you that every beast could speak before the arrival of St. Patrick, but that the saint having expelled the demons from the land by the sound of his bell, all the animals that, before that time, had possessed the power of foretelling future events, such as the Black Steed of _Binn-each-labhra_, the Royal Cat of _Cloughmagh-righ-cat_ (Clough), and others, became mute, and many of them fled to Egypt and other foreign countries."

Cats are said to have been appointed to guard hidden treasures; and there are few who have not heard old Irish people tell about strange meetings of cats and violent battles fought by them in the neighborhood. "It was believed," adds O'Kearney, "that an evil spirit in the shape of a cat a.s.sumed command over these animals in various districts, and that when those wicked beings pleased they could compel all the cats belonging to their division to attack those of some other district. The same was said of rats; and rat-expellers, when commanding a colony of those troublesome and destructive animals to emigrate to some other place, used to address their 'billet' to the infernal rat supposed to hold command over the rest. In a curious pamphlet on the power of bardic compositions to charm and expel rats, lately published, Mr. Eugene O'Curry states that a degraded priest, who was descended from an ancient family of hereditary bards, was enabled to expel a colony of rats by the force of satire!"

Hence, of course, Shakespeare's reference to rhyming Irish rats to death.

It will thus be seen that Irish Fairy Lore well deserves to have been called by Mr. Alfred Nutt, one of the leading authorities on the subject, "as fair and bounteous a harvest of myth and romance as ever flourished among any race."

REFERENCES:

Alex. Carmichael: Carmina Gadelica; David Comyn: The Boyish Exploits of Finn; the Periodical, "Folklore"; Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of Muirthemne, G.o.ds and Fighting Men; Miss Eleanor Hull: The Cuchulain Saga in Irish Literature; Douglas Hyde: Beside the Fire, (a collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories), _Leabhar Sgeulaicheachta_, (Folk Stories in Irish); "Irish Penny Journal"; Patrick Kennedy: The Fireside Stories of Ireland, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt; Standish Hayes O'Grady: Silva Gadelica; Wood-Martin: Traces of the Elder Faiths in Ireland, Pagan Ireland; W.Y. Wentz: The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries; Lady Wilde: Charms, Incantations, etc.; Celtic articles in Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.

IRISH WIT AND HUMOR

By Charles L. Graves.

No record of the glories of Ireland would be complete without an effort, however inadequate, to a.n.a.lyze and ill.u.s.trate her wit and humor. Often misunderstood, misrepresented, and misinterpreted, they are nevertheless universally admitted to be racial traits, and for an excellent reason. Other nations exhibit these qualities in their literature, and Ireland herself is rich in writers who have furnished food for mirth. But her special pre-eminence resides in the possession of what, to adapt a famous phrase, may be called an _anima naturaliter jocosa_. Irish wit and Irish humor are a national inheritance. They are inherent in the race as a whole, independent of education or culture or comfort. The best Irish sayings are the sayings of the people; the greatest Irish humorists are the nameless mult.i.tude who have never written books or found a place in national dictionaries of biography. None but an Irishman could have coined that supreme expression of contempt: "I wouldn't be seen dead with him at a pig-fair," or rebuked a young barrister because he did not "squandher his carca.s.s" (_i.e._, gesticulate) enough. But we cannot trace the paternity of these sayings any more than we can that of the lightning retort of the man to whom one of the "quality" had given a gla.s.s of whisky. "That's made another man of you, Patsy," remarked the donor. "'Deed an' it has, sor," Patsy flashed back, "an' that other man would be glad of another gla.s.s." It is enough for our purpose to note that such sayings are typically Irish and that their peculiar felicity consists in their combining both wit and humor.

To what element in the Irish nature are we to attribute this joyous and illuminating gift? No one who is not a Gaelic scholar can venture to dogmatize on this th.o.r.n.y subject. But, setting philology and politics aside, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ireland has gained rather than lost in this respect by the clash of races and languages. Gaiety, we are told, is not the predominating characteristic of the Celtic temperament, nor is it reflected in the prose and verse of the "old ancient days" that have come down to us.

Glamour and magic and pa.s.sion abound in the lays and legends of the ancient Gael, but there is more melancholy than mirth in these tales of long ago. Indeed, it is interesting to note in connection with this subject that the younger school of Irish writers a.s.sociated with what is called the Celtic Renascence have, with very few exceptions, sedulously eschewed anything approaching to jocosity, preferring the paths of crepuscular mysticism or sombre realism, and openly avowing their distaste for what they consider to be the denationalized sentiment of Moore, Lever, and Lover. To say this is not to disparage the genius of Yeats and Synge; it is merely a statement of fact and an ill.u.s.tration of the eternal dualism of the Irish temperament, which Moore himself realized when he wrote of "Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eye."

A reaction against the Donnybrook tradition was inevitable and to a great extent wholesome, since the stage Irishman of the transpontine drama or the music-halls was for the most part a gross and unlovely caricature, but, like all reactions, it has tended to obscure the real merits and services of those who showed the other side of the medal. Lever did not exaggerate more than d.i.c.kens, and his portraits of Galway fox-hunters and duellists, of soldiers of fortune, and of Dublin undergraduates were largely based on fact. At his best he was a most exhilarating companion, and his pictures of Irish life, if partial, were not misleading. He held no brief for the landlords, and in his later novels showed a keen sense of their shortcomings. The plain fact is that, in considering the literary glories of Ireland, we cannot possibly overlook the work of those Irishmen who were affected by English influences or wrote for an English audience.