When the friends of the late Edmund Leamy were considering ways of
honouring his memory they agreed that one way should be to republish
this little book of Irish fairy tales. They knew that nothing would
have been more grateful to himself, and that, in a manner, it would be
an act of justice to his remarkable gifts. It would introduce a
characteristic specimen of Leamy's work to a race of readers who have
appeared since it was written and who ought to be in a mood more
appreciative of such literature than the mood which prevailed in that
day. For the book has long been out of print. These "Irish Fairy
Tales" were written, and printed on Irish paper, and published through
an Irish publisher--Leamy would not bring out a book in any other
way--before the Celtic renaissance had arrived. This is one of the
facts which make them interesting. Perhaps, as some would tell us,
seventeen years ago was a benighted time; at any rate we must admit it
was rather dark from an Irish literary, or even "Irish Ireland,"
point of view. It was before the Gaelic movement, and before we had
such things as "intellectuals" and the "economic man," or even the
Irish Literary Theatre. Leamy's gentle and loyal soul could have taken
no influence from the asperity of some of the intervening ferment,
"Parliamentarian" though he was. Had the impulse to write this volume
come to him in this later period he would only have drawn from the
time the nourishment which the atmosphere of sympathy always brings to
the artist. But the impulse came to him before this period, in an
atmosphere which held little that could nourish the sentiment so
abundant among us to-day. O'Curry's and Dr. Joyce's books were almost
the only sources of Gaelic inspiration open to a writer who was not a
professed student. Douglas Hyde, though always at work, had not yet
brought the fruits of his researches to light; Miss Eleanor Hull had
not collected into a handy volume the materials of "The Cuchullin
Saga"; Kuno Meyer we did not know; Standish O'Grady, though he had
published his "Heroic Period," had not yet begun popularising the
bardic tales in such volumes as "Finn and his Companions." No one was
reading anything about Ireland but political matter. I think one may
fairly claim some respect from this later day for a writer who
seventeen years ago, of his own motion, with scarce a word of
encouragement save from his wife and a friend or two--perhaps only one
friend--turned to our Gaelic past and strove to give to Irish children
something which would implant in them a love for the beauty and
dignity of their country's traditions.
The modest author would never have claimed for these little tales the
interest which I think they deserve. He wrote them for children, for
he loved children, and one can detect the presence of the child
listener at nearly every line. He was not thinking of a literary
audience; the child at his knee was enough. This is why we hear
(occasionally) a certain _naive_ accent which will not, perhaps,
please the contemporary critic; but (as there are many who again find
pleasure in early Victorian furniture) it may please others; I confess
it pleases me. And the absence of literary self-consciousness is
itself pleasant; indeed, much of the charm of these stories is the
charm of their unpremeditated art. But, though he did not write for
the critics, Leamy was in spite of himself a man of letters. He was so
genuinely an artist that he could not do the thing ill. Any one of
these stories will prove his capacity: the first, for instance, about
that princess on the "bare, brown, lonely moor" who was "as sweet and
as fresh as an opening rosebud, and her voice was as musical as the
whisper of a stream in the woods in the hot days of summer." There is
not a flaw in it. It is so filled with simple beauty and tenderness,
and there is so much of the genuine word-magic in its language, that
one is carried away as by the spell of natural oratory. It has, too,
that intimate sympathy with nature which is another racial note in
these stories. The enchanted moor, with its silence, where no sound is
heard--the wind which shouted beyond the mountains, "when it sped
across the moor it lost its voice, and passed as silently as the
dead"--is affected by the fortune of the tale equally with its human
and its elfin personages. When the knight arrives at last, "wherever
his horse's hoofs struck the ground, grass and flowers sprang up, and
great trees with leafy branches rose on every side.... As they rode on
beneath the leafy trees from every tree the birds sang out, for the
spell of silence over the lonely moor was broken for ever." This
unpretentious story, a child's story, is as engaging as a gem. And so,
I think, are most of the others. One more example to illustrate the
quality of Leamy's style--say, the description of the contest of the
bards before the High King at the Feis of Tara in the story called
"The Huntsman's Son." The King gives the signal, the chief bard of
Erin ascends the mound in front of the royal enclosure, and is greeted
with a roar of cheers; but at the first note of his harp there is
silence like that of night.
"As he moved his fingers softly over the strings every heart
was hushed, filled with a sense of balmy rest. The lark,
soaring and singing above his head, paused mute and motionless
in the still air, and no sound was heard over the spacious
plain save the dreamy music. Then the bard struck another key,
and a gentle sorrow possessed the hearts of his hearers, and
unbidden tears gathered to their eyes. Then, with bolder hand,
he swept his fingers across his lyre, and all hearts were
moved to joy and pleasant laughter, and eyes that had been
dimmed by tears sparkled as brightly as running waters dancing
in the sun. When the last notes had died away a cheer arose,
loud as the voice of the storm in the glen when the live
thunder is revelling on the mountain tops."
As soon as the bard descends the mound the Skald from the northern
lands takes his place, amid shouts of welcome.
"He touched his harp, and in the perfect silence was heard the
strains of the mermaid's song, and through it the pleasant
ripple of summer waters on the pebbly beach. Then the theme
was changed, and on the air was borne the measured sweep of
countless oars and the swish of waters around the prows of
contending galleys, and the breezy voices of the sailors and
the sea-bird's cry. Then his theme was changed to the mirth
and laughter of the banquet hall, the clang of meeting
drinking-horns and songs of battle. When the last strain
ended, from the mighty host a great shout went up loud as the
roar of winter billows breaking in the hollows of the shore."
Then comes the hero of the tale, Fergus, the huntsman's son.
"He touched his harp with gentle fingers, and a sound, low and
soft as a faint summer breeze passing through forest trees,
stole out, and then was heard the rustle of birds through the
branches, and the dreamy murmur of waters lost in deepest
woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are
motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and
soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and
then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it
sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one
sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the
breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above
the minstrel, sank mute and motionless upon his shoulder, and
from all the leafy woods the birds came thronging out and
formed a fluttering canopy above his head.
"When the bard ceased playing no shout arose from the mighty
multitude, for the strains of his harp, long after its chords
were stilled, held their hearts spell-bound."
This passage reveals the poetry of the author's style, and it shows
how charged it is with qualities that are peculiar to the Celtic
temperament: a style in which expressions like "the song of the
blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of
the evening," or "she answered his salute by a wave of her little
hand, that was as white as a wild rose in the hedges in June," spring
up naturally, like daisies in the grass, at every turn. I have said
enough, too, to indicate the type of Celtic temperament to which
Leamy's belonged. His habitual mood was the exquisitely sensitive, the
tender, playful, reverent mood. He was, in this, the antithesis of the
"cloudy and lightning" Standish O'Grady, whose temperament, equally
Gaelic, is that of the fighting bard, delighting in battle, fierce,
fuliginous, aristocratic, pagan, with the roll of Homeric hexameters
in his martial style. If O'Grady recalls the Oisin who contended with
Patrick and longed to be slaying with the Fianna, even though they
were in hell, Leamy, _anima naturaliter Christiana_, reminds one
rather of the Irish monk in a distant land moved to write lyrics in
his missal by the song of the bird that makes him think of Erin, or
Marban, the hermit, rejoicing to his brother, the king, in his
"sheiling in the wood," his
"Tree of apples like a hostel vast, ...
The music of the bright red-breasted men, ...
Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world,
A gentle chorus."
It may not be amiss, in concluding this note, to add a word about
the author other than as he appears in this book. These stories
exhibit only one aspect of his gifts. They happen to be one of the
things he wrote down. Most of the coinage of his mind, and I think
the best of it, came forth in a form which does not permit of its
being recalled, the form of the spoken and unrecorded word. He was by
nature an improvisor. In the inclusive sense of the term, the sense
which includes poetry, story-telling, description as well as pleading
and exhortation, he was a born orator; and he was at his best when
in the glow of pure improvisation. It thus happened that it was
often a group of friends around a fireside, or a casual audience, who
were the witnesses of the most brilliant play of his genius. He had
a most observant and seeing eye. A walk in the street was fraught
with surprise, and he would come back delighted with his adventures.
Every little common incident--three little boys with their backs
to a wall looking up at a church tower: he would catch snatches of
their talk, speculations about deep things and strange; he would
note that an old Irish apple-woman in a grimy English town left her
basket, with all her stock-in-trade, outside in the street while
she went into a church to commune with her heavenly friends; the
conversation between a sapient publican, a friendly constable and
a group of dubious _bona fide_ travellers--such things were materials
for his insight or his fancy or his delightful humour. Often when he
returned in the evening full of his day's observations one wished
there had been a shorthand-writer present to take down what fell
from his lips. And just as it fell it would have been literature. He
was urged to write these things. But Leamy had not readily the will
or the power to compel his spirit when the favoured moment had
passed. He was mostly passive, like an AEolian harp, under the
visitation. Ill-health, too, extreme and distressing, burdened
him. He bore his trials cheerfully, and strove manfully to write,
especially in his later days when the power and the will seemed to
come to him just as illness tightened its hold. But he was sustained
by the most precious of blessings--a wife with a brave and bright
soul, who appreciated him, and had a heart as romantic as his own.
Their love, indeed, was an idyll, untouched by a shadow, through
illness and pain and hardship, to the hour of his death.
One ventures to wish that this little book may make his kindly Irish
spirit friends among a wider circle, and especially amongst the
children.