ocean. I knew it well, for I saw Cape Clear to my right hand, sticking
up out of the water. ‘Ah! my lord,’ said I to the goose, for I thought
it best to keep a civil tongue in my head any way, ‘fly to land if you
please.’ ‘It is impossible, you see, Dan,’ said he, ‘for awhile,
because you see we are going to Arabia.’ ‘To Arabia!’ said I; ‘that’s
surely some place in foreign parts, far away. Oh! Mr. Goose: why then
to be sure, I’m a man to be pitied among you.’ ‘Whist, whist, you
fool,’ said he, ‘hold your tongue; I tell you Arabia is a very decent
sort of place, as like West Carbery as one egg is like another, only
there is a little more sand there.’
“Just as we were talking, a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful
before the wind: ‘Ah! then, sir,’ said I, ‘will you drop me on the
ship, if you please?’ ‘We are not fair over it,’ said he. ‘We are,’
said I. ‘We are not,’ said he: ‘If I dropped you now you would go
splash into the sea.’ ‘I would not,’ says I: ‘I know better than that,
for it’s just clean under us, so let me drop now at once.’
“‘If you must, you must,’ said he. ‘There, take your own way;’ and he
opened his claw, and indeed he was right—sure enough I came down
plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I
went, and I gave myself up then for ever, when a whale walked up to
me, scratching himself after his night’s sleep, and looked me full in
the face, and never the word did he say, but lifting up his tail, he
splashed me all over again with the cold salt water, till there wasn’t
a dry stitch upon my whole carcass; and I heard somebody saying—’twas
a voice I knew too—‘Get up, you drunken brute, off of that;’ and with
that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water, which she
was splashing all over me;—for, rest her soul! though she was a good
wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand
of her own.
“‘Get up,’ said she again: ‘and of all places in the parish, would no
place _sarve_ your turn to lie down upon but under the _ould_ walls of
Carrigaphooka? an uneasy resting I am sure you had of it.’ And sure
enough I had; for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles,
and men of the moon, and flying ganders, and whales, driving me
through bogs, and up to the moon, and down to the bottom of the green
ocean. If I was in drink ten times over, long would it be before I’d
lie down on the same spot again; I know that.”
THE CROOKENED BACK.
XVI.
Peggy Barrett was once tall, well shaped, and comely. She was in her
youth remarkable for two qualities, not often found together, of being
the most thrifty housewife, and the best dancer in her native village
of Ballyhooley. But she is now upwards of sixty years old; and during
the last ten years of her life, she has never been able to stand
upright. Her back is bent nearly to a level; yet she has the freest
use of all her limbs that can be enjoyed in such a posture; her health
is good, and her mind vigorous; and, in the family of her eldest son,
with whom she has lived since the death of her husband, she performs
all the domestic services which her age, and the infirmity just
mentioned, allow. She washes the potatoes, makes the fire, sweeps the
house (labours in which she good-humouredly says “she finds her
crooked back mighty convenient”), plays with the children, and tells
stories to the family and their neighbouring friends, who often
collect round her son’s fire-side to hear them during the long winter
evenings. Her powers of conversation are highly extolled, both for
humour and in narration; and anecdotes of droll, awkward incidents,
connected with the posture in which she has been so long fixed, as
well as the history of the occurrence to which she owes that
misfortune, are favourite topics of her discourse. Among other
matters, she is fond of relating how, on a certain day at the close of
a bad harvest, when several tenants of the estate on which she lived
concerted in a field a petition for an abatement of rent, they placed
the paper on which they wrote upon her back, which was found no very
inconvenient substitute for a table.
Peggy, like all experienced story-tellers, suited her tales, both in
length and subject, to the audience and the occasion. She knew that,
in broad daylight, when the sun shines brightly, and the trees are
budding, and the birds singing around us, when men and women, like
ourselves, are moving and speaking, employed variously in business or
amusement; she knew, in short (though certainly without knowing or
much caring wherefore), that when we are engaged about the realities
of life and nature, we want that spirit of credulity, without which
tales of the deepest interest will lose their power. At such times
Peggy was brief, very particular as to facts, and never dealt in the
marvellous. But round the blazing hearth of a Christmas evening, when
infidelity is banished from all companies, at least in low and simple
life, as a quality, to say the least of it, out of season; when the
winds of “dark December” whistled bleakly round the walls, and almost
through the doors of the little mansion, reminding its inmates, that
as the world is vexed by elements superior to human power, so it may
be visited by beings of a superior nature:—at such times would Peggy
Barrett give full scope to her memory, or her imagination, or both;
and upon one of these occasions, she gave the following circumstantial
account of the “crookening of her back.”
“It was, of all days in the year, the day before May-day, that I went
out to the garden to weed the potatoes. I would not have gone out that
day, but I was dull in myself, and sorrowful, and wanted to be alone;
all the boys and girls were laughing and joking in the house, making
goaling-balls and dressing out ribands for the mummers next day. I
couldn’t bear it. ’Twas only at the Easter that was then past (and
that’s ten years last Easter—I won’t forget the time,) that I buried
my poor man; and I thought how gay and joyful I was, many a long year
before that, at the May-eve before our wedding, when with Robin by my
side, I sat cutting and sewing the ribands for the goaling-ball I was
to give the boys on the next day, proud to be preferred above all the
other girls of the banks of the Blackwater, by the handsomest boy and
the best hurler in the village; so I left the house and went to the
garden. I staid there all the day, and didn’t come home to dinner. I
don’t know how it was, but somehow I continued on, weeding, and
thinking sorrowfully enough, and singing over some of the old songs
that I sung many and many a time in the days that are gone, and for
them that never will come back to me to hear them. The truth is, I
hated to go and sit silent and mournful among the people in the house,
that were merry and young, and had the best of their days before them.
’Twas late before I thought of returning home, and I did not leave the
garden till some time after sunset. The moon was up; but though there
wasn’t a cloud to be seen, and though a star was winking here and
there in the sky, the day wasn’t long enough gone to have it clear
moonlight; still it shone enough to make every thing on one side of
the heavens look pale and silvery-like; and the thin white mist was
just beginning to creep along the fields. On the other side, near
where the sun was set, there was more of daylight, and the sky looked
angry, red, and fiery through the trees, like as if it was lighted up
by a great town burning below. Every thing was as silent as a
churchyard, only now and then one could hear far off a dog barking, or
a cow lowing after being milked. There wasn’t a creature to be seen on
the road or in the fields. I wondered at this first, but then I
remembered it was May-eve, and that many a thing, both good and bad,
would be wandering about that night, and that I ought to shun danger
as well as others. So I walked on as quick as I could, and soon came
to the end of the demesne wall, where the trees rise high and thick at
each side of the road, and almost meet at the top. My heart misgave me
when I got under the shade. There was so much light let down from the
opening above, that I could see about a stone-throw before me. All of
a sudden I heard a rustling among the branches, on the right side of
the road, and saw something like a small black goat, only with long
wide horns turned out instead of being bent backwards, standing upon
its hind legs upon the top of the wall, and looking down on me. My
breath was stopped, and I couldn’t move for near a minute. I couldn’t
help, somehow, keeping my eyes fixed on it; and it never stirred, but
kept looking in the same fixed way down at me. At last I made a rush,
and went on; but I didn’t go ten steps, when I saw the very same
sight, on the wall to the left of me, standing in exactly the same
manner, but three or four times as high, and almost as tall as the
tallest man. The horns looked frightful; it gazed upon me as before;
my legs shook, and my teeth chattered, and I thought I would drop
down dead every moment. At last I felt as if I was obliged to go
on—and on I went; but it was without feeling how I moved, or whether
my legs carried me. Just as I passed the spot where this frightful
thing was standing, I heard a noise as if something sprung from the
wall, and felt like as if a heavy animal plumped down upon me, and
held with the fore feet clinging to my shoulder, and the hind ones
fixed in my gown, that was folded and pinned up behind me. ’Tis the
wonder of my life ever since how I bore the shock; but so it was, I
neither fell, nor even staggered with the weight, but walked on as if
I had the strength of ten men, though I felt as if I couldn’t help
moving, and couldn’t stand still if I wished it. Though I gasped with
fear, I knew as well as I do now what I was doing. I tried to cry out,
but couldn’t; I tried to run, but wasn’t able; I tried to look back,
but my head and neck were as if they were screwed in a vice. I could
barely roll my eyes on each side, and then I could see, as clearly and
plainly as if it was in the broad light of the blessed sun, a black
and cloven foot planted upon each of my shoulders. I heard a low
breathing in my ear; I felt at every step I took, my leg strike back
against the feet of the creature that was on my back. Still I could do
nothing but walk straight on. At last I came within sight of the
house, and a welcome sight it was to me, for I thought I would be
released when I reached it. I soon came close to the door, but it was
shut; I looked at the little window, but it was shut too, for they
were more cautious about May-eve than I was; I saw the light inside,
through the chinks of the door; I heard ’em talking and laughing
within; I felt myself at three yards’ distance from them that would
die to save me;—and may the Lord save me from ever again feeling what
I did that night, when I found myself held by what couldn’t be good
nor friendly, but without the power to help myself, or to call my
friends, or to put out my hand to knock, or even to lift my leg to
strike the door, and let them know that I was outside it! ’Twas as if
my hands grew to my sides, and my feet were glued to the ground, or
had the weight of a rock fixed to them. At last I thought of blessing
myself; and my right hand, that would do nothing else, did that for
me. Still the weight remained on my back, and all was as before. I
blessed myself again: ’twas still all the same. I then gave myself up
for lost: but I blessed myself a third time, and my hand no sooner
finished the sign, than all at once I felt the burden spring off of my
back; the door flew open as if a clap of thunder burst it, and I was
pitched forward on my forehead, in upon the middle of the floor. When
I got up my back was crookened, and I never stood straight from that
night to this blessed hour.”
There was a pause when Peggy Barrett finished. Those who heard the
story before had listened with a look of half-satisfied interest,
blended, however, with an expression of that serious and solemn
feeling, which always attends a tale of supernatural wonders, how
often soever told. They moved upon their seats out of the posture in
which they had remained fixed during the narrative, and sat in an
attitude which denoted that their curiosity as to the cause of this
strange occurrence had been long since allayed. Those to whom it was
before unknown still retained their look and posture of strained
attention, and anxious but solemn expectation. A grandson of Peggy’s,
about nine years old (not the child of the son with whom she lived,)
had never before heard the story. As it grew in interest, he was
observed to cling closer and closer to the old woman’s side; and at
the close he was gazing steadfastly at her, with his body bent back
across her knees, and his face turned up to hers, with a look, through
which a disposition to weep seemed contending with curiosity. After a
moment’s pause, he could no longer restrain his impatience, and
catching her gray locks in one hand, while a tear of dread and wonder
was just dropping from his eye-lash, he cried, “Granny, what was it?”
The old woman smiled first at the elder part of her audience, and then
at her grandson, and patting him on the forehead, she said, “It was
the Phooka.”
The _Pouke_ or _Phooka_, as the word is pronounced, means, in
plain terms, the Evil One. “Playing the puck,” a common
Anglo-Irish phrase, is equivalent to “playing the devil.” Much
learning has been displayed in tracing this word through
various languages, vide Quarterly Review [vol. xxii. &c.] The
commentators on Shakspeare derive the beautiful and frolicksome
Puck of the Midsummer Night’s Dream from the mischievous
Pouke.—Vide Drayton’s Nymphidia.
“This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,
Still walking like a ragged colt,” &c.
In Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1587) we
find,
“—— and the countrie where Chgmæra, that same _Pooke_,
Hath goatish bodie,” &c.
* * * * *
The Irish Phooka, in its nature, perfectly resembles the
_Mahr_; and we have only to observe, that there is a particular
German tradition of a spirit, which sits among reeds and alder
bushes; and which, like the Phooka, leaps upon the back of
those who pass by in the night, and does not leave them till
they faint and fall to the earth.
THE BROTHERS GRIMM.
THIERNA NA OGE.
“On Lough-Neagh’s bank, as the fisherman strays,
When the clear cold eve’s declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining.”
MOORE.
FIOR USGA.
XVII.
A little way beyond the Gallows Green of Cork, and just outside the
town, there is a great lough of water, where people in the winter go
and skate for the sake of diversion; but the sport above the water is
nothing to what is under it, for at the very bottom of this lough
there are buildings and gardens, far more beautiful than any now to be
seen, and how they came there was in this manner.
Long before Saxon foot pressed Irish ground, there was a great king
called Core, whose palace stood where the lough now is, in a round
green valley, that was just a mile about. In the middle of the
court-yard was a spring of fair water, so pure, and so clear, that it
was the wonder of all the world. Much did the king rejoice at having
so great a curiosity within his palace; but as people came in crowds
from far and near to draw the precious water of this spring, he was
sorely afraid that in time it might become dry; so he caused a high
wall to be built up round it, and would allow nobody to have the
water, which was a very great loss to the poor people living about the
palace. Whenever he wanted any for himself, he would send his daughter
to get it, not liking to trust his servants with the key of the
well-door, fearing that they might give some away.
One night the king gave a grand entertainment, and there were many
great princes present, and lords and nobles without end; and there
were wonderful doings throughout the palace: there were bonfires,
whose blaze reached up to the very sky; and dancing was there, to such
sweet music, that it ought to have waked up the dead out of their
graves; and feasting was there in the greatest of plenty for all who
came; nor was any one turned away from the palace gates—but “you’re
welcome—you’re welcome, heartily,” was the porter’s salute for all.
Now it happened at this grand entertainment there was one young prince
above all the rest mighty comely to behold, and as tall and as
straight as ever eye would wish to look on. Right merrily did he dance
that night with the old king’s daughter, wheeling here, and wheeling
there, as light as a feather, and footing it away to the admiration of
every one. The musicians played the better for seeing their dancing;
and they danced as if their lives depended upon it. After all this
dancing came the supper; and the young prince was seated at table by
the side of his beautiful partner, who smiled upon him as often as he
spoke to her; and that was by no means so often as he wished, for he
had constantly to turn to the company and thank them for the many
compliments passed upon his fair partner and himself.
In the midst of this banquet, one of the great lords said to King
Core, “May it please your majesty, here is every thing in abundance
that heart can wish for, both to eat and drink, except water.”
“Water!” said the king, mightily pleased at some one calling for that
of which purposely there was a want: “water shall you have, my lord,
speedily, and that of such a delicious kind, that I challenge all the
world to equal it. Daughter,” said he, “go fetch some in the golden
vessel which I caused to be made for the purpose.”
The king’s daughter, who was called Fior Usga, (which signifies, in
English, Spring Water,) did not much like to be told to perform so
menial a service before so many people, and though she did not venture
to refuse the commands of her father, yet hesitated to obey him, and
looked down upon the ground. The king, who loved his daughter very
much, seeing this, was sorry for what he had desired her to do, but
having said the word, he was never known to recall it; he therefore
thought of a way to make his daughter go speedily and fetch the water,
and it was by proposing that the young prince her partner should go
along with her. Accordingly, with a loud voice, he said, “Daughter, I
wonder not at your fearing to go alone so late at night; but I doubt
not the young prince at your side will go with you.” The prince was
not displeased at hearing this; and taking the golden vessel in one
hand, with the other led the king’s daughter out of the hall so
gracefully that all present gazed after them with delight.
When they came to the spring of water, in the court-yard of the palace,
the fair Usga unlocked the door with the greatest care, and stooping
down with the golden vessel to take some of the water out of the well,
found the vessel so heavy that she lost her balance and fell in. The
young prince tried in vain to save her, for the water rose and rose so
fast, that the entire court-yard was speedily covered with it, and he
hastened back almost in a state of distraction to the king.
The door of the well being left open, the water, which had been so
long confined, rejoiced at obtaining its liberty, rushed forth
incessantly, every moment rising higher and higher, and was in the
hall of the entertainment sooner than the young prince himself, so
that when he attempted to speak to the king he was up to his neck in
water. At length the water rose to such a height, that it filled the
entire of the green valley in which the king’s palace stood, and so
the present lough of Cork was formed.
Yet the king and his guests were not drowned, as would now happen, if
such an awful inundation were to take place; neither was his daughter,
the fair Usga, who returned to the banquet-hall the very next night
after this dreadful event; and every night since the same
entertainment and dancing goes on in the palace at the bottom of the
lough, and will last until some one has the luck to bring up out of it
the golden vessel which was the cause of all this mischief.
Nobody can doubt that it was a judgment upon the king for his shutting
up the well in the court-yard from the poor people: and if there are
any who do not credit my story, they may go and see the lough of Cork,
for there it is to be seen to this day; the road to Kinsale passes at
one side of it; and when its waters are low and clear, the tops of
towers and stately buildings may be plainly viewed in the bottom by
those who have good eyesight, without the help of spectacles.
CORMAC AND MARY.
XVIII.
“She is not dead—she has no grave—
She lives beneath Lough Corrib’s water;[16]
And in the murmur of each wave
Methinks I catch the songs I taught her.”
Thus many an evening on the shore
Sat Cormac raving wild and lowly;
Still idly muttering o’er and o’er,
“She lives, detain’d by spells unholy.
“Death claims her not, too fair for earth,
Her spirit lives—alien of heaven;
Nor will it know a second birth
When sinful mortals are forgiven!
“Cold is this rock—the wind comes chill,
And mists the gloomy waters cover;
But oh! her soul is colder still—
To lose her God—to leave her lover!”
The lake was in profound repose,
Yet one white wave came gently curling,
And as it reach’d the shore, arose
Dim figures—banners gay unfurling.
Onward they move, an airy crowd:
Through each thin form a moonlight ray shone;
While spear and helm, in pageant proud,
Appear in liquid undulation.
Bright barbed steeds curvetting tread
Their trackless way with antic capers;
And curtain clouds hang overhead,
Festoon’d by rainbow-colour’d vapours.
And when a breath of air would stir
That drapery of Heaven’s own wreathing,
Light wings of prismy gossamer
Just moved and sparkled to the breathing.
Nor wanting was the choral song,
Swelling in silvery chimes of sweetness;
To sound of which this subtile throng
Advanced in playful grace and fleetness.
With music’s strain, all came and went
Upon poor Cormac’s doubting vision;
Now rising in wild merriment,
Now softly fading in derision.
“Christ save her soul,” he boldly cried;
And when that blessed name was spoken,
Fierce yells and fiendish shrieks replied,
And vanished all,—the spell was broken.
And now on Corrib’s lonely shore,
Freed by his word from power of faëry,
To life, to love, restored once more,
Young Cormac welcomes back his Mary.
[16] In the county of Galway.
THE LEGEND OF LOUGH GUR.
XIX.
Larry Cotter had a farm on one side of Lough Gur,[17] and was thriving
in it, for he was an industrious proper sort of man, who would have
lived quietly and soberly to the end of his days, but for the
misfortune that came upon him, and you shall hear how that was. He had
as nice a bit of meadow-land, down by the water-side, as ever a man
would wish for; but its growth was spoiled entirely on him, and no one
could tell how.
[17] In the county of Limerick.
One year after the other it was all ruined just in the same way: the
bounds were well made up, and not a stone of them was disturbed;
neither could his neighbours’ cattle have been guilty of the trespass,
for they were spancelled;[18] but however it was done, the grass of
the meadow was destroyed, which was a great loss to Larry.
[18] Spancelled—fettered.
“What in the wide world will I do?” said Larry Cotter to his
neighbour, Tom Welsh, who was a very decent sort of man himself: “that
bit of meadow-land, which I am paying the great rent for, is doing
nothing at all to make it for me; and the times are bitter bad,
without the help of that to make them worse.”
“’Tis true for you, Larry,” replied Welsh: “the times are bitter
bad—no doubt of that; but may be if you were to watch by night, you
might make out all about it: sure there’s Mick and Terry, my two boys,
will watch with you; for ’tis a thousand pities any honest man like
you should be ruined in such a scheming way.”
Accordingly, the following night, Larry Cotter, with Welsh’s two sons,
took their station in a corner of the meadow. It was just at the full
of the moon, which was shining beautifully down upon the lake, that
was as calm all over as the sky itself; not a cloud was there to be
seen any where, nor a sound to be heard, but the cry of the corn-creaks
answering one another across the water.
“Boys! boys!” said Larry, “look there! look there! but for your lives
don’t make a bit of noise, nor stir a step till I say the word.”
They looked, and saw a great fat cow, followed by seven milk-white
heifers, moving on the smooth surface of the lake towards the meadow.
“’Tis not Tim Dwyer the piper’s cow, any way, that danced all the
flesh off her bones,” whispered Mick to his brother.