Celtic Lore & Legend (22 page)

The hero confronts a dreadful monster.

Their apparel and speech is like that of the people and country under which they live; so are they seen to wear plaids and variegated garments in the Highlands of Scotland, and
suanachs
(plaids) therefore in Ireland. They speak but little, and by way of whistling clear, not rough. The very devils conjured in any country do answer in the language of that place; yet sometimes the subterraneans speak more distinctly than at other times. Their women are said to spin very fine, to dye, to tossue, and embroider, but whether it be as manual operation of industrial refined stuffs, with apt and solid instruments, or only curious cobwebs, unpalpable rainbows and a phantastic imitation of the actions of the more terrestrial mortals, since it transcended all the senses of the seer to discern whether, I leave to conjecture as I found it.

Their men travel much abroad, either presaging or aping the dismal and tragical actions of some amongst us; and have also many disastrous doings of their own, as convocations, fighting, gashes, wounds and burials, both in the earth and air. They live much longer than we, yet die, at last; or at least vanish from that state. ‘Tis one of these tenets that nothing perisheth, but (as the sun and year) everything goes in a circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions, as ‘tis another, that every body in creation moves (which is a sort of life) and that nothing moves but has another animal moving on it; and so on until the utmost minutest corpuscle that’s capable of being a receptacle of life.

They are said to have aristocratical rulers and laws, but no discernable religion, love, or devotion towards God, the blessed Maker of all; they disappear whenever they hear His name invoked, or the name of Jesus (at which all do bow willingly, or by constraint, that dwell above or beneath, within the earth) (Philip ii.10); nor can they act ought at that time after the hearing of the sacred name. The Taiblsdear or seer, that corresponds with this kind of familiars, can bring them with a spell to appear to himself or others when he pleases, as readily as the Endor Witch did those of her own kind. He tells that they are ever readiest to go on hurtful errands but seldom will be the messengers of great good to men. He is not terrified with their sight when he calls them, but seeing them in a surprise (as often as he does) frights him extremely, and glad would he be to be quit of such, for the hideous spectacles seen among them, as the torturing of some wight (spirit or goblin), earnest, ghostly, staring looks, skirmishes and the like. They do not all the harm which, appearingly, they have the power to do; nor are they perceived to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleasant, toyish books; but the operation of these pieces only appears in some paroxysms of antic, corybantic jollity, as if ravished and prompted by a new spirit entering into them at that instant, lighter and merrier than their own. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosicurucian style. They have nothing of the Bible, save collected parcels for charms and counter-charms: not to defend themselves withal, but to operate on other animals, for they are a people invulnerable to weapons, and albeit werewolves and witches true bodies are (by the union of spirit and nature that runs through all, echoing and doubling the blow towards another) wounded at home, when the astral or assumed bodies are stricken elsewhere—as the strings of a second harp, tuned to a unison sound, though only one be struck—yet these people have not a second, or so gross a body at all, to be so pierced, but as
the air which when divided, unites again; or if they feel pain by a blow, they are better physicians than we, and quickly cure. They are not subject to sore sicknesses, but dwindle and decay at a certain period, all about an age. Some say that their continual sadness is because of their pendulous state (like those men: Luke xiii. 2-6), as uncertain what at the last revolution will become of them; when they are locked up into an unchangeable condition; and if they have any frolic fits of mirth, ‘tis as the constrained grinning of a mort’s-head (death’s-head) or rather as acted on a stage and moved by another, than by cordially coming of themselves. But other men of the second sight, being illiterate, and unwary in their observations, differ from those, one averring those subterranean people to be departed souls, attending a while in this inferior state, and clothed with bodies procured through their alms-deeds in this life, fluid, active, eternal vehicles to hold them that they may not scatter nor wander and be lost in the totum or their first nothing; but if any were so impious as to have given no alms, they say, when the souls of such do depart, they sleep in an inactive state till they resume the terrestrial bodies again; others that what the low-country Scotch call a wraith, and the Irish taibhse, or death’s messenger (appearing sometimes as a little rough dog and if crossed and conjured in time will be pacified by the death of any other creature instead of the sick man) is only exuvious fumes of the man approaching death, exhaled and congealed into a various likeness (as ships and armies are sometimes shaped in the air) and called astral bodies, agitated as wildfire with the wind, and are neither souls nor counterfeiting spirits, yet not a few avouch (as is said) that surely these are a numerous people by themselves, having their own politics, which diversities of judgement may occasion several inconsistencies in this rehearsal after the narrowest scrutiny made about it.

It was not only local storytellers—those men and women who sat by the hearthside of a Winter’s night and entertained their neighbors with stories of great deeds in times long past and tales of the imminent supernatural—who looked towards the ancient corpus of belief and tradition. The successors of the oral transmitters, writers and artists, also drew on the lore of former times for their stories and pictures. Some of the writers simply recorded the tales that they heard, but others used the themes and suggestions that they’d heard in the Celtic countryside as a basis around which to build tales of their own. In a sense, they were following a tradition that dated all the way back to the Celtic Bards who changed and embellished some of the ordinary events that they recited into something marvelous and strange.

Many of these writers had either Celtic backgrounds or were interested in Celtic matters. Relatively recent writers such as American H.P. Lovecraft, with his lurking terrors in the hills of rural Rhode Island, or British writers such as
Arthur Machen, with his stories of strange little people hiding in the hollows of rural Wales, owe much to the stories and storytellers of earlier times. They look toward talespinners such as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, who wrote about wizard Earls emerging out of lakes or young girls marrying mouldering corpses (a common theme in some of the more gruesome Irish and Scottish legends); or to the collectors of rural folklore such as Jeremiah Curtin, Elias Owen, or Lady Gregory, with their fearful stories of small children being carried away by shadowy creatures that dwelt amongst (or sometimes under) the gloomy hills. Such stories have provided a basis for much of the fantastic and spine-tingling literature that we have enjoyed over the years.

Even the greatest bogeyman of them all, the dark and cape-clad Count Dracula, may well have his origins in Celtic folktale. Although he is portrayed as a Transylvanian (East European) nobleman, it is possible to argue that the Count may have had his origins in the mists of Celtic folklore. Remember that Dracula’s author, Bram Stoker, was Irish and had been brought up in Dublin, where his family had been attended by serving-maids from County Kerry. Undoubtedly, he would have heard old folktales of the blood-drinking fairies dwelling in the Magillycuddy Reeks Mountains. Later, as a man visiting his old friends Sir William and Lady Wilde, both collectors of folktales, he could have heard old stories of cannibalistic Irish chieftains from North Derry and all of these elements may well have influenced his portrayal of the vampiric Transylvanian nobleman. And similar tales may have also influenced his predecessor, Le Fanu, to pen one of the earliest vampire tales: the celebrated “Carmilla.” Thus novels and even modern-day film may very well have been influenced by the tales told around the Celtic fires of long ago.

Other writers, too, have drawn on Celtic roots for their tales. Stories of unsettled spirits and ancient charms and
shehoguey
places have been featured in many tales right up to today. Even television series such as the
X-Files
and more recently
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
have, from time to time, drawn on Celtic themes and have reawakened interest in these ancient tales. And each year, novels and anthologies appear that reflect, either consciously or unconsciously, many of the motifs and perspectives of an earlier Celtic folklore.

The folktale has come a long way, from the whispered stories in the dark of the night as ancient warriors bedded down for the night; through the yarns and mysteries told and hinted at by local storytellers around the rural hearths as evening drew in; to the books, films, and television series of our fast, “sophisticated,” modern world. Perhaps, in some ways at least, the ancient tales have adapted and have become, almost imperceptibly, a strand of our own culture, serving to show just what a clever animal the folktale is. It will be with us for years to come, for it is a fundamental part of our heritage and culture, and more: it is a fundamental part of
us,
whether we be Celt or not.

Ever since earliest times, peoples all across the world have sought to influence or change the natural course of events through the use of charms and spells. The Celts were no different. In all probability, their shamans had used incantations and allegedly sorcerous materials to affect the outcomes of battles, of kingship, of day-to-day living. This was, of course, part of a continuing Celtic belief that continued down into relatively modern times. Even as late as the early 20th century, the use of certain magical “rhymes” and of special herbs was still in evidence in many parts of the Celtic countryside.

Nowhere, arguably, was the use of charms, incantations and invocations more widespread than in the attempt to instill love into the heart of a desired one. The Celts used a variety of natural materials—herbs, parts of animals, pieces of sacred objects—that they ground into powders and potions as an aid to their charms. They also used waters from certain wells or extracts squeezed from special plants. Some of the
ingredients were more repellent. The more noxious the charm, it seemed, the greater its chances of success. The most grisly of all lovecharms was the burragh-boos or burragh-bos, which had been reputedly handed down from pagan times and which smacked to the later Christian peoples of darkest sorcery.

In her eerie story “Not to Be Taken at Bedtime” (published in
All The Year Round
in 1865), Belfast-born Gothic writer Rosa Mulholland (1841–1921) draws upon the lore and traditions of this ghastly charm. This is a story of terrible love and madness that contains echoes of both J.S. Le Fanu and William Carleton. It is the story of the dark Coll Dhu and of the Devil’s Inn.

by Rosa Mulholland

This is the legend of a house called the Devil’s Inn, standing in the heather on the top of the Connemara Mountains in a shallow valley between five peaks. Tourists sometimes come in sight of it on September evenings, a crazy and weather-stained apparition, with the sun glaring on it angrily between the hills and striking its shattered window-panes. Guides are known to shun it however.

The house was built by a stranger, who came no one knew whence, and whom the people named Coll Dhu (Black Coll) because of his sullen bearing and solitary habits. His dwelling they called the Devil’s Inn because no tired traveller had ever been asked to rest under its roof or friend known to cross its threshold. No-one bore him company in his retreat but a wizen-faced old man, who shunned the good-morrow of the trudging peasant when he took occasional excursions to the nearest village for provisions for himself and master, and who was as secret as a stone concerning all the antecedents of both.