THOSE that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of
their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to
have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has
passed the threshold of trance, to those sweet waters where Maeldun saw
the dishevelled eagles bathe and become young again.
There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
me a few months before his death that ‘they’ would not let him sleep
at night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their
pipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend
had told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or
to play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and
he did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play.
He showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he
did not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
she heard that ‘three of them’ had told him he was to die. He said they
had gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they
had ‘taken,’ I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the
house with them, had ‘gone to some other place,’ because ‘they found
the house too cold for them, maybe’; and he died a week after he had
said these things.
His neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old
age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young
man. His brother said, ‘Old he is, and it’s all in his brain the things
he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him.’ But he was
improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, ‘The
poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a
fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two
lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they
took away Fallon’s little girl.’ And she told how Fallon’s little girl
had met a woman ‘with red hair that was as bright as silver,’ who took
her away. Another neighbour, who was herself ‘clouted over the ear’ by
one of them for going into a fort where they were, said, ‘I believe
it’s mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last
night I said, “The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it
never stops,” to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,
“I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them
is after bringing out a little flute, and it’s on it he’s playing to
them.” And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he
said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones,
and he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and
strong.’
A friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms
of true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down
accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman’s story some
time before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote
it out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not
like being in the house alone because of the ghosts and faeries;
and the old woman said, ‘There’s nothing to be frightened about in
faeries, miss. Many’s the time I talked to a woman myself that was
a faery, or something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal
anyhow. She used to come about your grandfather’s house—your mother’s
grandfather, that is—in my young days. But you’ll have heard all about
her.’ My friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time
before, and she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went
on, ‘Well, dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming
about was when your uncle—that is, your mother’s uncle—Joseph married,
and building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
father’s, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
yet; and one day I was standing with my mother fornent the house, when
we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!’ My friend asked how the
woman was dressed, and the old woman said, ‘It was a gray cloak she
had on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied
round her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times.’
My friend asked, ‘How wee was she?’ And the old woman said, ‘Well now,
she wasn’t wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the
Wee Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you
would say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round
in the face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother’s sister, and
Betty was like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of
them. She was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married,
and she never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee
Woman—her being like Betty—was, maybe, one of their own people that had
been took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
straight over to where my mother was standing. “Go over to the Lough
this minute!”—ordering her like that—“Go over to the Lough, and tell
Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I’ll
show you fornent the thorn-bush. That is where it is to be built, if he
is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I’m telling ye this minute.”
The house was being built on “the path” I suppose—the path used by the
people of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down
and shows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but
didn’t bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,
when he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident
that come to a horse that hadn’t room to turn right with a harrow
between the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when
next she come, and says to us, “He didn’t do as I bid him, but he’ll
see what he’ll see.”’ My friend asked where the woman came from this
time, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, ‘Always the
same way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she
had about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and
many a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to
my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.
There was none of the other children of us ever seen her unless me;
but I used to be glad when I seen her coming up the burn, and would run
out and catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother,
“Here’s the Wee Woman!” No man body ever seen her. My father used to
be wanting to, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were
telling lies and talking foolish like. And so one day when she had
come, and was sitting by the fireside talking to my mother, I slips out
to the field where he was digging. “Come up,” says I, “if ye want to
see her. She’s sitting at the fireside now, talking to mother.” So in
he comes with me and looks round angry like and sees nothing, and he up
with a broom that was near hand and hits me a crig with it. “Take that
now!” says he, “for making a fool of me!” and away with him as fast as
he could, and queer and angry with me. The Wee Woman says to me then,
“Ye got that now for bringing people to see me. No man body ever seen
me, and none ever will.”
‘There was one day, though, she gave him a queer fright anyway, whether
he had seen her or not. He was in among the cattle when it happened,
and he comes up to the house all trembling like. “Don’t let me hear
you say another word of your Wee Woman. I have got enough of her this
time.” Another time, all the same, he was up Gortin to sell horses, and
before he went off, in steps the Wee Woman and says she to my mother,
holding out a sort of a weed, “Your man is gone up by Gortin, and
there’s a bad fright waiting him coming home, but take this and sew it
in his coat, and he’ll get no harm by it.” My mother takes the herb,
but thinks to herself, “Sure there’s nothing in it,” and throws it on
the fire, and lo and behold, and sure enough! coming home from Gortin,
my father got as bad a fright as ever he got in his life. What it was I
don’t right mind, but anyway he was badly damaged by it. My mother was
in a queer way frightened of the Wee Woman, after what she had done,
and sure enough the next time she was angry. “Ye didn’t believe me,”
she said, “and ye threw the herb I gave ye in the fire, and I went far
enough for it.” There was another time she came and told how William
Hearne was dead in America. “Go over,” she says, “to the Lough, and say
that William is dead, and he died happy, and this was the last Bible
chapter ever he read,” and with that she gave the verse and chapter.
“Go,” she says, “and tell them to read them at the next class meeting,
and that I held his head while he died.” And sure enough word came
after that how William had died on the day she named. And, doing as she
bid about the chapter and hymn, they never had such a prayer-meeting as
that. One day she and me and my mother was standing talking, and she
was warning her about something, when she says of a sudden, “Here comes
Miss Letty in all her finery, and it’s time for me to be off.” And with
that she gave a swirl round on her feet, and raises up in the air, and
round and round she goes, and up and up, as if it was a winding stairs
she went up, only far swifter. She went up and up, till she was no
bigger than a bird up against the clouds, singing and singing the whole
time the loveliest music I ever heard in my life from that day to this.
It wasn’t a hymn she was singing, but poetry, lovely poetry, and me and
my mother stands gaping up, and all of a tremble. “What is she at all,
mother?” says I. “Is it an angel she is or a faery woman, or what?”
With that up come Miss Letty, that was your grandmother, dear, but Miss
Letty she was then, and no word of her being anything else, and she
wondered to see us gaping up that way, till me and my mother told her
of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and was lovely looking. She was up
the lane where none of us could see her coming forward when the Wee
Woman rose up in that queer way, saying, “Here comes Miss Letty in all
her finery.” Who knows to what far country she went, or to see whom
dying?
‘It was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I
mind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by
the fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.
In slips the Wee Woman, “I’m come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,” says
she. “That’s right,” says my mother, and thinks to herself, “I can
give her her supper nicely.” Down she sits by the fire a while. “Now
I’ll tell you where you’ll bring my supper,” says she. “In the room
beyond there beside the loom—set a chair in and a plate.” “When ye’re
spending the night, mayn’t ye as well sit by the table and eat with the
rest of us?” “Do what you’re bid, and set whatever you give me in the
room beyant. I’ll eat there and nowhere else.” So my mother sets her a
plate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,
and we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,
and there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each
portion, and she clean gone!’
1897.