determination to fast through the Friday. He knew very well that if his
mother were coming into the room he would have to eat some food from
her, and that is the reason he would not let his mother in.
When the Friday came he never tasted bit nor sup throughout the day.
On the morning of Saturday his mother asked the girl how he was getting
on. The girl said that he was going on nicely [literally, "coming to
land"]. But when the girl went in at the hour of twelve o'clock in the
day he was a corpse, and there came a great dispiritedness [literally,
"much-drowning"] over the girl, and she began crying. She went out and
told his mother that he was dead.
The story went from mouth to mouth, and one person said to another that
it was the girl who had killed him; and they did not know what awful
death they would give her.
There was a heap of turf over against the kitchen, and they tied the
girl with a chain, fastened in an iron staple that was at the gable of
the house, and as soon as ever they would have the body buried they
were to put oil and grease on the turf, and give it fire, to burn and
to roast the girl.
On Monday morning when they went into the room to put the corpse into
the coffin, the minister's son was there alive and alert, in his bed;
and he told them the vision that he had seen.
He saw, he said, the fires of Purgatory, the mastiffs of Hell, and the
great Devil, Judas, and he told them that it was the glorious Virgin
who saved him, and who got him his pardon. She asked it of a request
of her One-Son to put him into the world again to teach the people,
and she got that request for him; and if it had not been that he had
worn the garb of the Virgin [though] only for a moment, when he was on
earth, he would not have seen one sight of the country of the heavens
for ever; but it was that which saved him from the lowest depths of
hell.
He spent [after that] seven years in the world teaching people, and
telling them the right religion, and all his family turned Catholics,
and it was the minister's son who composed the dán or poem.
THE DÁN OF THE MINISTER'S SON.
The body, it lies in the sleep of the dead,
And the candles above it are burning red;
The old women sit, all silent and dreaming,
But the young woman's cheeks with tears are streaming.
Oh, listen, listen, and hear the story
Of what are the sins that shut out from glory.
Promises, lies, penurious hoarding,
How troubled, how cursed, how damned the story!
But it was there that I saw the wonder!
Three great piles of fire,
And the least fire it rose in a spire
Like fifteen tons of turf on fire,
Or a burning mountain, higher and higher.
It was not long until I saw
The three great mastiffs,
Their gullets opened,
And their a-burning
Like great wax candles
In a mountain hollow,
Waiting for my poor soul
To tear and to swallow,
To bring down to hell's foulness
In anguish to wallow.
I was taken to the gates of hell,
And the hair was burnt off my forehead,
And a sieve of holes was put through my middle;
It was then it stood to me, that night I fasted,
And wore the garb of the Blessed Virgin,
Or my flesh and my blood had been burned to a puff of ashes.
It was then the jury of the twelve sat on me,
Their evil will than their good will was stronger,
And all that I did since my days of childhood
Was writ upon paper in black and white there;
One paper in my hand, on the ground another,
To conceal a crime I had no power.
On turning round of me towards the right-hand side,
I beheld the noble, blessed Justice
Beneath his bright mantle,
And he asked of me, with soft, blessed words,
"Where was I living when I was on the earth,
And whether I were not the poor soul who had to go to the bar."
On turning round of me, towards the left-hand side,
I beheld the Great Devil that got the bribe,
Going to fall upon me from above
[_literally, "on the top of my branches or limbs_,"]
And it was then that the thirst grew upon my poor soul!
And, oh! God! oh! it was no wonder!
I looked up and beheld the Blessed Virgin,
I asked a request of her----to save me from the foul devils.
She lowered herself down actively, quickly,
She laid herself upon her polished smooth knee
And asked a request of her One-Son and her child,
To put me in the top of the branches, or in the fold of a stone,
Or under the ground where the weasel goes,
Or on the north side where the snow blows,
Or in the same body again to teach the people,
--And the blessing of God to the mouth that tells it.
THE OLD WOMAN OF BEARE
PREFACE.
The Old Woman of Beare may, perhaps, have been an historical personage.
Kuno Meyer has printed a touching poem (of the 11th century as he
thinks) ascribed to her. "It is the lament of an old hetaira who
contrasts the privations and sufferings of her old age with the
pleasures of her youth when she had been the delight of kings." The
ancient prose preface runs, "The Old Woman of Beare, Digdi was her
name. Of Corcaguiny she was, _i.e._, of the Ui Maic Iair-chonchinn.
Of them also was Brigit, daughter of Iustan, and Liadain, the wife of
Cuirither,[57] and Uallach, daughter of Muinegan.[58] Saint Finan had
left them a charter that they should never be without an illustrious
woman of their race.... She had seven periods of youth, one after
another, so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old
age, so that her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races."
Legends about her are common all over Ireland, and even verses are
ascribed to her. There is another story about her in O Fotharta's
"Siamsa an Gheimhridh," p. 116. She was either a real character, an
early Ninon de l'Enclos, or else a mythic personage euphemized by the
romancists.
[57] A poetess and the heroine of the tale, "The Meeting of Liadain and
Cuirither," published by Kuno Meyer.
[58] A poetess who died in 932.
There is a short legend about her under the title of Mór ní Odhrain,
written down in County Donegal by, I think, Mr. Lloyd, in which
O'Donnell comes to visit her, and counts the bones of 500 beeves, one
of which she had killed every year. Mr. Timony found the same story
in Blacksod Bay, only she was there called "Aine an chnuic." She is
said in one version to have resided in "Teach Mor," "the house furthest
west in Ireland," which Mr. Lloyd identified with Tivore on the Dingle
promontory, and in a southern version which I also give she is called
The Old Woman of Dingle.
The vision told here as having been seen by the Old Woman is extremely
like a story in the "Dialogus Miraculorum of Caesarius of Heisterbach,"
Dist. xii., cap. 20, quoted by Landau in his "Quellen des Dekameron,"
and again by Lee in "The Decameron, its Sources and Analogues." It runs
as follows:--
"The leman of a priest before her death had made for herself shoes
with thick soles, saying 'bury me in them for I shall want them.' The
night of her death a knight was riding down the street in the bright
moonlight, accompanied by his attendants, when they heard a woman
screaming for help. It was this woman in her shift, and with the new
shoes on her feet, fleeing from a hunter. One could hear the terrible
sound of his horn and the yelping of his hounds. The knight seized the
woman by her hanging tresses, wound them round his left arm, and drew
his sword to protect her. The woman, however, cried out, "Let me go,
let me go, he is coming." As the knight, however, would not let her go,
she tore herself away from him, and in so doing left her locks wound
round his arm; the hunter then caught her up, threw her across his
horse and rode away with her. On the knight returning home he related
what he had seen and was not believed until they opened the woman's
grave and found that her hair was missing."
This is obviously the same story as that in our text, with the
incidents of the knight and the hair omitted.
It contains, however, (1) the woman and her particular sin; (2) the
fleeing before the hounds; (3) the pursuing huntsman; though in
peculiarly Irish fashion, it is mercifully left uncertain as to whether
she was overtaken or not.
The 8th novel of the 5th day of the Decameron seems to have been drawn
from some cognate source. The hero perceives "correndo verso il luogo
dove egli era una bellissima giovane ignuda--piaguendo e gridando
forte mercè. E oltre a questo le vide a fianchi due grandissimi e fieri
mastini." This is the soul of a dead woman with hell-hounds pursuing
her. The very word "mastini" being the same as in the Irish story.
In the second incident that happened to the Cailleach there appears
to be a reminiscence of Sindbad the sailor. But the story of the four
herds who lifted the bier which all the men at the funeral had been
unable to move, is told somewhat differently at p. 36 of Michael
Timony's "Sgéalta gearra so-léighte an iarthair." It is there put into
the mouth of "Aine an chnuic," Aine of the hill; who may be the same as
the "Old Woman of Beare," and the four herds, the coffin--and a rider
on a black horse who accompanied them--all disappeared in the side of
a rock which opened to receive them and closed after them. "Aine" of
"Cnoc Aine," or "Aine's hill," was the queen of the Limerick Fairies,
but I hardly think that it is she who has got into the Mayo folk tale.
There is a proverb in Connacht which says, speaking of the oldest lives
in the world, "the life of the yew tree, the life of the eagle,[59] and
the life of the Old Woman of Beare."
[59] See the story "The Adventures of Leithin."
See Kuno Meyer's edition of the song of the Old Woman of Beare in "Otia
Merseiana" and "O Fotharta's Siamsa an Gheimhridh," p. 116, see also
"The Vision of Mac Conglinne," p. 132, and my "Sgeuluidhe Gaedhealach."
The following story I wrote down very carefully word for word, about
fifteen years ago, from the telling of Michael Mac Ruaidhri, of
Ballycastle, Co. Mayo.
THE STORY.
There was an old woman in it, and long ago it was, and if we had been
there that time we would not be here now; we would have a new story or
an old story, and that would not be more likely than to be without any
story at all.
The hag was very old, and she herself did not know her own age, nor did
anybody else. There was a friar and his boy journeying one day, and
they came in to the house of the Old Woman of Beare.
"God save you," said the friar.
"The same man save yourself," said the hag; "you're welcome,[60] sit
down at the fire and warm yourself."
[60] Literally, "He (_i.e._, God) is your life"; the equivalent of
"hail!" "welcome."
The friar sat down, and when he had well finished warming himself he
began to talk and discourse with the old hag.
"If it's no harm of me to ask it of you, I'd like to know your age,
because I know you are very old" [said the friar].
"It is no harm at all to ask me," said the hag; "I'll answer you as
well as I can. There is never a year since I came to age that I used
not to kill a beef, and throw the bones of the beef up on the loft
which is above your head. If you wish to know my age you can send your
boy up on the loft and count the bones."
True was the tale. The friar sent the boy up on the loft and the boy
began counting the bones, and with all the bones that were on the loft
he had no room on the loft itself to count them, and he told the friar
that he would have to throw the bones down on the floor--that there was
no room on the loft.
"Down with them," said the friar, "and I'll keep count of them from
below."
The boy began throwing them down from above and the friar began
writing down [the number], until he was about tired out, and he asked
the boy had he them nearly counted, and the boy answered the friar down
from the loft that he had not even one corner of the loft emptied yet.
"If that's the way of it, come down out of the loft and throw the bones
up again," said the friar.
The boy came down, and he threw up the bones, and [so] the friar was
[just] as wise coming in as he was going out.
"Though I don't know your age," said the friar to the hag, "I know that
you haven't lived up to this time without seeing marvellous things
in the course of your life, and the greatest marvel that you ever
saw--tell it to me, if you please."
"I saw one marvel which made me wonder greatly," said the hag.
"Recount it to me," said the Friar, "if you please."
"I myself and my girl were out one day, milking the cows, and it was
a fine, lovely day, and I was just after milking one of the cows, and
when I raised my head I looked round towards my left hand, and I saw
a great blackness coming over my head in the air. "Make haste," says
myself to the girl, "until we milk the cows smartly, or we'll be wet
and drowned before we reach home, with the rain." I was on the pinch[61]
of my life and so was my girl, to have the cows milked before we'd get
the shower, for I thought myself that it was a shower that was coming,
but on my raising my head again I looked round me and beheld a woman
coming as white as the swan that is on the brink of the waves. She went
past me like a blast of wind, and the wind that was before her she was
overtaking it, and the wind that was behind her, it could not come up
with her. It was not long till I saw after the woman two mastiffs, and
two yards of their tongue twisted round their necks, and balls of fire
out of their mouths, and I wondered greatly at that. And after the
dogs I beheld a black coach and a team of horses drawing it, and there
were balls of fire on every side out of the coach, and as the coach
was going past me the beasts stood and something that was in the coach
uttered from it an unmeaning sound, and I was terrified, and faintness
came over me, and when I came back out of the faint I heard the voice
in the coach again, asking me had I seen anything going past me since
I came there; and I told him as I am telling you, and I asked him who
he was himself, or what was the meaning of the woman and the mastiffs
which went by me.
[61] Literally, "the boiling of the angles-between-the-fingers was on
me."
"I am the Devil, and those are two mastiffs which I sent after that
soul."
"And is it any harm for me to ask," says I, "what is the crime the
woman did when she was in the world?"
"That is a woman," said the Devil, "who brought scandal upon a priest,
and she died in a state of deadly sin, and she did not repent of it,
and unless the mastiffs come up with her before she comes to the
gates of Heaven the glorious Virgin will come and will ask a request
of her only Son to grant the woman forgiveness for her sins, and the
Virgin will obtain pardon for her, and I'll be out of her. But if the
mastiffs come up with her before she goes to Heaven she is mine."
The great Devil drove on his beasts, and went out of my sight, and
myself and my girl came home, and I was heavy, and tired and sad at
remembering the vision which I saw, and I was greatly astonished at
that wonder, and I lay in my bed for three days, and the fourth day I
arose very done up and feeble, and not without cause, since any woman
who would see the wonder that I saw, she would be grey a hundred years
before her term of life[62] was expired.
[62] Literally, "before her age being spent."
"Did you ever see any other marvel in your time?" says the friar to the
hag.
"A week after leaving my bed I got a letter telling me that one of
my friends was dead, and that I would have to go to the funeral. I
proceeded to the funeral, and on my going into the corpse-house the
body was in the coffin, and the coffin was laid down on the bier, and
four men went under the bier that they might carry the coffin, and they
weren't able to even stir[63] the bier off the ground. And another four
men came, and they were not able to move it off the ground. They were
coming, man after man, until twelve came, and went under the bier, and
they weren't able to lift it.
[63] Literally, "give it wind."
"I spoke myself, and I asked the people who were at the funeral what
sort of trade had this man when he was in the world, and it was told
me that it was a herd he was. And I asked of the people who were there
was there any other herd at the funeral. Then there came four men that
nobody at all who was at the funeral had any knowledge or recognition
of, and they told me that they were four herds, and they went under
the bier and they lifted it as you would lift a handful of chaff, and
off they went as quick and sharp as ever they could lift a foot. Good
powers of walking they had, and a fine long step I had myself, and I
cut out after them, and not a mother's son knew what the place was to
which they were departing with the body, and we were going and ever
going until the night and the day were parting from one another, until
the night was coming black dark dreadful, until the grey horse was
going under the shadow of the docking and until the docking was going
fleeing before him.[64]
[64] The fairies ride their little grey horses, and stable them at
night under the leaves of the copóg or dock-leaf, or docking. But if
they arrive too late and night has fallen, then the copóg has folded
her leaves and will not shelter them.
The roots going under the ground,
The leaves going into the air,
The grey horse a-fleeing apace,
And I left lonely there.
"On looking round me, there wasn't one of all the funeral behind me,
except two others. The other people were done up, and they were not
able to come half way, some of them fainted and some of them died.
Going forward two steps more in front of me I was within in a dark wood
wet and cold, and the ground opened, and I was swallowed down into a
black dark hole without a mother's son or a father's daughter[65] next
nor near me, without a man to be had to keen me or to lay me out; so
that I threw myself on my two knees, and I was there throughout four
days sending my prayer up to God to take me out of that speedily and
quickly. And with the fourth day there came a little hole like the
eye of a needle on one corner of the abode where I was; and I was
a-praying always and the hole was a-growing in size day by day, and on
the seventh day it increased to such a size that I got out through it.
I took to my heels[66] then when I got my feet with me on the outside
(of the hole) going home. The distance which I walked in one single day
following the coffin, I spent five weeks coming back the same road, and
don't you see yourself now that I got cause to be withered, old, aged,
grey, and my life to be shortening through those two perils in which I
was."
[65] Literally, "man's daughter."
[66] Literally, "I gave to the soles." Many people still say in
speaking English, "I gave to the butts." The Irish word means butt as
well as sole.
"You're a fine, hardy old woman all the time," said the friar.
THE OLD HAG OF DINGLE.
PREFACE.
It is quite obvious that this story from south-west Kerry represents
in a feebler manner the same tradition as the story which we have
just given from north Mayo, about the Old Woman of Beare. Note that
in the Mayo story the appearance of the woman was also prefaced by
the blackness of a shower. It is to the Old Woman of Beare that the
answer is ascribed in Connacht in which she gives the reason for her
longevity, only it is differently worded there.
I never carried the dirt of one puddle beyond another (?)
I never ate food, but when I would be hungry.
I never went to sleep but when I would be sleepy.
I never threw out the dirty water until I had taken in the clean.
This Kerry version of the story was written down by Séamus Shean Ua
Connaill, of Sgoil Chill Roilig, and published in "The Lochrann, Mi
Eanair agus Feabhra," 1911.
In Donegal the reasons given are:--
I never ate a morsel till I'd be hungry.
I never drank a drop till I'd be thirsty.
I never sat at the fire without being working.
If I had not work of my own to do I got it from somebody else.
THE STORY.
There was a woman in Dingle long ago. She lived 300 years and more. Her
name was the Old Hag of Dingle. The story spread throughout Ireland
that she had lived for 300 years, and many people used to come to see
her.
The Emperor of France and the Earl of Kerry and many other kings and
princes came journeying to her, and they asked her what age she was.
She told them that she was 300 years and more. They asked her what it
was in her opinion which gave her so long a life, beyond any one else.
She told them that she did not know that, except that her little finger
and the palm of her hand never saw the air, and that she never remained
in her bed but as long as she would be sleepy, and that she never ate
meat except when she would be hungry.
She would not herself give any other account of the reason for her long
life except that. They said to her that they were sure that she had
seen many a marvel, seeing that she had lived all that time.
She said that she never saw anything that she could marvel at
particularly, except one day [said she] that gentlemen were here and
wanted to go out to the Skelligs, and they got a crew. There was a
young priest who was here along with them. They went off and a boat
with them. A very fine day it was.
She told them that when they were half way to the Skelligs, the men saw
the shower[67] coming along the sea from the north-west, and the weather
growing cold. Fear came upon them and they said to face the boat for
the land, but the priest told them to keep up their courage, and that
there would be no land now, and that perhaps with the help of God
there was no danger of them. The shower was coming on, and the priest
said that he himself saw a woman in the shower, and a very great fear
came upon them then; but when the shower was coming [down] on them they
all saw her, and her face in the shower, against the wind. When she was
making for them the priest moved over to the stern of the boat, he took
to him his stole and put it round his neck. He said:
[67] Note the Irish idiom--the definite for the indefinite article.
"What have you done that has damned you?"
"I killed an unbaptized child," said she.
"That did not damn you," said the priest.
"I killed two," said she.
"That also did not damn you," said he.
"I killed three," said she.
"Ah! that damned you," said he. He drew to him his book. He did a
little reading on her. She turned her back then. He gave her that much
advantage. They went off then and the weather cleared for them, and
they went on their way to the Skelligs. They went all over the Skelligs
and they came home.
"I saw that, and that was the greatest wonder I ever saw," said she.
THE POEM OF THE TOR.
PREFACE.
I have heard more than one poem in which occurs a dialogue between a
living person and the soul of a dead man. I got the following from Mr.
John Kearney, a schoolmaster, at Belmullet, Co. Mayo. The poem is well
known round Belmullet, but I have a suspicion that this version of it
is not complete. I have not been able, however, to secure a fuller one.
It is locally known as the Dan or Poem of the Tor. This Tor is a rock
in the sea some twelve miles from land. There is a lighthouse upon
it now, but of course that was not so when the poem took shape, and
no more lonesome place than it for a soul dreeing its weird could be
conceived. The soul was put to do penance on this solitary rock. With
the verse about the soul parting from the body under rain under wind,
compare the fine North of England wake-dirge with the refrain--
Fire and sleet and candle light,
And Christ receive thy saule.
I have come across other allusions in Irish unpublished literature,
prayers, etc., to the South being the side of the good angels and the
North the side of the bad ones.
On the side of the north black walls of fire,
On the side of the south the people of Christ.
The "geilt" which the interlocutor supposes that the ghost may be, is
a person who goes wild in madness, and such a one was supposed to have
the power of levitation, and to be able to raise himself in the air and
fly. See the extraordinary story of Suibhne Geilt, vol. xii. of the
Irish Texts Society. See my "Religious Songs of Connacht," vol. i., p.
270.
THE STORY.
[THE MAN.]
O fellow yonder on the mountain
Who art being tortured at the Tor,
[I put] a question on thee in the name of Jesus,
Art thou a man of this world or a _geilt_?
[THE SOUL.]
Since the question is put in the name of Jesus,
Indeed I shall answer it for thee:
I am not a person of this world, nor a _geilt_,
But a poor soul who has left this world,
And who never went to God's heaven since.
[THE MAN.]
[I put] a question to thee again
Without doing thee harm:
How long since thou didst leave this world,
Or art thou there ever since?
[THE SOUL.]