Celtic Lore & Legend (13 page)

But there’s no harm in them, not much harm.

There was a woman who lived near me at Ballymacduff and she used to go about to attend women [
Editor’s Note
: She was a “handy woman”—a local midwife.]: Sarah Redington was her name. And she was brought away one time by a man that came for her into a hill, through a door, but she didn’t know where the hill was. And there were people in it and
cradles and a woman in labour and she helped her and the baby was born and the woman told her it was only that night she was brought away. And the man led her out again and put her on the road near her home and he gave her something rolled in a bag and he bid her not to look at it till she’d get home and to throw the first handful of it away from her. But she couldn’t wait to get home to look at it and she took it off her back and opened it, and there was nothing in it but cowdung. And the man came to her and said; “You have us near destroyed looking in that, and we’ll never bring you in again among us”.

There was a man I know well was away with them often and often, and he was passing one day by the big tree and they came about him and he had a new pair of breeches on, and one of them came and made a slit in them, and another tore a little bit out, and they all came running and tearing little bits till he hadn’t a rag left. Just to be humbugging him they did that. And they gave him good help, for he had but an acre of land and he had as much on it as another would have on a big farm. But his wife didn’t like him to be going and some one told her of a cure for him, and she said she’d try it and if she did, within two hours after she was dead, killed her they had before she’d try it. He used to say that where he was brought was into a round, very big house and Cairns that went with him told me the same.

Three times when I went for water to the well, the water spilled over me and I told Bridget after that they must bring the water themselves, I’d go for it no more. And the third time it was done there was a boy, one of the Heniffs, was near and when he heard what had happened me he said, “It must have been the woman that was at the well along with you that did that”. And I said there was no woman at the well along with me. “There was” says he; “I saw her there beside you, and the two little tins in her hand”.

One day after I came to live at Coole, a strange woman came into the house and I asked what was her name and she said: “I was in it before ever you were ever in it” and she went into the room inside and I saw her no more.

But Bridget and Peter saw her coming in and they asked me who she was for they never saw her before. And in the night when I was sleeping at the foot of the bed, she came and threw me out on the floor, that the joint of my arm has a mark on it yet. And every night she came and she’d spite me or annoy me in some way. And at last we got Father Nolan to come and to drive her out. As soon as he began to read, there went out of the house a great blast, and there was a sound as loud as thunder. And Father Nolan said, “It’s well for you that she didn’t have you killed before she went”.

I know that I used to be away among them myself, but how they brought me I don’t know, but when I’d come back I’d be cross with the husband and with all. I believe that when I was with them, I was cross that they wouldn’t let me go, and that’s why they didn’t keep me altogether, they don’t like cross people to be with them. The husband would ask me where I was, and why I stopped so long away but I think he knew I was
taken
and it fretted him, but he never spoke much about it. But my mother knew it well, but she tried to hide it. The neighbours would come in and ask where was I and she’d say I was sick in the bed—for whatever was put in the place of me would have the head in under the bed-clothes. And when a neighbour would bring me in a drink of milk, my mother would just put it by and say ‘Leave her now, maybe she’ll drink it tomorrow”. And maybe in a day or two, I’d meet someone and he’d say ‘Why wouldn’t you speak to me when I went into the house to see you?” And I was a young, fresh woman at the time.

Himself died but it was
they
took him from me. It was in the night and he lying beside me and I woke and heard him
move, and I thought I heard someone with him. And I put out my hand and what I touched was an iron hand, like knitting needles it felt. And I heard the bones of his neck crack, and he gave a sort of a choked laugh and I got out of bed and struck a light and I saw nothing but I thought I saw someone go through the door. And I called to Bridget and she didn’t come, and I called again and she came and she said she struck a light when she heard a noise and was coming and someone came and struck the light from her hand. And when we looked in the bed, himself was lying dead and not a mark on him”.

[
Editor’s Note
: Lady Gregory concludes her account of the conversations with Mrs. Sheridan in the following manner:]

“She died some year ago and I am told:

There is a ghost in Mrs. Sheridan’s house. They got a priest to say Mass there, but with all that there’s not one in it has leave to lay a head on the pillow till such time as the cock crows”.

For the Celtic people and their descendants, fairies and their nature presented something of a problem. There was no doubt in the popular mind that such beings existed, but what exactly were they? Were they, for example, spirits? A separate race of men? Ancient gods? Were they well intentioned towards Mankind or were they hostile? Were they agents of the Devil seeking to lead God’s children astray? Or were they something else? Views on them were ambivalent. In later years, the Christian Church taught that fairies were inherently evil and should be avoided, and local wisdom suggested that they should be feared. And yet the debates continued.

Arguably, nowhere in the Celtic world was the imminence of the fairy kind so closely felt than in Ireland. Within every bush and beyond every stone throughout the countryside, the fairy kind were said to dwell. And it was here that many of the debates about the exact nature of the Good Folk were conducted. Local sages turned their minds
to explaining fairy nature and fairy ways and to placing them within the rural context around them. The debate even seems to have made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to America, with folklorists there examining the tales of Irish fairies and even comparing them with Native American stories. As did the Irish, the Native Americans had their “little people,” and certain comparisons between the two are to be found.

The following extract comes from Dr. David Rice McAnally’s book
Irish Wonders
(published in 1888). Dr. McAnally (1810–1895) was an Irish-American folklorist who had amassed a fair amount of orally based material from the Irish countryside. Rather than adopting a scientific or philological approach to the tales, as many folklorists do, he preferred to concentrate on their literary, poetic, and narrative aspects. His was an attempt to present them as they would initially have been delivered by the storytellers themselves, and his work is nonetheless scholarly for that. What we find in this collection, therefore, is the authentic voice and belief of the Irish country people. The following is a discourse rooted in this tradition, concerning the origins and nature of the fairies, and it gives us insight as to how these enigmatic beings were viewed by rural Irish people during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

by Dr. David Rice McAnally

The Oriental luxuriance of the Irish mythology is nowhere more conspicuously displayed than when dealing with the history, habits, characteristics and pranks of the “good people”. According to the most reliable of the rural “fairy men”, a race now nearly extinct, the fairies were once angels, so numerous as to have formed a large part of the population of heaven.
When Satan sinned and drew throngs of the heavenly host with him into open rebellion, a large number of the less warlike spirits stood aloof from the contest that followed, fearing the consequences and not caring to take sides till the issue of the conflict was determined. Upon the defeat and expulsion of the rebellious angels, those who had remained neutral were punished by banishment from heaven, but their offence being only one of omission, they were not consigned to the pit with Satan and his followers, but were sent to earth where they still remain, without hope that on the last day they may be pardoned and readmitted to Paradise. They are thus on their good behaviour, but having power to do infinite harm, they are much feared, and spoken of either in whisper or aloud, as the “good people.”

Unlike Leprechawns, who are not considered fit associates for reputable fairies, the good people are not solitary; but quite sociable, and always live in large societies, the members of which pursue the co-operative plan of labor and enjoyment, owning all their property, the kind and amount of which are somewhat indefinite, in common, and uniting their efforts to accomplish any desired object, whether of work or play. They travel in large bands, and although their parties are never seen in the daytime, there is little difficulty in ascertaining the line of their march, for, “sure they the terriblest little cloud o’ dust iver raised, an’ not a bit o’ wind in it at all”, so that a fairy migration is sometimes the talk of the country. “Though be nacher (by nature), they’re not the length av yer finger, they can make themselves the bigness av a tower when it plazes them an’ av that ugliness that ye’d faint wid the looks o’ thim, as knowin’ they can shtrike ye dead on the shpot or change ye into a dog, a pig, or a unicorn or anny other dirthy baste they plaze”.

As a matter of fact, however, the fairies are by no means so numerous at present as they were formerly, a recent historian remarking that the National Schools and societies of Father
Matthew are rapidly driving the fairies out of the country, for “they hate larnin’ an’ wisdom an’ are lovers av nacher entirely”.

In a few remote districts where schools are not yet well established, the good people are still found and their doings are narrated with a childlike faith in the power of the first inhabitants of Ireland, for it seems to be agreed that they were in the country long before the coming either of the Irishman or of his Sassenagh oppressor.

The bodies of the fairies are not composed of flesh and bone but of an ethereal substance, the nature of which is not determined. “Ye can see themselves as plain as the nose on yer face an’ can see through thim like it was a mist”. They have the power of vanishing from human sight, when they please, and the fact that the air is sometimes full of them. Inspires the respect entertained for them, by the peasantry. Sometimes they are heard without being seen and when they travel through the air, as they often do, are known by a humming noise similar to that made by a swarm of bees. Whether or not they have wings is uncertain. Barney Murphy of Kerry thought they had; for several seen by him a number of years ago seemed to have long, semi-transparent pinions, “like thim that grows on a dhraggin-fly”. Barney’s neighbors, however, contradicted him by stoutly denying the good people the attribute of wings and intimated that at the time Barney saw the fairies he was too drunk to distinguish a pair of wings from a pair of legs, so this branch of the subject must remain in doubt.

With regard to their dress, the testimony is undisputed. Young lady fairies wear pure white robes and usually allow their hair to flow loosely over their shoulders; while fairy matrons bind up their tresses in a coil on the top or back of their head, also surrounding the temples with a golden band. Young gentleman elves wear green jackets, with white breeches and stockings; and when a fairy of either sex has need of a cap or head covering, the flower of the fox-glove is brought into requisition.

Male fairies are perfect in all military exercises for, like the other inhabitants of Ireland, fairies are divided into factions, the objects of contention not, in most cases, being definitely known. In Kerry a number of years ago, there was a great battle among the fairies, one party inhabiting a rath or sepulchral mound and the other an unused and lonely graveyard. Paddy O’Donohue was the sole witness of this encounter, the narrative being in his own words:

“I was lyin’ be the road, bein’ on my way home an’ tired wid the walkin’. A bright moon was out that night, an’ I heard a noise like a million av sogers (soldiers) thrampin’ on the road, so I riz (rose) an’ looked, an’ the way was full av little men, the length o’ me hand, wid green coats on, an’ all in rows like wan o’ the ridgmints; aitch wid a pike on his showldher an’ a shield on his arrum. Wan was in front, beway he was the ginral, walkin’ wid his chin up, proud as a paycock. Jagers, but I was skairt an’ prayed fasther than iver I did in me life, for it was too clost to me entirely they wor for comfort or convaynience aither. But they all went by, sorra the wan o’ thim turnin’ his head to raygard me at all, Glory be to God for that same; so they left me. Afther they were clane gone by, I had curiosity to see phat they were after, so I folly’d thim, a good bit aff, an’ ready to jump an’ run like a hare at the laste noise, for I was afeerd if they caught me at it, they’d make a pig o’ me at wanst or change me into a baste completely. They marched into the field bechuxt the graveyard an’ the rath an’ there was another army there wid red coats, from the graveyard an’ the two armies had the biggest fight ye iver seen, the granes agin the reds. Afther lookin’ on a bit, I got axcited, for the granes were batin’ the reds like blazes, an’ I up an’ gave a whilloo an’ called out ‘At ‘em agin. Don’t lave one o’ the blaggards’. An’ wid that word, the sight left me eyes an’ I remimber no more till mornin’, an’ there was I, layin’ on the road where I’d seen thim, as stiff as a crutch.”