The Irish Fairy Book Part 1

The Irish Fairy Book.

by Various.

Preface

Irish Fairy Lore has well 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," and Dr. Joyce, the well-known Irish scholar and historian, states: "that it is very probable that the belief in the existence of fairies came in with the earliest colonists that entered Ireland, and that this belief is recorded in the oldest of native Irish writings in a way that proves it to have been, at the time treated of, long established and universally received."

Colgan himself supplies us with the name and derivation of the Irish word for fairy, Sidh (shee), still used throughout the country.

"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."

In Colgan's time, then, the fairy superst.i.tion had pa.s.sed from the upper cla.s.ses, gradually disenthralled of it by the influence of Christianity to the common people, among whom it is still rife. But it is clear that in the time of St. Patrick a belief in a world of fairies existed even in the King's household, for it is recorded that "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."

As suggested, the belief of the Princesses obtains to this very day amongst the peasantry of remote districts in Ireland, who still maintain that the fairies inhabit the Sidhe, or hills, and record instances of relations and friends being transported into their underground palaces.

The truth is that the Gaelic peasant, Scotch and Irish, is a mystic, and believes not only in this world, and the world to come, but in that other world which is the world of Faery, and which exercises an extraordinary influence upon many actions of his life.

We see in the well-known dialogue between Oisin (Ossian) and St.

Patrick, and in other early Irish writers, how potent an influence Druidism, with its powers of concealing and changing, of paralysing and cursing, had been held to be in the days when the Irish worshipped no hideous idols, but adored Beal and Dagdae, the Great or the Good G.o.d, and afterwards Aine, the Moon, G.o.ddess of the Water and of Wisdom, and when their minor Deities were Mananan Mac Lir, the Irish Neptune, whose name is still to be found in the Isle of _Man_; Crom, who corresponded to Ceres; Iphinn, the benevolent, whose relations to the Irish Oirfidh resembled those of Apollo towards Orpheus. The ancient Irish owed allegiance also to the Elements, to the Wind, and to the Stars.

Besides these Pagan Divinities, however, and quite apart from them, the early Irish believed in a hierarchy of fairy beings, closely a.n.a.lagous to us "humans," supposed to people hill and valley, old road and old earth-mound, lakes and rivers, and there to exercise a constant, if occult, influence upon mankind.

Various theories have been advanced to account for their origin. Some call these fairies angels outcast from heaven for their unworthiness, yet not evil enough for h.e.l.l, and who, therefore, occupy intermediate s.p.a.ce.

Others suggest that they are the spirits of that mysterious early Irish race, the Tuatha da Danann, who were driven by their conquerors, the Milesians, to become "men of the hills," if not "cave" and "lake dwellers," in order to avoid the extermination that ultimately awaited them. Their artistic skill and superior knowledge evidenced to this day by remarkable sepulchral mounds, stone-inscribed spiral ornamentation, and beautiful bronze spear-heads, led them to be accounted magicians, and Mr. Yeats and others of his school favour the idea that the minor deities of the early Irish above referred to were the earliest members of the Tuatha da Danann dynasty, and that we here have a form of that ancestor worship now met with amongst the Chinese and j.a.panese.

Dr. Joyce does not hold, however, that the subjugation of the Tuatha da Dananns, with the subsequent belief regarding them, was the origin of Irish fairy mythology.

"The superst.i.tion, no doubt, existed long previously; and this mysterious race, having undergone a gradual deification, became confounded and identified with the original local G.o.ds, and ultimately superseded them altogether."

But whatever their origin, supernatural powers evil and beneficent were supposed to attach to them such as the power of spiriting away young married women to act as fairy nurses, and their infants to replace fairy weaklings, or again the power of conferring wealth, health, and prosperity where a certain ritual due to them had been performed by their human allies.

The injurious powers of malevolently disposed fairies can only be met, according to popular belief, by wizards and wise women, who still exercise their arts in remote districts of Gaelic-speaking Ireland and Scotland.

These fairies are supposed to be life-sized, but there was another cla.s.s of diminutive preternatural beings who came into close touch with man.

Amongst these were the Luchryman (Leith-phrogan) or _brogue_ (shoe) maker, otherwise known as Lepracaun. He is always found mending or making a shoe, and if grasped firmly and kept constantly in view will disclose hid treasure to you or render up his _sporan na sgillinge_ or purse of the (inexhaustible) shilling. He could only be bound by a plough chain or woollen thread. He is the type 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 _Gean-canach_ (love-talker). He does not appear like the Luchryman, with a purse in one of his pockets but with his hands in both of them and a DUDEEN (ancient Irish 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 Gean-canach.

Another evil sprite was the _Clobher-ceann_, "a jolly, red-faced drunken little fellow," always "found astride on a wine-b.u.t.t" and drinking and singing 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-sighe, 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 house whose _Vanithee_ (woman of the house) kept it constantly clean and neat.

The Pooka, who appeared in the shape of a horse, and whom Shakespeare has adapted as "Puck," was a goblin who combined "horse-play" with viciousness.

The _dullaghan_ was a churchyard demon whose head was of a movable kind, and 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 beautiful 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 Fenian times the days of Finn and his companion knights, the Piast, 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.

The Merrow, or Mermaid, is 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 Clough-magh-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 peasants tell about a strange meeting of cats and a violent battle fought by them in his neighbourhood. "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 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.

A few words upon the writers in this collection. Of Folk Tale collectors the palm must be given to Dr. Douglas Hyde, whose great knowledge of Irish, combined with a fine literary faculty, has enabled him to present the stories he has generously granted me the use of, in a manner which combines complete fidelity to his original, with true artistic feeling.

Dr. Joyce has not only granted the use of his fine Heroic Tale of the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacker, but had the honour of supplying Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the late Poet Laureate, with the subject of his "Voyage of Maeldune" in a story of that name, adapted into English in his "Old Celtic Romances." The Laureate acted on my suggestion that he should found a poem upon one of the romances in that book; and to that circ.u.mstance I owe the kind permission by his son and Messrs. Macmillan to republish it at length in this volume.

Besides Dr. Hyde and Dr. Joyce I have been enabled, through the friendly leave of Messrs. Macmillan and Elliot and Stock, to use Mr. Jeremiah Curtin's and Mr. Larminie's excellently told Irish Fairy Tales. These two latter Folk Tale collectors have worked upon Dr. Hyde's plan of taking down their tales from the lips of the peasants, and reproducing them, whether from their Irish or Hiberno-Irish, as clearly as they were able to do so. The recent death of both of these writers is a serious loss to Irish Folk Lore.

Obligations are due to Miss Hull for two hitherto unpublished and fine Folk Tales, to Lady Gregory for the use of her "Birth of Cuchulain," to Standish James O'Grady for his "Boyish Exploits of Cuchulain and The Coming of Finn," to the late Mrs. Ewing for "The Hill-man and the House-wife," to Mrs. William Allingham for the use of two of her husband's poems, to Mr. D. J. Donoghue for a poem by Mr. Thomas Boyd, and Mr. Chesson for one of his wife's (Nora Hopper), to Mrs. Shorter (Dora Sigerson) for a poem, and to Mr. Joseph Campbell for another, and finally to Mr. W. B. Yeats for his two charming Fairy Poems, "The Stolen Child" and "Faery Song."

ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES.

_Erinfa, Harlech, N. Wales, July 12, 1909._

The Coming of Finn

It was the Eve of Samhain, which we Christians call All Hallows' Eve.

The King of Ireland, Conn, the Hundred-Fighter, sat at supper in his palace at Tara. All his chiefs and mighty men were with him. On his right hand was his only son, Art the Solitary, so called because he had no brothers. The sons of Morna, who kept the boy Finn out of his rights and were at the time trying to kill him if they could, were here too.

Chief amongst them was Gaul mac Morna, a huge and strong warrior, and Captain of all the Fians ever since that battle in which Finn's father had been killed.

And Gaul's men were with him. The great long table was spread for supper. A thousand wax candles shed their light through the chamber, and caused the vessels of gold, silver, and bronze to shine. Yet, though it was a great feast, none of these warriors seemed to care about eating or drinking; every face was sad, and there was little conversation, and no music. It seemed as if they were expecting some calamity. Conn's sceptre, which was a plain staff of silver, lay beside him on the table, and there was a canopy of bright bronze over his head. Gaul mac Morna, Captain of the Fians, sat at the other end of the long table. Every warrior wore a bright banqueting mantle of silk or satin, scarlet or crimson, blue, green, or purple, fastened on the breast either with a great brooch or with a pin of gold or silver. Yet, though their raiment was bright and gay, and though all the usual instruments of festivity were there, and a thousand tall candles shed their light over the scene, no one looked happy.

Then was heard a low sound like thunder, and the earth seemed to tremble, and after that they distinctly heard a footfall like the slow, deliberate tread of a giant. These footfalls sent a chill into every heart, and every face, gloomy before, was now pale.

The King leaned past his son Art the Solitary, and said to a certain Druid who sat beside Art, "Is this the son of Midna come before his time?" "It is not," said the Druid, "but it is the man who is to conquer Midna. One is coming to Tara this night before whose glory all other glory shall wax dim."

Shortly after that they heard the voices of the doorkeepers raised in contention, as if they would repel from the hall someone who wished to enter, then a slight scuffle, and after that a strange figure entered the chamber. He was dressed in the skins of wild beasts, and wore over his shoulders a huge thick cloak of wild boars' skins, fastened on the breast with a white tusk of the same animal. He wore a shield and two spears. Though of huge stature his face was that of a boy, smooth on the cheeks and lips. It was white and ruddy, and very handsome. His hair was like refined gold. A light seemed to go out from him, before which the candles burned dim. It was Finn.

He stood in the doorway, and cried out in a strong and sonorous, but musical, voice: