taking their measure for boots. And the cat that was sitting on the
hearth said, "Take my measure for a pair of boots along with the
rest." So the man did, and when he went to the shoemaker he told him
of what the cat had said. And there was a man in the shop at the
time, and he having two greyhounds with him, and one of them all
black without a single white hair. And he said, "Bring the cat here
tomorrow. You can tell it that the boots can't be made without it
coming for its measure." So the next day he brought the cat in a bag,
and when he got to his shop the man was there with his greyhounds,
and he let the cat out, and it praying him not to loosen the bag.
And it made away through the fields and the hounds after it, and
whether it killed one of them I don't know, but anyhow the black
hound killed it, the one that had not a white hair on its body.
* * * * *
You should never be too attentive to a cat, but just to be civil and
to give it its share.
* * * * *
Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time, I
suppose, of some change in the world. That's why they're hard to kill
and why it's dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it
might claw you or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and
that would be the serpent's tooth.
* * * * *
There was an uncle of mine near Galway, and one night his wife was
very sick, and he had to go to the village to get something for her.
And it's a very lonely road, and as he was going what should he see
but a great number of cats, walking along the road, and they were
carrying a young cat, and crying it.
And when he was on his way home again from the village he met them
again, and one of the cats turned and spoke to him like a person
would, and said, "Bid Lady Betty to come to the funeral or she'll be
late." So he ran on home in a great fright, and he couldn't speak for
some time after getting back to the house, but sat there by the fire
in a chair. And at last he began to tell his wife what had happened.
And when he said that he had met a cat's funeral, his own cat that
was sleeping by the hearth began to stir her tail, and looked up at
him, affectionate like. But when he got to where he was bid send Lady
Betty to the funeral, she made one dash at his face and scraped it,
she was so mad that she wasn't told at once. And then she began to
tear at the door, that they had to let her out.
For cats is faeries, and every night they're obliged to travel over
seven acres; that's why you hear them crying about the country. It
was an old woman at the strand told me that, and she should know, for
she lived to a hundred years of age.
* * * * *
I saw three young weasels out in the sea, squealing, squealing, for
they couldn't get to land, and I put out a bunch of seaweed and
brought them to the land, and they went away after. I did that for
them. Weasels are not _right_, no more than cats; and I'm not sure
about foxes.
* * * * *
Rats are very bad, because a rat if one got the chance would do his
best to bite you, and I wouldn't like at all to get the bite of a
rat. But weasels are serpents, and if they would spit at any part of
your body it would fester, and you would get blood poisoning within
two hours.
I knew an old doctor--Antony Coppinger at Clifden--and he told
me that if the weasels had the power of other beasts they would
not leave a human living in the world. And he said the wild wide
wilderness of the sea was full of beasts mostly the same as on earth,
like bonavs and like cattle, and they lying at the bottom of the sea
as quiet as cows in a field.
* * * * *
It is wrong to insult a weasel, and if you pelt them or shoot them
they will watch for you forever to ruin you. For they are enchanted
and understand all things.
There is Mrs. Coneely that lives up the road, she had a clutch of
young geese on the floor, and a weasel walked in and brought away one
of them, but she said nothing to that.
But it came in again, and took a hold of another of the geese and
Mrs. Coneely said, "Oh, I'm not begrudging you what you have taken,
but leave these to me for it is hard I earned them, and it is great
trouble I had rearing them. But go," she said, "to the shoemaker's
home beyond, where they have a clutch, and let you spare mine. And
that I may never sin," she said, "but it walked out, for they can
understand everything, and it did not leave one of the clutch that
was at the shoemaker's."
It is why I called to you now when I saw you sitting there so near
to the sea; I thought the tide might steal up on you, or a weasel
might chance to come up with a fish in its mouth, and to give you a
start. It's best if you see one to speak nice to it, and to say,
"I wouldn't be begrudging you a pair of boots or of shoes if I had
them." If you treat them well they will treat you well.
* * * * *
And to see a weasel passing the road before you, there's nothing in
the world like that to bring you all sorts of good luck.
* * * * *
I was out in the field one time tilling potatoes, and two or three
more along with me, and a weasel put its head out of the wall--a
double stone wall it was--and one of the lads fired a stone at it.
Well, within a minute there wasn't a hole of the wall but a weasel
had put its head out of it, about a thousand of them, I saw that
myself. Very spiteful they are. I wouldn't like them.
* * * * *
The weasels, the poor creatures, they will do nothing at all on you
if you behave well to them and let them alone, but if you do not,
they will not leave a chicken in the yard. And magpies, let you do
nothing on them, or they will suck every egg and leave nothing in the
garden; but if you leave them to themselves they will do nothing but
to come into the street to pick a bit with the birds.
* * * * *
The granyóg (hedgehog) will do no harm to chickens or the like;
but if he will get into an orchard he will stick an apple on every
thorn, and away with him to a scalp with them to be eating through
the winter.
I met with a granyóg one day on the mountain, and that I may never
sin, he was running up the side of it as fast as a race-horse.
* * * * *
There is not much luck in killing a seal. There was a man in these
parts was very fond of shooting and killing them. And seals have
claws the same as cats, and he had two daughters, and when they were
born, they had claws the same as seals. I believe there is one of
them living yet.
* * * * *
But the thing it is not right to touch is the _ron_ (seal) for they
are in the Sheogue. It is often I see them on the strand, sitting
there and wiping themselves on the rocks. And they have a hand with
five fingers, like any Christian. I seen six of them, coming in a
boat one time with a man from Connemara, that is the time I saw they
had the five fingers.
There was a man killed one of them over there near the point. And he
came to the shore and it was night, and he was near dead with the want
of a blast of a pipe, and he saw a light from a house on the side of a
mountain, and he went in to ask a coal of fire to kindle the pipe. And
when he went in, there was a woman, and she called out to a man that
was lying stretched on the bed in the room, and she said, "Look till
you see who this man is." And the man that was on the bed says, "I
know you, for I have the sign of your hand on me. And let you get out
of this now," he said, "as fast as you can, and it will be best for
you." And the daughter said to him, "I wonder you to let him go as easy
as that." And you may be sure the man made off and made no delay. It
was a Sheogue house that was; and the man on the bed was the _ron_ he
had killed, but he was not dead, being of the Sheogues.
XIII
FRIARS AND PRIEST CURES
XIII
FRIARS AND PRIEST CURES
_An old woman begging at the door one day spoke of the cures done in
her early days by the Friars at Esker to the north of our county. I
asked if she had ever been there, and she burst into this praise of it:_
_"Esker is a grand place; this house and the house of Lough Cutra and
your own house at Roxborough, to put the three together it wouldn't
be as big as it; it is as big as the whole town of Gort, in its own
way; you wouldn't have it walked in a month._
_"To go there you would get cured of anything unless it might be the
stroke of the Fool that does be going with_ them; _it's best not be
talking of it. The clout he would give you, there is no cure for it._
_"Three barrels there are with water, and to see the first barrel
boiling it is certain you will get a cure. A big friar will come out
to meet us that is as big as three. Fat they do be that they can't
hardly get through the door. Water there does be rushing down; you to
stoop you would hear it talking; you would be afraid of the water._
_"One well for the rich and one well for the common; blue blinds to
the windows like little bars of timber without. You can see where the
friars are buried down dead to the end of the world._
"_They give out clothes to the poor, bedclothes and day clothes; it
is the beautifullest place from heaven out; summer houses and pears;
glass in the walls around._"
_I have been told:_
The Esker friars used to do great cures--Father Callaghan was the
best of them. They used to do it by reading, but what it was they
read no one knew, some secret thing.
There was a girl brought from Clare one time, that had lost her wits,
and she tied on a cart with ropes. And she was brought to Father
Callaghan and he began reading over her, and then he made a second
reading, and at the end of that, he bid them unloose the ropes,
and when they did she got up quite quiet, but very shy looking and
ashamed, and would not wait for the cart but walked away.
* * * * *
Father Callaghan was with a man near this one time, one Tully, and
they were talking about the faeries and the man said he didn't
believe in them at all. And Father Callaghan called him to the door
and put up his fingers and bade him look out through them, and there
he saw hundreds and hundreds of the smallest little men he ever saw
and they hurling and killing one another.
* * * * *
The friars are gone and there are missioners come in their place and
all they would do for you is to bless holy water, and as long as you
would keep it, it would never get bad.
* * * * *
My daughter, Mrs. Meehan, that lives there below, was very bad after
her first baby being born, and she wasted away and the doctors could
do nothing for her. My husband went to Biddy Early for her, but she
said, "Mother for daughter, father for son" and she could do nothing
for her because I didn't go. But I had promised God and the priest I
would never go to her, and so I kept to my word. But Mrs. Meehan was so
bad she kept to the bed, and one day one of the neighbours said I had a
right to bring her to the friars at Esker. And he said, "It's today you
should be in it, Monday, for a Monday gospel is the best, the gospel
of the Holy Ghost." So I got the cart after and put her in it, and she
lying down, and we had to rest and to take out the horse at Lenane, and
we got to Craughwell for the night. And the man of the house where we
got lodging for the night said the priest that was doing cures now was
Father Blake and he showed us the way to Esker. And when we got there
he was in the chapel, and my daughter was brought in and laid on a
form, and I went out and waited with the cart, and within half an hour
the chapel door opened, and my daughter walked out that was carried
in. And she got up on the cart herself. It was a gospel had been read
over her. And I said, "I wish you had asked a gospel to bring with you
home." And after that we saw a priest on the other side of a dry stone
wall, and he learning three children. And she asked a gospel of him,
and he said, "What you had today will do you, and I haven't one made up
at this time." So she came home well. She went another time there, when
she had something and asked for a gospel, and Father Blake said, "We're
out of doing it now, but as you were with us before, I'll do it for
you." And she wanted to give him £1 but he said, "If I took it I would
do nothing for you." So she said, "I'll give it to the other man," and
so she did.
* * * * *
I often saw Father Callaghan in Esker and the people brought to him
in carts. Many cures he did, but he was prevented often. And I knew
another priest did many cures, but he was carried away himself after,
to a lunatic asylum. And when he came back, he would do no more.
* * * * *
There was a little chap had but seven years, and he was doing no
good, but whistling and twirling, and the father went to Father
Callaghan, that was just after coming out of the gaol when he got
there, for doing cures; it is a gaol of their own they had. The man
asked him to do a cure on his son, and Father Callaghan said, "I
wouldn't like him to be brought here, but I will go some day to your
house; I will go with my dog and my hound as if fowling, and I will
bring no sign of a car or a carriage at all." So he came one day to
the house and knocked at the door. And when he came in he said to the
father, "Go out and bring me in a bundle of sally rods that will be
as thin as rushes, and divide them into six small parts," he said,
"and twist every one of the six parts together." And when that was
done, he took the little bundle of rods, and he beat the child on the
head with them one after another till they were in flitters and the
child roaring. Then he laid the child in the father's arms, and no
sooner there than it fell asleep, and Father Callaghan said to the
father, "What you have now is your own, but it wasn't your own that
was in it before."
* * * * *
There used to be swarms of people going to Esker, and Father Callaghan
would say in Irish, "Let the people in the Sheogue stand at one side,"
and he would go over and read over them what he had to read.
* * * * *
There was an uncle of my own was working at Ballycluan the time the
Quakers were making a place there, and it was the habit when the
summer was hot to put the beds out into the barn. And one night he
was sleeping in the barn, and something came and lay on him in the
bed; he could not see what it was, but it was about the size of the
foal of a horse. And the next night it came again and the next, and
lay on him, and he put out his left hand to push it from him, and
it went from him quite quiet, but if it did, when he rose in the
morning, he was not able to stretch out his hand, and he was a long
time like that and then his father brought him to the friars at
Esker, and within twelve minutes one of them had him cured, reading
over him, but I'm not sure was it Father Blake or Father Callaghan.
But it was not long after that till he fell off his cart as if he was
knocked off it, and broke his leg. The coppinger had his leg cured,
but he did not live long, for the third thing happened was, he threw
up his heart's blood and died.
For if you are cured of one thing that comes on you like that,
another thing will come on you in its place, or if not on you, on
some other person, maybe some one in your own family. It is very
often I noticed that to happen.
* * * * *
The priests in old times used to have the power to cure strokes and
madness and the like, but the Pope and the Bishops have that stopped;
they said that the people will get out of witchcraft little by little.
* * * * *
Priests can do cures if they will, and it's not out of the Gospel
they do them, but out of a book specially for the purpose, so I
believe. But something falls on them or on the things belonging to
them, if they do it too often.
But Father Keeley for certain did cures. It was he cured Mike
Madden's neck, when everyone else had failed--so they had--though
Mike has never confessed to it.
* * * * *
The priests can do cures surely, and surely they can put harm on you.
But they wouldn't do that unless they'd be sure a man would deserve it.
One time at that house you see up there beyond, Roche's, there was a
wedding and there was some fighting came out of it, and bad blood. And
Father Boyle was priest at that time, and he was vexed and he said he'd
come and have stations at the house, and they should all be reconciled.
So he came on the day he appointed and the house was settled like
a chapel, and some of the people there was bad blood between came,
but not all of them, and Roche himself was not there. And when
the stations were over Father Boyle got his book, and he read the
names of those he had told to be there, and they answered, like a
schoolmaster would call out the names of his scholars. And when
Roche's name was read and he not there to answer, with the dint of
madness Father Boyle quenched the candles on the altar, and he said
this house and all that belong to it will go away to nothing, like
the froth that's going down the river.
And if you look at the house now you'll see the way it is, not a stable
or an outhouse left standing, and not one of the whole family left in
it but Roche, and he paralysed. So they can do both harm and good.
* * * * *
There was a man out in the mountains used to do cures, and one day on
a little road the priest met him, and stopped his car and began to
abuse him for the cures he was doing.
And then the priest went on, and when he had gone a bit of the road
his horse fell down. And he came back and called to the man and said,
"Come help me now, for this is your doing, to make the horse fall."
And the man said, "It's none of my doing, but it's the doing of my
master, for he was vexed with the way you spoke. But go back now and
you'll find the horse as he was before." So he went back and the
horse had got up and was standing, and nothing wrong with him at all.
And the priest said no more against him from that day.
* * * * *
My son is lame this long time; a fine young man he was, about
seventeen years--and a pain came in his knee all of a moment. I tried
doctors with him and I brought him to the friars in Loughrea, and one
of them read a gospel over him, and the pain went after that, but the
knee grew out to be twisted like. The friar said it was surely he had
been overheated. A little old maneen he was, very ancient. I knew
well it was the _drochuil_ that did it; there by the side of the road
he was sitting when he got the frost.
There was a needlewoman used to be sewing late on a Saturday night,
and sometimes if there was a button or a thread wanting she would put
it in, even if it was Sunday morning; and she lived in Loughrea that
is near your own home. And one day she went to the loch to get a can
of water, and it was in her hand. And in a minute a blast of wind
came that rose all the dust and the straws and knocked herself. And
more than that, her mouth was twisted around to her poll.
There were some people saw her, and they brought her home, and within
a week her mother brought her to the priest. And when he saw her he
said, "You are the best mother ever there was, for if you had left
her nine days without bringing her to me, all I could do would not
have taken off her what is on her." He asked then up to what time
did she work on the Saturday night, and she said up to one or two
o'clock, and sometimes on a Sunday morning. So he took off what was
on her, and bade her do that no more, and she got well, but to the
last there was a sort of a twisted turn in her mouth.
That woman now I am telling you of was an aunt of my own.
* * * * *
Father Nolan has a kind heart, and he'd do cures. But it's hard to
get them, unless it would be for some they had a great interest in.
But Father McConaghy is so high in himself, he wouldn't do anything
of that sort. When Johnny Dunne was bad, two years ago, and all but
given over, he begged and prayed Father McConaghy to do it for him.
And he refused and said, "You must commit yourself to the mercy of
Almighty God," and Johnny Dunne, the poor man, said, "It's a hard
thing for a man that has a house full of children to be left to the
mercy of Almighty God."
* * * * *
But there's _some_ that can help. My father told me long ago that my
sister was lying sick for a long time, and one night a beggarman came
to the door and asked for shelter. And he said, "I can't give you
shelter, with my daughter lying sick in the room." "Let me in, it's
best for you," says he. And in the morning he went away, and the sick
girl rose up, as well as ever she was before.
* * * * *
Father Flaherty, when he was a curate, could open the eyes that were
all but closed in death, but he wouldn't have such things spoken of
now. Losses they may have, but that's not all. Whatever evil thing
they raise, they may not have strength after to put it down again,
and so they may be lost themselves in the end.
* * * * *
Surely they can do cures, and they can tell sometimes the hour you'd
go. There was a girl I knew was sick, and when the priest came and
saw her, he said, "Between the two Masses tomorrow she'll be gone,"
and so she was. And those that saw her after, said that it was the
face of her mother that died before that was on the bed, and that it
was her mother had taken her to where she was.
* * * * *
And Mike Barrett surely saw a man brought in a cart to Father
Curley's house when he lived in Cloon, and carried upstairs to him,
and he walked down out of the house again, sound and well. But they
must lose something when they do cures--either their health or
something else, though many say no one did so many cures as Father
Fitzgerald when he was a curate. Father Airlie one time was called
in to Glover's house where he was lying sick, and did a cure on him.
And he had a cow at the time that was in calf. And soon after some
man said to him "The cow will be apt soon to calve," though it wasn't
very near the time. And Father Airlie said "She'll never live to do
that." And sure enough in a couple of days after she was dead.
SWEDENBORG, MEDIUMS, AND THE
DESOLATE PLACES
SWEDENBORG, MEDIUMS, AND THE
DESOLATE PLACES
I
Some fifteen years ago I was in bad health and could not work, and
Lady Gregory brought me from cottage to cottage while she began to
collect the stories in this book, and presently when I was at work
again she went on with her collection alone till it grew to be, so
far as I know, the most considerable book of its kind. Except that I
had heard some story of "The Battle of the Friends" at Aran and had
divined that it might be the legendary common accompaniment of death,
she was not guided by any theory of mine, but recorded what came,
writing it out at each day's end and in the country dialect. It was at
this time mainly she got the knowledge of words that makes her little
comedies of country life so beautiful and so amusing. As that ancient
system of belief unfolded before us, with unforeseen probabilities and
plausibilities, it was as though we had begun to live in a dream, and
one day Lady Gregory said to me when we had passed an old man in the
wood: "That old man may know the secret of the ages."
I had noticed many analogies in modern spiritism and began a more
careful comparison, going a good deal to séances for the first time
and reading all writers of any reputation I could find in English
or French. I found much that was moving, when I had climbed to the
top story of some house in Soho or Holloway, and, having paid my
shilling, awaited, among servant girls, the wisdom of some fat old
medium. That is an absorbing drama, though if my readers begin to
seek it they will spoil it, for its gravity and simplicity depends on
all, or all but all, believing that their dead are near.
I did not go there for evidence of the kind the Society for Psychical
Research would value, any more than I would seek it in Galway or
in Aran. I was comparing one form of belief with another, and like
Paracelsus, who claimed to have collected his knowledge from midwife
and hangman, I was discovering a philosophy. Certain things had
happened to me when alone in my own room which had convinced me that
there are spiritual intelligences which can warn us and advise us,
and, as Anatole France has said, if one believes that the Devil can
walk the streets of Lisbon, it is not difficult to believe that he
can reach his arm over the river and light Don Juan's cigarette. And
yet I do not think I have been easily convinced, for I know we make a
false beauty by a denial of ugliness and that if we deny the causes
of doubt we make a false faith, and that we must excite the whole
being into activity if we would offer to God what is, it may be, the
one thing germane to the matter, a consenting of all our faculties.
Not but that I doubt at times, with the animal doubt of the Middle
Ages that I have found even in pious countrywomen when they have
seen some life come to an end like the stopping of a clock, or that
all the perceptions of the soul, or the weightiest intellectual
deductions, are not at whiles but a feather in the daily show.