protected me. I was drowned twice but for them. Once I was going to
Durnish Island, a mile off the coast. The channel is very deep, and at
the time there was a rough sea, with the tide running out, and I was
almost lost. I shrieked and shouted, and finally got safe to the
mainland. The day I talked with one of the _gentry_ at the foot of the
mountain when he was for _taking_ me, he mentioned this, and said they
were the ones who saved me from drowning then.'
_'Gentry' Stations._--'Especially in Ireland, the _gentry_ live inside
the mountains in beautiful castles; and there are a good many branches
of them in other countries. Like armies, they have various stations and
move from one to another. Some live in the Wicklow Mountains near
Dublin.'
_'Gentry' Control Over Human Affairs._--'The _gentry_ take a great
interest in the affairs of men, and they always stand for justice and
right. Any side they favour in our wars, that side wins. They favoured
the Boers, and the Boers did get their rights. They told me they
favoured the Japanese and not the Russians, because the Russians are
tyrants. Sometimes they fight among themselves. One of them once said,
"I'd fight for a friend, or I'd fight for Ireland."'
_The 'Gentry' Described._--In response to my wish, this description of
the 'gentry' was given:--'The folk are the grandest I have ever seen.
They are far superior to us, and that is why they are called the
_gentry_. They are not a working class, but a military-aristocratic
class, tall and noble-appearing. They are a distinct race between our
own and that of spirits, as they have told me. Their qualifications are
tremendous. "We could cut off half the human race, but would not," they
said, "for we are expecting salvation." And I knew a man three or four
years ago whom they struck down with paralysis. Their sight is so
penetrating that I think they could see through the earth. They have a
silvery voice, quick and sweet. The music they play is most beautiful.
They _take_ the whole body and soul of young and intellectual people who
are interesting, transmuting the body to a body like their own. I asked
them once if they ever died, and they said, "No; we are always kept
young." Once they take you and you taste food in their palace you cannot
come back. You are changed to one of them, and live with them for ever.
They are able to appear in different forms. One once appeared to me, and
seemed only four feet high, and stoutly built. He said, "I am bigger
than I appear to you now. We can make the old young, the big small, the
small big." One of their women told all the secrets of my family. She
said that my brother in Australia would travel much and suffer
hardships, all of which came true; and foretold that my nephew, then
about two years old, would become a great clergyman in America, and that
is what he is now. Besides the _gentry_, who are a distinct class, there
are bad spirits and ghosts, which are nothing like them. My mother once
saw a leprechaun beside a bush hammering. He disappeared before she
could get to him, but he also was unlike one of the _gentry_.'[16]
EVIDENCE FROM GRANGE
Our next witness, who lives about three miles from our last witness, is
Hugh Currid, the oldest man in Grange; and so old is he that now he does
little more than sit in the chimney-corner smoking, and, as he looks at
the red glow of the peat, dreaming of the olden times. Hugh knows
English very imperfectly, and so what he narrated was in the ancient
Gaelic which his fathers spoke. When Father Hines took me to Hugh's
cottage, Hugh was in his usual silent pose before the fire. At first he
rather resented having his thoughts disturbed, but in a few minutes he
was as talkative as could be, for there is nothing like the mention of
Ireland to get him started. The Father left us then; and with the help
of Hugh's sister as an interpreter I took down what he said:--
_The Flax-Seller's Return from Faerie._--'An old woman near Lough More,
where Father Patrick was drowned,[17] who used to make her living by
selling flax at the market, was _taken_ by the _gentry_, and often came
back afterwards to her three children to comb their hair. One time she
told a neighbour that the money she saved from her dealings in flax
would be found near a big rock on the lake-shore, which she indicated,
and that she wanted the three children to have it.'
_A Wife Recovered from the 'Gentry'._--'A man's young wife died in
confinement while he was absent on some business at Ballingshaun, and
one of the _gentry_ came to him and said she had been _taken._ The
husband hurried home, and that night he sat with the body of his wife
all alone. He left the door open a little, and it wasn't long before his
wife's spirit came in and went to the cradle where her child was
sleeping. As she did so, the husband threw at her a charm of hen's dung
which he had ready, and this held her until he could call the
neighbours. And while they were coming, she went back into her body, and
lived a long time afterwards. The body was stiff and cold when the
husband arrived home, though it hadn't been washed or dressed.'
A TAILOR'S TESTIMONY
Our next witness is Patrick Waters, by trade a tailor, living in
Cloontipruckilish, a cross-road hamlet less than two miles from Hugh
Currid's home. His first story is a parallel to one told about the
minister of Aberfoyle who was _taken_ by the 'good people' (pp. 89
ff.):--
_The Lost Bride._--'A girl in this region died on her wedding-night
while dancing. Soon after her death she appeared to her husband, and
said to him, "I'm not dead at all, but I am put from you now for a time.
It may be a long time, or a short time, I cannot tell. I am not badly
off. If you want to get me back you must stand at the gap near the house
and catch me as I go by, for I live near there, and see you, and you do
not see me." He was anxious enough to get her back, and didn't waste any
time in getting to the gap. When he came to the place, a party of
strangers were just coming out, and his wife soon appeared as plain as
could be, but he couldn't stir a hand or foot to save her. Then there
was a scream and she was gone. The man firmly believed this, and would
not marry again.'
_The Invisible Island._--'There is an enchanted island which is an
invisible island between Innishmurray and the mainland opposite. It is
only seen once in seven years. I saw it myself, and so did four or five
others with me. A boatman from Sligo named Carr took two strange men
with him towards Innishmurray, and they disappeared at the spot where
the island is, and he thought they had fallen overboard and been
drowned. Carr saw one of the same men in Connelly (County Donegal), some
six months or so after, and with great surprise said to him, "Will you
tell me the wonders of the world? Is it you I saw drowned near
Innishmurray?" "Yes," he said; and then asked, "Do you see me?" "Yes,"
answered Carr. "But," said the man again, "you do not see me with both
eyes?" Then Carr closed one eye to be sure, and found that he saw him
with one eye only. And he told the man which one it was. At this
information the fairy man blew on Carr's face, and Carr never saw him
again.'
_A Dream._--'My father dreamt he saw two armies coming in from the sea,
walking on the water. Reaching the strand, they lined up and commenced a
battle, and my father was in great terror. The fighting was long and
bloody, and when it was over every fighter vanished, the wounded and
dead as well as the survivors. The next morning an old woman who had the
reputation of talking with the fairies came in the house to my father,
who, though greatly disturbed over the dream, had told us nothing of it,
and asked him, "Have you anything to tell? I couldn't but laugh at you,"
she added, and before my father could reply, continued, "Well, Jimmy,
you won't tell the news, so I will." And then she began to tell about
the battle. "Ketty!" exclaimed my father at this, "can it be true? And
who were the men beside me?" When Ketty told him, they turned out to be
some of his dead friends. She received her information from a drowned
man whom she met on the spot where the _gentry_ armies had come ashore;
and, in the place where they fought, the sand was all burnt red, as from
fire.'
As the narrator reflected on this dream story, he remarked about dreams
generally:--'The reason our dreams appear different from what they are
is because while in them we can't touch the body and transform it.
People believe themselves to be with the dead in dreams.'
During September 1909, when I had several fresh interviews with Patrick
Waters, I verified all of his 1908 testimony such as it appears above;
and among unimportant anecdotes I have omitted from the matter taken
down in 1908 one anecdote about our seer-witness from County Sligo,
because it proved to be capable of opposite interpretations. Patrick
Waters, however, like many of his neighbours, thoroughly supports Hugh
Currid's opinion that our seer-witness 'surely sees something, and it
must be the _gentry_'; and of Hugh Currid himself, Patrick Waters said,
'Hugh Currid did surely see the _gentry_; he saw them passing this way
like a blast of wind.' Patrick's fresh testimony now follows, the story
about Father Patrick and Father Dominick coming first:--
_Father Patrick and Father Dominick._--'Father Patrick Noan while
bathing in the harbour at Carns (about three miles north-west of Grange)
was drowned. His body was soon brought ashore, and his brother, Father
Dominick Noan, was sent for. When Father Dominick arrived, one of the
men who had collected around the body said to him, "Why don't you do
something for your brother Patrick?" "Why don't somebody ask me?" he
replied, "for I must be asked in the name of God." So Jimmy McGowan went
on his knees and asked for the honour of God that Father Dominick should
bring Father Patrick back to life; and, at this, Father Dominick took
out his breviary and began to read. After a time he whistled, and began
to read again. He whistled a second time, and returned to the reading.
Upon his whistling the third time, Father Patrick's spirit appeared in
the doorway.
'"Where were you when I whistled the first time?" Father Dominick asked.
"I was at a hurling match with the _gentry_ on Mulloughmore strand."
"And where were you at the second whistle?" "I was coming over Corrick
Fadda; and when you whistled the third time I was here at the door."
Father Patrick's spirit had gone back into the body, and Father Patrick
lived round here as a priest for a long time afterwards.
'There was no such thing as artificial respiration known hereabouts when
this happened some fifty or sixty years ago. I heard this story, which I
know is true, from many persons who saw Father Dominick restore his
brother to life.'
_A Druid Enchantment._--After this strange psychical narrative, there
followed the most weird legend I have heard in Celtic lands about Druids
and magic. One afternoon Patrick Waters pointed out to me the field,
near the sea-coast opposite Innishmurray, in which the ancient menhir
containing the 'enchantment' used to stand; and, at another time, he
said that a bronze wand covered with curious marks (or else interlaced
designs) was found not far from the ruined dolmen and _allée couverte_
on the farm of Patrick Bruan, about two miles southward. This last
statement, like the story itself, I have been unable to verify in any
way.
'In times before Christ there were Druids here who enchanted one another
with Druid rods made of brass, and metamorphosed one another into stone
and lumps of oak. The question is, Where are the spirits of these Druids
now? Their spirits are wafted through the air, and the man or beast they
meet is smitten, while their own bodies are still under enchantment. I
had such a Druid enchantment in my hand; it wasn't stone, nor marble,
nor flint, and had human shape. It was found in the centre of a big rock
on Innis-na-Gore; and round this rock light used to appear at night. The
man who owned the stone decided to blast it up, and he found at its
centre the enchantment--just like a man, with head and legs and
arms.[18] Father Healy took the enchantment away, when he was here on a
visit, and said that it was a Druid enchanted, and that to get out of
the rock was one part of the releasement, and that there would be a
second and complete releasement of the Druid.'
_The Fairy Tribes Classified._--Finally I asked Patrick to classify, as
far as he could, all the fairy tribes he had ever heard about, and he
said:--'The leprechaun is a red-capped fellow who stays round pure
springs, generally shoemaking for the rest of the fairy tribes. The
lunantishees are the tribes that guard the blackthorn trees or sloes;
they let you cut no stick on the eleventh of November (the original
November Day), or on the eleventh of May (the original May Day). If at
such a time you cut a blackthorn, some misfortune will come to you.
Pookas are black-featured fellows mounted on good horses; and are
horse-dealers. They visit racecourses, but usually are invisible. The
_gentry_ are the most noble tribe of all; and they are a big race who
came from the planets--according to my idea; they usually appear white.
The _Daoine Maithe_ (though there is some doubt, the same or almost the
same as the _gentry_) were next to Heaven at the Fall, but did not fall;
they are a people expecting salvation.'
BRIDGET O'CONNER'S TESTIMONY
Our next witness is Bridget O'Conner, a near neighbour to Patrick
Waters, in Cloontipruckilish. When I approached her neat little cottage
she was cutting sweet-pea blossoms with a pair of scissors, and as I
stopped to tell her how pretty a garden she had, she searched out the
finest white bloom she could find and gave it to me. After we had talked
a little while about America and Ireland, she said I must come in and
rest a few minutes, and so I did; and it was not long before we were
talking about fairies:--
_The Irish Legend of the Dead._--'Old Peggy Gillin, dead these thirty
years, who lived a mile beyond Grange, used to cure people with a secret
herb shown to her by her brother, dead of a fairy-stroke. He was drowned
and _taken_ by the fairies, in the big drowning here during the herring
season. She would pull the herb herself and prepare it by mixing spring
water with it. Peggy could always talk with her dead relatives and
friends, and continually with her brother, and she would tell everybody
that they were with the fairies. Her daughter, Mary Short, who inherited
some of her mother's power, died here about three or four years ago.
'I remember, too, about Mary Leonard and her daughter, Nancy Waters.
Both of them are dead now. The daughter was the first to die, as it
happened, and in child-birth. When she was gone, her mother used to wail
and cry in an awful manner; and one day the daughter appeared to her in
the garden, and said, "The more you wail for me, the more I am in
torment. Pray for me, but do not wail."'
_A Midwife Story._--'A country nurse was requested by a strange man on
horseback to go with him to exercise her profession; and she went with
him to a castle she didn't know. When the baby was born, every woman in
the place where the event happened put her finger in a basin of water
and rubbed her eyes, and so the nurse put her finger in and rubbed it on
one of her eyes. She went home and thought no more about it. But one day
she was at the fair in Grange and saw some of the same women who were in
the castle when the baby was born; though, as she noticed, she only
could see them with the one eye she had wet with the water from the
basin. The nurse spoke to the women, and they wanted to know how she
recognized them; and she, in reply, said it was with the one eye, and
asked, "How is the baby?" "Well," said one of the fairy women; "and what
eye do you see us with?" "With the left eye," answered the nurse. Then
the fairy woman blew her breath against the nurse's left eye, and said,
"You'll never see me again." And the nurse was always blind in the left
eye after that.'
THE SPIRIT WORLD AT CARNS
The Carns or Mount Temple country, about three miles from Grange, County
Sligo, has already been mentioned by witnesses as a 'gentry' haunt, and
so now we shall hear what one of its oldest and most intelligent native
inhabitants says of it. John McCann had been referred to, by Patrick
Waters, as one who knows much about the 'gentry' at first hand, and we
can be sure that what he offers us is thoroughly reliable evidence. For
many years, John McCann, born in 1830, by profession a carpenter and
boat-builder, has been official mail-carrier to Innishmurray; and he
knows quite as much about the strange little island and the mainland
opposite it as any man living. His neat little cottage is on the shore
of the bay opposite the beautiful fairy-haunted Darnish Island; and, as
we sat within it beside a brilliant peat fire, and surrounded by all the
family, this is what was told me:--
_A 'Gentry' Medium._--'Ketty Rourk (or Queenan) could tell all that
would happen--funerals, weddings, and so forth. Sure some spirits were
coming to her. She said they were the _gentry_; that the _gentry_ are
everywhere; and that my drowned uncles and grandfather and other dead
are among them. A drowned man named Pat Nicholson was her adviser. He
used to live just a mile from here; and she knew him before he was
drowned.'
Here we have, clearly enough, a case of 'mediumship', or of
communication with the dead, as in modern Spiritualism. And the
following story, which like this last has numerous Irish parallels,
illustrates an ancient and world-wide animistic belief, that in
sickness--as in dreams--the soul goes out of the body as at death, and
meets the dead in their own fairy world.
_The Clairvoyance of Mike Farrell._--'Mike Farrell, too, could tell all
about the _gentry_, as he lay sick a long time. And he told about Father
Brannan's youth, and even the house in Roscommon in which the Father was
born; and Father Brannan never said anything more against Mike after
that. Mike surely saw the _gentry_; and he was with them during his
illness for twelve months. He said they live in _forts_ and at Alt Darby
("the Big Rock"). After he got well, he went to America, at the time of
the famine.'
_The 'Gentry' Army._--'The _gentry_ were believed to live up on this
hill (Hill of the Brocket Stones, _Cluach-a-brac_), and from it they
would come out like an army and march along the road to the strand. Very
few persons could see them. They were thought to be like living people,
but in different dress. They seemed like soldiers, yet it was known they
were not living beings such as we are.'
_The Seership of Dan Quinn._--'On Connor's Island (about two miles
southward from Carns by the mainland) my uncle, Dan Quinn, often used to
see big crowds of the _gentry_ come into his house and play music and
dance. The house would be full of them, but they caused him no fear.
Once on such an occasion, one of them came up to him as he lay in bed,
and giving him a green leaf told him to put it in his mouth. When he did
this, instantly he could not see the _gentry_, but could still hear
their music. Uncle Dan always believed he recognized in some of the
_gentry_ his drowned friends. Only when he was alone would the _gentry_
visit him. He was a silent old man, and so never talked much; but I know
that this story is as true as can be, and that the _gentry_ always took
an interest in him.'
UNDER THE SHADOW OF BEN BULBIN AND BEN WASKIN
I was driving along the Ben Bulbin road, on the ocean side, with Michael
Oates, who was on his way from his mountain-side home to the lowlands to
cut hay; and as we looked up at the ancient mountain, so mysterious and
silent in the shadows and fog of a calm early morning of summer, he told
me about its invisible inhabitants:--
_The 'Gentry' Huntsmen._--'I knew a man who saw the _gentry_ hunting on
the other side of the mountain. He saw hounds and horsemen cross the
road and jump the hedge in front of him, and it was one o'clock at
night. The next day he passed the place again, and looked for the tracks
of the huntsmen, but saw not a trace of tracks at all.'
_The 'Taking' of the Turf-Cutter._--After I had heard about two boys who
were drowned opposite Innishmurray, and who afterwards appeared as
apparitions, for the _gentry_ had them, this curious story was
related:--'A man was cutting turf out on the side of Ben Bulbin when a
strange man came to him and said, "You have cut enough turf for to-day.
You had better stop and go home." The turf-cutter looked around in
surprise, and in two seconds the strange man had disappeared; but he
decided to go home. And as soon as he was home, such a feeling came over
him that he could not tell whether he was alive or dead. Then he took to
his bed and never rose again.'
_Hearing the 'Gentry' Music._--At this Michael said to his companion in
the cart with us, William Barber, 'You tell how you heard the music';
and this followed:--'One dark night, about one o'clock, myself and
another young man were passing along the road up there round Ben Bulbin,
when we heard the finest kind of music. All sorts of music seemed to be
playing. We could see nothing at all, though we thought we heard voices
like children's. It was the music of the _gentry_ we heard.'
My next friend to testify is Pat Ruddy, eighty years old, one of the
most intelligent and prosperous farmers living beside Ben Bulbin. He
greeted me in the true Irish way, but before we could come to talk about
fairies his good wife induced me to enter another room where she had
secretly prepared a great feast spread out on a fresh white cloth, while
Pat and myself had been exchanging opinions about America and Ireland.
When I returned to the kitchen the whole family were assembled round the
blazing turf fire, and Pat was soon talking about the 'gentry':--
_Seeing the 'Gentry' Army._--'Old people used to say the _gentry_ were
in the mountains; that is certain, but I never could be quite sure of it
myself. One night, however, near midnight, I did have a sight: I set out
from Bantrillick to come home, and near Ben Bulbin there was the
greatest army you ever saw, five or six thousand of them in armour
shining in the moonlight. A strange man rose out of the hedge and
stopped me, for a minute, in the middle of the road. He looked into my
face, and then let me go.'
_An Ossianic Fragment._--'A man went away with the _good people_ (or
_gentry_), and returned to find the townland all in ruins. As he came
back riding on a horse of the _good people_, he saw some men in a quarry
trying to move a big stone. He helped them with it, but his saddle-girth
broke, and he fell to the ground. The horse ran away, and he was left
there, an old man'[19] (cf. pp. 346-7).
A SCHOOLMASTER'S TESTIMONY
A schoolmaster, who is a native of the Ben Bulbin country, offers this
testimony:--'There is implicit belief here in the _gentry_, especially
among the old people. They consider them the spirits of their departed
relations and friends, who visit them in joy and in sorrow. On the death
of a member of a family, they believe the spirits of their near
relatives are present; they do not see them, but feel their presence.
They even have a strong belief that the spirits show them the future in
dreams; and say that cases of affliction are always foreshown in a
dream.
'The belief in changelings is not now generally prevalent; but in olden
times a mother used to place a pair of iron tongs over the cradle before
leaving the child alone, in order that the fairies should not change the
child for a weakly one of their own. It was another custom to take a
wisp of straw, and, lighting one end of it, make a fiery sign of the
cross over a cradle before a babe could be placed in it.'
WITH THE IRISH MYSTICS IN THE _SIDHE_ WORLD
Let us now turn to the Rosses Point country, which, as we have already
said, is one of the very famous places for seeing the 'gentry', or, as
educated Irish seers who make pilgrimages thither call them, the
_Sidhe_. I have been told by more than one such seer that there on the
hills and Greenlands (a great stretch of open country, treeless and
grass-grown), and on the strand at Lower Rosses Point--called Wren Point
by the country-folk--these beings can be seen and their wonderful music
heard; and a well-known Irish artist has shown me many drawings, and
paintings in oil, of these _Sidhe_ people as he has often beheld them at
those places and elsewhere in Ireland. They are described as a race of
majestic appearance and marvellous beauty, in form human, yet in nature
divine. The highest order of them seems to be a race of beings evolved
to a superhuman plane of existence, such as the ancients called gods;
and with this opinion, strange as it may seem in this age, all the
educated Irish seers with whom I have been privileged to talk agree,
though they go further, and say that these highest _Sidhe_ races still
inhabiting Ireland are the ever-young, immortal divine race known to the
ancient men of Erin as the Tuatha De Danann.
Of all European lands I venture to say that Ireland is the most
mystical, and, in the eyes of true Irishmen, as much the Magic Island of
Gods and Initiates now as it was when the Sacred Fires flashed from its
purple, heather-covered mountain-tops and mysterious round towers, and
the Greater Mysteries drew to its hallowed shrines neophytes from the
West as well as from the East, from India and Egypt as well as from
Atlantis;[20] and Erin's mystic-seeing sons still watch and wait for the
relighting of the Fires and the restoration of the old Druidic
Mysteries. Herein I but imperfectly echo the mystic message Ireland's
seers gave me, a pilgrim to their Sacred Isle. And until this mystic
message is interpreted, men cannot discover the secret of Gaelic myth
and song in olden or in modern times, they cannot drink at the
ever-flowing fountain of Gaelic genius, the perennial source of
inspiration which lies behind the new revival of literature and art in
Ireland, nor understand the seeming reality of the fairy races.
AN IRISH MYSTIC'S TESTIMONY
Through the kindness of an Irish mystic, who is a seer, I am enabled to
present here, in the form of a dialogue, very rare and very important
evidence, which will serve to illustrate and to confirm what has just
been said above about the mysticism of Ireland. To anthropologists this
evidence may be of more than ordinary value when they know that it
comes from one who is not only a cultured seer but who is also a man
conspicuously successful in the practical life of a great city:--
_Visions._--
Q.--Are all visions which you have had of the same character?
A.--'I have always made a distinction between pictures seen in the
memory of nature and visions of actual beings now existing in the inner
world. We can make the same distinction in our world: I may close my
eyes and see you as a vivid picture in memory, or I may look at you with
my physical eyes and see your actual image. In seeing these beings of
which I speak, the physical eyes may be open or closed: mystical beings
in their own world and nature are never seen with the physical eyes.'
_Otherworlds._--
Q.--By the inner world do you mean the Celtic Otherworld?
A.--'Yes; though there are many Otherworlds. The _Tír-na-nog_ of the
ancient Irish, in which the races of the _Sidhe_ exist, may be described
as a radiant archetype of this world, though this definition does not at
all express its psychic nature. In _Tír-na-nog_ one sees nothing save
harmony and beautiful forms. There are other worlds in which we can see
horrible shapes.'
_Classification of the 'Sidhe'._--
Q.--Do you in any way classify the _Sidhe_ races to which you refer?
A.--'The beings whom I call the _Sidhe_, I divide, as I have seen them,
into two great classes: those which are shining, and those which are
opalescent and seem lit up by a light within themselves. The shining
beings appear to be lower in the hierarchies; the opalescent beings are
more rarely seen, and appear to hold the positions of great chiefs or
princes among the tribes of Dana.'
_Conditions of Seership._--
Q.--Under what state or condition and where have you seen such beings?
A.--'I have seen them most frequently after being away from a city or
town for a few days. The whole west coast of Ireland from Donegal to
Kerry seems charged with a magical power, and I find it easiest to see
while I am there. I have always found it comparatively easy to see
visions while at ancient monuments like New Grange and Dowth, because I
think such places are naturally charged with psychical forces, and were
for that reason made use of long ago as sacred places. I usually find it
possible to throw myself into the mood of seeing; but sometimes visions
have forced themselves upon me.'
_The Shining Beings._--
Q.--Can you describe the shining beings?
A.--'It is very difficult to give any intelligible description of them.
The first time I saw them with great vividness I was lying on a
hill-side alone in the west of Ireland, in County Sligo: I had been
listening to music in the air, and to what seemed to be the sound of
bells, and was trying to understand these aerial clashings in which wind
seemed to break upon wind in an ever-changing musical silvery sound.
Then the space before me grew luminous, and I began to see one beautiful
being after another.'
_The Opalescent Beings._--
Q.--Can you describe one of the opalescent beings?
A.--'The first of these I saw I remember very clearly, and the manner of
its appearance: there was at first a dazzle of light, and then I saw
that this came from the heart of a tall figure with a body apparently
shaped out of half-transparent or opalescent air, and throughout the
body ran a radiant, electrical fire, to which the heart seemed the
centre. Around the head of this being and through its waving luminous
hair, which was blown all about the body like living strands of gold,
there appeared flaming wing-like auras. From the being itself light
seemed to stream outwards in every direction; and the effect left on me
after the vision was one of extraordinary lightness, joyousness, or
ecstasy.
'At about this same period of my life I saw many of these great beings,
and I then thought that I had visions of Aengus, Manannan, Lug, and
other famous kings or princes among the Tuatha De Danann; but since then
I have seen so many beings of a similar character that I now no longer
would attribute to any one of them personal identity with particular
beings of legend; though I believe that they correspond in a general way
to the Tuatha De Danann or ancient Irish gods.'
_Stature of the 'Sidhe'._--
Q.--You speak of the opalescent beings as great beings; what stature do
you assign to them, and to the shining beings?
A.--'The opalescent beings seem to be about fourteen feet in stature,
though I do not know why I attribute to them such definite height, since
I had nothing to compare them with; but I have always considered them as
much taller than our race. The shining beings seem to be about our own
stature or just a little taller. Peasant and other Irish seers do not
usually speak of the _Sidhe_ as being little, but as being tall: an old
schoolmaster in the West of Ireland described them to me from his own
visions as tall beautiful people, and he used some Gaelic words, which I
took as meaning that they were shining with every colour.'
_The worlds of the 'Sidhe.'_--
Q.--Do the two orders of _Sidhe_ beings inhabit the same world?
A.--'The shining beings belong to the mid-world; while the opalescent
beings belong to the heaven-world. There are three great worlds which we
can see while we are still in the body: the earth-world, mid-world, and
heaven-world.'
_Nature of the 'Sidhe.'_--
Q.--Do you consider the life and state of these _Sidhe_ beings superior
to the life and state of men?
A.--'I could never decide. One can say that they themselves are
certainly more beautiful than men are, and that their worlds seem more
beautiful than our world.
'Among the shining orders there does not seem to be any individualized
life: thus if one of them raises his hands all raise their hands, and if
one drinks from a fire-fountain all do; they seem to move and to have
their real existence in a being higher than themselves, to which they
are a kind of body. Theirs is, I think, a collective life, so
unindividualized and so calm that I might have more varied thoughts in
five hours than they would have in five years; and yet one feels an
extraordinary purity and exaltation about their life. Beauty of form
with them has never been broken up by the passions which arise in the
developed egotism of human beings. A hive of bees has been described as
a single organism with disconnected cells; and some of these tribes of
shining beings seem to be little more than one being manifesting itself
in many beautiful forms. I speak this with reference to the shining
beings only: I think that among the opalescent or _Sidhe_ beings, in the
heaven-world, there is an even closer spiritual unity, but also a
greater individuality.'
_Influence of the 'Sidhe' on Men._--
Q.--Do you consider any of these _Sidhe_ beings inimical to humanity?
A.--'Certain kinds of the shining beings, whom I call wood beings, have
never affected me with any evil influences I could recognize. But the
water beings, also of the shining tribes, I always dread, because I felt
whenever I came into contact with them a great drowsiness of mind and, I
often thought, an actual drawing away of vitality.'
_Water Beings Described._--
Q.--Can you describe one of these water beings?
A.--'In the world under the waters--under a lake in the West of Ireland
in this case--I saw a blue and orange coloured king seated on a throne;
and there seemed to be some fountain of mystical fire rising from under
his throne, and he breathed this fire into himself as though it were his
life. As I looked, I saw groups of pale beings, almost grey in colour,
coming down one side of the throne by the fire-fountain. They placed
their head and lips near the heart of the elemental king, and, then, as
they touched him, they shot upwards, plumed and radiant, and passed on
the other side, as though they had received a new life from this chief
of their world.'
_Wood Beings Described._--
Q.--Can you describe one of the wood beings?
A.--'The wood beings I have seen most often are of a shining silvery
colour with a tinge of blue or pale violet, and with dark
purple-coloured hair.'
_Reproduction and Immortality of the 'Sidhe'._--
Q.--Do you consider the races of the _Sidhe_ able to reproduce their
kind; and are they immortal?
A.--'The higher kinds seem capable of breathing forth beings out of
themselves, but I do not understand how they do so. I have seen some of
them who contain elemental beings within themselves, and these they
could send out and receive back within themselves again.
'The immortality ascribed to them by the ancient Irish is only a
relative immortality, their space of life being much greater than ours.
In time, however, I believe that they grow old and then pass into new
bodies just as men do, but whether by birth or by the growth of a new
body I cannot say, since I have no certain knowledge about this.'
_Sex among the 'Sidhe'._--
Q.--Does sexual differentiation seem to prevail among the Sidhe races?
A.--'I have seen forms both male and female, and forms which did not
suggest sex at all.'
_'Sidhe' and Human Life._--
Q.--(1) Is it possible, as the ancient Irish thought, that certain of
the higher _Sidhe_ beings have entered or could enter our plane of life
by submitting to human birth? (2) On the other hand, do you consider it
possible for men in trance or at death to enter the _Sidhe_ world?
A.--(1) 'I cannot say.' (2) 'Yes; both in trance and after death. I
think any one who thought much of the _Sidhe_ during his life and who
saw them frequently and brooded on them would likely go to their world
after death.'
_Social Organization of the 'Sidhe'._--
Q.--You refer to chieftain-like or prince-like beings, and to a king
among water beings; is there therefore definite social organization
among the various _Sidhe_ orders and races, and if so, what is its
nature?
A.--'I cannot say about a definite social organization. I have seen
beings who seemed to command others, and who were held in reverence.
This implies an organization, but whether it is instinctive like that of
a hive of bees, or consciously organized like human society, I cannot
say.'
_Lower 'Sidhe' as Nature Elementals._--
Q.--You speak of the water-being king as an elemental king; do you
suggest thereby a resemblance between lower _Sidhe_ orders and what
mediaeval mystics called elementals?
A.--'The lower orders of the _Sidhe_ are, I think, the nature elementals
of the mediaeval mystics.'
_Nourishment of the Higher 'Sidhe'._--
Q.--The water beings as you have described them seem to be nourished and
kept alive by something akin to electrical fluids; do the higher orders
of the _Sidhe_ seem to be similarly nourished?
A.--'They seemed to me to draw their life out of the Soul of the World.'
_Collective Visions of 'Sidhe' Beings._--
Q.--Have you had visions of the various _Sidhe_ beings in company with
other persons?
A.--'I have had such visions on several occasions.'
And this statement has been confirmed to me by three participants in
such collective visions, who separately at different times have seen in
company with our witness the same vision at the same moment. On another
occasion, on the Greenlands at Rosses Point, County Sligo, the same
_Sidhe_ being was seen by our present witness and a friend with him,
also possessing the faculty of seership, at a time when the two
percipients were some little distance apart, and they hurried to each
other to describe the being, not knowing that the explanation was
mutually unnecessary. I have talked with both percipients so much, and
know them so intimately that I am fully able to state that as
percipients they fulfil all necessary pathological conditions required
by psychologists in order to make their evidence acceptable.
PARALLEL EVIDENCE AS TO THE _SIDHE_ RACES
In general, the rare evidence above recorded from the Irish seer could
be paralleled by similar evidence from at least two other reliable Irish
people, with whom also I have been privileged to discuss the
Fairy-Faith. One is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, the other is
the wife of a well-known Irish historian; and both of them testify to
having likewise had collective visions of _Sidhe_ beings in Ireland.
This is what Mr. William B. Yeats wrote to me, while this study was in
progress, concerning the Celtic Fairy Kingdom:--'I am certain that it
exists, and will some day be studied as it was studied by Kirk.'[21]
INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE FROM THE _SIDHE_ WORLD
One of the most remarkable discoveries of our Celtic researches has been
that the native population of the Rosses Point country, or, as we have
called it, the _Sidhe_ world, in most essentials, and, what is most
important, by independent folk-testimony, substantiate the opinions and
statements of the educated Irish mystics to whom we have just referred,
as follows:--
_John Conway's Vision of the 'Gentry'._--In Upper Rosses Point, Mrs. J.
Conway told me this about the 'gentry':--'John Conway, my husband, who
was a pilot by profession, in watching for in-coming ships used to go
up on the high hill among the Fairy Hills; and there he often saw the
_gentry_ going down the hill to the strand. One night in particular he
recognized them as men and women of the _gentry_; and they were as big
as any living people. It was late at night about forty years ago.'
_Ghosts and Fairies._--When first I introduced myself to Owen Conway, in
his bachelor quarters, a cosy cottage at Upper Rosses Point, he said
that Mr. W. B. Yeats and other men famous in Irish literature had
visited him to hear about the fairies, and that though he knew very
little about the fairies he nevertheless always likes to talk of them.
Then Owen began to tell me about a man's ghost which both he and Bran
Reggan had seen at different times on the road to Sligo, then about a
woman's ghost which he and other people had often seen near where we
were, and then about the exorcizing of a haunted house in Sligo some
sixty years ago by Father McGowan, who as a result died soon afterwards,
apparently having been killed by the exorcized spirits. Finally, I heard
from him the following anecdotes about the fairies:--
_A Stone Wall overthrown by 'Fairy' Agency._--'Nothing is more certain
than that there are fairies. The old folks always thought them the
fallen angels. At the back of this house the fairies had their pass. My
neighbour started to build a cow-shed, and one wall abutting on the pass
was thrown down twice, and nothing but the fairies ever did it. The
third time the wall was built it stood.'
_Fairies passing through Stone Walls._--'Where MacEwen's house stands
was a noted fairy place. Men in building the house saw fairies on horses
coming across the spot, and the stone walls did not stop them at all.'
_Seeing the 'Gentry'._--'A cousin of mine, who was a pilot, once went to
the watch-house up there on the Point to take his brother's place; and
he saw ladies coming towards him as he crossed the Greenlands. At first
he thought they were coming from a dance, but there was no dance going
then, and, if there had been, no human beings dressed like them and
moving as they were could have come from any part of the globe, and in
so great a party, at that hour of the night. Then when they passed him
and he saw how beautiful they were, he knew them for the _gentry_
women.'
'Michael Reddy (our next witness) saw the _gentry_ down on the
Greenlands in regimentals like an army, and in daylight. He was a young
man at the time, and had been sent out to see if any cattle were
astray.'
And this is what Michael Reddy, of Rosses Point, now a sailor on the
ship _Tartar_, sailing from Sligo to neighbouring ports on the Irish
coast, asserts in confirmation of Owen Conway's statement about him:--'I
saw the _gentry_ on the strand (at Lower Rosses Point) about forty years
ago. It was afternoon. I first saw one of them like an officer pointing
at me what seemed a sword; and when I got on the Greenlands I saw a
great company of _gentry_, like soldiers, in red, laughing and shouting.
Their leader was a big man, and they were ordinary human size. As a
result [of this vision] I took to my bed and lay there for weeks. Upon
another occasion, late at night, I was with my mother milking cows, and
we heard the _gentry_ all round us talking, but could not see them.'
_Going to the 'Gentry' through Death, Dreams, or Trance._--John
O'Conway, one of the most reliable citizens of Upper Rosses Point,
offers the following testimony concerning the 'gentry':--'In olden times
the _gentry_ were very numerous about _forts_ and here on the
Greenlands, but rarely seen. They appeared to be the same as any living
men. When people died it was said the _gentry_ took them, for they would
afterwards appear among the _gentry_.'
'We had a ploughman of good habits who came in one day too late for his
morning's work, and he in excuse very seriously said, "May be if you had
travelled all night as much as I have you wouldn't talk. I was away with
the _gentry_, and save for a lady I couldn't have been back now. I saw a
long hall full of many people. Some of them I knew and some I did not
know. The lady saved me by telling me to eat no food there, however
enticing it might be."'
'A young man at Drumcliffe was _taken_ [in a trance state], and was with
the _Daoine Maithe_ some time, and then got back. Another man, whom I
knew well, was haunted by the _gentry_ for a long time, and he often
went off with _them_' (apparently in a dream or trance state).
_'Sidhe' Music._--The story which now follows substantiates the
testimony of cultured Irish seers that at Lower Rosses Point the music
of the _Sidhe_ can be heard:--'Three women were gathering shell-fish, in
the month of March, on the lowest point of the strand (Lower Rosses or
Wren Point) when they heard the most beautiful music. They set to work
to dance with it, and danced themselves sick. They then thanked the
invisible musician and went home.'
THE TESTIMONY OF A COLLEGE PROFESSOR
Our next witness is the Rev. Father ----, a professor in a Catholic
college in West Ireland, and most of his statements are based on events
which happened among his own acquaintances and relatives, and his
deductions are the result of careful investigation:--
_Apparitions from Fairyland._--'Some twenty to thirty years ago, on the
borders of County Roscommon near County Sligo, according to the firm
belief of one of my own relatives, a sister of his was _taken_ by the
fairies on her wedding-night, and she appeared to her mother afterwards
as an apparition. She seemed to want to speak, but her mother, who was
in bed at the time, was thoroughly frightened, and turned her face to
the wall. The mother is convinced that she saw this apparition of her
daughter, and my relative thinks she might have saved her.
'This same relative who gives it as his opinion that his sister was
_taken_ by the fairies, at a different time saw the apparition of
another relative of mine who also, according to similar belief, had been
_taken_ by the fairies when only five years old. The child-apparition
appeared beside its living sister one day while the sister was going
from the yard into the house, and it followed her in. It is said the
child was _taken_ because she was such a good girl.'
_Nature of the Belief in Fairies._--'As children we were always afraid
of fairies, and were taught to say "God bless _them_! God bless _them_!"
whenever we heard them mentioned.
'In our family we always made it a point to have clean water in the
house at night for the fairies.
'If anything like dirty water was thrown out of doors after dark it was
necessary to say "_Hugga, hugga salach!_" as a warning to the fairies
not to get their clothes wet.
'Untasted food, like milk, used to be left on the table at night for the
fairies. If you were eating and food fell from you, it was not right to
take it back, for the fairies wanted it. Many families are very serious
about this even now. The luckiest thing to do in such cases is to pick
up the food and eat just a speck of it and then throw the rest away to
the fairies.
'Ghosts and apparitions are commonly said to live in isolated
thorn-bushes, or thorn-trees. Many lonely bushes of this kind have their
ghosts. For example, there is Fanny's Bush, Sally's Bush, and another I
know of in County Sligo near Boyle.'
_Personal Opinions._--'The fairies of any one race are the people of the
preceding race--the Fomors for the Fir Bolgs, the Fir Bolgs for the
Dananns, and the Dananns for us. The old races died. Where did they go?
They became spirits--and fairies. Second-sight gave our race power to
see the inner world. When Christianity came to Ireland the people had no
_definite_ heaven. Before, their ideas about the other world were vague.
But the older ideas of a spirit world remained side by side with the
Christian ones, and being preserved in a subconscious way gave rise to
the fairy world.'
EVIDENCE FROM COUNTY ROSCOMMON
Our next place for investigation will be the ancient province of the
great fairy-queen Meave, who made herself famous by leading against
Cuchulainn the united armies of four of the five provinces of Ireland,
and all on account of a bull which she coveted. And there could be no
better part of it to visit than Roscommon, which Dr. Douglas Hyde has
made popular in Irish folk-lore.
_Dr. Hyde and the Leprechaun._--One day while I was privileged to be at
Ratra, Dr. Hyde invited me to walk with him in the country. After we had
visited an old _fort_ which belongs to the 'good people', and had
noticed some other of their haunts in that part of Queen Meave's realm,
we entered a straw-thatched cottage on the roadside and found the good
house-wife and her fine-looking daughter both at home. In response to
Dr. Hyde's inquiries, the mother stated that one day, in her girlhood,
near a hedge from which she was gathering wild berries, she saw a
leprechaun in a hole under a stone:--'He wasn't much larger than a doll,
and he was most perfectly formed, with a little mouth and eyes.' Nothing
was told about the little fellow having a money-bag, although the woman
said people told her afterwards that she would have been rich if she had
only had sense enough to catch him when she had so good a chance.[22]
_The Death Coach._--The next tale the mother told was about the death
coach which used to pass by the very house we were in. Every night until
after her daughter was born she used to rise up on her elbow in bed to
listen to the death coach passing by. It passed about midnight, and she
could hear the rushing, the tramping of the horses, and most beautiful
singing, just like fairy music, but she could not understand the words.
Once or twice she was brave enough to open the door and look out as the
coach passed, but she could never see a thing, though there was the
noise and singing. One time a man had to wait on the roadside to let the
fairy horses go by, and he could hear their passing very clearly, and
couldn't see one of them.
When we got home, Dr. Hyde told me that the fairies of the region are
rarely seen. The people usually say that they hear or feel them only.
_The 'Good People' and Mr. Gilleran._--After the mother had testified,
the daughter, who is quite of the younger generation, gave her own
opinion. She said that the 'good people' live in the _forts_ and often
take men and women or youths who pass by the _forts_ after sunset; that
Mr. Gilleran, who died not long ago, once saw certain dead friends and
recognized among them those who were believed to have been _taken_ and
those who died naturally, and that he saw them again when he was on his
death-bed.
We have here, as in so many other accounts, a clear connexion between
the realm of the dead and Fairyland.
THE TESTIMONY OF A LOUGH DERG SEER
Neil Colton, seventy-three years old, who lives in Tamlach Townland, on
the shores of Lough Derg, County Donegal, has a local reputation for
having seen the 'gentle folk', and so I called upon him. As we sat round
his blazing turf fire, and in the midst of his family of three sturdy
boys--for he married late in life--this is what he related:--
_A Girl Recovered from Faerie._--'One day, just before sunset in
midsummer, and I a boy then, my brother and cousin and myself were
gathering bilberries (whortleberries) up by the rocks at the back of
here, when all at once we heard music. We hurried round the rocks, and
there we were within a few hundred feet of six or eight of the _gentle
folk_, and they dancing. When they saw us, a little woman dressed all in
red came running out from them towards us, and she struck my cousin
across the face with what seemed to be a green rush. We ran for home as
hard as we could, and when my cousin reached the house she fell dead.
Father saddled a horse and went for Father Ryan. When Father Ryan
arrived, he put a stole about his neck and began praying over my cousin
and reading psalms and striking her with the stole; and in that way
brought her back. He said if she had not caught hold of my brother, she
would have been _taken_ for ever.'
_The 'Gentle Folk'._--'The _gentle folk_ are not earthly people; they
are a people with a nature of their own. Even in the water there are men
and women of the same character. Others have caves in the rocks, and in
them rooms and apartments. These races were terribly plentiful a hundred
years ago, and they'll come back again. My father lived two miles from
here, where there were plenty of the _gentle folk_. In olden times they
used to take young folks and keep them and draw all the life out of
their bodies. Nobody could ever tell their nature exactly.'
EVIDENCE FROM COUNTY FERMANAGH
From James Summerville, eighty-eight years old, who lives in the country
near Irvinestown, I heard much about the 'wee people' and about
banshees, and then the following remarkable story concerning the 'good
people':--
_Travelling Clairvoyance through 'Fairy' Agency._--'From near Ederney,
County Fermanagh, about seventy years ago, a man whom I knew well was
taken to America on Hallow Eve Night; and _they_ (the _good people_)
made him look down a chimney to see his own daughter cooking at a
kitchen fire. Then _they_ took him to another place in America, where he
saw a friend he knew. The next morning he was at his own home here in
Ireland.
'This man wrote a letter to his daughter to know if she was at the place
and at the work on Hallow Eve Night, and she wrote back that she was. He
was sure that it was the _good people_ who had taken him to America and
back in one night.'
EVIDENCE FROM COUNTY ANTRIM
At the request of Major R. G. Berry, M.R.I.A., of Richill Castle,
Armagh, Mr. H. Higginson, of Glenavy, County Antrim, collected all the
material he could find concerning the fairy-tradition in his part of
County Antrim, and sent to me the results, from which I have selected
the very interesting, and, in some respects, unique tales which
follow:--
_The Fairies and the Weaver._--'Ned Judge, of Sophys Bridge, was a
weaver. Every night after he went to bed the weaving started of itself,
and when he arose in the morning he would find the dressing which had
been made ready for weaving so broken and entangled that it took him
hours to put it right. Yet with all this drawback he got no poorer,
because the fairies left him plenty of household necessaries, and
whenever he sold a web [of cloth] he always received treble the amount
bargained for.'
_Meeting Two Regiments of 'Them'._--'William Megarry, of Ballinderry, as
his daughter who is married to James Megarry, J.P., told me, was one
night going to Crumlin on horseback for a doctor, when after passing
through Glenavy he met just opposite the Vicarage two regiments of
_them_ (the fairies) coming along the road towards Glenavy. One regiment
was dressed in red and one in blue or green uniform. _They_ were playing
music, but when they opened out to let him pass through the middle of
_them_ the music ceased until he had passed by.'
IN CUCHULAINN'S COUNTRY: A CIVIL ENGINEER'S TESTIMONY
In the heroic days of pagan Ireland, as tradition tells, the ancient
earthworks, now called the Navan Rings, just outside Armagh, were the
stronghold of Cuchulainn and the Red Branch Knights; and, later, under
Patrick, Armagh itself, one of the old mystic centres of Erin, became
the ecclesiastical capital of the Gaels. And from this romantic country,
one of its best informed native sons, a graduate civil engineer of
Dublin University, offers the following important evidence:--
_The Fairies are the Dead._--'When I was a youngster near Armagh, I was
kept good by being told that the fairies could take bad boys away. The
sane belief about the fairies, however, is different, as I discovered
when I grew up. The old people in County Armagh seriously believe that
the fairies are the spirits of the dead; and they say that if you have
many friends deceased you have many friendly fairies, or if you have
many enemies deceased you have many fairies looking out to do you harm.'
_Food-Offerings to Place-Fairies._--'It was very usual formerly, and the
practice is not yet given up, to place a bed, some other furniture, and
plenty of food in a newly-constructed dwelling the night before the time
fixed for moving into it; and if the food is not consumed, and the
crumbs swept up by the door in the morning, the house cannot safely be
occupied. I know of two houses now that have never been occupied,
because the fairies did not show their willingness and goodwill by
taking food so offered to them.'
ON THE SLOPES OF SLIEVE GULLION
In climbing to the summit of Cuchulainn's mountain, which overlooks
parts of the territory made famous by the 'Cattle Raid of Cooley', I met
John O'Hare, sixty-eight years old, of Longfield Townland, leading his
horse to pasture, and I stopped to talk with him about the 'good
people'.
'The _good people_ in this mountain,' he said, 'are the people who have
died and been _taken_; the mountain is enchanted.'
_The 'Fairy' Overflowing of the Meal-Chest._--'An old woman came to the
wife of Steven Callaghan and told her not to let Steven cut a certain
hedge. "It is where we shelter at night," the old woman added; and Mrs.
Callaghan recognized the old woman as one who had been _taken_ in
confinement. A few nights later the same old woman appeared to Mrs.
Callaghan and asked for charity; and she was offered some meal, which
she did not take. Then she asked for lodgings, but did not stop. When
Mrs. Callaghan saw the meal-chest next morning it was overflowing with
meal: it was the old woman's gift for the hedge.'
THE TESTIMONY OF TWO DROMINTEE PERCIPIENTS
After my friend, the Rev. Father L. Donnellan, C.C., of Dromintee,
County Armagh, had introduced me to Alice Cunningham, of his parish, and
she had told much about the 'gentle folk', she emphatically declared
that they do exist--and this in the presence of Father Donnellan--because
she has often seen them on Carrickbroad Mountain, near where she lives.
And she then reported as follows concerning enchanted Slieve Gullion:--
_The 'Sidhe' Guardian of Slieve Gullion._--'The top of Slieve Gullion is
a very _gentle_ place. A fairy has her house there by the lake, but she
is invisible. She interferes with nobody. I hear of no _gentler_ places
about here than Carrickbroad and Slieve Gullion.'
Father Donnellan and I called next upon Thomas McCrink and his wife at
Carrifamayan, because Mrs. McCrink claims to have seen some of the 'good
people', and this is her testimony:--
_Nature of the 'Good People'._--'I've heard and felt the _good people_
coming on the wind; and I once saw them down in the middle field on my
father's place playing football. They are still on earth. Among them are
the spirits of our ancestors; and these rejoice whenever good fortune
comes our way, for I saw them before my mother won her land [after a
long legal contest] in the field rejoicing.
'Some of the _good people_ I have thought were fallen angels, though
these may be dead people whose time is not up. We are only like shadows
in this world: my mother died in England, and she came to me in the
spirit. I saw her plainly. I ran to catch her, but my hands ran through
her form as if it were mere mist. Then there was a crack, and she was
gone.' And, finally, after a moment, our percipient said:--'The fairies
once passed down this lane here on a Christmas morning; and I took them
to be suffering souls out of Purgatory, going to mass.'
THE TESTIMONY OF A DROMINTEE SEERESS
Father Donnellan, the following day, took me to talk with almost the
oldest woman in his parish, Mrs. Biddy Grant, eighty-six years old, of
Upper Toughal, beside Slieve Gullion. Mrs. Grant is a fine specimen of
an Irishwoman, with white hair, clear complexion, and an expression of
great natural intelligence, though now somewhat feeble from age. Her
mind is yet clear, however; and her testimony is substantiated by this
statement from her own daughter, who lives with her:--'My mother has the
power of seeing things. It is a fact with her that spirits exist. She
has seen much, even in her old age; and what she is always telling me
scares me half to death.'
The following is Mrs. Grant's direct testimony given at her own home, on
September 20, 1909, in answer to our question if she knew anything about
the 'good people':--
_Seeing the 'Good People' as the Dead._--'I saw _them_ once as plain as
can be--big, little, old, and young. I was in bed at the time, and a boy
whom I had reared since he was born was lying ill beside me. Two of
_them_ came and looked at him; then came in three of _them_. One of
_them_ seemed to have something like a book, and he put his hand to the
boy's mouth; then he went away, while others appeared, opening the back
window to make an avenue through the house; and through this avenue came
great crowds. At this I shook the boy, and said to him, "Do you see
anything?" "No," he said; but as I made him look a second time he said,
"I do." After that he got well.
'These _good people_ were the spirits of our dead friends, but I could
not recognize them. I have often seen them that way while in my bed.
Many women are among them. I once touched a boy of theirs, and he was
just like feathers in my hand; there was no substance in him, and I knew
he wasn't a living being. I don't know where they live; I've heard they
live in the _Carrige_ (rocks). Many a time I've heard of their _taking_
people or leading them astray. They can't live far away when they come
to me in such a rush. They are as big as we are. I think these fairy
people are all through this country and in the mountains.'
_An Apparition of a 'Sidhe' Woman?_--'At a wake I went out of doors at
midnight and saw a woman running up and down the field with a strange
light in her hand. I called out my daughter, but she saw nothing, though
all the time the woman dressed in white was in the field, shaking the
light and running back and forth as fast as you could wink. I thought
the woman might be the spirit of Nancy Frink, but I was not sure.' (Cf.
pp. 60 ff., 83, 155, 215.)
EVIDENCE FROM LOUGH GUR, COUNTY LIMERICK
One of the most interesting parts of Ireland for the archaeologist and
for the folk-lorist alike is the territory immediately surrounding Lough
Gur, County Limerick. Shut in for the most part from the outer world by
a circle of low-lying hills on whose summits fairy goddesses yet dwell
invisibly, this region, famous for its numerous and well-preserved
cromlechs, dolmens, menhirs, and tumuli, and for the rare
folk-traditions current among its peasantry, has long been popularly
regarded as a sort of Otherworld preserve haunted by fairy beings, who
dwell both in its waters and on its land.
There seems to be no reasonable doubt that in pre-Christian times the
Lough Gur country was a very sacred spot, a mystic centre for
pilgrimages and for the celebration of Celtic religious rites, including
those of initiation. The Lough is still enchanted, but once in seven
years the spell passes off it, and it then appears like dry land to any
one that is fortunate enough to behold it. At such a time of
disenchantment a Tree is seen growing up through the lake-bottom--a Tree
like the strange World-Tree of Scandinavian myth. The Tree is covered
with a Green Cloth, and under it sits the lake's guardian, a woman
knitting.[23] The peasantry about Lough Gur still believe that beneath
its waters there is one of the chief entrances in Ireland to
_Tír-na-nog_, the 'Land of Youth', the Fairy Realm. And when a child is
stolen by the Munster fairies, 'Lough Gur is conjectured to be the place
of its unearthly transmutation from the human to the fairy state.'[23]
To my friend, Count John de Salis, of Balliol College, I am indebted for
the following legendary material, collected by him on the fairy-haunted
Lough Gur estate, his ancestral home, and annotated by the Rev. J. F.
Lynch, one of the best-informed antiquarians living in that part of
South Ireland:--
_The Fairy Goddesses, Aine and Fennel (or Finnen)._--'There are two
hills near Lough Gur upon whose summits sacrifices and sacred rites used
to be celebrated according to living tradition. One, about three miles
south-west of the lake, is called Knock Aine, Aine or Ane being the name
of an ancient Irish goddess, derived from _an_, "bright." The other, the
highest hill on the lake-shores, is called Knock Fennel or Hill of the
Goddess Fennel, from _Finnen_ or _Finnine_ or _Fininne_, a form of
_fin_, "white." The peasantry of the region call Aine one of the Good
People;[24] and they say that Fennel (apparently her sister goddess or
a variant of herself) lived on the top of Knock Fennel' (termed Finnen
in a State Paper dated 1200).
_The Fairy Boat-Race._--'Different old peasants have told me that on
clear calm moonlight nights in summer, fairy boats appear racing across
Lough Gur. The boats come from the eastern side of the lake, and when
they have arrived at Garrod Island, where the Desmond Castle lies in
ruins, they vanish behind Knock Adoon. There are four of these phantom
boats, and in each there are two men rowing and a woman steering. No
sound is heard, though the seer can see the weird silvery splash of the
oars and the churning of the water at the bows of the boats as they
shoot along. It is evident that they are racing, because one boat gets
ahead of the others, and all the rowers can be seen straining at the
oars. Boats and occupants seem to be transparent, and you cannot see
exactly what their nature is. One old peasant told me that it is the
shining brightness of the clothes on the phantom rowers and on the women
who steer which makes them visible.
'Another man, who is about forty years of age, and as far as I know of
good habits, assures me that he also has seen this fairy boat-race, and
that it can still be seen at the proper season.'
_The Bean-Tighe._[25]--'The _Bean-tighe_, the fairy housekeeper of the
enchanted submerged castle of the Earl of Desmond, is supposed to appear
sitting on an ancient earthen monument shaped like a great chair and
hence called _Suidheachan_, the "Housekeeper's Little Seat," on Knock
Adoon (Hill of the Fort), which juts out into the Lough. The
_Bean-tighe_, as I have heard an old peasant tell the tale, was once
asleep on her Seat, when the _Buachailleen_[26] or "Little Herd Boy"
stole her golden comb. When the _Bean-tighe_ awoke and saw what had
happened, she cast a curse upon the cattle of the _Buachailleen_, and
soon all of them were dead, and then the "Little Herd Boy" himself died,
but before his death he ordered the golden comb to be cast into the
Lough.'[27]
_Lough Gur Fairies in General._--'The peasantry in the Lough Gur region
commonly speak of the _Good People_ or of the _Kind People_ or of the
_Little People_, their names for the fairies. The leprechaun indicates
the place where hidden treasure is to be found. If the person to whom he
reveals such a secret makes it known to a second person, the first
person dies, or else no money is found: in some cases the money is
changed into ivy leaves or into furze blossoms.
'I am convinced that some of the older peasants still believe in
fairies. I used to go out on the lake occasionally on moonlight nights,
and an old woman supposed to be a "wise woman" (a seeress), hearing
about my doing this, told me that under no circumstances should I
continue the practice, for fear of "Them People" (the fairies). One
evening in particular I was warned by her not to venture on the lake.
She solemnly asserted that the "Powers of Darkness" were then abroad,
and that it would be misfortune for me to be in their path.[28]
'Under ordinary circumstances, as a very close observer of the Lough Gur
peasantry informs me, the old people will pray to the Saints, but if by
any chance such prayers remain unanswered they then invoke other powers,
the fairies, the goddesses Aine and Fennel, or other pagan deities, whom
they seem to remember in a vague subconscious manner through tradition.'
TESTIMONY FROM A COUNTY KERRY SEER
To another of my fellow students in Oxford, a native Irishman of County
Kerry, I am indebted for the following evidence:--
_A Collective Vision of Spiritual Beings._--'Some few weeks before
Christmas, 1910, at midnight on a very dark night, I and another young
man (who like myself was then about twenty-three years of age) were on
horseback on our way home from Limerick. When near Listowel, we noticed
a light about half a mile ahead. At first it seemed to be no more than a
light in some house; but as we came nearer to it and it was passing out
of our direct line of vision we saw that it was moving up and down, to
and fro, diminishing to a spark, then expanding into a yellow luminous
flame. Before we came to Listowel we noticed two lights, about one
hundred yards to our right, resembling the light seen first. Suddenly
each of these lights expanded into the same sort of yellow luminous
flame, about six feet high by four feet broad. In the midst of each
flame we saw a radiant being having human form. Presently the lights
moved toward one another and made contact, whereupon the two beings in
them were seen to be walking side by side. The beings' bodies were
formed of a pure dazzling radiance, white like the radiance of the sun,
and much brighter than the yellow light or aura surrounding them. So
dazzling was the radiance, like a halo, round their heads that we could
not distinguish the countenances of the beings; we could only
distinguish the general shape of their bodies; though their heads were
very clearly outlined because this halo-like radiance, which was the
brightest light about them, seemed to radiate from or rest upon the head
of each being. As we travelled on, a house intervened between us and the
lights, and we saw no more of them. It was the first time we had ever
seen such phenomena, and in our hurry to get home we were not wise
enough to stop and make further examination. But ever since that night I
have frequently seen, both in Ireland and in England, similar lights
with spiritual beings in them.' (Cf. pp. 60 ff., 77, 133, 155, 215,
483.)
_Reality of the Spiritual World._--'Like my companion, who saw all that
I saw of the first three lights, I formerly had always been a sceptic as
to the existence of spirits; now I know that there is a spiritual world.
My brother, a physician, had been equally sceptical until he saw, near
our home at Listowel, similar lights containing spiritual beings and was
obliged to admit the genuineness of the phenomena.
'In whatever country we may be, I believe that we are for ever immersed
in the spiritual world; but most of us cannot perceive it on account of
the unrefined nature of our physical bodies. Through meditation and
psychical training one can come to see the spiritual world and its
beings. We pass into the spirit realm at death and come back into the
human world at birth; and we continue to reincarnate until we have
overcome all earthly desires and mortal appetites. Then the higher life
is open to our consciousness and we cease to be human; we become divine
beings.' (Recorded in Oxford, England, August 12, 1911.)
III. IN SCOTLAND
Introduction by ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, Hon. LL.D. of the University of
Edinburgh; author of _Carmina Gadelica_.
The belief in fairies was once common throughout Scotland--Highland and
Lowland. It is now much less prevalent even in the Highlands and
Islands, where such beliefs linger longer than they do in the Lowlands.
But it still lives among the old people, and is privately entertained
here and there even among younger people; and some who hold the belief
declare that they themselves have seen fairies.
Various theories have been advanced as to the origin of fairies and as
to the belief in them. The most concrete form in which the belief has
been urged has been by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, in
Perthshire.[29] Another theory of the origin of fairies I took down in
the island of Miunghlaidh (Minglay); and, though I have given it in
_Carmina Gadelica_, it is sufficiently interesting to be quoted here.
During October 1871, Roderick Macneill, known as 'Ruaraidh mac Dhomhuil,'
then ninety-two years of age, told it in Gaelic to the late J. F.
Campbell of Islay and the writer, when they were storm-stayed in the
precipitous island of Miunghlaidh, Barra:--
'The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of heaven, where
he had been a leading light. He declared that he would go and found a
kingdom for himself. When going out at the door of heaven the Proud
Angel brought prickly lightning and biting lightning out of the doorstep
with his heels. Many angels followed him--so many that at last the Son
called out, "Father! Father! the city is being emptied!" whereupon the
Father ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates of hell should be
closed. This was instantly done. And those who were in were in, and
those who were out were out; while the hosts who had left heaven and had
not reached hell flew into the holes of the earth, like the stormy
petrels. These are the Fairy Folk--ever since doomed to live under the
ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when the King permits. They
are never allowed abroad on Thursday, that being Columba's Day; nor on
Friday, that being the Son's Day; nor on Saturday, that being Mary's
Day; nor on Sunday, that being the Lord's Day.
God be between me and every fairy,
Every ill wish and every druidry;
To-day is Thursday on sea and land,
I trust in the King that they do not hear me.
On certain nights when their _bruthain_ (bowers) are open and their
lamps are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the
fairies may be heard singing lightheartedly:--
Not of the seed of Adam are we,
Nor is Abraham our father;
But of the seed of the Proud Angel,
Driven forth from Heaven.'
The fairies entered largely into the lives and into the folk-lore of the
Highland people, and the following examples of things named after the
fairies indicate the manner in which the fairies dominated the minds of
the people of Gaeldom:--_teine sith_, 'fairy fire' (_ignis fatuus_);
_breaca sith_, 'fairy marks,' livid spots appearing on the faces of the
dead or dying; _marcachd shith_, 'fairy riding,' paralysis of the spine
in animals, alleged to be brought on by the fairy mouse riding across
the backs of animals while they are lying down; _piob shith_, 'fairy
pipe' or 'elfin pipe', generally found in ancient underground houses;
_miaran na mna sithe_, 'the thimble of the fairy woman,' the fox-glove;
_lion na mna sithe_, 'lint of the fairy woman,' fairy flax, said to be
beneficial in certain illnesses; and _curachan na mna sithe_, 'coracle
of the fairy woman,' the shell of the blue valilla. In place-names
_sith_, 'fairy,' is common. Glenshee, in Perthshire, is said to have
been full of fairies, but the screech of the steam-whistle frightened
them underground. There is scarcely a district of the Highlands without
its fairy knoll, generally the greenest hillock in the place. 'The black
chanter of Clan Chattan' is said to have been given to a famous
Macpherson piper by a fairy woman who loved him; and the Mackays have a
flag said to have been given to a Mackay by a fairy sweetheart. The
well-known fairy flag of Dunvegan is said to have been given to a
Macleod of Macleod by a fairy woman; and the Macrimmons of Bororaig,
pipers to the Macleods of Macleod, had a chanter called '_Sionnsair
airgid na mna sithe_', 'the silver chanter of the fairy woman.' A family
in North Uist is known as _Dubh-sith_, 'Black fairy,' from a tradition
that the family had been familiar with the fairies in their secret
flights and nightly migrations.
Donald Macalastair, seventy-nine years of age, crofter, Druim-a-ghinnir,
Arran, told me, in the year 1895, the following story in Gaelic:--'The
fairies were dwelling in the knoll, and they had a near neighbour who
used to visit them in their home. The man used to observe the ways of
the fairies and to do as they did. The fairies took a journey upon them
to go to Ireland, and the man took upon him to go with them. Every
single fairy of them caught a ragwort and went astride it, and they were
pell-mell, every knee of them across the Irish Ocean in an instant, and
across the Irish Ocean was the man after them, astride a ragwort like
one of themselves. A little wee tiny fairy shouted and asked were they
all ready, and all the others replied that they were, and the little
fairy called out:--
My king at my head,
Going across in my haste,
On the crests of the waves,
To Ireland.
"Follow me," said the king of the fairies, and away they went across the
Irish Ocean, every mother's son of them astride his ragwort. Macuga
(Cook) did not know on earth how he would return to his native land, but
he leapt upon the ragwort as he saw the fairies do, and he called as he
heard them call, and in an instant he was back in Arran. But he had got
enough of the fairies on this trip itself, and he never went with them
again.'
The fairies were wont to take away infants and their mothers, and many
precautions were taken to safeguard them till purification and baptism
took place, when the fairy power became ineffective. Placing iron about
the bed, burning leather in the room, giving mother and child the milk
of a cow which had eaten of the _mothan_, pearl-wort (_Pinguicula
vulgaris_), a plant of virtue, and similar means were taken to ensure
their safety. If the watching-women neglected these precautions, the
mother or child or both were spirited away to the fairy bower. Many
stories are current on this subject.
Sometimes the fairies helped human beings with their work, coming in at
night to finish the spinning or the house-work, or to thresh the
farmer's corn or fan his grain. On such occasions they must not be
molested nor interfered with, even in gratitude. If presented with a
garment they will go away and work no more. This method of getting rid
of them is often resorted to, as it is not easy always to find work for
them to do.
_Bean chaol a chot uaine 's na gruaige buidhe_, 'the slender woman of
the green kirtle and of the yellow hair,' is wise of head and deft of
hand. She can convert the white water of the rill into rich red wine and
the threads of the spiders into a tartan plaid. From the stalk of the
fairy reed she can bring the music of the lull of the peace and of the
repose, however active the brain and lithe the limb; and she can rouse
to mirth and merriment, and to the dance, men and women, however
dolorous their condition. From the bower could be heard the pipe and the
song and the voice of laughter as the fairies 'sett' and reeled in the
mazes of the dance. Sometimes a man hearing the merry music and seeing
the wonderful light within would be tempted to go in and join them, but
woe to him if he omitted to leave a piece of iron at the door of the
bower on entering, for the cunning fairies would close the door and the
man would find no egress. There he would dance for years--but to him the
years were as one day--while his wife and family mourned him as dead.
The flint arrow-heads so much prized by antiquarians are called in the
Highlands _Saighead sith_, fairy arrows. They are said to have been
thrown by the fairies at the sons and daughters of men. The writer
possesses one which was thrown at his own maid-servant one night when
she went to the peatstack for peats. She was aware of something whizzing
through the silent air, passing through her hair, grazing her ear and
falling at her feet. Stooping in the bright moonlight the girl picked up
a fairy arrow!
'But faith is dead--such things do not happen now,' said a courteous
informant. If not quite dead it is almost dead, hastened by the
shifting of population, the establishment of means of communication, the
influx of tourists, and the scorn of the more materialistic of the
incomers and of the people themselves.
EDINBURGH,
_October_ 1910.
ABERFOYLE, THE COUNTRY OF ROBERT KIRK
My first hunt for fairies in Scotland began at Aberfoyle, where the
Highlands and the Lowlands meet, and in the very place where Robert
Kirk, the minister of Aberfoyle, was _taken_ by them, in the year 1692.
The minister spent a large part of his time studying the ways of the
'good people', and he must have been able to see them, for he was a
seventh son. Mrs. J. MacGregor, who keeps the key to the old churchyard
where there is a tomb to Kirk, though many say there is nothing in it
but a coffin filled with stones, told me that Kirk was taken into the
Fairy Knoll, which she pointed to just across a little valley in front
of us, and is there yet, for the hill is full of caverns, and in them
the 'good people' have their homes. And she added that Kirk appeared to
a relative of his after he was _taken_, and said that he was in the
power of the 'good people', and couldn't get away. 'But,' says he, 'I
can be set free if you will have my cousin do what I tell him when I
appear again at the christening of my child in the parsonage.' According
to Mr. Andrew Lang, who reports the same tradition in more detail in his
admirable Introduction to _The Secret Commonwealth_, the cousin was
Grahame of Duchray, and the thing he was to do was to throw a dagger
over Kirk's head. Grahame was at hand at the christening of the
posthumous child, but was so astonished to see Kirk appear as Kirk said
he would, that he did not throw the dagger, and so Kirk became a
perpetual prisoner of the 'good people'.
After having visited Kirk's tomb, I called on the Rev. William M.
Taylor, the present successor of Kirk, and, as we sat together in the
very room where Kirk must have written his _Secret Commonwealth_, he
told me that tradition reports Kirk as having been _taken_ by the
fairies while he was walking on their hill, which is but a short way
from the parsonage. 'At the time of his disappearance, people said he
was _taken_ because the fairies were displeased with him for prying into
their secrets. At all events, it seems likely that Kirk was taken ill
very suddenly with something like apoplexy while on the Fairy Knoll, and
died there. I have searched the presbytery books, and find no record of
how Kirk's death really took place; but of course there is not the least
doubt of his body being in the grave.' So thus, according to Mr. Taylor,
we are to conclude that if the fairies carried off anything, it must
have been the spirit or soul of Kirk. I talked with others round
Aberfoyle about Kirk, and some would have it that his body and soul were
both _taken_, and that what was buried was no corpse at all. Mrs.
Margaret MacGregor, one of the few Gaelic speakers of the old school
left in Aberfoyle, holds another opinion, for she said to me, 'Nothing
could be surer than that the _good people_ took Kirk's spirit only.'
In the Aberfoyle country, the Fairy-Faith, save for the stories about
Kirk, which will probably persist for a long time yet, is rapidly
passing. In fact it is almost forgotten now. Up to thirty years ago, as
Mr. Taylor explained, before the railway reached Aberfoyle, belief in
fairies was much more common. Nowadays, he says, there is no real
fairy-lore among the peasants; fifty to sixty years ago there was. And
in his opinion, 'the fairy people of three hundred years ago in Scotland
were a distinct race by themselves. They had never been human beings.
The belief in them was a survival of paganism, and not at all an
outgrowth of Christian belief in angelic hosts.'
A SCOTCH MINISTER'S TESTIMONY
A Protestant minister of Scotland will be our next witness. He is a
native of Ross-shire, though he draws many of his stories from the
Western Hebrides, where his calling has placed him. Because he speaks
from personal knowledge of the living Fairy-Faith as it was in his
boyhood and is now, and chiefly because he has had the rare privilege
of conscious contact with the fairy world, his testimony is of the
highest value.
_Reality of Fairies._--'When I was a boy I was a firm believer in
fairies; and now as a Christian minister I believe in the possibility
and also the reality of these spiritual orders, but I wish only to know
those orders which belong to the realm of grace. It is very certain that
they exist. I have been in a state of ecstasy, and have seen spiritual
beings which form these orders.[30]
'I believe in the actuality of evil spirits; but people in the Highlands
having put aside paganism, evil spirits are not seen now.'
This explanation was offered of how fairies may exist and yet be
invisible:--'Our Saviour became invisible though in the body; and, as
the Scriptures suggest, I suppose we are obliged to concede a similar
power of invisibility to spirits as well, good and evil ones alike.'
_Precautions against Fairies._--'I remember how an old woman pulled me
out of a fairy ring to save me from being _taken_.
'If a mother takes some bindweed and places it burnt at the ends over
her babe's cradle, the fairies have no power over the child. The
bindweed is a common roadside convolvulus.
'As a boy, I saw two old women passing a babe over red-hot coals, and
then drop some of the cinders in a cup of water and give the water to
the babe to drink, in order to cure it of a fairy stroke.'
_Fairy Fights on Halloween._--'It is a common belief now that on
Halloween the fairies, or the fairy hosts, have fights. Lichens on
rocks after there has been a frost get yellowish-red, and then when they
thaw and the moisture spreads out from them the rocks are a bright red;
and this bright red is said to be the blood of the fairies after one of
their battles.'
_Fairies and the Hump-back._--The following story by the present witness
is curious, for it is the same story of a hump-back which is so
widespread. The fact that in Scotland the hump is removed or added by
fairies as it is in Ireland, in Cornwall by pixies, and in Brittany by
_corrigans_, goes far to prove the essential identity of these three
orders of beings. The story comes from one of the remote Western
Hebrides, Benbecula:--'A man who was a hump-back once met the fairies
dancing, and danced with their queen; and he sang with them, "Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday," so well that they took off his hump, and he
returned home a straight-bodied man. Then a tailor went past the same
place, and was also admitted by the fairies to their dance. He caught
the fairy queen by the waist, and she resented his familiarity. And in
singing he added "Thursday" to their song and spoilt it. To pay the
tailor for his rudeness and ill manners, the dancers took up the hump
they had just removed from the first man and clapped it on his back, and
the conceited fellow went home a hump-back.'
_Libations to Fairies._--'An elder in my church knew a woman who was
accustomed, in milking her cows, to offer libations to the fairies.[31]
The woman was later converted to Christ and gave up the practice, and as
a result one of her cows was _taken_ by the fairies. Then she revived
the practice.
'The fairy queen who watches over cows is called _Gruagach_ in the
Islands, and she is often seen. In pouring libations to her and her
fairies various kinds of stones, usually with hollows in them, are
used.[32]
'In Lewis libations are poured to the goddess [or god] of the sea,
called _Shoney_,[33] in order to bring in seaweed. Until modern times in
Iona similar libations were poured to a god corresponding to Neptune.'
IN THE HIGHLANDS
I had the pleasure as well as the great privilege of setting out from
Inverness on a bright crisp September morning in company with Dr.
Alexander Carmichael, the well-known folk-lorist of Scotland, to study
the Fairy-Faith as it exists now in the Highlands round Tomatin, a small
country village about twenty miles distant. We departed by an early
train; and soon reaching the Tomatin country began our search--Dr.
Carmichael for evidence regarding rare and curious Scotch beliefs
connected with folk-magic, such as blood-stopping at a distance and
removing motes in the eye at a distance, and I for Highland ghosts and
fairies.
Our first experience was with an old man whom we met on the road between
the railway station and the post office, who could speak only Gaelic.
Dr. Carmichael talked with him awhile, and then asked him about fairies,
and he said there were some living in a cave some way off, but as the
distance was rather too far we decided not to call on them. Then we went
on to see the postmaster, Mr. John MacDougall, and he told us that in
his boyhood the country-folk round Tomatin believed thoroughly in
fairies. He said they thought of them as a race of spirits capable of
making themselves visible to mortals, as living in underground places,
as _taking_ fine healthy babes and leaving changelings in their place.
These changelings would waste away and die in a short time after being
left. So firmly did the old people believe in fairies then that they
would ridicule a person for not believing. And now quite the reverse
state has come about.[34]
THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN DUNBAR OF INVEREEN
We talked with other Highlanders in the country round Tomatin, and heard
only echoes, mostly fragmentary, of what their forefathers used to
believe about fairies. But at Invereen we discovered John Dunbar, a
Highlander, who really knows the Fairy-Faith and is not ashamed to
explain it. Speaking partly from experience and partly from what he has
heard his parents relate concerning the 'good people', he said:--
_The Sheep and the Fairy-Hunting._--'I believe people saw fairies, but I
think one reason no one sees them now is because every place in this
parish where they used to appear has been put into sheep, and deer, and
grouse, and shooting. According to tradition, Coig na Fearn is the place
where the last fairy was seen in this country. Before the big sheep
came, the fairies are supposed to have had a premonition that their
domains were to be violated by them. A story is told of a fight between
the sheep and fairies, or else of the fairies hunting the sheep:--James
MacQueen, who could traffic with the fairies, whom he regarded as ghosts
or spirits, one night on his old place, which now is in sheep, was lying
down all alone and heard a small and big barking of dogs, and a small
and big bleating of sheep, though no sheep were there then. It was the
fairy-hunting he heard. "I put an axe under my head and I had no fear
therefore," he always repeated when telling the story. I believe the man
saw and heard something. And MacQueen used to aid the fairies, and on
that account, as he was in the habit of saying, he always found more
meal in his chest than he thought he had.'
_Fairies._--'My grandmother believed firmly in fairies, and I have heard
her tell a good many stories about them. They were a small people
dressed in green, and had dwellings underground in dry spots. Fairies
were often heard in the hills over there (pointing), and I believe
something was there. They were awful for music, and used to be heard
very often playing the bagpipes. A woman wouldn't go out in the dark
after giving birth to a child before the child was christened, so as not
to give the fairies power over her or the child. And I have heard people
say that if fairies were refused milk and meat they would _take_ a horse
or a cow; and that if well treated they would repay all gifts.'
_Time in Fairyland._--'People would be twenty years in Fairyland and it
wouldn't seem more than a night. A bridegroom who was _taken_ on his
wedding-day was in Fairyland for many generations, and, coming back,
thought it was next morning. He asked where all the wedding-guests were,
and found only one old woman who remembered the wedding.'
_Highland Legend of the Dead._--As I have found to be the case in all
Celtic countries equally, fairy stories nearly always, in accordance
with the law of psychology known as 'the association of ideas', give
place to or are blended with legends of the dead. This is an important
factor for the Psychological Theory. And what follows proves the same
ideas to be present to the mind of Mr. Dunbar:--'Some people after death
are seen in their old haunts; no mistake about it. A bailiff had false
corn and meal measures, and so after he died he came back to his
daughter and told her he could have no peace until the measures were
burned. She complied with her father's wish, and his spirit was never
seen again. I have known also of phantom funerals of people who died
soon afterwards being seen on the road at night.'
TO THE WESTERN HEBRIDES
From Inverness I began my journey to the Western Hebrides. While I
waited for the steamer to take me from Kyle to the Isle of Skye, an old
man with whom I talked on the docks said this about Neill Mackintosh, of
Black Island:--'You can't argue with the old man that he hasn't seen
fairies. He can tell you all about them.'
EVIDENCE FROM THE ISLE OF SKYE
Miss Frances Tolmie, who was born at Uignish, Isle of Skye, and has
lived many years in the isle in close touch with some of its oldest
folk, contributes, from Edinburgh, the evidence which follows. The first
two tales were told in the parish of Minginish a number of years ago by
Mary Macdonald, a goat-herd, and have their setting in the region of the
Koolian[35] range of mountains on the west side of Skye.
_The Fatal Peat Ember._--'An aged nurse who had fallen fast asleep as
she sat by the fire, was holding on her knees a newly-born babe. The
mother, who lay in bed gazing dreamily, was astonished to see three
strange little women enter the dwelling. They approached the unconscious
child, and she who seemed to be their leader was on the point of lifting
it off the nurse's lap, when the third exclaimed:--"Oh! let us leave
this one with her as we have already taken so many!" "So be it," replied
the senior of the party in a tone of displeasure, "but when that peat
now burning on the hearth shall be consumed, her life will surely come
to an end." Then the three little figures passed out. The good wife,
recognizing them to be fairies, sprang from her bed and poured over the
fire all the water she could find, and extinguished the half-burnt
ember. This she wrapped carefully in a piece of cloth and deposited at
the very bottom of a large chest, which afterwards she always kept
locked.
'Years passed, and the babe grew into a beautiful young woman. In the
course of time she was betrothed; and, according to custom, not
appearing in public at church on the Sunday preceding the day appointed
for her marriage, remained at home alone. To amuse herself, she began to
search the contents of all the keeping-places in the house, and came at
last to the chest containing the peat ember. In her haste, the good
mother had that day forgotten the key of the chest, which was now in the
lock. At the bottom of the chest the girl found a curious packet
containing nothing but a morsel of peat, and this apparently useless
thing she tossed away into the fire. When the peat was well kindled the
young girl began to feel very ill, and when her mother returned was
dying. The open chest and the blazing peat explained the cause of the
calamity. The fairy's prediction was fulfilled.'
_Results of Refusing Fairy Hospitality._--'Two women were walking toward
the Point when one of them, hearing churning going on under a hillock,
expressed aloud a wish for some butter-milk. No sooner had she spoken
than a very small figure of a woman came out with a bowlful and offered
it to her, but the thirsty woman, ignorant of fairy customs and the
penalty attending their infringement, declined the kind offer of
refreshment, and immediately found herself a prisoner in the hillock.
She was led to an apartment containing a chest full of meal and a great
bag of wool, and was told by the fairy that when she had eaten all the
meal and spun all the wool she would be free to return to her home. The
prisoner at once set herself to eating and spinning assiduously, but
without apparent result, and despairing of completing the task consulted
an old man of very sad countenance who had long been a captive in the
hillock. He willingly gave her his advice, which was to wet her left eye
with saliva each morning before she settled down to her task. She
followed this advice, and gradually the wool and the meal were
exhausted. Then the fairy granted her freedom, but in doing so cursed
the old man, and said that she had it in her power to keep him in the
hillock for ever.'
_The Fairies' 'Waulking' (Fulling)._--'At Ebost, in Bracadale, an old
woman was living in a little hut, with no companion save a wise cat. As
we talked, she expressed her wonder that no fairies are ever seen or
heard nowadays. She could remember hearing her father tell how he, when
a herd-boy, had heard the fairies singing a "waulking" song in
Dun-Osdale, an ancient and ruined round tower in the parish of
Dùirinish, and not far from Heléval _mhor_ (great) and Heléval _bheag_
(less)--two hills occasionally alluded to as "Macleod's Tables". The
youth was lying on the grass-grown summit of the ruin, and heard them
distinctly. As if with exultation, one voice took the verse and then the
whole company joined in the following chorus: "_Ho! fir-e! fair-e,
foirm! Ho! Fair-eag-an an clò!_ (Ho! well done! Grand! Ho! bravo the web
[of homespun]!)"'
_Crodh Chailean._--'This tale was related by Mr. Neil Macleod, the bard
of Skye:--"Colin was a gentleman of Clan Campbell in Perthshire, who was
married to a beautiful maiden whom the fairies carried off on her
marriage-day, and on whom they cast a spell which rendered her invisible
for a day and a year. She came regularly every day to milk the cows of
her sorrowing husband, and sang sweetly to them while she milked, but he
never once had the pleasure of beholding her, though he could hear
perfectly what she sang. At the expiry of the year she was, to his great
joy, restored to him."'[36]
_Fairy Legend of the Macleod Family._--'There is a legend told of the
Macleod family:--Soon after the heir of the Macleods was born, a
beautiful woman in wonderful raiment, who was a fairy woman or banshee
(there were joyous as well as mourning banshees) appeared at the castle,
and went directly to the babe's cradle. She took up the babe and chanted
over it a series of verses, and each verse had its own melody. The
verses foretold the future manhood of the young child, and acted as a
protective charm over its life. Then she put the babe back into its
cradle, and, going out, disappeared across the moorlands.
'For many generations it was a custom in the Macleod family that whoever
was the nurse of the heir must sing those verses as the fairy woman had
sung them. After a time the song was forgotten, but at a later period it
was partially recovered, and to-day it is one of the proud folk-lore
heritages of the Macleod family.'[37]
_Origin and Nature of the Fairy-Faith._--Finally, with respect to the
origin and nature of the Scotch Fairy-Faith, Miss Tolmie states:--'As a
child I was not permitted to hear about fairies. At twenty I was seeking
and trying to understand the beliefs of my fathers in the light of
modern ideas. I was very determined not to lose the past.
'The fairy-lore originated in a cultured class in very ancient times.
The peasants inherited it; they did not invent it. With the loss of
Gaelic in our times came the loss of folk-ideals. The classical and
English influences combined had a killing effect; so that the
instinctive religious feeling which used to be among our people when
they kept alive the fairy-traditions is dead. We have
intellectually-constructed creeds and doctrines which take its place.
'We always thought of fairies as mysterious little beings living in
hills. They were capricious and irritable, but not wicked. They could do
a good turn as well as a bad one. They were not aerial, but had bodies
which they could make invisible; and they could make human bodies
invisible in the same way. Besides their hollow knolls and mounds there
seemed to be a subterranean world in which they also lived, where things
are like what they are in this world.'
THE ISLE OF BARRA,[38] WESTERN HEBRIDES
We pass from Cuchulainn's beautiful island to what is now the most
Celtic part of Scotland--the Western Hebrides, where the ancient life is
lived yet, and where the people have more than a faith in spirits and
fairies. And no one of the Western Hebrides, perhaps excepting the tiny
island of Erisgey, has changed less during the last five hundred years
than Barra.
Our Barra guide and interpreter, Michael Buchanan, a native and a
life-long resident of Barra, is seventy years old, yet as strong and
active as a city man at fifty. He knows intimately every old man on the
island, and as he was able to draw them out on the subject of the 'good
people' as no stranger could do, I was quite willing, as well as obliged
on account of the Scotch Gaelic, to let him act on my behalf in all my
collecting on Barra. Mr. Buchanan is the author of a little book called
_The MacNeils of Barra Genealogy_, published in the year 1902. He was
the official interpreter before the Commission of Inquiry which was
appointed by the British Parliament in 1883 to search into the
oppression of landlordism in the Highlands and Islands, and he acted in
the same capacity before the Crofters' Commission and the Deer-Forest
Commission. We therefore feel perfectly safe in allowing him to present,
before our jury trying the Fairy-Faith, the evidence of the
Gaelic-speaking witnesses from Barra.
JOHN MACNEIL'S TESTIMONY
We met the first of the Barra witnesses on the top of a rocky hill,
where the road from Castlebay passes. He was carrying on his back a sack
of sand heavy enough for a college athlete, and he an old man between
seventy and eighty years of age. Michael Buchanan has known John MacNeil
all his life, for they were boys together on the island; and there is
not much difference between them in age, our interpreter being the
younger. Then the three of us sat down on a grassy knoll, all the world
like a fairy knoll, though it was not; and when pipes were lit and the
weather had been discussed, there was introduced the subject of the
'good people'--all in Gaelic, for our witness now about to testify knows
no English--and what John MacNeil said is thus interpreted by Michael
Buchanan:--
_A Fairy's Visit._--'Yes, I have' (in answer to a question if he had
heard of people being _taken_ by the 'good people' or fairies). 'A fairy
woman visited the house of a young wife here in Barra, and the young
wife had her baby on her breast at the time. The first words uttered by
the fairy woman were, "Heavy is your child;" and the wife answered,
"Light is everybody who lives the longest." "Were it not that you have
answered my question," said the fairy woman, "and understood my meaning,
you should have been less your child." And then the fairy woman
departed.'
_Fairy-Singing._--'My mother, and two other women well known here in
Barra, went to a hill one day to look after their sheep, and, a thick
fog coming on, they had to rest awhile. They then sat down upon a knoll
and began to sing a _walking_ (cloth-working) song, as follows:--"It is
early to-day that I have risen;" and, as they sang, a fairy woman in the
rocks responded to their song with one of her own.'
_Nature of Fairies._--Then the question was asked if fairies were men or
spirits, and this is the reply:--'I never saw any myself, and so cannot
tell, but they must be spirits from all that the old people tell about
them, or else how could they appear and disappear so suddenly? The old
people said they didn't know if fairies were flesh and blood, or
spirits. They saw them as men of more diminutive stature than our race.
I heard my father say that fairies used to come and speak to natural
people, and then vanish while one was looking at them. Fairy women used
to go into houses and talk and then vanish. The general belief was that
the fairies were spirits who could make themselves seen or not seen at
will. And when they _took_ people they _took_ body and soul together.'
THE TESTIMONY OF JOHN CAMPBELL, NINETY-FOUR YEARS OLD
Our next witness from Barra is John Campbell, who is ninety-four years
old, yet clear-headed. He was born on Barra at Sgalary, and lives near
there now at Breuvaig. We were on our way to call at his home, when we
met him coming on the road, with a cane in each hand and a small sack
hanging from one of them. Michael saluted him as an old acquaintance,
and then we all sat down on a big boulder in the warm sunshine beside
the road to talk. The first thing John wanted was tobacco, and when this
was supplied we gradually led from one subject to another until he was
talking about fairies. And this is what he said about them:--
_The Fairy and the Fountain._--'I had a companion by the name of James
Galbraith, who was drowned about forty years ago, and one time he was
crossing from the west side of the island to the east side, to the
township called Sgalary, and feeling thirsty took a drink out of a
spring well on the mountain-side. After he had taken a drink, he looked
about him and saw a woman clad in green, and imagined that no woman
would be clad in such a colour except a fairy woman. He went on his way,
and when he hadn't gone far, looked back, and, as he looked, saw the
woman vanish out of his sight. He afterwards reported the incident at
his father's house in Sgalary, and his father said he also had seen a
woman clad in clothes of green at the same place some nights before.'
_A Step-son Pitied by the Fairies._--'I heard my father say that a
neighbour of his father, that is of my grandfather, was married twice,
and had three children from the first marriage, and when married for the
second time, a son and daughter. His second wife did not seem to be kind
enough to the children of the first wife, neglecting their food and
clothing and keeping them constantly at hard work in the fields and at
herding.
'One morning when the man and his second wife were returning from mass
they passed the pasture where their cows were grazing and heard the
enjoyable _skirrels_ of the bagpipes. The father said, "What may this
be?" and going off the road found the eldest son of the first wife
playing the bagpipes to his heart's pleasure; and asked him earnestly,
"How did you come to play the bagpipes so suddenly, or where did you get
this splendid pair of bagpipes?" The boy replied, "An old man came to me
while I was in the action of roasting pots in a pit-fire and said, 'Your
step-mother is bad to you and in ill-will towards you.' I told the old
man I was sensible that that was the case, and then he said to me, 'If I
give you a trade will you be inclined to follow it?' I said yes, and the
old man then continued, 'How would you like to be a piper by trade?' 'I
would gladly become a piper,' says I, 'but what am I to do without the
bagpipes and the tunes to play?' 'I'll supply the bagpipes,' he said,
'and as long as you have them you'll never want for the most delightful
tunes.'" The male descendants of the boy in question were all famous
pipers thereafter, and the last of them was a piper to the late Cluny
MacPherson of Cluny.'
_Nature of Fairies._--At this point, Michael turned the trend of John's
thoughts to the nature of fairies, with the following result:--'The
general belief of the people here during my father's lifetime was that
the fairies were more of the nature of spirits than of men made of flesh
and blood, but that they so appeared to the naked eye that no difference
could be marked in their forms from that of any human being, except that
they were more diminutive. I have heard my father say it was the case
that fairy women used to take away children from their cradles and leave
different children in their places, and that these children who were
left would turn out to be old men.
'At Barra Head, a fairy woman used to come to a man's window almost
every night as though looking to see if the family was home. The man
grew suspicious, and decided the fairy woman was watching her chance to
steal his wife, so he proposed a plan. It was then and still is the
custom after thatching a house to rope it across with heather-spun
ropes, and, at the time, the man was busy spinning some of them; and he
told his wife to take his place that night to spin the heather-rope, and
said he would take her spinning-wheel. They were thus placed when the
fairy woman made the usual look in at the window, and she seeing that
her intention was understood, said to the man, "You are yourself at the
spinning-wheel and your wife is spinning the heather-rope."
'I have heard it said that the fairies live in knolls on a higher level
than that of the ground in general, and that fairy songs are heard from
the faces of high rocks. The fairies of the air (the fairy or spirit
hosts) are different from those in the rocks. A man whom I've seen,
Roderick MacNeil, was lifted by the hosts and left three miles from
where he was taken up. The hosts went at about midnight. A man awake at
midnight is in danger. Cows and horses are sometimes shot in place of
men' (and why, will be explained by later witnesses).
_Father MacDonald's Opinions._--We then asked about the late Rev. Donald
MacDonald, who had the reputation of knowing all about fairies and
spirits when he lived here in these islands, and John said:--'I have
heard my wife say that she questioned Father MacDonald, who was then a
parish priest here in Barra, and for whom she was a housekeeper, if it
was possible that such beings or spirits as fairies were in existence.
He said "Yes", and that they were those who left Heaven after the fallen
angels; and that those going out after the fallen angels had gone out
were so numerous and kept going so long that St. Michael notified Christ
that the throne was fast emptying, and when Christ saw the state of
affairs he ordered the doors of Heaven to be closed at once, saying as
he gave the order, "Who is out is out and who is in is in." And the
fairies are as numerous now as ever they were before the beginning of
the world.' (Cf. pp. 47, 53, 67, 76, 85, 109, 113, 116, 129, 154, 205,
212.)
Here we left John, and he, continuing on his way up the mountain road in
an opposite direction from us and round a turn, disappeared almost as a
fairy might.
AN AGED PIPER'S TESTIMONY
We introduce now as a witness Donald McKinnon, ninety-six years old, a
piper by profession; and not only is he the oldest man on Barra, but
also the oldest man among all our witnesses. He was born on the Island
of South Uist, one of the Western Hebrides north of Barra, and came to
Barra in 1836, where he has lived ever since. In spite of being four
years less than a hundred in age, he greeted us very heartily, and as he
did not wish us to sit inside, for his chimney happened not to be
drawing very well, and was filling the straw-thatched cottage with peat
smoke, we sat down outside on the grass and began talking; and as we
came to fairies this is what he said:--
_Nature of Fairies._--'I believe that fairies exist as a tribe of
spirits, and appear to us in the form of men and women. People who saw
fairies can yet describe them as they appeared dressed in green. No
doubt there are fairies in other countries as well as here.
'In my experience there was always a good deal of difference between the
fairies and the hosts. The fairies were supposed to be living without
material food, whereas the hosts were supposed to be living upon their
own booty. Generally, the hosts were evil and the fairies good, though I
have heard that the fairies used to _take_ cattle and leave their old
men rolled up in the hides. One night an old witch was heard to say to
the fairies outside the fold, "We cannot get anything to-night." The old
men who were left behind in the hides of the animals _taken_, usually
disappeared very suddenly. I saw two men who used to be lifted by the
hosts. They would be carried from South Uist as far south as Barra Head,
and as far north as Harris. Sometimes when these men were ordered by the
hosts to kill men on the road they would kill instead either a horse or
a cow; for in that way, so long as an animal was killed, the injunction
of the hosts was fulfilled.' To illustrate at this point the idea of
fairies, Donald repeated the same legend told by our former witness,
John Campbell, about the emptying of Heaven and the doors being closed
to keep the remainder of its population in. Then he told the following
story about fairies:--
_The Fairy-Belt._--'I heard of an apprentice to carpentry who was
working with his master at the building of a boat, a little distance
from his house, and near the sea. He went to work one morning and forgot
a certain tool which he needed in the boat-building. He returned to his
carpenter-shed to get it, and found the shed filled with fairy men and
women. On seeing him they ran away so greatly confused that one of the
women forgot her gird (belt), and he picked it up. In a little while she
came back for the gird, and asked him to give it her, but he refused to
do so. Thereupon she promised him that he should be made master of his
trade wherever his lot should fall without serving further
apprenticeship. On that condition he gave her the gird; and rising early
next morning he went to the yard where the boat was a-building and put
in two planks so perfectly that when the master arrived and saw them, he
said to him, "Are you aware of anybody being in the building-yard last
night, for I see by the work done that I am more likely to be an
apprentice than the person who put in those two planks, whoever he is.
Was it you that did it?" The reply was in the affirmative, and the
apprentice told his master the circumstances under which he gained the
rapid mastership of his trade.'
ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS
It was nearing sunset now, and a long mountain-climb was ahead of us,
and one more visit that evening, before we should begin our return to
Castlebay, and so after this story we said a hearty good-bye to Donald,
with regret at leaving him. When we reached the mountain-side, one of
the rarest of Barra's sights greeted us. To the north and south in the
golden glow of a September twilight we saw the long line of the Outer
Hebrides like the rocky backbone of some submerged continent. The scene
and colours on the land and ocean and in the sky seemed more like some
magic vision, reflected from Faerie by the 'good people' for our
delight, than a thing of our own world. Never was air clearer or sea
calmer, nor could there be air sweeter than that in the mystic
mountain-stillness holding the perfume of millions of tiny blossoms of
purple and white heather; and as the last honey-bees were leaving the
beautiful blossoms their humming came to our ears like low, strange
music from Fairyland.
MARIAN MACLEAN OF BARRA, AND HER TESTIMONY
Our next witness to testify is a direct descendant of the ancient
MacNeils of Barra. Her name now is Marian MacLean; and she lives in the
mountainous centre of Barra at Upper Borve. She is many years younger
than the men who have testified, and one of the most industrious women
on the island. It was already dark and past dinner-time when we entered
her cottage, and so, as we sat down before a blazing peat-fire, she at
once offered us some hot milk and biscuits, which we were only too glad
to accept. And, as we ate, we talked first about our hard climb in the
darkness across the mountains, and through the thick heather-bushes, and
then about the big rock which has a key-hole in it, for it contains a
secret entrance to a fairy palace. We had examined it in the twilight as
we came through the mountain pass which it guards, and my guide Michael
had assured me that more than one islander, crossing at the hour we
were, had seen some of the fairies near it. We waited in front of the
big rock in hopes one might appear for our benefit, but, in spite of our
strong belief that there are fairies there, not a single one would come
out. Perhaps they came and we couldn't see them; who knows?
_Fairies and Fairy Hosts ('Sluagh')._[39]--'O yes,' Marian said, as she
heard Michael and myself talking over our hot milk, 'there are fairies
there, for I was told that the Pass was a notable fairy haunt.' Then I
said through Michael, 'Can you tell us something about what these
fairies are?' And from that time, save for a few interruptions natural
in conversation, we listened and Marian talked, and told stories as
follows:--
'Generally, the fairies are to be seen after or about sunset, and walk
on the ground as we do, whereas the hosts travel in the air above places
inhabited by people. The hosts used to go after the fall of night, and
more particularly about midnight. You'd hear them going in fine weather
against a wind like a covey of birds. And they were in the habit of
lifting men in South Uist, for the hosts need men to help in shooting
their javelins from their bows against women in the action of milking
cows, or against any person working at night in a house over which they
pass. And I have heard of good sensible men whom the hosts took,
shooting a horse or cow in place of the person ordered to be shot.
'There was a man who had only one cow and one daughter. The daughter was
milking the cow at night when the hosts were passing, and that human
being whom the hosts had lifted with them was her father's neighbour.
And this neighbour was ordered by the hosts to shoot the daughter as she
was milking, but, knowing the father and daughter, he shot the cow
instead. The next morning he went where the father was and said to him,
"You are missing the cow." "Yes," said the father, "I am." And the man
who had shot the cow said, "Are you not glad your cow and not your
daughter was _taken_? For I was ordered to shoot your daughter and I
shot your cow, in order to show blood on my arrow." "I am very glad of
what you have done if that was the case," the father replied. "It was
the case," the neighbour said.
'My father and grandfather knew a man who was carried by the hosts from
South Uist here to Barra. I understand when the hosts take away earthly
men they require another man to help them. But the hosts must be
spirits. My opinion is that they are both spirits of the dead and other
spirits not the dead. A child was taken by the hosts and returned after
one night and one day, and found at the back of the house with the palms
of its hands in the holes in the wall, and with no life in its body. It
was dead in the spirit. It is believed that when people are dropped from
a great height by the hosts they are killed by the fall. As to fairies,
my firm opinion is that they are spirits who appear in the shape of
human beings.'
The question was now asked whether the fairies were anything like the
dead, and Marian hesitated about answering. She thought they were like
the dead, but not to be identified with them. The fallen-angel idea
concerning fairies was an obstacle she could not pass, for she said,
'When the fallen angels were cast out of Heaven God commanded them
thus:--"You will go to take up your abodes in crevices, under the earth,
in mounds, or soil, or rocks." And according to this command they have
been condemned to inhabit the places named for a certain period of time,
and when it is expired before the consummation of the world, they will
be seen as numerous as ever.'
Now we heard two good stories, the first about fairy women spinning for
a mortal, the second about a wonderful changeling who was a magic
musician:--
_Fairy-Women Spinners._--'I have heard my father, Alexander MacNeil, who
was well known to Mr. [Alexander] Carmichael and to Mr. J. F. Campbell
of Islay, say that his father knew a woman in the neighbourhood who was
in a hurry to have her stock of wool spun and made into cloth, and one
night this woman secretly wished to have some women to help her. So the
following morning there appeared at her house six or seven fairy women
in long green robes, all alike chanting, "A wool-card, and a
spinning-wheel." And when they were supplied with the instruments they
were so very desirous to get, they all set to work, and by midday of
that morning the cloth was going through the process of the hand-loom.
But they were not satisfied with finishing the work the woman had set
before them, but asked for new employment. The woman had no more
spinning or weaving to be done, and began to wonder how she was to get
the women out of the house. So she went into her neighbour's house and
informed him of her position in regard to the fairy women. The old man
asked what they were saying. "They are earnestly petitioning for some
work to do, and I have no more to give them," the woman replied. "Go you
in," he said to her, "and tell them to spin the sand, and if then they
do not move from your house, go out again and yell in at the door that
Dun Borve is in fire!" The first plan had no effect, but immediately on
hearing the cry, "Dun Borve is in fire!" the fairy women disappeared
invisibly. And as they went, the woman heard the melancholy wail, "Dun
Borve is in fire! Dun Borve is in fire! And what will become of our
hammers and anvil?"--for there was a smithy in the fairy-dwelling.'
_The Tailor and the Changeling._--'There was a young wife of a young man
who lived in the township of Allasdale, and the pair had just had their
first child. One day the mother left her baby in its cradle to go out
and do some shearing, and when she returned the child was crying in a
most unusual fashion. She fed him as usual on porridge and milk, but he
wasn't satisfied with what seemed to her enough for any one of his age,
yet every suspicion escaped her attention. As it happened, at the time
there was a web of home-made cloth in the house waiting for the tailor.
The tailor came and began to work up the cloth. As the woman was going
out to her customary shearing operation, she warned the tailor if he
heard the child continually crying not to pay much attention to it,
adding she would attend to it when she came home, for she feared the
child would delay him in his work.
'All went well till about noon, when the tailor observed the child
rising up on its elbow and stretching its hand to a sort of shelf above
the cradle and taking down from it a yellow chanter [of a bagpipe]. And
then the child began to play. Immediately after the child began to play
the chanter, the house filled with young fairy women all clad in long
green robes, who began to dance, and the tailor had to dance with them.
About two o'clock that same afternoon the women disappeared unknown to
the tailor, and the chanter disappeared from the hands of the child also
unknown to the tailor; and the child was in the cradle crying as usual.
'The wife came home to make the dinner, and observed that the tailor was
not so far advanced with his work as he ought to be in that space of
time. However, when the fairy women disappeared, the child had enjoined
upon the tailor never to tell what he had seen. The tailor promised to
be faithful to the child's injunctions, and so he said nothing to the
mother.
'The second day the wife left for her occupation as usual, and told the
tailor to be more attentive to his work than the day before. A second
time at the same hour of the day the child in the cradle, appearing more
like an old man than a child, took the chanter and began to play. The
same fairy women filled the house again, and repeated their dance, and
the tailor had to join them.