Meeting the Other Crowd

by Eddie Lenihan

  They made a horse for him, and he’d go off with them all over the place every night. And when his wife would wake up during the night she’d find a block of oak in the bed with her.

  Anyway, one day he was in Dingle and he met a cousin of his from Ventry. They stopped and had a chat.

  “By the way,” he said, “we called to your house the other night”—and he mentioned which night—“and it was in a bit of a mess. We wanted to have a dance and the place wasn’t clear for us. There was no clean water there and there was no clean cup that we could take a drink o’ water. And they weren’t very happy about it,” he said, “but because I was your cousin I spoke to them about it, and they let it pass. But they weren’t too happy. I was surprised myself that you’d have your kitchen in such a mess.”

  “Well,” she said, “it was Tuesday night, wasn’t it?”

  “ ’Twas,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, “because I was out working all day. I was out in the field binding sheaves and if you remember ’twas a fine day and I was the whole day at it. When I came home I was exhausted. And I couldn’t do a thing. I had to go to bed. And that’s why the place was in a mess. But if they came any other night it’d be nice and tidy and they’d be welcome to have their dance, and there’d be water there, and there’d be clean cups there.”

  “Ah,” he said, “it’s all right now, but only that I was your cousin and that I spoke up for you, they wouldn’t be too happy, and they might . . . well, I don’t know what they might do.”

  It might seem strange that the fairies made a horse out of a plough, ’cause they’re afraid of steel. But maybe ’twas a timber plough or maybe ’twas only a bit of a plough, a wooden part, or something. Because they brought somebody else off like that and he was surprised when they were able to make a horse out of the plough. And when the plough jumped at a big jump he said, “mo ghrá do léim, a shean-bhéim céachta”—a fine jump for an old plough. And suddenly he fell off it.

  They didn’t like that kind of talk. And they let him go. He shouldn’t have made comments, you see. He should have accepted his horse, not be looking a gift horse in the mouth. He was only congratulating the horse on the fine jump he did, but they didn’t like that.

  This story, from Irish-speaking west Kerry, shows us some more details of what it was like to accompany the fairies on their nightly travels: their power to transform things at will (in this case to make a horse for the man accompanying them); what was left at home in his place while he was gone—an interesting point here is that it is a block of oak and there would have been no oak occurring naturally in that treeless part of Kerry; their pastimes—dancing—as well as their cleanliness.

  But there is also the veiled threat of what might have happened to the woman whose house was not tidy for the fairies’ nighttime revels were it not for the intervention of her cousin “in the fairies.” And their mercurial nature and the great care needed when dealing with them is further shown in the final episode, when what should have been a wonderful adventure—“a gift horse”—for the man in question, turns into a sudden upset, and probably a long walk home, and all because of an ill-timed, though innocent, comment made in the excitement of the moment.

  In the light of this kind of sensitivity on their part, is it any wonder that humans should find it difficult to tread unscathed among the sidhe?

  “They maintained that they used take the children. But there was no question of violence, or anything. The child would, maybe, develop a hump on his back, or he’d be a hunchback or something like that, an’ eventually he’d die.”

  DRUMLINE, OCTOBER 17, 1992

  Hurler with a Humpback

  ’T WAS ALWAYS KNOWN that there was certain people more in touch with the fairies than others. There was a man like that in this parish one time. They always made out that he was in the fairies.

  There’s a story told that the Broadford team was hurling one day—above in Tulla ’twas—and this man o’ the McMahons was in the goals. He was a good hurler, too, the same man. During the first half, the man that was in the fairies was standing behind the goals. And no matter what way the other team hit a ball at McMahon, he’d block it.

  But at halftime the man said, “I’m going away now. You’re on your own after this.”

  Whatever way it came during the second half, the other team scored—several times.

  What people used to make out was that the man wasn’t on his own. He’d have five or six of ’em with him that no one could see.

  That man, when I remember him, he had a hump on his back. But he hadn’t always that hump. Everyone will tell you how he got it. He was a terrible man for being out late when he was young, at dances, and playing cards especially. And he had a good distance to go home, at least two miles off o’ the main road. And ’twas up a very lonesome old road. He was going home one night, and someone found him in the morning flung on the side o’ the road, nearly unconscious. He was taken home and put into bed. And he didn’t leave the bed for the best part o’ six months. When he got up he had a hump on his back. ’Twas the fairies attacked him and beat him, they said, and put a hump on his back. And he was no small man. That’s a fact.

  If this story confirms anything it would seem to be that being in the fairies can be a dangerous business, with its perils as well as its rewards. But the teller is, perhaps, doubtful as to what really befell the man on that dark lonely road home. There were no witnesses to what occurred. He does not say the fairies attacked and beat the man, only that others said so. Yet he was attacked and ended up with a hunchback, so everyone drew the conclusion that it must be the fairies, since there was no mention of robbery and he was known to be “in” them. And the detail “and he was no small man” seems to be added as an afterthought, as if to say, “What use would mere human strength have been against opponents like the fairies, anyway?”

  “There was others in league with ’em, then—like Biddy—that could get concessions off of ’em, or gifts. But they were exceptional people.”

  CULLANE, TULLA, FEBRUARY 15, 1982

  Biddy Early “Strange” as a Child

  BIDDY EARLY was always the type that was going off on her own, when she was a child, and talking to herself.

  Her mother had a hatching hen, anyway. She wanted to get eggs from some woman. And she sent Biddy for the eggs to put under the hen—to bring out the chickens. But in three hours, she wasn’t back, so her mother went looking for her. And she found her above, under whitethorns, chatting and talking away. She didn’t even know her mother was talking to her when she met her, she was so engrossed in it.

  She could see things another couldn’t see.

  Then, she was hired out when she was fourteen years. Poor people used to hire out their children to work; there’d be a fair in Ennis and they’d be looking for servant girls in it. Someone in Tulla hired her. His wife was dead and he had two or three children. He had a baby in the cot, even. He brought Biddy home, anyway, and she was a great little housekeeper.

  He was out saving hay one day. There was no one there but herself and the baby in the cot. And the baby spoke to her and asked her to take down that fiddle there and he’d play a tune for her.

  She gave it to him. ’Tis up under the rafters they’d have things hanging at that time. The baby played the tune, anyway, the nicest music you ever heard. The fiddle was left on the table, and when the man o’ the house came in for his dinner he asked her was she able to play. She said no.

  And he said, “What was you doing with the fiddle, so? You are able to play.”

  And she said, “No.”

  But she handed it over to the baby and he played this tune again, for the father.

  Mystery, and therefore curiosity, has always surrounded Biddy Early’s early years and how she acquired her power as a healer and intermediary. Here we get a glimpse of her as a child “under the whitethorns”—in a fort, probably—“chatting and talking,” presumably with the fairies, so engrossed that she is
oblivious of all else around her.

  In the second part of the story, if ordinary standards of proof were applied it would be dismissed as at least incomplete, perhaps even childishly simple. For example, is the father not surprised at the baby in the cradle’s speaking like an adult and playing the fiddle? Or maybe the usual part of such a tale, where the changeling in the cot is banished and the real child restored, is missing.

  Yet, I think not. Far more likely the focus here is on Biddy, how she was from a very young age a convergence point for the otherworldly and our world. The inconsistencies are incidental and in a telling of the tale would probably pass quite unnoticed.

  “Definitely she had the power.

  There’s no question about that.

  She could foretell.”

  DRUMLINE, MARCH 14, 1990

  Biddy Early Helps, but a Price Paid

  BELOW, at the Point, at Shannon Airport, there was a family living. They had a son and he wasn’t well. So the father went on the horse and saddle over to Biddy.

  “I know,” says she, when he arrived in the yard, “I know what brought you. Your son is not well.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Well, come in,” says she. She told him that his house was built at the end of a fort, and one room of it was in the fort, and that he’d have to cut that away from the rest o’ the house.

  She gave him a bottle and told him to give the son so much of it morning and evening, or three times a day—I can’t remember.

  “You’ll break that bottle,” says she, “before you reach Quin,”—which he did. He was coming in at the back gate o’ Quinville and the bottle fell out of his pocket, down on the road, and smashed. He had to go back to Biddy again, and she gave him another bottle.

  “I knew you’d break it,” says she. “So be careful now, that nothing’ll happen to you this time. Go straight home,”—which he did.

  So he did what Biddy told him: He built up the room door, discarded that room. And he gave the bottle to his young son. The son got better.

  Now, he had three pigs out in the shed. One evening, as soon as the son was better, a storm came up the Shannon river and swept the roof and the door off o’ the cabin. Out went the three pigs, into the river, and was never seen again.

  Here we see that Biddy can save a person from the Good People, but that they may become very angry at being deprived of their chosen prey and take something else valuable instead. It is said that Biddy suffered many beatings from them because she had, by her power, helped keep “dying” people alive (i.e., people who were being carried by the Good People), thus depriving them of their chosen victims. Some stories of “curing” priests have the same theme: the priest cured at great expense to himself, and most such priests were short-lived.

  “O’ course, she was death on the priests.”

  DRUMLINE, MARCH 14, 1990

  A Clash of Power: Biddy Early Versus the Clergy

  ONE TIME she told ’em how to resurrect a fellow, but the Church moved in.

  When they went to her to cure this fellow she said, “Ah, you’re coming now. Pat is down. He wouldn’t let the magpies alone. He went down on his knee to shoot a magpie, and he wouldn’t let the old bloody magpies alone. They weren’t doing any harm to anyone. But when the Fool26 got him on his knee, he hit Pat a clip. But go home and mind him for two weeks. Don’t leave his bedside day or night, for two weeks!”

  Jeez, he was grand. Everything was going fine. The other brother came into the yard one day, and he had two horses out in the garden. He was plowing and he fed the horses and they started a kicking match outside over the oats.

  The sister that was minding him inside in the bed—and he was inside singing a song!—she ran out to separate the horses. The very minute she did—spell broken!

  So they went to Biddy again and she said, “Ah, the red-haired sister went out in the yard to separate the horses that were kicking.”

  She told ’em what to do then: Place black-handled knives at the four corners o’ the coffin, get the four strongest men in the parish to carry it, and let the coffin down at the crossroads and he’d be all right. But the coffin got so heavy on the way to the crossroads that it bent ’em to the ground. But they got it there, anyway.

  But, sure, the priests moved in and they whipped ’em, whipped the crowd out of it with their whips and horses. They whipped ’em out of it—before anyone knew if he was alive or not! So, they had to take the fellow away and bury him.

  Sure, if the priests didn’t come, they’d have succeeded in bringing him back. Oh, definitely. Definitely.

  There are differing versions of this story. In some of them the man being “brought back” by Biddy is one who has been carried by the Good People, but here we have him being resurrected, so it is hardly surprising that the Church moves in. Someone as untutored as Biddy performing such a miracle could hardly be tolerated. It would show the clergy in a very poor light.

  Yet we see that it was the fairies who punished the man, the Fool of the Fairies (Amadán na Bruíne), in fact—whose stroke was usually fatal. And so it proves to be, even though in a roundabout way.

  This story leaves us in no doubt as to why Biddy is remembered so vividly (and affectionately, for the most part) even today: Hers was a helping mission, whereas too often the clergy were more concerned about the power of the Church as an institution than about the individuals who made up that same church—as is obvious here from the way they whip them like animals.

  “There are so many stories, they can’t all be apocryphal. And even though some of them can be taken with a grain of salt, there are others that make you think. I wouldn’t like to be thought of as somebody who believed everything, or somebody who’s laughing at the idea, either—which I’m not.”

  A PRIEST’S OPINION, LISCANNOR, AUGUST 28, 1999

  Three Stories of Priests Who Can See the Other Crowd

  THIS PRIEST in the parish of Killanin was given all kinds of credentials by the people. They said he could cure people and read souls. And there was an old man called John Joyce, and John was telling him that as he came home to a place called Aur, which isn’t too far from Moycullen, he saw people playing hurling in the moonlight. He was looking down over them and there they were. He didn’t recognize any of them. And one o’ them spotted him and in Irish said, “féach an fear ag faire orainn”—“Look at the man; he’s watching us.” And they disappeared.

  They were up on horseback, and he was riding behind the priest. So, the priest said to him then, “Would you like to see the fairies again, the siógaí?”

  “Why?”

  “Well,” he said, “if you put your foot up on mine,”—which was in the stirrup—“you’ll be able to.”

  But John Joyce refrained. He didn’t want to do it.

  I KNEW AN INSTANCE of where there was an old sports field out in the country, and the priest used to come there every evening. He was a great man for sport, a great man for the youth, and a great man for the parish. Great man! He had all the lads hurling and footballing, hundred yards and long jump and weight-throwing and tug-o-war and everything. He had the youth o’ the parish interested. They weren’t going deviling.

  When the chat’d be getting serious in the night, you see, when the old bit o’ sport’d be over, there’d be a crowd o’ young lads around and they’d have an ear on ’em to hear what the older lads’d be talking about. And, o’ course, they didn’t want the young lads to be getting the gossip. So they’d frighten ’em to send ’em home, you see: “Oh, the fairies’ll catch you. Go home now. ’Tis getting dark. Be home before the fairies’ll catch you.”

  You know, the usual old thing.

  So, the young lads’d run, o’ course, fly for their lives. And the boys could talk away then and there was no one with their ear cocked.

  Begod, one fellow said to the priest this night, “I wonder are they there, Father?” he said. “I wonder is there such a thing as fairies,”—just in the course of events, ca
sual.

  “Oh,” he said, “are they what! Anyone care to look out under my arm?”

  Jeez, there wasn’t a man in the crowd did.

  “Look,” he said, “d’you see that valley down there? They’re as thick there as the hairs on your head. As thick as the hairs on your head.”

  If I was there I wouldn’t look, either. He might show me one, what I didn’t want to see. Them things are best left alone, nearly.

  Them fellows’d put you thinking very quick! And d’you know there’s an exorcist priest in every diocese? The clergy have power over certain ones of ’em. But not all, not all.

  A PRIEST from Liscannor used to go in to Lahinch in the Sunday nights. He had some friends he used to call to and this other bloke from Liscannor used to be going in playing cards. They’d walk in together. But the priest’d tell him on no account to go home when he’d be finishing up at the card game, or wherever he’d be, without calling to the house where the priest’d be, to go home with him.

  So, when they were coming up the Liscannor road—they were walking—the priest took off his hat and he put it on the man. He had to go up to the parochial gate with the priest.

  And when the man gave back his hat, the priest said to him, “Did you see anything?”

  “No,” says he.

  “The road was black with ’em,” says the priest. That’s what he said.

  It might be on account of putting his hat on the other bloke that the man didn’t see ’em.