Produced by Douglas L. Alley, III, Barbara Tozier, Bill
Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
_By Lady Gregory_
DRAMA
Seven Short Plays
Folk-History Plays, 2 vols.
New Comedies
The Image
The Golden Apple
Our Irish Theatre. A Chapter of Autobiography
IRISH FOLK LORE AND LEGEND
Visions and Beliefs, 2 vols.
Cuchulain of Muirthemne
Gods and Fighting Men
Saints and Wonders
Poets and Dreamers
The Kiltartan Poetry Book
[Illustration: Coole Lake
From a picture by Robert Gregory in Sir Hugh Lane's Collection]
VISIONS AND BELIEFS IN
THE WEST OF IRELAND
COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY
LADY GREGORY: WITH TWO ESSAYS
AND NOTES BY W. B. YEATS
"_There's no doubt at all but that there's the same
sort of things in other countries; but you hear
more about them in these parts because the Irish
do be more familiar in talking of them._"
_FIRST SERIES_
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
=The Knickerbocker Press=
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY
LADY GREGORY
=The Knickerbocker Press, New York=
PREFACE
The Sidhe cannot make themselves visible to all. They are
shape-changers; they can grow small or grow large, they can take what
shape they choose; they appear as men or women wearing clothes of
many colours, of today or of some old forgotten fashion, or they are
seen as bird or beast, or as a barrel or a flock of wool. They go by
us in a cloud of dust; they are as many as the blades of grass. They
are everywhere; their home is in the forths, the lisses, the ancient
round grass-grown mounds. There are thorn-bushes they gather near
and protect; if they have a mind for a house like our own they will
build it up in a moment. They will remake a stone castle, battered by
Cromwell's men, if it takes their fancy, filling it with noise and
lights. Their own country is Tir-nan-Og--the Country of the Young. It
is under the ground or under the sea, or it may not be far from any
of us. As to their food, they will use common things left for them
on the hearth or outside the threshold, cold potatoes it may be, or
a cup of water or of milk. But for their feasts they choose the best
of all sorts, taking it from the solid world, leaving some worthless
likeness in its place; when they rob the potatoes from the ridges
the diggers find but rottenness and decay; they take the strength
from the meat in the pot, so that when put on the plates it does not
nourish. They will not touch salt; there is danger to them in it.
They will go to good cellars to bring away the wine.
Fighting is heard among them, and music that is more beautiful than
any of this world; they are seen dancing on the rocks; they are often
seen playing at the hurling, hitting balls towards the goal. In each
one of their households there is a queen, and she has more power than
the rest; but the greatest power belongs to their fool, the Fool of
the Forth, Amadan-na-Briona. He is their strongest, the most wicked,
the most deadly; there is no cure for any one he has struck.
When they are friendly to a man they give him help in his work,
putting their strength into his body. Or they may tell him where to
find treasure, hidden gold; or through certain wise men or women
who have learned from them or can ask and get their knowledge they
will tell where cattle that have strayed may be found, or they will
cure the sick or tell if a sickness is not to be cured. They will
sometimes work as if against their own will or intention, giving back
to the life of our world one who had received the call to go over to
their own. They call many there, summoning them perhaps through the
eye of a neighbour, the evil eye, or by a touch, a blow, a fall, a
sudden terror. Those who have received their touch waste away from
this world, lending their strength to the invisible ones; for the
strength of a human body is needed by the shadows, it may be in their
fighting, and certainly in their hurling to win the goal. Young men
are taken for this, young mothers are taken that they may give the
breast to newly born children among the Sidhe, young girls that they
may themselves become mothers there.
While these are away a body in their likeness, or the likeness of a
body, is left lying in their place. They may be given leave to return
to their village after a while, seven years it may be, or twice or
three times seven. But some are sent back only at the end of the
years allotted them at the time of their birth, old spent men and
women, thought to have been dead a long time, given back to die and
be buried on the face of the earth.
There are two races among the Sidhe. One is tall and handsome, gay,
and given to jesting and to playing pranks, leading us astray in
the fields, giving gold that turns to withered leaves or to dust.
These ride on horses through the night-time in large companies and
troops, or ride in coaches, laughing and decked with flowers and
fine clothes. The people of the other race are small, malicious,
wide-bellied, carrying before them a bag. When a man or woman is
about to die, a woman of the Sidhe will sometimes cry for a warning,
keening and making lamentation. At the hour of death fighting may be
heard in the air or about the house--that is, when the man in danger
has friends among the shadows, who are fighting on his behalf.
The dead are often seen among them, and will give help in danger to
comrade or brother or friend. Sometimes they have a penance to work
out, and will come and ask the living for help, for prayers, for the
payment of a debt. They may wander in some strange shape, or be bound
in the one place, or go through the air as birds. When the Sidhe pass
by in a blast of wind we should say some words of blessing, for there
may be among them some of our own dead. The dead are of the nature
of the Saints, mortals who have put on immortality, who have known
the troubles of the world. The Sidhe have been, like the Angels, from
before the making of the earth. In the old times in Ireland they were
called gods or the children of gods; now it is laid down they are
those Angels who were cast out of heaven, being proud.
This is the news I have been given of the people of the Sidhe by many
who have seen them and some who have known their power.
A. G.
COOLE, February, 1916.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I.--SEA-STORIES 3
II.--SEERS AND HEALERS 35
BIDDY EARLY 35
MRS. SHERIDAN 70
MR. SAGGARTON 92
"A GREAT WARRIOR IN THE BUSINESS" 103
OLD DERUANE 112
III.--THE EVIL EYE--THE TOUCH--THE PENALTY 127
IV.--AWAY 169
WITCHES AND WIZARDS AND IRISH FOLK-LORE 247
NOTES 265
I
SEA-STORIES
I
SEA-STORIES
_"The Celtic Twilight" was the first book of Mr. Yeats's that I read,
and even before I met him, a little time later, I had begun looking
for news of the invisible world; for his stories were of Sligo and
I felt jealous for Galway. This beginning of knowledge was a great
excitement to me, for though I had heard all my life some talk of
the faeries and the banshee_ (_having indeed reason to believe in
this last_), _I had never thought of giving heed to what I, in common
with my class, looked on as fancy or superstition. It was certainly
because of this unbelief that I had been told so little about them.
Even when I began to gather these stories, I cared less for the
evidence given in them than for the beautiful rhythmic sentences in
which they were told. I had no theories, no case to prove, I but
"held up a clean mirror to tradition."_
_It is hard to tell sometimes what has been a real vision and what
is tradition, a legend hanging in the air, a "vanity" as our people
call it, made use of by a story-teller here and there, or impressing
itself as a real experience on some sensitive and imaginative
mind. For tradition has a large place in "the Book of the People"
showing a sowing and re-sowing, a continuity and rebirth as in
nature. "Those," "The Others," "The Fallen Angels" have some of the
attributes of the gods of ancient Ireland; we may even go back yet
farther to the early days of the world when the Sons of God mated
with the Daughters of Men. I believe that if Christianity could be
blotted out and forgotten tomorrow, our people would not be moved at
all from the belief in a spiritual world and an unending life; it has
been with them since the Druids taught what Lucan called "the happy
error of the immortality of the soul." I think we found nothing so
trivial in our search but it may have been worth the lifting; a clue,
a thread, leading through the maze to that mountain top where things
visible and invisible meet._
_To gather folk-lore one needs, I think, leisure, patience,
reverence, and a good memory. I tried not to change or alter
anything, but to write down the very words in which the story had
been told. Sometimes Mr. Yeats was with me at the telling; or I would
take him to hear for himself something I had been told, that he might
be sure I had missed or added nothing. I filled many copybooks, and
came to have a very faithful memory for all sides of folk-lore,
stories of saints, of heroes, of giants and enchanters, as well as
for these visions. For this I have had to "pay the penalty" by losing
in some measure that useful and practical side of memory that is
concerned with names and dates and the multiplication table, and the
numbers on friends' houses in a street._
_It was on the coast I began to gather these stories, and I went
after a while to the islands Inishmor, Inishmaan, Inisheer, and so I
give the sea-stories first._
_I was told by:
A Man on the Height near Dun Conor:_
It's said there's everything in the sea the same as on the land, and
we know there's horses in it. This boy here saw a horse one time out
in the sea, a grey one, swimming about. And there were three men from
the north island caught a horse in their nets one night when they
were fishing for mackerel, but they let it go; it would have broke
the boat to bits if they had brought it in, and anyhow they thought
it was best to leave it. One year at Kinvara, the people were missing
their oats that was eaten in the fields, and they watched one night
and it was five or six of the sea-horses they saw eating the oats,
but they could not take them, they made off to the sea.
And there was a man on the north island fishing on the rocks one
time, and a mermaid came up before him, and was partly like a fish
and the rest like a woman. But he called to her in the name of God to
be off, and she went and left him.
There was a boy was sent over here one morning early by a friend of
mine on the other side of the island, to bring over some cattle that
were in a field he had here, and it was before daylight, and he came
to the door crying, and said he heard thirty horses or more galloping
over the roads there, where you'd think no horse could go.
Surely those things are on the sea as well as on the land. My father
was out fishing one night off Tyrone and something came beside the
boat, that had eyes shining like candles. And then a wave came in,
and a storm rose of a moment, and whatever was in the wave, the
weight of it had like to sink the boat. And then they saw that it was
a woman in the sea that had the shining eyes. So my father went to
the priest, and he bid him always to take a drop of holy water and a
pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and nothing would harm him.
_A Galway Bay Lobster-Seller:_
They are on the sea as well as on the land, and their boats are often
to be seen on the bay, sailing boats and others. They look like our
own, but when you come near them they are gone in an instant. (_Note_
1.)
My mother one time thought she saw our own boat come in to the pier
with my father and two other men in it, and she got the supper ready,
but when she went down to the pier and called them there was nothing
there, and the boat didn't come in till two hours after.
There were three or four men went out one day to fish, and it was a
dead calm; but all of a sudden they heard a blast and they looked,
and within about three mile of the boat they saw twelve men from the
waist, the rest of them was under water. And they had sticks in their
hands and were striking one another. And where they were, and the
blast, it was rough, but smooth and calm on each side.
There's a sort of a light on the sea sometimes; some call it a "Jack
O'Lantern" and some say it is sent by _them_ to mislead them. (_Note_
2.)
There's many of them out in the sea, and often they pull the boats
down. (_Note_ 3.) It's about two years since four fishermen went out
from Aran, two fathers and two sons, where they saw a big ship coming
in and flying the flag for a pilot, and they thought she wanted to be
brought in to Galway. And when they got near the ship, it faded away
to nothing and the boat turned over and they were all four drowned.
There were two brothers of my own went to fish for the herrings, and
what they brought up was like the print of a cat, and it turned with
the inside of the skin outside, and no hair. So they pulled up the
nets, and fished no more that day. There was one of _them_ lying on
the strand here, and some of the men of the village came down of a
sudden and surprised him. And when he saw he was taken he began a
great crying. But they only lifted him down to the sea and put him
back into it. Just like a man they said he was. And a little way out
there was another just like him, and when he saw that they treated
the one on shore so kindly, he bowed his head as if to thank them.
Whatever's on the land, there's the same in the sea, and between the
islands of Aran they can often see the horses galloping about at the
bottom. (_Note_ 4.)
There was a sort of a big eel used to be in Tully churchyard, used to
come and to root up the bodies, but I didn't hear of him of late--he
may be done away with now.
There was one Curran told me one night he went down to the strand
where he used to be watching for timber thrown up and the like.
And on the strand, on the dry sands, he saw a boat, a grand one
with sails spread and all, and it up farther than any tide had ever
reached. And he saw a great many people round about it, and it was
all lighted up with lights. And he got afraid and went away. And four
hours after, after sunrise, he went there again to look at it, and
there was no sign of it, or of any fire, or of any other thing. The
Mara-warra (mermaid) was seen on the shore not long ago, combing out
her hair. She had no fish's tail, but was like another woman.
_John Corley:_
There is no luck if you meet a mermaid and you out at sea, but storms
will come, or some ill will happen.
There was a ship on the way to America, and a mermaid was seen
following it, and the bad weather began to come. And the captain said,
"It must be some man in the ship she's following, and if we knew which
one it was, we'd put him out to her and save ourselves." So they drew
lots, and the lot fell on one man, and then the captain was sorry
for him, and said he'd give him a chance till tomorrow. And the next
day she was following them still, and they drew lots again, and the
lot fell on the same man. But the captain said he'd give him a third
chance, but the third day the lot fell on him again. And when they were
going to throw him out he said, "Let me alone for a while." And he went
to the end of the ship and he began to sing a song in Irish, and when
he sang, the mermaid began to be quiet and to rock like as if she was
asleep. So he went on singing till they came to America, and just as
they got to the land the ship was thrown up into the air, and came down
on the water again. There's a man told me that was surely true.
And there was a boy saw a mermaid down by Spiddal not long ago, but
he saw her before she saw him, so she did him no harm. But if she'd
seen him first, she'd have brought him away and drowned him.
Sometimes a light will come on the sea before the boats to guide them
to the land. And my own brother told me one day he was out and a
storm came on of a sudden, and the sail of the boat was let down as
quick and as well as if two men were in it. Some neighbour or friend
it must have been that did that for him. Those that go down to the
sea after the tide going out, to cut the weed, often hear under the
sand the sound of the milk being churned. There's some didn't believe
that till they heard it themselves.
_A Man from Roundstone:_
One night I was out on the boat with another man, and we saw a big ship
near us with about twenty lights. She was as close to us as that rock
(about thirty yards), but we saw no one on board. And she was like some
of the French ships that sometimes come to Galway. She went on near us
for a while, and then she turned towards the shore and then we knew
that she was not a right ship. And she went straight on to the land,
and when she touched it, the lights went out and we saw her no more.
There was a comrade of mine was out one night, and a ship came after
him, with lights, and she full of people. And as they drew near the
land, he heard them shouting at him and he got afraid, and he went
down and got a coal of fire and threw it at the ship, and in a minute
it was gone.
_A Schoolmaster:_
A boy told me last night of two men that went with poteen to the
Island of Aran. And when they were on the shore they saw a ship
coming as if to land, and they said, "We'll have the bottle ready
for those that are coming." But when the ship came close to the land,
it vanished. And presently they got their boat ready and put out to
sea. And a sudden blast came and swept one of them off. And the other
saw him come up again, and put out the oar across his breast for him
to take hold of it. But he would not take it but said, "I'm all right
again now," and sank down again and was never seen no more.
_John Nagle:_
For one there's on the land there's ten on the sea. When I lived at
Ardfry there was never a night but there was a voice heard crying
and roaring, by them that were out in the bay. A baker he was from
Loughrea, used to give short weight and measure, and so he was put
there for a punishment.
I saw a ship that was having a race with another go suddenly down
into the sea, and no one could tell why. And afterwards one of the
Government divers was sent down to look for her, and he told me he'd
never as long as he'd live go down again, for there at the bottom he
found her, and the captain and the saloon passengers, and all sitting
at the table and eating their dinner, just as they did before.
_A Little Girl:_
One time a woman followed a boat from Galway twenty miles out, and
when they saw that she was some bad thing, wanting some of them,
they drowned her.
_Mrs. Casey:_
I was at home and I got some stories from a man I had suspected of
having newses. And he told me that when he was a youngster he was
at a height where there used to be a great many of them. And all of
a sudden he saw them fly out to where a boat was coming from Duras
with seaweed. And they went in two flights, and so fast that they
swept the water away from each side the boat, and it was left on the
sand, and this they did over and over, just to be humbugging the man
in the boat, and he was kept there a long time. When they first rose
up, they were like clouds of dust, but with all sorts of colours, and
then he saw their faces turned, but they kept changing colour every
minute. (_Note_ 5.) Laughing and humbugging they seemed to be.
My uncle that used to go out fishing for mackerel told me that one
night some sort of a monster came under the boat and it wasn't a
fish, and it had them near upset.
_At an evening gathering in Inishmaan, by a Son of the House:_
There was a man on this island was down on the beach one evening with
his dog, and some black thing came up out of the sea, and the dog
made for it and began to fight it. And the man began to run home and
he called the dog, and it followed him, but every now and again it
would stop and begin to fight again. And when he got to the house he
called the dog in and shut the door, and whatever was outside began
hitting against the door but it didn't get in. But the dog went in
under the bed in the room, and before morning it was dead.
_The Man of the House:_
A horse I've seen myself on the sea and on the rocks--a brown one,
just like another. And I threw a stone at it, and it was gone in a
minute. We often heard there was fighting amongst _these._ And one
morning before daybreak I went down to the strand with some others,
and the whole of the strand, and it low tide, was covered with blood.
_Colman Kane:_
I knew a woman on this island and she and her daughter went down to
the strand one morning to pick weed, and a wave came and took the
daughter away. And a week after that, the mother saw her coming to
the house, but she didn't speak to her.
There was a man coming from Galway here and he had no boatman. And on
the way he saw a man that was behind him in the boat, that was putting
up the sail and taking the management of everything, and he spoke no
word. And he was with him all the way, but when the boat came to land,
he was gone, and the man isn't sure, but he thinks it was his brother.
You see that sand below on the south side. When the men are out with
the mackerel boats at early morning, they often see those sands
covered with boys and girls.
There were some men out fishing in the bay one time, and a man came
and held on to the boat, and wanted them to make room for him to get
in, and after a time he left them. He was one of _those_. And there
was another of them came up on the rocks one day, and called out to
Martin Flaherty that was going out and asked what was his name.
There's said to be another island out there that's enchanted, and
there are some that see it. And it's said that a fisherman landed on
it one time, and he saw a little house, and he went in, and a very
nice-looking young woman came out and said, "What will you say to
me?" and he said, "You are a very nice lady." And a second came and
asked him the same thing and a third, and he made the same answer.
And after that they said, "You'd best run for your life," and so he
did, and his curragh was floating along and he had but just time to
get into it, and the island was gone. But if he had said "God bless
you," the island would have been saved.
_A Fisherman on Kilronan Pier:_
I don't give in to these things myself, but they'd make you believe
them in the middle island. Mangan, that I lodged with there, told me of
seeing a ship when he was out with two other men, that followed them
and vanished. And he said one of the men took to his bed from that
time and died. And Doran told me about the horse he saw, that was in
every way like a horse you'd see on land. And a man on the south island
told me how he saw a calf one morning on the strand, and he thought it
belonged to a neighbour, and was going to drive it up to his field,
when its mother appeared on the sea, and it went off to her.
They are in the sea as well as on the land. That is well known by
those that are out fishing by the coast. When the weather is calm,
they can look down sometimes and see cattle and pigs and all such
things as we have ourselves. And at nights their boats come out and
they can be seen fishing, but they never last out after one o'clock.
The cock always crows on the first of March every year at one
o'clock. And there was a man brought a cock out with him in his boat
to try them. And the first time when it crowed they all vanished.
That is how they were detected.
There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and they
sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of
fishes, for they can take their choice shape.
_Pat O'Hagan:_
There were two fine young women--red-haired women--died in my village
about six months ago. And I believe they're living yet. And there
are some have seen them appear. All I ever saw myself was one day I
was out fishing with two others, and we saw a canoe coming near us,
and we were afraid it would come near enough to take away our fish.
And as we looked it turned into a three-masted ship, and people in
it. I could see them well, dark-coloured and dressed like sailors.
But it went away and did us no harm.
One night I was going down to the curragh, and it was a night in
harvest, and the stars shining, and I saw a ship fully rigged going
towards the coast of Clare where no ship could go. And when I looked
again, she was gone.
And one morning early, I and other men that were with me, and one of
them a friend of the man here, saw a ship coming to the island, and he
thought she wanted a pilot, and put out in the curragh. But when we got
to where she was, there was no sign of her, but where she was the water
was covered with black gulls, and I never saw a black gull before,
thousands and crowds of them, and not one white bird among them. And
one of the boys that was with me took a tarpin and threw it at one of
the gulls and hit it on the head, and when he did, the curragh went
down to the rowlocks in the water--up to that--and it's nothing but a
miracle she ever came up again, but we got back to land. I never went
to a ship again, for the people said it was on account of me helping in
the Preventive Service it happened, and that if I'd hit at one of the
gulls myself, there would have been a bad chance for us. But those were
no right gulls, and the ship was no living ship.
_The Old Man in the Kitchen:_
It's in the middle island the most of them are, and I'll tell you a
thing that I know of myself that happened not long ago. There was a
young girl, and one evening she was missing, and they made search for
her everywhere and they thought that she was drowned or that she had
gone away with some man. And in the evening of the next day there was
a boy out in a curragh, and as he passed by a rock that is out in the
sea there was the girl on it, and he brought her off. And surely she
could not go there by herself. I suppose she wasn't able to give much
account of it, and now she's after going to America. (_Note_ 6.)
And in Aran there were three boys and their uncle went out to a ship
they saw coming, to pilot her into the bay. But when they got to where
she was, there was no ship, and a sea broke over the canoe, and they
were drowned, all fine strong men. But a man they had with them that
was no use or of no account, he came safe to land. And I know a man in
this island saw curraghs and curraghs full of people about the island
of a Sunday morning early, but I never saw them myself. And one Sunday
morning in my time there were scores and scores lying their length by
the sea on the sand below, and they saw a woman in the sea, up to her
waist, and she racking her hair and settling herself and as clean and
as nice as if she was on land. Scores of them saw that.
There's a house up there where the family have to leave a plate of
potatoes ready every night, and all's gone in the morning. (_Note_ 7.)
They are said to have all things the same as ourselves under the
sea, and one day a cow was seen swimming as if for the headland, but
before she got to it she turned another way and went down. And one
time I got a small muc-warra (porpoise) and I went to cut it up to
get what was good of it, for it had about two inches of fat, and when
I cut it open the heart and the liver and every bit of it were for
all the world like a pig you would cut up on land.
There's a house in the village close by this that's haunted. My
sister was sitting near it one day, and it empty and locked, and some
other little girls, and they heard a noise in it, and at the same
time the flags they were sitting on grew red-hot, that they had to
leave them. And another time the woman of the house was sick, and a
little girl that was sitting by the fire in the kitchen saw standing
in the door the sister of the woman that was sick, and she a good
while dead, and she put up her arm, as if to tell her not to notice
her. And the poor woman of that house, she had no luck, nothing but
miscarriages or dead babies. And one child lived to be nine months
old, and there was less flesh on it at the end of the nine months
than there was the day it was born. She has a little girl now that's
near a year old, but her arm isn't the size of that, and she's
crabbed and not like a child as she should be. Many a one that's long
married without having a child goes to the fortune-teller in Galway,
and those that think anything of themselves go to Roundstone.
_A Man near Loughmore:_
I know a woman was washed and laid out, and it went so far that two
half-penny candles were burned over her. And then she sat up, came
back again, and spoke to her husband, and told him how to divide his
property, and to manage the children well. And her step-son began to
question her, and he might have got a lot out of her but her own son
stopped him and said to let her alone. And then she turned over on
her side and died. She was not to say an old woman. It's not often
the old are taken. What use would there be for them? But a woman to
be taken young, you know there's demand for her. It's the people in
the middle island know about these things. There were three boys from
there lost in a curragh at the point near the lighthouse, and for
long after their friends were tormented when they came there fishing,
and they would see ships there when the people of this island that
were out at the same time couldn't see them. There were three or four
out in a curragh near the lighthouse, and a conger-eel came and upset
it, and they were all saved but one, but he was brought down and for
the whole day they could hear him crying and screeching under the
sea. And they were not the only ones, but a fisherman that was there
from Galway had to go away and leave it, because of the screeching.
There was a coast-guard's wife there was all but gone, but she was
saved after. And there's a boy here now was for a long time that
they'd give the world he was gone altogether, with the state he was,
in, and now he's as strong as any boy in the island; and if ever any
one was away and came back again, it was him. Children used often to
be taken, but there's a great many charms in use in these days that
saves them. A big sewing-needle you'll see the woman looking for to
put with a baby, and as long as that's with it, it's safe. But anyway
they're always put back again into the world before they die in the
place of some young person. And even a beast of any consequence if
anything happens to it, no one in the island would taste it; there
might be something in it, some old woman or the like.
There were a few young men from here were kept in Galway for a day,
and they went to a woman there that works the cards. And she told
them of deaths that would come in certain families. And it wasn't a
fortnight after that five boys were out there, just where you see the
curragh now, and they were upset and every one drowned, and they were
of the families that she had named on the cards.
My uncle told me that one night they were all up at that house up
the road, making a match for his sister, and they stopped till near
morning, and when they went out, they all had a drop taken. And
he was going along home with two or three others and one of them,
Michael Flaherty, said he saw people on the shore. And another of
them said that there were not, and my uncle said, "If Flaherty said
that and it not true, we have a right to bite the ear off him, and
it would be no harm." And then they parted, and my uncle had to pass
by the beach, and then he saw whole companies of people coming up
from the sea, that he didn't know how he'd get through them, but they
opened before him and let him pass.
There were men going to Galway with cattle one morning from the beach
down there, and they saw a man up to his middle in the sea--all of
them saw it.
There was a man was down early for lobsters on the shore at the
middle island, and he saw a horse up to its middle in the sea, and
bowing its head down as if to drink. And after he had watched it
awhile it disappeared.
There was a woman walking over by the north shore--God have mercy on
her--she's dead since--and she looked out and saw an island in the
sea, and she was a long time looking at it. It's known to be there,
and to be enchanted, but only few can see it.
There was a man had his horse drawing seaweed up there on the rocks,
the way you see them drawing it every day, in a basket on the mare's
back. And on this day every time he put the load on, the mare would
let its leg slip and it would come down again, and he was vexed and
he had a stick in his hand and he gave the mare a heavy blow. And
that night she had a foal that was dead, not come to its full growth,
and it had spots over it, and every spot was of a different colour.
And there was no sire on the island at that time, so whatever was the
sire must have come up from the sea. (_Note_ 8.)
_A Man Watching the Weed-gatherers:_
There's no doubt at all about the sea-horses. There was a man out at
the other side of the island, and he saw one standing on the rocks
and he threw a stone at it and it went off in the sea. He said it was
grand to see it swimming, and the mane and the tail floating on the
top of the water.
_A Woman from the Connemara Side:_
I was told there was a mare that had a foal, and it had never had
a horse. And one day the mare and foal were down by the sea, and a
horse put up its head and neighed, and away went the foal to it and
came back no more.
And there was a man on this island watched his field one night where
he thought the neighbours' cattle were eating his grass, and what he
saw was horses and foals coming up from the sea. And he caught a foal
and kept it, and set it racing, and no horse or no pony could ever come
near it, till one day the race was on the strand, and away with it into
the sea, and the jockey along with it, and they never were seen again.
_Mrs. O'Dea and Mrs. Daly:_
There was a cow seen come up out of the sea one day and it walked
across the strand, and its udder like as if it had been lately
milked. And Tommy Donohue was running up to tell his father to come
down and see it, and when he looked back it was gone out to sea again.
There was a man here was going to build a new house, and he brought
a wise woman to see would it be in the right place. And she made
five heaps of stones in five places, and said, "Whatever heap isn't
knocked in the night, build it there." And in the morning all the
heaps were knocked but one, and so he built it there. (_Note_ 9.)
One time I was out over by that island with another man, and we saw
three women standing by the shore, beating clothes with a beetle. And
while we looked, they vanished, and then we heard the cry of a child
passing over our heads twenty feet in the air.
I know they go out fishing like ourselves, for Father Mahony told me
so; and one night I was out myself with my brother, beyond where that
ship is, and we heard talk going on, so we knew that a boat was near,
and we called out to let them know we heard them, and then we saw the
boat and it was just like any other one, and the talk went on, but we
couldn't understand what they were saying. And then I turned to light
my pipe, and while I lighted it, the boat and all in it were gone.
_Mrs. Casey:_
I got a story from an old man down by the sea at Tyrone. He says
there was a man went down one night to move his boat from the shore
where it was to the pier. And when he had put out, he found it was
going out to sea, instead of to touch the pier, and he felt it very
heavy in the water, and he looked behind him and there on the back of
the boat were six men in shiny black clothes like sailors, and there
was one like a harvest-man dressed in white flannel with a belt round
his waist. And he asked what they were doing, and the man in white
said he had brought the others out to make away with them there, and
he took and cut their bodies in two and threw them one by one over
the boat, and then he threw himself after them into the sea. And the
boat went under water too, and the poor man himself lost his wits,
but it came up again and he said he had never seen as many people as
he did in that minute under the water. And then he got home and left
the boat, and in the morning he came down to it, and there was blood
in it; and first he washed it and then he painted it, but for all he
could do, he couldn't get rid of the blood.
_Peter Donohue:_
There was a woman, a friend of this man's, living out in the middle
island, and one day she came down to where a man of this island was
putting out his curragh to come back, and she said, "I just saw a
great crowd of them--that's the Sheogue--going over to your island
like a cloud." And when he got home he went up to a house there
beyond, where the old woman used to be selling poteen on the sly. And
while he was there her little boy came running in and cried, "Hide
away the poteen, for the police are on the island! Such a man called
to me from his curragh to give warning, for he saw the road full of
them with the crowd of them and they with their guns and cutlasses
and all the rest." But the man was in the house first knew well what
it was, after what he heard from the woman on the other island, and
that they were no right police, and sure enough no other one ever saw
them. And that same day, my mother had put out wool to dry in front
of where that house is with the three chimneys, near the Chapel.
And I was there talking to some man, one on each side of the yard,
and the wall between us. And the day was as fine as this day is and
finer, and not a breath of air stirring. And a woman that lived near
by had her wool out drying too. And the wool that was in my mother's
yard began to rise up, as if something was under it, and I called to
the other man to help me to hold it down, but for all we could do it
went up in the air, a hundred feet and more, till we could see it no
more. And after a couple of hours it began to drop again, like snow,
some on the thatch and some on the rocks and some in the gardens. And
I think it was a fortnight before my mother had done gathering it.
And one day she was spinning it, I don't know what put it in my mind,
but I asked her did she lose much of that wool. And what she said
was, "If I didn't get more than my own, I didn't get less." That's
true and no lie, for I never told a lie in my life--I think. But the
wool belonging to the neighbouring woman was never stirred at all.
And the woman that had the wool that wasn't stirred, she is the woman
I married after, and that's now my wife.
There was a man, one Power, died in this island, and one night that
was bright there was a friend of his going out for mackerel, and he
saw these sands full of people hurling, and he well knew Power's
voice that he heard among them.
There was a cousin of my own built a new house, and when they were
first in it and sitting round the fire, the woman of the house that
was singing for them saw a great blot of blood come down the chimney
on to the floor, and they thought there would be no luck in the house
and that it was a wrong place. But they had nothing but good luck
ever after.
_Peter Dolan:_
There was a man that died in the middle island, that had two wives.
And one day he was out in the curragh he saw the first wife appear.
And after that one time the son of the second wife was sick, and the
little girl, the first wife's daughter, was out tending cattle, and
a can of water with her and she had a waistcoat of her father's put
about her body, where it was cold. And her mother appeared to her in
the form of a sheep, and spoke to her, and told her what herbs to
find, to cure the step-brother, and sure enough they cured him. And
she bid her leave the waistcoat there and the can, and she did. And
in the morning the waistcoat was folded there, and the can standing
on it. And she appeared to her in her own shape another time, after
that. Why she came like a sheep the first time was that she wouldn't
be frightened. The girl is in America now, and so is the step-brother
that got well. (_Note_ 10.)
_A Galway Woman:_
One time myself, I was up at the well beyond, and looking into it,
a very fine day, and no breath of air stirring, and the stooks were
ripe standing about me. And all in a minute a noise began in them,
and they were like as if knocking at each other and fighting like
soldiers all about me.
_Mary Moran:_
There was a girl here that had been to America and came back, and one
day she was coming over from Liscannor in a curragh, and she looked
back and there behind the curragh was the "Gan ceann" the headless
one. And he followed the boat a great way, but she said nothing. But
a gold pin that was in her hair fell out, and into the sea, that she
had brought from America, and then it disappeared. And her sister was
always asking her where was the pin she brought from America, and she
was afraid to say. But at last she told her, and the sister said,
"It's well for you it fell out, for what was following you would
never have left you, till you threw it a ring or something made of
gold." It was the sister herself that told me this.
Up in the village beyond they think a great deal of these things and
they won't part with a drop of milk on May Eve, and last Saturday
week that was May Eve there was a poor woman dying up there, and she
had no milk of her own, and as is the custom, she went out to get a
drop from one or other of the neighbours. But not one would give it
because it was May Eve. I declare I cried when I heard it, for the
poor woman died on the second day after.
And when my sister was going to America she went on the first of May
and we had a farewell party the night before, and in the night a
little girl that was there saw a woman from that village go out, and
she watched her, and saw her walk round a neighbour's house, and pick
some straw from the roof.
And she told of it, and it happened a child had died in that house
and the father said the woman must have had a hand in it, and there
was no good feeling to her for a long while. Her own husband is lying
sick now, so I hear.
II
SEERS AND HEALERS
II
SEERS AND HEALERS
BIDDY EARLY
_In talking to the people I often heard the name of Biddy Early, and
I began to gather many stories of her, some calling her a healer and
some a witch. Some said she had died a long time ago, and some that
she was still living. I was sure after a while that she was dead, but
was told that her house was still standing, and was on the other side
of Slieve Echtge, between Feakle and Tulla. So one day I set out and
drove Shamrock, my pony, to a shooting lodge built by my grandfather
in a fold of the mountains, and where I had sometimes, when a young
girl, stayed with my brothers when they were shooting the wild deer
that came and sheltered in the woods. It had like other places on our
estate a border name brought over from Northumberland, but though we
called it Chevy Chase the people spoke of its woods and outskirts
as Daire-caol, the Narrow Oak Wood, and Daroda, the Two Roads, and
Druim-da-Rod, their Ridge. I stayed the night in the low thatched
house, setting out next day for Feakle "eight strong miles over the
mountain." It was a wild road, and the pony had to splash his way
through two unbridged rivers, swollen with the summer rains. The red
mud of the road, the purple heather and foxglove, the brown bogs
were a contrast to the grey rocks and walls of Burren and Aidhne,
and there were many low hills brown when near, misty blue in the
distance; then the Golden Mountain, Slieve nan-Or, "where the last
great battle will be fought before the end of the world." Then I was
out of Connacht into Clare, the brown turning to green pasture as I
drove by Raftery's Lough Greine._
_I put up my pony at a little inn. There were portraits of John
Dillon and Michael Davitt hanging in the parlour, and the landlady
told me Parnell's likeness had been with them, until the priest had
told her he didn't think well of her hanging it there. There was also
on the wall, in a frame, a warrant for the arrest of one of her sons,
signed by, I think, Lord Cowper, in the days of the Land War. "He got
half a year in gaol the same year Parnell did. He got sick there,
and though he lived for some years the doctor said when he died the
illness he got in gaol had to do with his death."_
_I had been told how to find Biddy Early's house "beyond the little
humpy bridge," and I walked on till I came to it, a poor cottage
enough, high up on a mass of rock by the roadside. There was only a
little girl in the house, but her mother came in afterwards and told
me that Biddy Early had died about twenty years before, and that
after they had come to live in the house they had been "annoyed for
a while" by people coming to look for her. She had sent them away,
telling them Biddy Early was dead, though a friendly priest had said
to her, "Why didn't you let on you were her and make something out of
them?" She told me some of the stories I give below, and showed me
the shed where the healer had consulted with her invisible friends. I
had already been given by an old patient of hers a "bottle" prepared
for the cure, but which she had been afraid to use. It lies still
unopened on a shelf in my storeroom. When I got back at nightfall to
the lodge in the woods I found many of the neighbours gathered there,
wanting to hear news of "the Tulla Woman" and to know for certain if
she was dead. I think as time goes on her fame will grow and some of
the myths that always hang in the air will gather round her, for I
think the first thing I was told of her was, "There used surely to
be enchanters in the old time, magicians and freemasons. Old Biddy
Early's power came from the same thing."_ (_Note_ 11.)
_An Old Woman in the Lodge Kitchen_ says:
Do you remember the time John Kevin beyond went to see Biddy Early,
for his wife, she was sick at the time. And Biddy Early knew
everything, and that there was a forth behind her house, and she
said, "Your wife is too fond of going out late at night."
_I was told by a Gate-keeper:_
There was a man at Cranagh had one of his sheep shorn in the night,
and all the wool taken. And he got on his horse and went to Feakle
and Biddy Early, and she told him the name of the man that did it,
and where it was hidden, and so he got it back again.
There was a man went to Biddy Early, and she told him that the woman
he'd marry would have her husband killed by his brother. And so it
happened, for the woman he married was sitting by the fire with her
husband, and the brother came in, having a drop of drink taken, and
threw a pint at him that hit him on the head and killed him. It was
the man that married her that told me this.
_Mrs. Kearns:_
Did I know any one that was taken by them? Well, I never knew one
that was brought back again. Himself went one time to Biddy Early
for his uncle, Donohue, that was sick, and he found her there and her
fingers all covered with big gold rings, and she gave him a bottle,
and she said: "Go in no house on your way home, or stop nowhere, or
you'll lose it." But going home he had a thirst on him and he came to
a public-house, and he wouldn't go in, but he stopped and bid the boy
bring him out a drink. But a little farther on the road the horse got
a fall, and the bottle was broke.
_Mrs. Cregan:_
It's I was with this woman here to Biddy Early. And when she saw
me, she knew it was for my husband I came, and she looked in her
bottle and she said, "It's nothing put upon him by my people that's
wrong with him." And she bid me give him cold oranges and some other
things--herbs. He got better after.
_Daniel Curtin:_
Did I ever hear of Biddy Early? There's not a man in this countryside
over forty year old that hasn't been with her some time or other.
There's a man living in that house over there was sick one time, and
he went to her, and she cured him, but says she, "You'll have to lose
something, and don't fret after it." So he had a grey mare and she
was going to foal, and one morning when he went out he saw that the
foal was born, and was lying dead by the side of the wall. So he
remembered what she said to him and he didn't fret.
There was one Dillane in Kinvara, Sir William knew him well, and he
went to her one time for a cure. And Father Andrew came to the house
and was mad with him for going, and says he, "You take the cure out
of the hands of God." And Mrs. Dillane said, "Your Reverence, none of
us can do that." "Well," says Father Andrew, "then I'll see what the
devil can do and I'll send my horse tomorrow, that has a sore in his
leg this long time, and try will she be able to cure him."
So next day he sent a man with his horse, and when he got to Biddy
Early's house she came out, and she told him every word that Father
Andrew had said, and she cured the sore. So after that, he left the
people alone; but before it, he'd be dressed in a frieze coat and a
riding whip in his hand, driving away the people from going to her.
She had four or five husbands, and they all died of drink one after
another. Maybe twenty or thirty people would be there in the day
looking for cures, and every one of them would bring a bottle of
whiskey. Wild cards they all were, or they wouldn't have married her.
She'd help too to bring the butter back. Always on the first of May,
it used to be taken, and maybe what would be taken from one man would
be conveyed to another.
_Mr. McCabe:_