I have given this book its name because it is at my own door, in the
Barony of Kiltartan, I have heard a great number of the stories from
beggars, pipers, travelling men, and such pleasant company. But others I
have heard in the Workhouse, or to the north of Galway Bay, in
Connemara, or on its southern coast, in Burren. I might, perhaps, better
have called the little book Myths in the Making.
A sociable people given to conversation and belief; no books in the
house, no history taught in the schools; it is likely that must have
been the way of it in old Greece, when the king of highly civilised
Crete was turned by tradition into a murderous tyrant owning a monster
and a labyrinth. It was the way of it in old France too, one thinks,
when Charlemagne's height grew to eight feet, and his years were counted
by centuries: "He is three hundred years old, and when will he weary of
war?" Anyhow, it has been the way of modern Ireland--the Ireland I
know--and when I hear myth turned into history, or history into myth, I
see in our stonebreakers and cattle drivers Greek husbandmen or ancient
vinedressers of the Loire.
I noticed some time ago, when listening to many legends of the Fianna,
that is about Finn, their leader, the most exaggerated of the tales have
gathered; and I believe the reason is that he, being the greatest of the
"Big Men," the heroic race, has been most often in the mouths of the
people. They have talked of him by their fire-sides for two thousand
years or so; at first earlier myths gathered around him, and then from
time to time any unusual feats of skill or cunning shown off on one or
another countryside, till many of the stories make him at the last
grotesque, little more than a clown. So in Bible History, while lesser
kings keep their dignity, great Solomon's wit is outwitted by the
riddles of some countryman; and Lucifer himself, known in Kiltartan as
"the proudest of the angels, thinking himself equal with God," has been
seen in Sligo rolling down a road in the form of the _Irish Times_. The
gods of ancient Ireland have not escaped. Mananaan, Son of the Sea,
Rider of the Horses of the Sea, was turned long ago into a juggler doing
tricks, and was hunted in the shape of a hare. Brigit, the "Fiery
Arrow," the nurse of poets, later a saint and the Foster-mother of
Christ, does her healing of the poor in the blessed wells of to-day as
"a very civil little fish, very pleasant, wagging its tail."
Giobniu, the divine smith of the old times, made a new sword and a new
spear for every one that was broken in the great battle between the gods
and the mis-shapen Fomor. "No spearpoint that is made by my hand," he
said, "will ever miss its mark; no man it touches will ever taste life
again." It was his father who, with a cast of a hatchet, could stop the
inflowing of the tide; and it was he himself whose ale gave lasting
youth: "No sickness or wasting ever comes on those who drink at
Giobniu's Feast." Later he became a saint, a master builder, builder of
a house "more shining than a garden; with its stars, with its sun, with
its moon." To-day he is known as the builder of the round towers of the
early Christian centuries, and of the square castles of the
Anglo-Normans. And the stories I have given of him, called as he now is,
"the Goban Saor," show that he has fallen still farther in legend from
his high origin.
As to O'Connell, perhaps because his name, like that of Finn and the
Goban, is much in the mouths of the people, there is something of the
absurd already coming into his legend. The stories of him show more than
any others how swiftly myths and traditions already in the air may
gather around a memory much loved and much spoken of. He died only sixty
years ago, and many who have seen and heard him are still living; and
yet he has already been given a miraculous birth, and the power of a
saint is on its way to him. I have charged my son, and should I live
till he comes to sensible years, I will charge my grandson, to keep
their ears open to the growth of legend about him who was once my
husband's friendly enemy, and afterwards his honoured friend.
I do not take the credit or the discredit of the opinions given by the
various speakers, nor do I go bail for the facts; I do but record what
is already in "the Book of the People." The history of England and
Ireland was shut out of the schools and it became a passion. As to why
it was shut out, well, I heard someone whisper "Eugene Aram hid the body
away, being no way anxious his scholars should get a sight of it." But
this also was said in the barony of Kiltartan.
The illustrations are drawn from some delft figures, ornaments in a
Kiltartan house.