DRUMLINE, JULY 10, 2000
A Fairy Request Thwarted
THIS MAN NOW—I only just remember him, but I remember my father talking about him many’s the time—he was Dr. Walsh. At least he had the name of a doctor, ’cause he was a bit knowledgeable. He was in Listowel one day at the market and he came home, very early, of a summer’s evening.
Now, he had a brother, and it was just the harvest time, and he said to the brother, “There’s a rail o’ turf yet in the bog. We’ll go back for it before the harvest’ll start. And d’you know what?” says he. “I’ll take the shortcut, and let you go around the other road. I bet you I’ll be back before you.”
Why the two of ’em didn’t go together, I can’t tell you that, but this is the way my father told it to me.
The doctor went his road, and whether ’twas tired he was or not I don’t know. He was, I s’pose, after his day in Listowel. But after he crossed this glen that was on his way, he sat up on the side of a bank and he fell asleep.
He slept for a while, and when he woke he was inside in the finest house, I’d say, that was ever built. There was nothing like it in Dublin, or in London, either. And still, he knew where he was in spite of all of it. And he knew the time he left home. Oh, he didn’t lose the run o’ his senses at all.
Next, a door opened and a man came in, a man of about seventy-five years of age.
He stood, oh, for a good five minutes with not a word out of him, only staring at the poor man. Then, when he had enough looked, he held out his hand.
“Welcome here, Mr. Walsh,” says he.
“And tell me, how’s Seán a’ Carraig?”—that was Walsh’s father’s name—“and how’s all the Walshs in Carraigín?” . . . and all that kind o’ thing.
They started talking, and they had a great chat. But after a while the old lad says, “I know that my father’d like to see you.”
“You don’t mean to tell me, surely,” says Walsh, “that your father is alive yet.”
“My father? Indeed he is, and hardy,” says he.
He got up, went to the door, and called for the father. He came in, a fine hardy man, right enough, and they talked on—“How’re all the Walshs in Carraigín?” . . . and more to that.
But after a while the lad, he says, “I must call my grandfather. ’Tis a pity to leave him out of a grand friendly meeting like this.”
Begod, ’tis then that Walsh was getting afraid. The grandfather came in, anyway, and begod, he was a fresh enough man, too, for his years, no crutches or nothing. But they weren’t too long talking at all when the music started, and begod it must be good ’cause the whole lot of ’em got up and started in at it. ’Twas great sport and Walsh danced as good as any of ’em.
At last, the music stopped and a table was laid. And that was the time he says to himself, “Ah! If I take anything now, I’m held.”
They wanted him in the worst way to have something. There was stuff on the table the like o’ which he never saw before, but he’d eat nothing.
He must have great courage, the same man. What did he say to the man that came in the door first? He was sitting there next to him. “Well now,” says he, “if ’twas the Man Above Himself sent ye here I don’t know, but I’m passing here since I was a child and I never see this house here before.”
“We’re here,” says he, “with . . . I don’t know how many years. Hundreds o’ years. And you’ll put us back at the age o’ thirty-three years now if you’ll do this for us. We came from Mountcollins, and I’ll give you a rod here now,” says he, “and if you go to Mountcollins there’s a field there. They call it Páirc na Búistéirí, The Butchers’ Field. There’s a well in that field and if you’ll only touch the flagstone that’s over that well with the rod, you’ll be handed out a razor. Bring it back here to us, and when we’ll shave ourselves with that we’ll be back to thirty-three years again, myself and my father and grandfather. Will you do that much for us?”
“I will,” says he.
He took the rod and he slept again—maybe tired after all the dancing. And when he woke there was no house. He was there on the side o’ the bank. But the rod was beside him. He was looking at it! He was nearly afraid to pick it up, but what could he do, after promising ’em? So he went on home.
His wife asked him where was he and what kept him. She was a saintly kind of a woman. He didn’t want to be worrying her, you know.
“Oh,” says he, “I was with your cousin behind there. There was a cow sick to calve all night, and I didn’t like to come home,” . . . and all that kind o’ talk.
But she mustn’t have believed him, ’cause in the windup she got the real story out o’ him. And she was at the well before him. Whatever chance he had, she took the rod, and she never again gave it back to him. Whether ’twould be effective or not, I don’t know.
You’d think he’d be dreaming but for the rod being there when he woke up.
I heard that from the man himself. He used to be at our house, rambling, when we were young. But they say that kind o’ thing was in his family. His mother’s family was from Brosna, and his uncle had land going down to where Mountcollins creamery is now. And there was about a half acre o’ land taken up by a fort in his place, near the creamery. And when they had the hay finished one year, himself and the mowers went over to Mountcollins to have a few pints. So, they were just crossing the bridge and one o’ the mowers gave a look back at the fort.
“By God,” says he, “ ’tis a pity to see that fine crop o’ hay going for nothing. I’ll cut it.”
“Don’t mind it,” says the uncle. “Leave it there.”
“No,” says he. “I’ll cut it.”
He went back, whatever was picking him. He drew the first sweep. And he stuck the scythe in the ground—a thing that no right mower’d do.
“Come on. Come out of it!” says the other man.
“Well,” says he—he was stubborn—“if it takes until cock crow o’ me, I’ll cut it.”
That very minute a cock crew up in one o’ the bushes!
“Will you come out of it! Leave it there!”
And they did.
’Tis there today, that fort. And if you look at it you’ll see that no one goes next or near it ’cause ’tis all overgrown with bushes.
In tangible terms, all that remains today of the elements of this story is the fort near Mountcollins creamery. All the human actors and tellers are dead, and no one could point out to me the well or even Páirc na Búistéirí. That proves nothing, though, for names change, and land reclamation has gone on at an ever more rapid pace in every parish in Ireland in recent years.
This story appeals to me because of its undoubted antiquity—the notion of the chosen coming back to the same age as Jesus Christ, thirty-three years, especially for resurrection, was a common one in the Middle Ages throughout Europe. And a person’s wandering into a fairy mansion, where the laws of human time no longer apply, is extremely old in Irish telling.
And yet, the miracle is that I was able to hear (in 1978) these echoes of ancient times from an ordinary, so-called uneducated man living in a roadside cottage! I was fortunate to do so when I did. Otherwise he would now be no more than just another member of that vast legion of great storytellers silent forever in the graveyards of Ireland.
“They were always associated with horses.”
MILTOWN MALBAY, JUNE 27, 1999
Man Borrows a Fairy Horse
THERE’S SUCH A THING there as a fíor-lár. The fíor-lár is a fairy horse, a fairy foal. And how that foal comes to be a fairy horse is this: You see, ordinarily it takes approximately ten, eleven months, or a little over it, for a mare to breed a foal. But for a fíor-lár, from the day the mare has left the horse until the day she has the foal, she has to carry that foal for three hundred and sixty-six days. Not a leap year, now, but any year—a year and a day. ’Tis very rare. You might get one in five thousand. But it happens. And if you get that foal, you have a fairy foal. People don�
�t particularly like ’em. They can be funny fish.
There was a fellow over the road and he had one, an Irish draught mare. She was a grand animal. And the stable was right up to the back of a fort. When she got to be a two-year-old, he trained her. Fine farming horse—or she’d hunt—excellent horse. As quiet and satisfactory an animal as you could possibly meet.
People around here used to be carrying hay, turnips, and everything to Limerick market that time. They used to start in the middle o’ the night. Every fellow’d be looking to try and get a quiet horse that’d stand inside in town, stand inside in the market. If you had a quiet horse, they’d borrow him.
Nearly everyone used to borrow this one, the fíor-lár one. But the man that owned her, he’d always say to you, “You have no business coming for her until after two o’clock.” They should be starting out at two o’clock in the morning to be in the market for five o’clock to sell a load o’ hay or turnips.
But this one fellow, he lived about a mile away, d’you see, and he was a bit of an unbeliever in them things. “You know,” he said, “I’ll bring her home, and that way I won’t have to be coming at two o’clock in the morning for her. I’ll bring her home at seven or eight o’clock and tackle her.”
“Okay,” says your man.
So he collected the mare and took her home. And he started off for town at about twelve o’clock with his load o’ hay.
Bejasus, when he was coming for Bunratty the load o’ hay got two or three most terrible bumps. The car heeled up with him, man! He didn’t know what in the hell was the score. But it settled down again. He went on to town. But when he got to the market and when it came daylight, it wasn’t the mare that he borrowed that was under the car at all, but another one, a different horse!
So, begod, he carried on, but he couldn’t understand it. He sold his load o’ hay and came home. And he had to go on towards Newmarket with his horse and car.
Bejasus, when he came above to the fort at Smithstown—Walsh’s Fort ’tis known as—the horse stopped. No power on earth’d move him. He stopped dead. Begod, he was a clever old boy. He decided that he’d untackle the horse and take him out from under the car and push the car a bit up the road and tackle him again to it. He knew ’twas the fort was stalling him. He got suspicious, you see. How could it be that a horse would change from under the car at Bunratty the night before? He knew he had something strange on his hands.
Well, anyway, he untackled this new horse, and the very minute he untackled the horse and pulled him down the road a bit, the horse shook himself. He shook off what tacklings was on him, jumped over the wall into the field where the fort was, and left him there—tacklings, car, and all. Ran for it.
He had the car there, anyway, and sure, he was nearly home. But by God, he was terrible confused.
So he went up and he collected his own horse and he got a fellow along with him. They tackled his own horse to the car and brought it home.
But he contacted the man that lent him the mare and the man said to him, “Christ, did you go to town with the load o’ hay, at all?”
“I did,” says your man.
“Begod,” he said, “didn’t I give you the mare to bring the load o’ hay?”
“You did,” he said, “but something happened in the meantime.”
“Well, by God, I don’t understand that, now,” says your man. “That mare is below in the field. My own mare. She was in the stable this morning when I went out.”
The man that owned her knew that the Good People had her picked up at Bunratty. They swapped him a fairy horse, another nag there, and let him off to Limerick.
The fairies wanted that horse for the hunt. That mare was gone with ’em that night. How well they left something instead of her, though. I s’pose they couldn’t let him down there with no way o’ going.
There are different definitions of what constitutes a fíor-lár, but what is not in doubt in Ireland is that some horses are special—are, in fact, fairy horses. This detailed story shows clearly that such a horse had an agenda of its own, well understood and accepted by its human owner if he was wise. She was needed at specific times by the Good People for their own pursuits, and when a human got in the way of those, he was unceremoniously pushed to one side—but not left helpless, as so often one human will leave another.
The Good People have a sense of fair play, we see. They will not let a person who is dependent for a livelihood on the services of the fíor-lár without a horse when they need her. Another horse is substituted.
A sad postscript to this story is that Walsh’s Fort has been demolished of late to make way for a new highway. Not without promises of dire consequences-to-come from some very knowledgeable local elders. And, strangely enough, there have been several fatalities and injuries among those associated with its destruction. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.
“Several cows around here was taken. They want the milk, you see, in the forts, the fairies. They want the milk!”
LISCANNOR, JULY 17, 1999
A Fairy Cow
THERE WAS A STORY TOLD, ’twas common knowledge in this area when I was going to school, about this cow, a fairy cow. She used to billet above where the bush is in Latoon and she used to come down every morning via Clonmoney. And of course, the people o’ the parish used to all milk her on the way down. She supplied milk to the poor people o’ the parish. She was something on the same principle as the manna in the desert. She was a white cow. And you could milk her a million times and she’d still supply milk.
I inquired of a man that knew the story from his elders. I always heard it when I was going to school, but in order to back up my belief, I asked him. And he told me that some smart aleck on the way bet his neighbor he’d find a utensil that she wouldn’t fill.
So he produced a sieve and milked her into that. She couldn’t fill that, o’ course. When the facility was abused, she came along until she came to Clonmoney, below the Hurler’s Cross. There’s a stream crossing the road there called the Sruthán.5 She took a drink out o’ that stream and she showed up no more.
If the Good People take from us what they need when they need it, they can also be generous and helpful neighbors, as in this case, where one of their cattle is sent to help poor people.
Yet how depressingly predictable that human nature so often seems to find a way to abuse kindness—and for no other reason than the pleasure of doing so!—to the ultimate loss of everyone.
This story is told in various versions not just all over Ireland (in Irish the cow is known as the Glas Ghoibhneach), but also in Scotland, Wales, and parts of England.
“An old woman told me one time, if you ever heard it, there’s only a veil between this world an’the next.”
BALLINRUAN, AUGUST 17, 1999
An Old Woman Changes Shape
THERE WAS AN OLD LADY, she used to turn into a hare and go off and clean what milk and butter’d be in the parish. I know, ’tis very hard to imagine for a person in their sober senses that a human being was capable o’ doing it. Common sense would tell you otherwise. But still, it used to be done.
’Twas never heard of in a man—always a woman that did it. And if the wind changed while the person was in the shape o’ the hare, she wouldn’t be able to change back.
The Church used to denounce it, you know, strongly. So there must be something in it.
This old woman, anyway, that I heard about, she was definitely piseógaí.6 You wouldn’t be safe to have hand, act, nor part, or to meet her on the road, or anything.
Her neighbor had a pair o’ greyhounds and he was out this day for a hunt. He was off a mile or two down the country when this hare rose. And the two old hounds—they’d be only old half-bred hounds—begod, they went at the hare. And she ran for it, straight for the house. There was a half-door in the house. And just as the hare was going over the half-door, begod didn’t the hound grab her by the backside and brought a piece off o’ her. The man that owned the two dogs, anyway, followed up,
and he found the old lady inside in a pool o’ blood on the floor. The hunt had the backside brought out o’ her. So that’s how he knew she was the hare.
The hare was an animal felt as being notably close to the Other World, to be regarded with suspicion if seen among cattle or too close to human habitation.
In this case the Good People are not involved, but might easily be, since this was one of the animals favored by them in their shape-shifting into our world.
The teller of this widespread story is adamant that only women were capable of this kind of shape-changing. But it had its dangers. Later, we will see that people who, similarly, “went” with the fairies could, in the long run, pay a terrible price for short-term gain. But if we can believe that women are more sensitive to, more capable of contact with, the World Beyond than men are, we need go no farther than County Clare for proof, for Feakle, in east Clare, was the home of Biddy Early (1798-1874), the greatest of all such. Regarded by the prejudiced and ignorant as a witch, she was in reality what the Irish called a “bean feasa”—a woman of knowledge. (There were no such things as witches in the Gaelic tradition. That was an imported aberration. Anywhere in Ireland that witches were burned—such as Kilkenny and Carrickfergus—was in the English sphere of political and church influence.) And to this day, Biddy is vividly remembered in Clare and the surrounding counties as one who cured not only physical ailments, but also advised people successfully on all and every kind of difficulties they might be having with their otherworldly neighbors. Her remedies are still remembered and some of them still acted on—well over a century after her death! No mean achievement for a mere “peasant” woman.7
“They say she used to be with the fairies, an’she got herbs an’cures an’every kind o’medicine.”
MULLAGH, FEBRUARY 5, 1988
The Rats from the Ashes
Meeting the Other Crowd Page 7
