Page 49. This legend of the alp-luachra is widely disseminated, and
I have found traces of it in all parts of Ireland. The alp-luachra
is really a newt, not a lizard, as is generally supposed. He is the
lissotriton punctatus of naturalists, and is the only species of newt
known in Ireland. The male has an orange belly, red-tipped tail, and
olive back. It is in most parts of Ireland a rare reptile enough, and
hence probably the superstitious fear with which it is regarded, on
the principle of _omne ignotum pro terribli_. This reptile goes under
a variety of names in the various counties. In speaking English the
peasantry when they do not use the Irish name, call him a “mankeeper,” a
word which has probably some reference to the superstition related in our
story. He is also called in some counties a “darklooker,” a word which is
probably, a corruption of an Irish name for him which I have heard the
Kildare people use, dochi-luachair (daċuiḋ luaċra), a word not found in
the dictionaries. In Waterford, again, he is called arc-luachra, and the
Irish MSS. call him arc-luachra (earc-luaċra). The alt-pluachra of the
text is a mis-pronunciation of the proper name, alp-luachra. In the Arran
Islands they have another name, ail-ċuaċ. I have frequently heard of
people swallowing one while asleep. The symptoms, they say, are that the
person swells enormously, and is afflicted with a thirst which makes him
drink canfuls and pails of water or buttermilk, or anything else he can
lay his hand on. In the south of Ireland it is believed that if something
savoury is cooked on a pan, and the person’s head held over it, the
mankeeper will come out. A story very like the one here given is related
in Waterford, but of a dar daol, or _daraga dheel_, as he is there
called, a venomous insect, which has even more legends attached to him
than the alp-luachra. In this county, too, they say that if you turn the
alp-luachra over on its back, and lick it, it will cure burns. Keating,
the Irish historian and theologian, alludes quaintly to this reptile in
his Tri Biorġaoiṫe an Bháir, so finely edited in the original the other
day by Dr. Atkinson. “Since,” says Keating, “prosperity or worldly
store is the weapon of the adversary (the devil), what a man ought to
do is to spend it in killing the adversary, that is, by bestowing it
on God’s poor. The thing which we read in Lactantius agrees with this,
that if an airc-luachra were to inflict a wound on anyone, what he ought
to do is to shake a pinchful of the ashes of the airc-luachra upon the
wound, and he will be cured thereby; and so, if worldly prosperity wounds
the conscience, what you ought to do is to put a poultice of the same
prosperity to cure the wound which the covetousness by which you have
amassed it has made in your conscience, by distributing upon the poor of
God all that remains over your own necessity.” The practice which the
fourth-century Latin alludes to, is in Ireland to-day transferred to the
dar-daol, or goevius olens of the naturalists, which is always burnt as
soon as found. I have often heard people say:—“Kill a keerhogue (clock or
little beetle); burn a dar-dael.”
Page 59. Boccuch (bacaċ), literally a lame man, is, or rather was, the
name of a very common class of beggars about the beginning of this
century. Many of these men were wealthy enough, and some used to go about
with horses to collect the “alms” which the people unwillingly gave them.
From all accounts they appear to have been regular black-mailers, and to
have extorted charity partly through inspiring physical and partly moral
terror, for the satire, at least of some of them, was as much dreaded as
their cudgels. Here is a curious specimen of their truculence from a song
called the Bacach Buidhe, now nearly forgotten:—
Is bacach mé tá air aon chois, siúbhalfaidh mé go spéifeaṁail,
Ceannóchaidh mé bréidin i g-Cill-Cainnigh do’n bhraois,
Cuirfead cóta córuiġthe gleusta, a’s búcla buidhe air m’aon chois,
A’s nach maith mo shlighe bidh a’s eudaigh o chaill mo chosa siúbhal!
Ni’l bacach ná fear-mála o Ṡligeach go Cinn-tráile
Agus ó Bheul-an-átha go Baile-buidhe na Midhe,
Nach bhfuil agam faoi árd-chíos, agus cróin anaghaidh na ráithe,
No mineóchainn a g-cnámha le bata glas daraigh.
_i.e._,
I am a boccugh who goes on one foot, I will travel airily,
I will buy frize in Kilkenny for the breeches(?)
I will put a well-ordered prepared coat and yellow buckles on my one
foot,
And isn’t it good, my way of getting food and clothes since my feet
lost their walk.
There is no boccuch or bagman from Sligo to Kinsale
And from Ballina to Ballybwee (Athboy) in Meath,
That I have not under high rent to me—a crown every quarter from them—
Or I’d pound their bones small with a green oak stick.
The memory of these formidable guests is nearly vanished, and the
boccuch in our story is only a feeble old beggarman. I fancy this tale
of evicting the alt-pluachra family from their human abode is fathered
upon a good many people as well as upon the father of the present
MacDermot. [Is the peasant belief in the Alp-Luachra the originating idea
of the well-known Irish Rabelaisian 14th century tale “The Vision of
McConglinny?”—A.N.]