' 'No,' said a third, 'she is
the faery out of the foxglove grown big.
the faery out of the foxglove grown big.
Yeats
In this way he was
kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.
It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of
the Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work
of the Sidhe who live in the heart of phantasy.
A COWARD
ONE day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives
beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who
seemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked
him, and was told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom
robust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with
a nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at
the lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing
of undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had
lived a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he
was coming home late at night, and suddenly felt himself sinking in,
as it were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a
dead brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not
stop till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung
himself against the door with so much of violence that he broke the
thick wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his
wild life, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to
look, either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face,
and he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, 'the
prettiest girl in the country' persuade him to see her home after a
party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the
face no man can see unchanged--the imponderable face of a spirit.
THE THREE O'BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES
IN the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things.
There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing
there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon
the earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the
desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What
wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom!
A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was
straying about a rath called 'Cashel Nore. ' A man with a haggard face
and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and
began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and
asked who the man was. 'That is the third O'Byrne,' was the answer. A
few days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had
been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries
set to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the
family of the O'Byrnes. Before that day three O'Byrnes must find it and
die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last
he got a glimpse of the stone coffer that contained it, but immediately
a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and tore him to
pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished deep into
the earth. The second O'Byrne came and dug and dug until he found the
coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within. He saw some
horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and soon died. The
treasure again sank out of sight. The third O'Byrne is now digging. He
believes that he will die in some terrible way the moment he finds the
treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and the O'Byrne family
made rich for ever, as they were of old.
A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the
shin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole
in it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the
ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath
again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.
DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES
DRUMCLIFF and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!
places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them,
time after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.
Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the
mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall
to loose the faery riders on the world. The great Saint Columba
himself, the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed
the mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.
Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
like a green table-cloth, and lying in the foam midway between the
round cairn-headed Knocknarea and 'Ben Bulben, famous for hawks':
'But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
Many a poor sailor'd be cast away,'
as the rhyme goes.
At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and
rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall
asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake 'silly,'
the 'good people' having carried off his soul. There is no more ready
short-cut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered
and smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes
thither 'full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and
drawing-rooms. ' Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and
was heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland.
These forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all
Rosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most
others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was
poking about there, an unusually intelligent and 'reading' peasant who
had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and
whispered in a timid voice, 'Are you all right, sir? ' I had been some
little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the
dog.
No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by
ill-boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose
northern slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer's young son
came from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards
it, but the 'glamour' fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence,
cross-legged, and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined
the fence was a horse, and that all night long he went on the most
wonderful ride through the country. In the morning he was still beating
his fence, and they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for
three years before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer
tried to level the fort. His cows and horses died, and all manner of
trouble overtook him, and finally he himself was led home, and left
useless with 'his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his
death. '
A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is
another angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with
sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three
or four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the
darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth
two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A
great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers,
but the creatures had gone.
To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of
never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door
in the evening, and, in her own words, 'looks at the mountains and
thinks of the goodness of God,' God is all the nearer, because the
pagan powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for
hawks, the white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild
unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the
White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad
cloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even
though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long
while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of
her dress touched him. 'He fell down, and was dead three days. ' But
this is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that
join this world and the other.
One night as I sat eating Mrs. H----'s soda-bread, her husband told me a
longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor man
from Fin M'Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell
of, for those creatures, the 'good people,' love to repeat themselves.
At any rate the story-tellers do. 'In the times when we used to travel
by the canal,' he said, 'I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued
I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then
we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls
milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked
them for a drink of milk. "We have nothing to put it in here," they
said, "but come to the house with us. " We went home with them, and sat
round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,
loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to
eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it
on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.
When I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It
grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave
the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them
a corpse. When I saw them coming I hid behind the door. Says one to the
other, putting the corpse on the spit, "Who'll turn the spit? " Says
the other, "Michael H----, come out of that and turn the meat. " I came
out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. "Michael H----," says
the one who spoke first, "if you let it burn we'll have to put you on
the spit instead"; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling
and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But
having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that
time; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: "Michael H----,
can you tell me a story? " "Divil a one," said I. On which he caught
me by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing
night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night--the darkest
night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for
the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on
the shoulder, with a "Michael H----, can you tell a story now? " "I can,"
says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says: "Begin. " "I
have no story but the one," says I, "that I was sitting here, and you
two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and set me turning
it. " "That will do," says he; "ye may go in there and lie down on the
bed. " And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning where was I but in
the middle of a green field! '
'Drumcliff' is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing
season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a
place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient
boat, with Saint Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread
portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,
renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or
care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest
boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchulain and his heroes. A
vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.
Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,
hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men
in armour, shadow-hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so
on. A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there
is a very ancient graveyard. _The Annals of the Four Masters_ have
this verse about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: 'A pious
soldier of the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff. ' Not
very long ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night
to pray, saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where
she was going. It was the 'pious soldier of the race of Con,' says
local wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the
graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling
the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from
the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut
your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.
There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the
snipe-ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know
well: for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses
or on the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea.
There is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived
there who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred
pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man
knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,
not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly
afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered
since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive
out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade
of the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:
once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put
spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,
they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.
My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
'They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine': for it
is dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself
or knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
friend, 'the sweet Harp-String' (I give no more than his Irish name
for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest
heart, but then he supplies the _potheen_-makers with grain from his
own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who
raised the 'dhoul' in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of
prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures.
They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the
parentage of magicians be true.
THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE
I
ONCE a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made
them feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break,
and they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet,
and worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
Icelanders, or 'Danes' as we call them and all other dwellers in the
Scandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,
and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same
way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the
custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people
of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland
which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses
itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as
Roughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red
beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a
boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike
each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint
of hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing,
only to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a
man from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row,
and made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so
thin you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of
passionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and
cried, 'That little fellow's skull if ye were to hit it would go like
an egg-shell,' he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,
'but a man might wallop away at your lordship's for a fortnight. '
II
I wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories. I
was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate
places. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for
the memories of one's childhood are brittle things to lean upon.
1902.
THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR
A SEA captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his
deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the
valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
with a Captain Moran on board the ss. _Margaret_, that had put into a
western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
his words broke the hard energy of his calling.
'Sur,' said he, 'did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer? '
'No,' said I; 'what is it? '
'It is,' he replied, '"O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip. "'
'And what does that mean? '
'It means,' he said, 'that when they come to me some night and wake me
up, and say, "Captain, we're going down," that I won't make a fool o'
meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin' on the bridge,
when the third mate comes up to me lookin' mortial bad. Says he,
"Captain, all's up with us. " Says I, "Didn't you know when you joined
that a certain percentage go down every year? " "Yes, sur," says he; and
says I, "Arn't you paid to go down? " "Yes, sur," says he; and says I,
"Then go down like a man, and be damned to you! "'
CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY
IN Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far
apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many
years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, 'There
is a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there
are two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way
the one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has
shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for
shelter. I don't believe it, but there is many a one would not pass
by it at night. ' Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near
together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than
the shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
creature why she did not have it cut short. 'It was my grandmother's,'
said the child; 'would you have her going about yonder with her
petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days? ' I have read
a story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had
made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never go leaky, nor
the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
righteous from the unrighteous.
1892 and 1902.
THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES
SOMETIMES when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond
the power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will,
and sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands.
One day I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went
a circular parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating
precious stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered
green and crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable
hunger. I knew that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell
of the artist, and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful
things with too avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless
and common. I have seen into other people's hells also, and saw in
one an infernal Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who
weighed on a curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed,
but the good deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could
see the scales go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were,
I knew, crowding about him. I saw, on another occasion a quantity of
demons of all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and
dog-like--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and
looking at a moon-like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from
the depths of the pit.
OUR LADY OF THE HILLS
WHEN we were children we did not say at such a distance from the
post-office, or so far from the butcher's or the grocer's, but measured
things by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in
the hill. We belonged then to God and to His works, and to things come
down from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised
had we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon
the mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed
love--every eternal mood,--but now the draw-net is about our feet. A few
miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Protestant girl, who was both
pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up
among those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how
she met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When
they first saw her they threw themselves face down in a bed of rushes,
as if in a great fear; but after a little other children came about
them, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed
their fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little
girl threw herself into them with the cry, 'Ah, you are the Virgin out
o' the picture! ' 'No,' said another, coming near also, 'she is a sky
faery, for she has the colour of the sky.
' 'No,' said a third, 'she is
the faery out of the foxglove grown big. ' The other children, however,
would have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin's
colours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got
the children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was,
but they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of
no avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? 'Yes,' said one;
'but we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the
Virgin. ' 'Tell Him to be good to me,' whispered another into her ear.
'He would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil,' burst out a
third.
She talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was
finally interrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her
to be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children away,
despite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come
to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had
gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the
child who was called 'a divil' jumped down from the high ditch by the
lane, and said she would believe her 'an ordinary lady' if she had 'two
skirts,' for 'ladies always had two skirts. ' The 'two skirts' were
shown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later
jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, 'Dad's a divil,
mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,'
and having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When
my pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had
dropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon
the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child
who had first called her the Virgin out o' the picture, and saw the
tassels hanging about the child's neck, and said, 'I am the lady you
met last year, who told you about Christ. ' 'No, you are not! no, you
are not! no, you are not! ' was the passionate reply. And after all, it
was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking
in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who
cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that
men pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and
the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and
evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.
THE GOLDEN AGE
A WHILE ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time
I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a
message from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who
inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw
with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,
moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal
vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his
pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;
and I remembered a peasant belief about two faery dogs who go about
representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the
excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and
chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage
and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,
and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest
emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden
Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a
beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and
flung into a corner. It said that the world was once all perfect and
kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried
like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and
the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over
our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the
song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of
the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the
clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred
by a little vulgarity, or by a pinprick out of sad recollection, and
that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only
they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the
sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must
weep until the Eternal gates swing open.
We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the fiddler
put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a copper, and
then opened the door and was gone.
A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF THEIR
GHOSTS AND FAERIES
NOT only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the
other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in
front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,
and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It
would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An
Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.
For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and
spirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the
other side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither
will go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man
Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his
horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a
needle into her. They to a river, and she grew very restless, fearing
to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her. She
cried out, 'Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-like
slave' (the needle) 'out of me. ' They came to an inn. He turned the
light of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling
star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they
treat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery
loved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.
Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted
knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take
long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done
so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped
her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little
child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her
make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out
of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off
with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm
into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand
through the treachery of the child.
In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
the Devil religious. 'Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the
minister? ' he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
have left them alone. To be sure, the 'loyal minority' knocked out the
eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town
of Carrickfergus. But then the 'loyal minority' is half Scottish. You
have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to
have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have
gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn
have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear
their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes
ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland
you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been
permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.
Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they
will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in
sadness in anger have they said it. The Catholic religion likes to keep
on good terms with its neighbours.
These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and
graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror
to Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of
make-believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is
made to turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not
feel anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the
dew on his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have
soured the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The
piper M'Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched
into a sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a
long time the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a
mile, when they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased
suddenly. Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern
completely flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of
the cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake
where treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close
to the coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came.
He rose to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen
the treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while
his heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw
the rest of his body.
These water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish
folk-lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our
tales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly
humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one
of these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does
not prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding
it with conscious phantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day
for congers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my
shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground
behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an
immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had
broken my line and escaped. 'That was him,' said the fisherman. 'Did
you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,
you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast
comes up to him, and says, "What are you after? " "Stones, sur," says
he. "Don't you think you had better be going? " "Yes, sur," says he. And
that's why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got
poor, but that's not true. '
You--you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and
air and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We--we exchange
civilities with the world beyond.
WAR
WHEN there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor
Sligo woman, a soldier's widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence
out of a letter I had just had from London: 'The people here are mad
for war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully,' or some
like sentence. Her mind ran a good deal on war, which she imagined
partly from what she had heard from soldiers, and partly from tradition
of the rebellion of '98, but the word London doubled her interest, for
she knew there were a great many people in London, and she herself
had once lived in 'a congested district. ' 'There are too many over
one another in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is
killed they want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want
nothing but peace and quietness. The people here don't mind the war
coming. They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die
soldierly before God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven. ' Then
she began to say that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed
about on bayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of
the great rebellion. She said presently, 'I never knew a man that was
in a battle that liked to speak of it after. They'd sooner be throwing
hay down from a hayrick. ' She told me how she and her neighbours used
to be sitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war
that was coming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she
had dreamed that all the bay was 'stranded and covered with seaweed. '
I asked her if it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much
afraid of war coming. But she cried out, 'Never had I such fun and
pleasure as in the Fenian times. I was in a house where some of the
officers used to be staying, and in the daytime I would be walking
after the soldiers' band, and at night I'd be going down to the end
of the garden watching a soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling
the Fenians in the field behind the house. One night the boys tied the
liver of an old horse, that had been dead three weeks, to the knocker,
and I found it when I opened the door in the morning. ' And presently
our talk of war shifted, as it had a way of doing, to the battle of the
Black Pig, which seems to her a battle between Ireland and England,
but to me an Armageddon which shall quench all things in the Ancestral
Darkness again, and from this to sayings about war and vengeance. 'Do
you know,' she said, 'what the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put
the man-child on the spear, and somebody said to them, "You will be
cursed in the fourth generation after you," and that is why disease or
anything always comes in the fourth generation. '
1902.
THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL
I HAVE heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of
Clare and Galway, say that in 'every household' of faery 'there is a
queen and a fool,' and that if you are 'touched' by either you never
recover, though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said
of the fool that he was 'maybe the wisest of all,' and spoke of him
as dressed like one of 'the mummers that used to be going about the
country. ' Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him,
and I have heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember
seeing a long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage
of an old miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told
that he was a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has
gathered that he is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether
he becomes an _Amadan-na-Breena_, a fool of the forth, and is attached
to a household there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know
well, and who has been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said,
'There are fools amongst them, and the fools we see, like that _Amadan_
of Ballylee, go away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that
we call _Oinseachs_ (apes). ' A woman who is related to the witch-doctor
on the border of Clare, and who can cure people and cattle by spells,
said, 'There are some cures I can't do. I can't help any one that has
got a stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a
woman that saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian.
I never heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking
near Gort, and she called out, "There's the fool of the forth coming
after me. " So her friends that were with her called out, though they
could see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no
harm. He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that
is all she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a
cousin of Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years. ' The wife of
the old miller said, 'It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but
the stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets
that is gone. The _Amadan-na-Breena_ we call him! ' And an old woman
who lives in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, 'It is true
enough, there is no cure for the stroke of the _Amadan-na-Breena_.
There was an old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell
what diseases you had with measuring you; and he knew many things,
and he said to me one time, "What month of the year is the worst? "
and I said, "The month of May, of course. " "It is not," he said; "but
the month of June, for that's the month that the _Amadan_ gives his
stroke! " They say he looks like any other man, but he's leathan (wide),
and not smart. I knew a boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb
looked over the wall at him with a beard on it, and he knew it was the
_Amadan_, for it was the month of June. And they brought him to that
man I was telling about, that had the tape, and when he saw him he
said, "Send for the priest, and get a Mass said over him. " And so they
did, and what would you say but he's living yet and has a family! A
certain Regan said, "They, the other sort of people, might be passing
you close here and they might touch you. But any that gets the touch
of the _Amadan-na-Breena_ is done for. " It's true enough that it's in
the month of June he's most likely to give the touch. I knew one that
got it, and he told me about it himself. He was a boy I knew well, and
he told me that one night a gentleman came to him, that had been his
landlord, and that was dead. And he told him to come along with him,
for he wanted him to fight another man. And when he went he found two
great troops of them, and the other troop had a living man with them
too, and he was put to fight him. And they had a great fight, and he
got the better of the other man, and then the troop on his side gave a
great shout, and he was left home again. But about three years after
that he was cutting bushes in a wood and he saw the _Amadan_ coming at
him. He had a big vessel in his arms, and it was shining, so that the
boy could see nothing else; but he put it behind his back then and came
running, and the boy said he looked wild and wide, like the side of the
hill. And the boy ran, and he threw the vessel after him, and it broke
with a great noise, and whatever came out of it, his head was gone
there and then. He lived for a while after, and used to tell us many
things, but his wits were gone. He thought they mightn't have liked him
to beat the other man, and he used to be afraid something would come
on him. ' And an old woman in a Galway workhouse, who had some little
knowledge of Queen Maive, said the other day, 'The _Amadan-na-Breena_
changes his shape every two days. Sometimes he comes like a youngster,
and then he'll come like the worst of beasts, trying to give the touch
he used to be. I heard it said of late he was shot, but I think myself
it would be hard to shoot him. '
I knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind's eye an image of
AEngus, the old Irish god of love and poetry and ecstasy, who changed
four of his kisses into birds, and suddenly the image of a man with a
cap and bells rushed before his mind's eye, and grew vivid and spoke
and called itself 'AEngus' messenger. ' And I knew another man, a truly
great seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there
was a tree with peacocks' feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that
opened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them
with his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a
pool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up
from the pool.
What else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and
beauty? and foolishness may be a kind of death. I cannot think
wonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel or some
enchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in 'every
household of them. ' It is natural, too, that there should be a queen
to every household of them, and that one should hear little of their
kings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient
peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. The
self, which is the foundation of our knowledge, is broken in pieces
by foolishness, and is forgotten in the sudden emotions of women, and
therefore fools may get, and women do get of a certainty, glimpses of
much that sanctity finds at the end of its painful journey. The man who
saw the white fool said of a certain woman, not a peasant woman, 'If I
had her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and
her visions do not interest her. ' And I know of another woman, also not
a peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into countries of an unearthly
beauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about her house
and her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called
it. Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to
those who die every day they live, though their dying may not be like
the dying Shakespeare spoke of. There is a war between the living and
the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have
it that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of
the earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their
wisdom when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make
the trees wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery
in November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because
the soul always believes in these, or in like things, the cell and the
wilderness shall never be long empty, or lovers come into the world who
will not understand the verse--
'Heardst thou not sweet words among
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
Heardst thou not that those who die
Awake in a world of ecstasy?
How love, when limbs are interwoven,
And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
And thought to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
And music when one's beloved is singing,
Is death? '
1901.
THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY
THOSE that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of
their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to
have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has
passed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw
the dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.
There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
me a few months before his death that 'they' would not let him sleep
at night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their
pipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend
had told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or
to play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and
he did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play.
He showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he
did not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
she heard that 'three of them' had told him he was to die.
kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.
It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of
the Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work
of the Sidhe who live in the heart of phantasy.
A COWARD
ONE day I was at the house of my friend the strong farmer, who lives
beyond Ben Bulben and Cope's mountain, and met there a young lad who
seemed to be disliked by the two daughters. I asked why they disliked
him, and was told he was a coward. This interested me, for some whom
robust children of nature take to be cowards are but men and women with
a nervous system too finely made for their life and work. I looked at
the lad; but no, that pink-and-white face and strong body had nothing
of undue sensibility. After a little he told me his story. He had
lived a wild and reckless life, until one day, two years before, he
was coming home late at night, and suddenly felt himself sinking in,
as it were, upon the ghostly world. For a moment he saw the face of a
dead brother rise up before him, and then he turned and ran. He did not
stop till he came to a cottage nearly a mile down the road. He flung
himself against the door with so much of violence that he broke the
thick wooden bolt and fell upon the floor. From that day he gave up his
wild life, but was a hopeless coward. Nothing could ever bring him to
look, either by day or night, upon the spot where he had seen the face,
and he often went two miles round to avoid it; nor could, he said, 'the
prettiest girl in the country' persuade him to see her home after a
party if he were alone. He feared everything, for he had looked at the
face no man can see unchanged--the imponderable face of a spirit.
THE THREE O'BYRNES AND THE EVIL FAERIES
IN the dim kingdom there is a great abundance of all excellent things.
There is more love there than upon the earth; there is more dancing
there than upon the earth; and there is more treasure there than upon
the earth. In the beginning the earth was perhaps made to fulfil the
desire of man, but now it has got old and fallen into decay. What
wonder if we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom!
A friend was once at a village near Sleive League. One day he was
straying about a rath called 'Cashel Nore. ' A man with a haggard face
and unkempt hair, and clothes falling in pieces, came into the rath and
began digging. My friend turned to a peasant who was working near and
asked who the man was. 'That is the third O'Byrne,' was the answer. A
few days after he learned this story: A great quantity of treasure had
been buried in the rath in pagan times, and a number of evil faeries
set to guard it; but some day it was to be found and belong to the
family of the O'Byrnes. Before that day three O'Byrnes must find it and
die. Two had already done so. The first had dug and dug until at last
he got a glimpse of the stone coffer that contained it, but immediately
a thing like a huge hairy dog came down the mountain and tore him to
pieces. The next morning the treasure had again vanished deep into
the earth. The second O'Byrne came and dug and dug until he found the
coffer, and lifted the lid and saw the gold shining within. He saw some
horrible sight the next moment, and went raving mad and soon died. The
treasure again sank out of sight. The third O'Byrne is now digging. He
believes that he will die in some terrible way the moment he finds the
treasure, but that the spell will be broken, and the O'Byrne family
made rich for ever, as they were of old.
A peasant of the neighbourhood once saw the treasure. He found the
shin-bone of a hare lying on the grass. He took it up; there was a hole
in it; he looked through the hole, and saw the gold heaped up under the
ground. He hurried home to bring a spade, but when he got to the rath
again he could not find the spot where he had seen it.
DRUMCLIFF AND ROSSES
DRUMCLIFF and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven!
places of unearthly resort. I have lived near by them and in them,
time after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore.
Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the
mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall
to loose the faery riders on the world. The great Saint Columba
himself, the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed
the mountains on one notable day to get near heaven with his prayers.
Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with short grass,
like a green table-cloth, and lying in the foam midway between the
round cairn-headed Knocknarea and 'Ben Bulben, famous for hawks':
'But for Benbulben and Knocknarea
Many a poor sailor'd be cast away,'
as the rhyme goes.
At the northern corner of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and
rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted place. No wise peasant would fall
asleep under its low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake 'silly,'
the 'good people' having carried off his soul. There is no more ready
short-cut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered
and smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes
thither 'full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and
drawing-rooms. ' Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and
was heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland.
These forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all
Rosses and all Columkille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most
others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I was
poking about there, an unusually intelligent and 'reading' peasant who
had come with me, and waited outside, knelt down by the opening, and
whispered in a timid voice, 'Are you all right, sir? ' I had been some
little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the
dog.
No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by
ill-boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose
northern slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer's young son
came from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards
it, but the 'glamour' fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence,
cross-legged, and commenced beating it with a stick, for he imagined
the fence was a horse, and that all night long he went on the most
wonderful ride through the country. In the morning he was still beating
his fence, and they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for
three years before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer
tried to level the fort. His cows and horses died, and all manner of
trouble overtook him, and finally he himself was led home, and left
useless with 'his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his
death. '
A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is
another angle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with
sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three
or four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the
darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth
two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A
great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers,
but the creatures had gone.
To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of
never-fading mystery. When the aged countrywoman stands at her door
in the evening, and, in her own words, 'looks at the mountains and
thinks of the goodness of God,' God is all the nearer, because the
pagan powers are not far: because northward in Ben Bulben, famous for
hawks, the white square door swings open at sundown, and those wild
unchristian riders rush forth upon the fields, while southward the
White Lady, who is doubtless Maive herself, wanders under the broad
cloud nightcap of Knocknarea. How may she doubt these things, even
though the priest shakes his head at her? Did not a herd-boy, no long
while since, see the White Lady? She passed so close that the skirt of
her dress touched him. 'He fell down, and was dead three days. ' But
this is merely the small gossip of faerydom--the little stitches that
join this world and the other.
One night as I sat eating Mrs. H----'s soda-bread, her husband told me a
longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor man
from Fin M'Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell
of, for those creatures, the 'good people,' love to repeat themselves.
At any rate the story-tellers do. 'In the times when we used to travel
by the canal,' he said, 'I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued
I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then
we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls
milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked
them for a drink of milk. "We have nothing to put it in here," they
said, "but come to the house with us. " We went home with them, and sat
round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,
loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to
eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it
on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.
When I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again. It
grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave
the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them
a corpse. When I saw them coming I hid behind the door. Says one to the
other, putting the corpse on the spit, "Who'll turn the spit? " Says
the other, "Michael H----, come out of that and turn the meat. " I came
out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. "Michael H----," says
the one who spoke first, "if you let it burn we'll have to put you on
the spit instead"; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling
and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But
having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that
time; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: "Michael H----,
can you tell me a story? " "Divil a one," said I. On which he caught
me by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing
night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night--the darkest
night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for
the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on
the shoulder, with a "Michael H----, can you tell a story now? " "I can,"
says I. In he brought me; and putting me by the fire, says: "Begin. " "I
have no story but the one," says I, "that I was sitting here, and you
two men brought in a corpse and put it on the spit, and set me turning
it. " "That will do," says he; "ye may go in there and lie down on the
bed. " And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning where was I but in
the middle of a green field! '
'Drumcliff' is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing
season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a
place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient
boat, with Saint Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread
portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,
renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or
care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest
boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchulain and his heroes. A
vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.
Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,
hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men
in armour, shadow-hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so
on. A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there
is a very ancient graveyard. _The Annals of the Four Masters_ have
this verse about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: 'A pious
soldier of the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff. ' Not
very long ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night
to pray, saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where
she was going. It was the 'pious soldier of the race of Con,' says
local wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the
graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling
the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from
the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut
your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.
There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the
snipe-ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know
well: for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses
or on the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea.
There is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived
there who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred
pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea captain. This my man
knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,
not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly
afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered
since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive
out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade
of the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:
once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put
spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,
they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.
My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
'They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine': for it
is dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself
or knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
friend, 'the sweet Harp-String' (I give no more than his Irish name
for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest
heart, but then he supplies the _potheen_-makers with grain from his
own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who
raised the 'dhoul' in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of
prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures.
They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the
parentage of magicians be true.
THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE
I
ONCE a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made
them feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break,
and they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet,
and worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
Icelanders, or 'Danes' as we call them and all other dwellers in the
Scandinavian countries. In some of our mountainous and barren places,
and in our seaboard villages, we still test each other in much the same
way the Icelanders tested the head of Egil. We may have acquired the
custom from those ancient Danish pirates, whose descendants the people
of Rosses tell me still remember every field and hillock in Ireland
which once belonged to their forebears, and are able to describe Rosses
itself as well as any native. There is one seaboard district known as
Roughley, where the men are never known to shave or trim their wild red
beards, and where there is a fight ever on foot. I have seen them at a
boat-race fall foul of each other, and after much loud Gaelic, strike
each other with oars. The first boat had gone aground, and by dint
of hitting out with the long oars kept the second boat from passing,
only to give the victory to the third. One day the Sligo people say a
man from Roughley was tried in Sligo for breaking a skull in a row,
and made the defence not unknown in Ireland, that some heads are so
thin you cannot be responsible for them. Having turned with a look of
passionate contempt towards the solicitor who was prosecuting, and
cried, 'That little fellow's skull if ye were to hit it would go like
an egg-shell,' he beamed upon the judge, and said in a wheedling voice,
'but a man might wallop away at your lordship's for a fortnight. '
II
I wrote all this years ago, out of what were even then old memories. I
was in Roughley the other day, and found it much like other desolate
places. I may have been thinking of Moughorow, a much wilder place, for
the memories of one's childhood are brittle things to lean upon.
1902.
THE RELIGION OF A SAILOR
A SEA captain when he stands upon the bridge, or looks out from his
deck-house, thinks much about God and about the world. Away in the
valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
with a Captain Moran on board the ss. _Margaret_, that had put into a
western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
his words broke the hard energy of his calling.
'Sur,' said he, 'did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer? '
'No,' said I; 'what is it? '
'It is,' he replied, '"O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip. "'
'And what does that mean? '
'It means,' he said, 'that when they come to me some night and wake me
up, and say, "Captain, we're going down," that I won't make a fool o'
meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin' on the bridge,
when the third mate comes up to me lookin' mortial bad. Says he,
"Captain, all's up with us. " Says I, "Didn't you know when you joined
that a certain percentage go down every year? " "Yes, sur," says he; and
says I, "Arn't you paid to go down? " "Yes, sur," says he; and says I,
"Then go down like a man, and be damned to you! "'
CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY
IN Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far
apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many
years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, 'There
is a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there
are two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way
the one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has
shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for
shelter. I don't believe it, but there is many a one would not pass
by it at night. ' Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near
together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than
the shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
creature why she did not have it cut short. 'It was my grandmother's,'
said the child; 'would you have her going about yonder with her
petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days? ' I have read
a story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had
made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never go leaky, nor
the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
righteous from the unrighteous.
1892 and 1902.
THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES
SOMETIMES when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond
the power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will,
and sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands.
One day I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went
a circular parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating
precious stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered
green and crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable
hunger. I knew that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell
of the artist, and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful
things with too avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless
and common. I have seen into other people's hells also, and saw in
one an infernal Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who
weighed on a curious double scales not only the evil deeds committed,
but the good deeds left undone, of certain invisible shades. I could
see the scales go up and down, but I could not see the shades who were,
I knew, crowding about him. I saw, on another occasion a quantity of
demons of all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and
dog-like--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and
looking at a moon-like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from
the depths of the pit.
OUR LADY OF THE HILLS
WHEN we were children we did not say at such a distance from the
post-office, or so far from the butcher's or the grocer's, but measured
things by the covered well in the wood, or by the burrow of the fox in
the hill. We belonged then to God and to His works, and to things come
down from the ancient days. We would not have been greatly surprised
had we met the shining feet of an angel among the white mushrooms upon
the mountains, for we knew in those days immense despair, unfathomed
love--every eternal mood,--but now the draw-net is about our feet. A few
miles eastward of Lough Gill, a young Protestant girl, who was both
pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white, wandered up
among those mountain mushrooms, and I have a letter of hers telling how
she met a troop of children, and became a portion of their dream. When
they first saw her they threw themselves face down in a bed of rushes,
as if in a great fear; but after a little other children came about
them, and they got up and followed her almost bravely. She noticed
their fear, and presently stood still and held out her arms. A little
girl threw herself into them with the cry, 'Ah, you are the Virgin out
o' the picture! ' 'No,' said another, coming near also, 'she is a sky
faery, for she has the colour of the sky.
' 'No,' said a third, 'she is
the faery out of the foxglove grown big. ' The other children, however,
would have it that she was indeed the Virgin, for she wore the Virgin's
colours. Her good Protestant heart was greatly troubled, and she got
the children to sit down about her, and tried to explain who she was,
but they would have none of her explanation. Finding explanation of
no avail, she asked had they ever heard of Christ? 'Yes,' said one;
'but we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the
Virgin. ' 'Tell Him to be good to me,' whispered another into her ear.
'He would not let me near Him, for dad says I am a divil,' burst out a
third.
She talked to them a long time about Christ and the apostles, but was
finally interrupted by an elderly woman with a stick, who, taking her
to be some adventurous hunter for converts, drove the children away,
despite their explanation that here was the great Queen of Heaven come
to walk upon the mountain and be kind to them. When the children had
gone she went on her way, and had walked about half-a-mile, when the
child who was called 'a divil' jumped down from the high ditch by the
lane, and said she would believe her 'an ordinary lady' if she had 'two
skirts,' for 'ladies always had two skirts. ' The 'two skirts' were
shown, and the child went away crestfallen, but a few minutes later
jumped down again from the ditch, and cried angrily, 'Dad's a divil,
mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,'
and having flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing. When
my pretty Protestant had come to her own home she found that she had
dropped the tassels of her parasol. A year later she was by chance upon
the mountain, but wearing now a plain black dress, and met the child
who had first called her the Virgin out o' the picture, and saw the
tassels hanging about the child's neck, and said, 'I am the lady you
met last year, who told you about Christ. ' 'No, you are not! no, you
are not! no, you are not! ' was the passionate reply. And after all, it
was not my pretty Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking
in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who
cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that
men pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and
the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and
evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the stars.
THE GOLDEN AGE
A WHILE ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time
I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a
message from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who
inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw
with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,
moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal
vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his
pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;
and I remembered a peasant belief about two faery dogs who go about
representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the
excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and
chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage
and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,
and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest
emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden
Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a
beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and
flung into a corner. It said that the world was once all perfect and
kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried
like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and
the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over
our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the
song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of
the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the
clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred
by a little vulgarity, or by a pinprick out of sad recollection, and
that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only
they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the
sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must
weep until the Eternal gates swing open.
We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the fiddler
put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a copper, and
then opened the door and was gone.
A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF THEIR
GHOSTS AND FAERIES
NOT only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the
other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in
front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,
and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It
would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An
Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.
For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and
spirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the
other side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither
will go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man
Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his
horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a
needle into her. They to a river, and she grew very restless, fearing
to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her. She
cried out, 'Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-like
slave' (the needle) 'out of me. ' They came to an inn. He turned the
light of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling
star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they
treat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery
loved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.
Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted
knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take
long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done
so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped
her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little
child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her
make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out
of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off
with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm
into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand
through the treachery of the child.
In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
the Devil religious. 'Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the
minister? ' he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
have left them alone. To be sure, the 'loyal minority' knocked out the
eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town
of Carrickfergus. But then the 'loyal minority' is half Scottish. You
have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to
have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have
gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn
have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear
their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes
ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland
you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been
permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.
Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they
will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in
sadness in anger have they said it. The Catholic religion likes to keep
on good terms with its neighbours.
These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and
graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror
to Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of
make-believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is
made to turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not
feel anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the
dew on his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have
soured the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The
piper M'Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched
into a sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a
long time the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a
mile, when they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased
suddenly. Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern
completely flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of
the cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake
where treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close
to the coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came.
He rose to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen
the treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while
his heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw
the rest of his body.
These water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish
folk-lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our
tales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly
humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one
of these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does
not prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding
it with conscious phantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day
for congers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my
shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground
behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an
immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had
broken my line and escaped. 'That was him,' said the fisherman. 'Did
you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,
you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast
comes up to him, and says, "What are you after? " "Stones, sur," says
he. "Don't you think you had better be going? " "Yes, sur," says he. And
that's why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got
poor, but that's not true. '
You--you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and
air and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We--we exchange
civilities with the world beyond.
WAR
WHEN there was a rumour of war with France a while ago, I met a poor
Sligo woman, a soldier's widow, that I know, and I read her a sentence
out of a letter I had just had from London: 'The people here are mad
for war, but France seems inclined to take things peacefully,' or some
like sentence. Her mind ran a good deal on war, which she imagined
partly from what she had heard from soldiers, and partly from tradition
of the rebellion of '98, but the word London doubled her interest, for
she knew there were a great many people in London, and she herself
had once lived in 'a congested district. ' 'There are too many over
one another in London. They are getting tired of the world. It is
killed they want to be. It will be no matter; but sure the French want
nothing but peace and quietness. The people here don't mind the war
coming. They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die
soldierly before God. Sure they will get quarters in heaven. ' Then
she began to say that it would be a hard thing to see children tossed
about on bayonets, and I knew her mind was running on traditions of
the great rebellion. She said presently, 'I never knew a man that was
in a battle that liked to speak of it after. They'd sooner be throwing
hay down from a hayrick. ' She told me how she and her neighbours used
to be sitting over the fire when she was a girl, talking of the war
that was coming, and now she was afraid it was coming again, for she
had dreamed that all the bay was 'stranded and covered with seaweed. '
I asked her if it was in the Fenian times that she had been so much
afraid of war coming. But she cried out, 'Never had I such fun and
pleasure as in the Fenian times. I was in a house where some of the
officers used to be staying, and in the daytime I would be walking
after the soldiers' band, and at night I'd be going down to the end
of the garden watching a soldier, with his red coat on him, drilling
the Fenians in the field behind the house. One night the boys tied the
liver of an old horse, that had been dead three weeks, to the knocker,
and I found it when I opened the door in the morning. ' And presently
our talk of war shifted, as it had a way of doing, to the battle of the
Black Pig, which seems to her a battle between Ireland and England,
but to me an Armageddon which shall quench all things in the Ancestral
Darkness again, and from this to sayings about war and vengeance. 'Do
you know,' she said, 'what the curse of the Four Fathers is? They put
the man-child on the spear, and somebody said to them, "You will be
cursed in the fourth generation after you," and that is why disease or
anything always comes in the fourth generation. '
1902.
THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL
I HAVE heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of
Clare and Galway, say that in 'every household' of faery 'there is a
queen and a fool,' and that if you are 'touched' by either you never
recover, though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said
of the fool that he was 'maybe the wisest of all,' and spoke of him
as dressed like one of 'the mummers that used to be going about the
country. ' Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him,
and I have heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember
seeing a long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage
of an old miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told
that he was a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has
gathered that he is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether
he becomes an _Amadan-na-Breena_, a fool of the forth, and is attached
to a household there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know
well, and who has been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said,
'There are fools amongst them, and the fools we see, like that _Amadan_
of Ballylee, go away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that
we call _Oinseachs_ (apes). ' A woman who is related to the witch-doctor
on the border of Clare, and who can cure people and cattle by spells,
said, 'There are some cures I can't do. I can't help any one that has
got a stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a
woman that saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian.
I never heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking
near Gort, and she called out, "There's the fool of the forth coming
after me. " So her friends that were with her called out, though they
could see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no
harm. He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that
is all she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a
cousin of Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years. ' The wife of
the old miller said, 'It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but
the stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets
that is gone. The _Amadan-na-Breena_ we call him! ' And an old woman
who lives in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, 'It is true
enough, there is no cure for the stroke of the _Amadan-na-Breena_.
There was an old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell
what diseases you had with measuring you; and he knew many things,
and he said to me one time, "What month of the year is the worst? "
and I said, "The month of May, of course. " "It is not," he said; "but
the month of June, for that's the month that the _Amadan_ gives his
stroke! " They say he looks like any other man, but he's leathan (wide),
and not smart. I knew a boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb
looked over the wall at him with a beard on it, and he knew it was the
_Amadan_, for it was the month of June. And they brought him to that
man I was telling about, that had the tape, and when he saw him he
said, "Send for the priest, and get a Mass said over him. " And so they
did, and what would you say but he's living yet and has a family! A
certain Regan said, "They, the other sort of people, might be passing
you close here and they might touch you. But any that gets the touch
of the _Amadan-na-Breena_ is done for. " It's true enough that it's in
the month of June he's most likely to give the touch. I knew one that
got it, and he told me about it himself. He was a boy I knew well, and
he told me that one night a gentleman came to him, that had been his
landlord, and that was dead. And he told him to come along with him,
for he wanted him to fight another man. And when he went he found two
great troops of them, and the other troop had a living man with them
too, and he was put to fight him. And they had a great fight, and he
got the better of the other man, and then the troop on his side gave a
great shout, and he was left home again. But about three years after
that he was cutting bushes in a wood and he saw the _Amadan_ coming at
him. He had a big vessel in his arms, and it was shining, so that the
boy could see nothing else; but he put it behind his back then and came
running, and the boy said he looked wild and wide, like the side of the
hill. And the boy ran, and he threw the vessel after him, and it broke
with a great noise, and whatever came out of it, his head was gone
there and then. He lived for a while after, and used to tell us many
things, but his wits were gone. He thought they mightn't have liked him
to beat the other man, and he used to be afraid something would come
on him. ' And an old woman in a Galway workhouse, who had some little
knowledge of Queen Maive, said the other day, 'The _Amadan-na-Breena_
changes his shape every two days. Sometimes he comes like a youngster,
and then he'll come like the worst of beasts, trying to give the touch
he used to be. I heard it said of late he was shot, but I think myself
it would be hard to shoot him. '
I knew a man who was trying to bring before his mind's eye an image of
AEngus, the old Irish god of love and poetry and ecstasy, who changed
four of his kisses into birds, and suddenly the image of a man with a
cap and bells rushed before his mind's eye, and grew vivid and spoke
and called itself 'AEngus' messenger. ' And I knew another man, a truly
great seer, who saw a white fool in a visionary garden, where there
was a tree with peacocks' feathers instead of leaves, and flowers that
opened to show little human faces when the white fool had touched them
with his coxcomb, and he saw at another time a white fool sitting by a
pool and smiling and watching the images of many fair women floating up
from the pool.
What else can death be but the beginning of wisdom and power and
beauty? and foolishness may be a kind of death. I cannot think
wonderful that many should see a fool with a shining vessel or some
enchantment or wisdom or dream too powerful for mortal brains in 'every
household of them. ' It is natural, too, that there should be a queen
to every household of them, and that one should hear little of their
kings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient
peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. The
self, which is the foundation of our knowledge, is broken in pieces
by foolishness, and is forgotten in the sudden emotions of women, and
therefore fools may get, and women do get of a certainty, glimpses of
much that sanctity finds at the end of its painful journey. The man who
saw the white fool said of a certain woman, not a peasant woman, 'If I
had her power of vision I would know all the wisdom of the gods, and
her visions do not interest her. ' And I know of another woman, also not
a peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into countries of an unearthly
beauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about her house
and her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called
it. Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to
those who die every day they live, though their dying may not be like
the dying Shakespeare spoke of. There is a war between the living and
the dead, and the Irish stories keep harping upon it. They will have
it that when the potatoes or the wheat or any other of the fruits of
the earth decay, they ripen in faery, and that our dreams lose their
wisdom when the sap rises in the trees, and that our dreams can make
the trees wither, and that one hears the bleating of the lambs of faery
in November, and that blind eyes can see more than other eyes. Because
the soul always believes in these, or in like things, the cell and the
wilderness shall never be long empty, or lovers come into the world who
will not understand the verse--
'Heardst thou not sweet words among
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
Heardst thou not that those who die
Awake in a world of ecstasy?
How love, when limbs are interwoven,
And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
And thought to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
And music when one's beloved is singing,
Is death? '
1901.
THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE OF FAERY
THOSE that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of
their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to
have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has
passed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw
the dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.
There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
me a few months before his death that 'they' would not let him sleep
at night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their
pipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend
had told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or
to play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and
he did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play.
He showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he
did not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
she heard that 'three of them' had told him he was to die.
