Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (50 page)

“It was also deposed that strange noises, as of whistling, scratching, etc., were heard in the house, and that a sulphureous smell was observed in the rooms; that stones, turf, and the like were thrown about the house, and the coverlets, etc., frequently taken off the beds and made up in the shape of a corpse; and that a bolster once walked out of a room into the kitchen with a night-gown about it. It likewise appeared in evidence that in some of her fits three strong men were scarcely able to hold her in the bed; that at times she vomited feathers, cotton yarn, pins, and buttons; and that on one occasion she slid off the bed and was laid on the floor, as if supported and drawn by an invincible power. The afflicted person was unable to give any evidence on the trial, being during that time dumb, but had no violent fit during its continuance.”

In defence of the accused, it appeared that they were mostly sober, industrious people, who attended public worship, could repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and had been known to pray both in public and private; and that some of them had lately received communion.

Judge Upton charged the jury, and observed on the regular attendance of accused at public worship; remarking that he thought it improbable that real witches could so far retain the form of religion as to frequent the religious worship of God, both publicly and privately,
which had been proved in favor of the accused. He concluded by giving his opinion “that the jury could not bring them in guilty upon the sole testimony of the afflicted person’s visionary images.” He was followed by Judge Macarthy, who differed from him in opinion, “and thought the jury might, from the evidence, bring them in guilty,” which they accordingly did.

This trial lasted from six o’clock in the morning till two in the afternoon; and the prisoners were sentenced to be imprisoned twelve months, and to stand four times in the pillory of Carrickfergus.

Tradition says that the people were much exasperated against these unfortunate persons, who were severely pelted in the pillory with boiled cabbage stalks and the like, by which one of them had an eye beaten out.

T’
YEER-NA-N
-O
GE
.—
this page
.

“Tir-na-n-óg,”
Mr. Douglas Hyde writes, “ ‘The Country of the Young,’ is the place where the Irish peasant will tell you
geabhaedh tu an sonas aer pighin
, ‘you will get happiness for a penny,’ so cheap and common it will be. It is sometimes, but not often, called
Tir-na-hóige
; the ‘Land of Youth.’ Crofton Croker writes it,
Thierna-na-noge
, which is an unfortunate mistake of his,
Thierna
meaning a lord, not a country. This unlucky blunder is, like many others of the same sort where Irish words are concerned, in danger of becoming stereotyped, as the name of Iona has been, from mere clerical carelessness.”

T
HE
G
ONCONER OR
G
ANCANAGH
[G
EAN-CANACH
].—
this page
.

O’Kearney, a Louthman, deeply versed in Irish lore, writes of the
gean-canach
(love-talker) that he is “another diminutive being of the same tribe as the Lepracaun, but, unlike him, he personated love and idleness, and always appeared with a dudeen in his jaw in lonesome valleys, and it was his custom to make love to shepherdesses and milk-maids. It was considered very unlucky to meet him, and whoever was known to have ruined his fortune by devotion to the fair sex was said to have met a
gean-canach.
The dudeen, or ancient Irish tobacco pipe, found in our raths, etc., is still popularly called a
geancanach’s
pipe.”

The word is not to be found in dictionaries, nor does this spirit appear to be well known, if known at all, in Connacht. The word is pronounced
gánconâgh.

In the MS. marked R.I.A.
in the Roy’ Ir. Ae., there is a long poem describing such a fairy hurling-match as the one in the story, only the fairies described as the
shiagh
, or host, wore plaids and bonnets, like Highlanders. After the hurling the fairies have a hunt, in which the poet takes part, and they swept with great rapidity through half Ireland. The poem ends with the line:

“and I had travelled the five provinces with nothing under me but a yellow bohalawn (rag-weed).”—[
Note by Mr. Douglas Hyde.
]

F
ATHER
J
OHN
O’H
ART
.—
this page
.

Father O’Rorke is the priest of the parishes of Ballysadare and Kilvarnet, and it is from his learnedly and faithfully and sympathetically written history of these parishes that I have taken the story of Father John, who had been priest of these parishes, dying in the year 1739. Coloony is a village in Kilvarnet.

Some sayings of Father John’s have come down. Once when he was sorrowing greatly for the death of his brother, the people said to him, “Why do you sorrow so for your brother when you forbid us to keen?” “Nature,” he answered, “forces me, but ye force nature.” His memory and influence survives, in the fact that to the present day there has been no keening in Coloony.

He was a friend of the celebrated poet and musician, Carolan.

S
HONEEN AND
S
LEIVEEN
.—
this page
.

Shoneen
is the diminutive of
shone
[Ir.
Seón
], There are two Irish names for John—one is
Shone
, the other is
Shawn
[Ir.
Seághan
]. Shone is the “grandest” of the two, and is applied to the gentry. Hence Shoneen means “a little gentry John,” and is applied to upstarts and “big” farmers, who ape the rank of gentleman.

Sleiveen
, not to be found in the dictionaries, is a comical Irish word (at least in Connaught) for a rogue. It probably comes from
sliabh
,
a mountain, meaning primarily a mountaineer, and in a secondary sense, on the principle that mountaineers are worse than anybody else, a rogue. I am indebted to Mr. Douglas Hyde for these details, as for many others.

D
EMON
C
AT
.—
this page
.

In Ireland one hears much of Demon Cats. The father of one of the present editors of the
Fortnightly
had such a cat, say county Dublin peasantry. One day the priest dined with him, and objecting to see a cat fed before Christians, said something over it that made it go up the chimney in a flame of fire. “I will have the law on you for doing such a thing to my cat,” said the father of the editor. “Would you like to see your cat?” said the priest. “I would,” said he, and the priest brought it up, covered with chains, through the hearth-rug, straight out of hell. The Irish devil does not object to these undignified shapes. The Irish devil is not a dignified person. He has no whiff of sulphureous majesty about him. A centaur of the ragamuffin, jeering and shaking his tatters, at once the butt and terror of the saints!

A L
EGEND OF
K
NOCKMANY
.—
this page
.

Carleton says: “Of the gray stone mentioned in this legend, there is a very striking and melancholy anecdote to be told. Some twelve or thirteen years ago, a gentleman in the vicinity of the site of it was building a house, and, in defiance of the legend and curse connected with it, he resolved to break it up and use it. It was with some difficulty, however, that he could succeed in getting his laborers to have anything to do with its mutilation. Two men, however, undertook to blast it, but, somehow, the process of ignition being mismanaged, it exploded prematurely, and one of them was killed. This coincidence was held as a fulfilment of the curse mentioned in the legend. I have heard that it remains in that mutilated state to the present day, no other person being found who had the hardihood to touch it. This stone, before it was disfigured, exactly resembled that which the country people term a miscaun of butter, which is precisely the shape of a complete prism, a circumstance, no doubt, which, in the fertile imagination of the old Senachies, gave rise to the superstition annexed to it.”

S
OME
A
UTHORITIES ON
I
RISH
F
OLK
-L
ORE
.

Croker’s
Legends of the South of Ireland.
Lady Wilde’s
Ancient Legends of Ireland.
Sir William Wilde’s
Irish Popular Superstitions.
McAnally’s
Irish Wonders. Irish Folk-Lore
, by Lageniensis. Lover’s
Legends and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.
Patrick Kennedy’s
Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, Banks of the Boro, Legends of Mount Leinster
, and
Banks of the Duffrey
; Carleton’s
Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry
; and the chap-books,
Royal Fairy Tales, Hibernian Tales
, and
Tales of the Fairies.
Besides these there are many books on general subjects, containing stray folk-lore, such as Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall’s
Ireland
; Lady Chatterton’s
Rambles in the South of Ireland
; Gerald Griffin’s
Tales of a Jury-room
; and the
Lead-beater Papers.
For banshee stories see Barrington’s
Recollections
and Miss Lefanu’s
Memoirs of my Grandmother.
In O’Donovan’s introduction to the
Four Masters
are several tales. The principal magazine articles are in the
Dublin and London Magazine
for 1825–1828 (Sir William Wilde calls this the best collection of Irish folk-lore in existence): and in the
Dublin University Magazine
for 1839 and 1878, those in ’78 being by Miss Maclintock. The
Folk-Lore Journal
and the
Folk-Lore Record
contain much Irish folk-lore, as also do the
Ossianic Society’s
publications and the proceedings of the
Kilkenny Archæological Society.
Old Irish magazines, such as the
Penny Journal, Newry Magazine
, and
Duffy’s Sixpenny Magazine
and
Hibernian Magazine
, have much scattered through them. Among the peasantry are immense quantities of ungathered legends and beliefs.

Maya Angelou
•
Daniel J. Boorstin
•
A. S. Byatt
•
Caleb Carr
•
Christopher Cerf
•
Ron Chernow
•
Shelby Foote
•
Charles Frazier
•
Vartan Gregorian
•
Richard Howard
•
Charles Johnson
•
Jon Krakauer
•
Edmund Morris
•
Joyce Carol Oates
•
Elaine Pagels
•
John Richardson
•
Salman Rushdie
•
Oliver Sacks
•
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
•
Carolyn See
•
William Styron
•
Gore Vidal

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