A WHILE ago I was in the train, and getting near Sligo. The last time
I had been there something was troubling me, and I had longed for a
message from those beings or bodiless moods, or whatever they be, who
inhabit the world of spirits. The message came, for one night I saw
with blinding distinctness a black animal, half weasel, half dog,
moving along the top of a stone wall, and presently the black animal
vanished, and from the other side came a white weasel-like dog, his
pink flesh shining through his white hair and all in a blaze of light;
and I remembered a peasant belief about two faery dogs who go about
representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the
excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and
chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage
and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box,
and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest
emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden
Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a
beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and
flung into a corner. It said that the world was once all perfect and
kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried
like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and
the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over
our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the
song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of
the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the
clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred
by a little vulgarity, or by a pinprick out of sad recollection, and
that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only
they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the
sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must
weep until the Eternal gates swing open.
We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the fiddler
put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a copper, and
then opened the door and was gone.
A REMONSTRANCE WITH SCOTSMEN FOR HAVING SOURED THE DISPOSITION OF THEIR
GHOSTS AND FAERIES
NOT only in Ireland is faery belief still extant. It was only the
other day I heard of a Scottish farmer who believed that the lake in
front of his house was haunted by a water-horse. He was afraid of it,
and dragged the lake with nets, and then tried to pump it empty. It
would have been a bad thing for the water-horse had he found him. An
Irish peasant would have long since come to terms with the creature.
For in Ireland there is something of timid affection between men and
spirits. They only ill-treat each other in reason. Each admits the
other side to have feelings. There are points beyond which neither
will go. No Irish peasant would treat a captured faery as did the man
Campbell tells of. He caught a kelpie, and tied her behind him on his
horse. She was fierce, but he kept her quiet by driving an awl and a
needle into her. They to a river, and she grew very restless, fearing
to cross the water. Again he drove the awl and needle into her. She
cried out, ‘Pierce me with the awl, but keep that slender, hair-like
slave’ (the needle) ‘out of me.’ They came to an inn. He turned the
light of a lantern on her; immediately she dropped down like a falling
star, and changed into a lump of jelly. She was dead. Nor would they
treat the faeries as one is treated in an old Highland poem. A faery
loved a little child who used to cut turf at the side of a faery hill.
Every day the faery put out his hand from the hill with an enchanted
knife. The child used to cut the turf with the knife. It did not take
long, the knife being charmed. Her brothers wondered why she was done
so quickly. At last they resolved to watch, and find out who helped
her. They saw the small hand come out of the earth, and the little
child take from it the knife. When the turf was all cut, they saw her
make three taps on the ground with the handle. The small hand came out
of the hill. Snatching the knife from the child, they cut the hand off
with a blow. The faery was never again seen. He drew his bleeding arm
into the earth, thinking, as it is recorded, he had lost his hand
through the treachery of the child.
In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
the Devil religious. ‘Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the
minister?’ he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
have left them alone. To be sure, the ‘loyal minority’ knocked out the
eye of one with a cabbage-stump on the 31st of March, 1711, in the town
of Carrickfergus. But then the ‘loyal minority’ is half Scottish. You
have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like to
have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals have
gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn
have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear
their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes
ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland
you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been
permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls.
Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they
will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but more in
sadness in anger have they said it. The Catholic religion likes to keep
on good terms with its neighbours.
These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and
graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror
to Scotland. Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of
make-believe. When a peasant strays into an enchanted hovel, and is
made to turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not
feel anxious; we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the
dew on his old coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have
soured the naturally excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins. The
piper M’Crimmon, of the Hebrides, shouldered his pipes, and marched
into a sea cavern, playing loudly, and followed by his dog. For a
long time the people could hear the pipes. He must have gone nearly a
mile, when they heard the sound of a struggle. Then the piping ceased
suddenly. Some time went by, and then his dog came out of the cavern
completely flayed, too weak even to howl. Nothing else ever came out of
the cavern. Then there is the tale of the man who dived into a lake
where treasure was thought to be. He saw a great coffer of iron. Close
to the coffer lay a monster, who warned him to return whence he came.
He rose to the surface; but the bystanders, when they heard he had seen
the treasure, persuaded him to dive again. He dived. In a little while
his heart and liver floated up, reddening the water. No man ever saw
the rest of his body.
These water-goblins and water-monsters are common in Scottish
folk-lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our
tales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly
humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one
of these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does
not prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding
it with conscious phantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day
for congers in the monster hole. Returning home, a great eel on my
shoulder, his head flapping down in front, his tail sweeping the ground
behind, I met a fisherman of my acquaintance. I began a tale of an
immense conger, three times larger than the one I carried, that had
broken my line and escaped. ‘That was him,’ said the fisherman. ‘Did
you ever hear how he made my brother emigrate? My brother was a diver,
you know, and grubbed stones for the Harbour Board. One day the beast
comes up to him, and says, “What are you after?” “Stones, sur,” says
he. “Don’t you think you had better be going?” “Yes, sur,” says he. And
that’s why my brother emigrated. The people said it was because he got
poor, but that’s not true.’
You—you will make no terms with the spirits of fire and earth and
air and water. You have made the Darkness your enemy. We—we exchange
civilities with the world beyond.