Witches and fairy doctors receive their power from opposite dynasties;
the witch from evil spirits and her own malignant will; the fairy
doctor from the fairies, and a something--a temperament--that is born
with him or her. The first is always feared and hated. The second is
gone to for advice, and is never worse than mischievous. The most
celebrated fairy doctors are sometimes people the fairies loved and
carried away, and kept with them for seven years; not that those the
fairies' love are always carried off--they may merely grow silent and
strange, and take to lonely wanderings in the "gentle" places. Such
will, in after-times, be great poets or musicians, or fairy doctors;
they must not be confused with those who have a _Lianhaun shee_
[_leannán-sidhe_], for the _Lianhaun shee_ lives upon the vitals of
its chosen, and they waste and die. She is of the dreadful solitary
fairies. To her have belonged the greatest of the Irish poets, from
Oisin down to the last century.
Those we speak of have for their friends the trooping fairies--the gay
and sociable populace of raths and caves. Great is their knowledge of
herbs and spells. These doctors, when the butter will not come on the
milk, or the milk will not come from the cow, will be sent for to find
out if the cause be in the course of common nature or if there has
been witchcraft. Perhaps some old hag in the shape of a hare has been
milking the cattle. Perhaps some user of "the dead hand" has drawn
away the butter to her own churn. Whatever it be, there is the
counter-charm. They will give advice, too, in cases of suspected
changelings, and prescribe for the "fairy blast" (when the fairy
strikes any one a tumour rises, or they become paralysed. This is
called a "fairy blast" or a "fairy stroke"). The fairies are, of
course, visible to them, and many a new-built house have they bid the
owner pull down because it lay on the fairies' road. Lady Wilde thus
describes one who lived in Innis Sark:--"He never touched beer,
spirits, or meat in all his life, but has lived entirely on bread,
fruit, and vegetables. A man who knew him thus describes him--'Winter
and summer his dress is the same--merely a flannel shirt and coat. He
will pay his share at a feast, but neither eats nor drinks of the food
and drink set before him. He speaks no English, and never could be
made to learn the English tongue, though he says it might be used with
great effect to curse one's enemy. He holds a burial-ground sacred,
and would not carry away so much as a leaf of ivy from a grave. And he
maintains that the people are right to keep to their ancient usages,
such as never to dig a grave on a Monday, and to carry the coffin
three times round the grave, following the course of the sun, for then
the dead rest in peace. Like the people, also, he holds suicides as
accursed; for they believe that all its dead turn over on their faces
if a suicide is laid amongst them.
"'Though well off, he never, even in his youth, thought of taking a
wife; nor was he ever known to love a woman. He stands quite apart from
life, and by this means holds his power over the mysteries. No money
will tempt him to impart his knowledge to another, for if he did he
would be struck dead--so he believes. He would not touch a hazel stick,
but carries an ash wand, which he holds in his hand when he prays, laid
across his knees; and the whole of his life is devoted to works of grace
and charity, and though now an old man, he has never had a day's
sickness. No one has ever seen him in a rage, nor heard an angry word
from his lips but once, and then being under great irritation, he
recited the Lord's Prayer backwards as an imprecation on his enemy.
Before his death he will reveal the mystery of his power, but not till
the hand of death is on him for certain.'" When he does reveal it, we
may be sure it will be to one person only--his successor. There are
several such doctors in County Sligo, really well up in herbal medicine
by all accounts, and my friends find them in their own counties. All
these things go on merrily. The spirit of the age laughs in vain, and is
itself only a ripple to pass, or already passing, away.
The spells of the witch are altogether different; they smell of the
grave. One of the most powerful is the charm of the dead hand. With a
hand cut from a corpse they, muttering words of power, will stir a
well and skim from its surface a neighbour's butter.
A candle held between the fingers of the dead hand can never be blown
out. This is useful to robbers, but they appeal for the suffrage of
the lovers likewise, for they can make love-potions by drying and
grinding into powder the liver of a black cat. Mixed with tea, and
poured from a black teapot, it is infallible. There are many stories
of its success in quite recent years, but, unhappily, the spell must
be continually renewed, or all the love may turn into hate. But the
central notion of witchcraft everywhere is the power to change into
some fictitious form, usually in Ireland a hare or a cat. Long ago a
wolf was the favourite. Before Giraldus Cambrensis came to Ireland, a
monk wandering in a forest at night came upon two wolves, one of whom
was dying. The other entreated him to give the dying wolf the last
sacrament. He said the mass, and paused when he came to the viaticum.
The other, on seeing this, tore the skin from the breast of the dying
wolf, laying bare the form of an old woman. Thereon the monk gave the
sacrament. Years afterwards he confessed the matter, and when Giraldus
visited the country, was being tried by the synod of the bishops. To
give the sacrament to an animal was a great sin. Was it a human being
or an animal? On the advice of Giraldus they sent the monk, with
papers describing the matter, to the Pope for his decision. The result
is not stated.
Giraldus himself was of opinion that the wolf-form was an illusion,
for, as he argued, only God can change the form. His opinion coincides
with tradition, Irish and otherwise.
It is the notion of many who have written about these things that magic
is mainly the making of such illusions. Patrick Kennedy tells a story of
a girl who, having in her hand a sod of grass containing, unknown to
herself, a four-leaved shamrock, watched a conjurer at a fair. Now, the
four-leaved shamrock guards its owner from all _pishogues_ (spells), and
when the others were staring at a cock carrying along the roof of a shed
a huge beam in its bill, she asked them what they found to wonder at in
a cock with a straw. The conjurer begged from her the sod of grass, to
give to his horse, he said. Immediately she cried out in terror that the
beam would fall and kill somebody.
This, then, is to be remembered--the form of an enchanted thing is a
fiction and a caprice.