The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Irish Fairy Book, by Various, Edited by Alfred Perceval Graves, Illustrated by George Denham
Title: The Irish Fairy Book
Author: Various
Editor: Alfred Perceval Graves
Release Date: May 1, 2010 [eBook #32202]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Irish Fairy Book
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Sung by the people of faery over Diarmuid and Grania, who lay in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.
e who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
W. B. Yeats.
THE COMING OF FINN Standish James O’Grady 1 THE THREE CROWNS Patrick Kennedy 12 THE GRATEFUL BEASTS Patrick Kennedy 25 THE LEPRACAUN William Allingham 31 DANIEL O’ROURKE T. Crofton Croker 35 CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE Lady Gregory 45 THE BOYHOOD OF CUCHULAIN Standish James O’Grady 52 THE LEGEND OF KNOCKGRAFTON T. Crofton Croker 60 THE STOLEN CHILD W. B. Yeats 67 THE LAND OF YOUTH Bryan O’Looney 71 Edited by John O’Daly THE ADVENTURES OF GILLA NA CHRECK Patrick Kennedy 85 THE HILL-MAN AND THE HOUSE-WIFE Mrs. Ewing 96 THE GIANT WALKER Sir Samuel Ferguson 99 THE PURSUIT OF THE GILLA DACKER Patrick W. Joyce 102 JAMIE FREEL AND THE YOUNG LADY Letitia McClintock 123 A LEGEND OF KNOCKMANY William Carleton 133 THE NINEPENNY FIDIL Joseph Campbell 149 FESTIVITIES AT THE HOUSE OF CONAN Nicholas O’Kearney 151 THE WHITE TROUT Samuel Lover
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 superstition had passed from the upper classes, 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
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 God, and afterwards Aine, the Moon, Goddess 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 analagous 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 hell, and who, therefore, occupy intermediate space.
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 Japanese.
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 superstition, no doubt, existed long previously; and this mysterious race, having undergone a gradual deification, became confounded and identified with the original local gods, 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 class 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 lasses 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-butt” 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 footballs.”
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
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 circumstance 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.
t 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.
hen 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:
Conn the Hundred-Fighter, son of Felimy, the righteous son of Tuthal the legitimate, O King of the Kings of
“Thou art welcome whoever thou art,” answered the King, “and doubly welcome because thou art unfortunate. I think, such is thy face and form, that thou art the son of some mighty king on whom disaster has fallen undeserved. The high gods of Erin grant thee speedy restoration and strong vengeance of thy many wrongs. Sit here, O noble youth, between me and my only son, Art, heir to my kingdom.”
An attendant took his weapons from the youth and hung them on the wall with the rest, and Finn sat down between the King of Ireland and his only son. Choice food was set before him, which he ate, and old ale, which he drank. From the moment he entered no one thought of anything but of him. When Finn had made an end of eating and drinking, he said to the King:
“O illustrious prince, though it is not right for a guest to even seem to observe aught that may be awry, or not as it should be, in the hall of his entertainer, yet the sorrow of a kindly host is a sorrow, too, to his guest, and sometimes unawares the man of the house finds succour and help in the stranger. There is sorrow in this chamber of festivity. If anyone who is dear to thee and thy people happens to be dead, I can do nothing. But I say it, and it is not a vain boast, that even if a person is at the point of death, I can restore him to life and health, for there are marvellous powers of life-giving in my two hands.”
onn the Hundred-Fighter answered, “Our grief is not such as you suppose; and why should I not tell a cause of shame, which is known far and wide? This, then, is the reason of our being together, and the gloom which is over us. There is a mighty enchanter whose dwelling is in the haunted mountains of Slieve Gullion in the north. His name is Allen, son of Midna, and his enmity to me is as great as his power. Once every year, at this season, it is his pleasure to burn Tara. Descending out of his wizard haunts, he standeth over against the city and shoots balls of fire out of his mouth against it, till it is consumed. Then he goes away mocking and triumphant. This annual building of Tara, only to be annually consumed, is a shame to me, and till this enchanter declared war against me, I have lived without reproach.”
“But,” said Finn, “how is it that thy young warriors, valiant and swift, do not repel him, or kill him?”
“Alas!” said Conn, “all our valour is in vain against this man. Our hosts encompass Tara on all sides, keeping watch and ward when the fatal night comes. Then the son of Midna plays on his Druidic instrument of music, on his magic pipe and his magic lyre, and as the fairy music falls on our ears, our eyelids grow heavy, and soon all subside upon the grass in deep slumber. So comes this man against the city and shoots his fire-balls against it, and utterly consumes it. Nine years he has burnt Tara in that manner, and this is the tenth. At midnight to-night he will come and do the same. Last year (though it was a shame to me that I, who am the high King over all Ireland, should not be able myself to defend Tara) I summoned Gaul mac Morna and all the Fians to my assistance. They came, but the pipe and lyre of the son of Midna prevailed over them too, so that Tara was burned as at other times. Nor have we any reason to believe that the son of Midna will not burn the city again to-night, as he did last year. All the women and children have been sent out of Tara this day. We are only men of war here, waiting for the time. That, O noble youth, is why we are sad. The ‘Pillars of Tara’ are broken, and the might of the Fians is as nought before the power of this man.”
“What shall be my reward if I kill this man and save Tara?” asked Finn.
“Thy inheritance,” answered the King, “be it great or small, and whether it lies in Ireland or beyond Ireland; and for securities I give you my son Art and Gaul mac Morna and the Chief of the Fians.”
Gaul and the captains of the Fianna consented to that arrangement, though reluctantly, for their minds misgave them as to who the great youth might be.
After that all arose and armed themselves and ringed Tara round with horse and foot, and thrice Conn the Hundred-Fighter raised his awful regal voice, enjoining vigilance upon his people, and thrice Gaul mac Morna did the same, addressing the Fians, and after that they filled their ears with wax and wool, and kept a stern and fierce watch, and many of them thrust the points of their swords into their flesh.
ow Finn was alone in the banqueting chamber after the rest had gone out, and he washed his face and his hands in pure water, and he took from the bag that was at his girdle the instruments of divination and magic, which had been his father’s, and what use he made of them is not known; but ere long a man stood before him, holding a spear in one hand and a blue mantle in the other. There were twenty nails of gold of Arabia in the spear. The nails glittered like stars, and twinkled with live light as stars do in a frosty night, and the blade of it quivered like a tongue of white fire. From haft to blade-point that spear was alive. There were voices in it too, and the war-tunes of the enchanted races of Erin, whom they called the Tuatha De Danan, sounded from it. The mantle, too, was a wonder, for innumerable stars twinkled in the blue, and the likeness of clouds passed through it. The man gave these things to Finn, and when he had instructed him in their use, he was not seen.
Then Finn arose and armed himself, and took the magic spear and mantle and went out. There was a ring of flame round Tara that night, for the Fians and the warriors of Conn had torches in their hands, and all the royal buildings of Tara showed clear in the light, and also the dark serpentine course of the Boyne, which flowed past Tara on the north; and there, standing silent and alert, were the innumerable warriors of all Erin, with spear and shield, keeping watch and ward against the son of Midna, also the Four Pillars of Tara in four dense divisions around the high King, even Conn the Hundred-Fighter.
Finn stood with his back to the palace, which was called the House-of-the-going-round-of-Mead, between the palace and Conn, and he grasped the magic spear strongly with one hand and the mantle with the other.
s midnight drew nigh, he heard far away in the north, out of the mountains of Slieve Gullion, a fairy tune played, soft, low, and slow, as if on a silver flute; and at the same time the roar of Conn the Hundred-Fighter, and the voice of Gaul like thunder, and the responsive shouts of the captains, and the clamour of the host, for the host shouted all together, and clashed their swords against their shields in fierce defiance, when in spite of all obstructions the fairy music of the enchanter began to steal into their souls. That shout was heard all over Ireland, echoing from sea to sea, and the hollow buildings of Tara reverberated to the uproar. Yet through it all could be heard the low, slow, delicious music that came from Slieve Gullion. Finn put the point of the spear to
inn, bearing the head, passed through the sleepers into the palace and spiked the head on his own spear, and drove the spear-end into the ground at Conn’s end of the great hall. Then the sickness and faintness of death came upon Finn, also a great horror and despair overshadowed him, so that he was about to give himself up for utterly lost. Yet he recalled one of his marvellous attributes, and approaching a silver vessel, into which pure water ever flowed and which was always full, he made a cup with his two hands and, lifting it to his mouth, drank, and the blood began to circulate in his veins, and strength returned to his limbs, and the cheerful hue of rosy health to his cheeks.
Having rested himself sufficiently he went forth and shouted to the sleeping host, and called the captains by their names, beginning with Conn. They awoke and rose up, though dazed and stupid, for it was difficult for any man, no matter how he had stopped his ears, to avoid hearing Finn when he sent forth his voice of power. They were astonished to find that Tara was still standing, for though the night was dark, the palaces and temples, all of hewn timber, were brilliantly coloured and of many hues, for in those days men delighted in splendid colours.
When the captains came together Finn said, “I have slain Midna.” “Where is his head?” they asked, not because they disbelieved him, but because the heads of men slain in battle were always brought away for trophies. “Come and see,” answered Finn. Conn and his only son and Gaul mac Morna followed the young hero into the Teck-Midcuarta, where the spear-long waxen candles were still burning, and when they saw the head of Midna impaled there at the end of the hall, the head of the man whom they believed to be immortal and not to be wounded or conquered, they were filled with great joy, and praised their deliverer and paid him many compliments.
ho art thou, O brave youth?” said Conn. “Surely thou art the son of some great king or champion, for heroic feats like thine are not performed by the sons of inconsiderable and unknown men.”
Then Finn flung back his cloak of wild boars’ skins, and holding his father’s treasure-bag in his hand before them all, cried in a loud voice:
“I am Finn, the son of Cool, the son of Trenmor, the son of Basna; I am he whom the sons of Morna have been seeking to destroy from the time that I was born; and here to-night, O King of the Kings of Erin, I claim the fulfilment of thy promise, and the restoration of my inheritance, which is the Fian leadership of Fail.” Thereupon Gaul mac Morna put his right hand into Finn’s, and became his man. Then his brothers and his sons, and the sons of his brothers, did so in succession, and after that all the chief men of the Fians did the same, and that night Finn was solemnly and surely installed in the Fian leadership of Erin, and put in possession of all the woods and forests and waste places, and all the hills and mountains and promontories, and all the streams and rivers of Erin, and the harbours and estuaries and the harbour-dues of the merchants, and all ships and boats and galleys with their mariners, and all that pertained of old time to the Fian leadership of Fail.
Standish James O’Grady.