Meeting the Other Crowd

by Eddie Lenihan

  Mr. Mahon didn’t stand in John’s way, either. He did not, only gave him a good send-off, something he wasn’t the worse of, anyway, when he settled in at Castleconnell.

  And he did settle in there. And got on fine. And their people are there yet, for all I know.

  But, one thing, when I visited that fort after, I couldn’t find any sign or trace of a hole or passageway on the side o’ the hill facing Corbally House, or anywhere around that hill. ’Cause, you know, a lot o’ forts have a room underground and a passage leading into it.

  On November Eve, as well as May Eve, it was regarded as very dangerous to be outdoors come darkness, for on those nights above all others the fairies were on the move and anything might happen to a person who met them. So, when John O’Brien saw the light on Corbally hill, the fact that there was a fort there should have given him pause.

  Luckily for us, and for a certain girl carried by the Good People, curiosity got the better of his fear, and his subsequent investigation and display of courage changes his life forever.

  This very detailed account was given to me in 1980 by one of the last and best traditional storytellers from that part of County Clare, a man with a memory for the details that other people pass over. And here is the result, one of the few “happy ever after” endings in this book—deservedly so for a hero who dared the fairies on their own ground for the hand of the beautiful maiden. Even they seemed to respect his bravery, for they did not interfere when he risked all by snatching her from them, she who was necessary for their annual celebration in Corbally fort and whose absence spoiled it.

  “If I was involved in a thing like that I’d very, very well let sleeping dogs lie.”

  DRUMLINE, MARCH 13, 1997

  Woman Carried Asks for Rescue

  THIS WOMAN DIED having a baby, and in a case like that they usually said, “Oh, is amhlaidh a sciobadh í.” She was carried. She didn’t really die. She was carried by the fairies.

  But, down in County Limerick, in this farmer’s house, there was a servant boy and he used to go out playing cards at night. And when he’d come home, the farmer used to always leave some food for him ready, milk and bread, so that he could eat a bit before he went to bed.

  But this night, there was nothing left. And the next night there was nothing left. And he said it to the farmer. “By the way . . .” and he told him.

  And the farmer said, “But I did leave it.”

  “Well,” he said, “it wasn’t there when I came home.”

  So, the next night, the farmer himself sat up waiting, with the door open in the room, and he was listening. And he saw this woman coming in and eating the food. He went up and spoke to her. And she told him that she was such and such a woman from Ventry in Kerry, and that the fairies took her. She said she was married, had a baby, and the fairies took her on a certain night. But she didn’t eat their food. They carried her away, but she didn’t eat their food. And while she wasn’t eating their food, she was safe. But her husband would have to come and get her away. She told him what to do. She told him her husband’s name, everything about him, where he lived, and so on, and how he was to take her out.

  So the farmer wrote to the man and he told him what had happened and how he met the man’s wife. But the man had remarried in the meantime, because they married very quickly then.

  He went to the priest and asked the priest, “What should I do?”

  And the priest said, “Look, leave things as they are. That’s the best thing to do.”

  So he did. She never came back and that was the end of it. He carried on with the other wife.

  That happened the last century.

  In this poignant little story one may imagine the feelings of the priest, if he was a man of any conscience, to have to give the advice he does to the husband of the woman who has been carried in childbirth by the fairies (since there was no such thing as divorce in that society). Where does that leave her? In a limbo, neither lost to them nor at rest in a Christian sense. In fact, no one should be happy at the end of this tale, where people are less important than social conventions and all that seems to matter is that the surface calm of society be preserved, whatever the hidden cost to the individuals involved.

  (The servant-boy system, by which young men and women from poverty-stricken west Kerry spent part of the year working for farmers in the rich dairy lands of the Golden Vale—counties Limerick and Tipperary—lasted well into the 1940s.)

  “Any man or woman or girl that’d die that’d be good an’ healthy-looking, the fairies that’d have ’em taken. That’s what the old people believed, anyway.”

  MOYREE, MARCH 10, 1985

  A Tragic Loss of Nerve

  THE FAIRIES used to move from place to place. In fact, I heard a story about it.

  These two brothers, they were farmers, they lived together in one house. One of ’em was married; he had three or four children. And the girl that came into the house brought in a dowry. The other boy, he got that fortune and more money that they had made, and he was going to marry a farmer’s daughter after a while. But when the man’s wife died, he didn’t marry. He stayed on to help the brother. She died very quick; she was only sick four or five days. A lot o’ people had an idea that she was swept.

  The man that was married had a lot o’ work to do around the house, you know—milking cows, and had to keep the place going, and ready the children for school.

  Everything was going according to plan, anyway. Now, the married man wouldn’t go on ragairne27 on winter nights, but the single man did. He used to go to a place where they’d be playing cards. But the married man always left roasted spuds by the fire for him, and butter if they had it, and a cup o’ sour milk, buttermilk. And he’d have them when he’d come home.

  He came in one night, anyway, and the plate was empty and the buttermilk was drank. That carried on for four or five nights, and he didn’t know what in the world was wrong.

  They were abroad digging spuds a while after, himself and the brother, and he said to him, “Am I not working as good as ever for you? Why don’t you leave up my supper for me?”

  “I beg your pardon,” says the brother, “I leave up your supper every night.”

  So that was all right. He went on ragairne the next night and he went to a place where there was a couple o’ more people. They were talking away until about half past nine o’clock, and he said he didn’t know if his brother was leaving up the supper for him.

  He went off early and when he came to the house, he looked in through the window. And the brother had the supper up on the fireplace for him. He used to eat this before he’d go to bed.

  When he looked in through the window, didn’t he see the man’s wife eating the spuds—the woman that was dead! He took the latch from the door as easy as he could, and he came in and he spoke to her.

  “I’m eating your supper,” says she.

  “I don’t begrudge it to you,” says he. “Even if ’twas beef, I wouldn’t begrudge it to you.”

  “Well, I’m eating that for the last four or five nights and the reason I came here tonight is to make contact with you,” she said. “We’ll be leaving this fort below”—there was a fort below, about a half mile from the house—“such a night,” she said, “and I’ll be above on the fifth horse in front of a fairy man, the fifth horse that’ll come out o’ that fort. We’re changing. We’re going to a different fort.”

  “Okay,” says he.

  “Tell my husband to be there. And if he’ll whip me off o’ the saddle when the fifth horse’ll come out, I’ll get to come back,” says she.

  “Or if he don’t, I will,” says the fellow.

  “No good! You have no claim over me,” says the fairy woman. “It must be my husband.”

  On the night, the brother went with him and they stayed outside the fairy fort. The first horse came out, and the second horse. They were grand-looking people. Then the fifth horse came out, and when he saw his wife in front o’ this—he wasn�
�t too fairy-looking entirely; he was a fairly good-looking man—he dropped in a dead weakness, and he failed to whip her off the saddle.

  And people that was out that same night, the crying was heard all over the country, the woman crying as they went to whatever fort they were going to.

  She was never again seen, nor heard of. That’s a true story.

  What makes this story particularly interesting is the glimpse it gives us into what it may be like in the Other Place for a victim of fairy abduction. Obviously the woman wants to return home permanently and it is still possible for her to appear to her relatives and give instructions as to how she may be saved—but only for as long as she is in the fort to which she has been first taken. On the vital night on which she is moved to another fort her single opportunity of salvation presents itself. The fact that it is not taken obviously consigns her to some awful fate in her new place of abode, if we are to believe the teller that her weeping was heard all over the country. And the statement that “she was never seen again, nor heard of” suggests that after this one window of escape from the Other People there was no second.

  “A man went to the fair o’Tulla, sure, an’ he disappeared. He vanished with a cow. No one knew where he went. That was in the month of April, or May. An’that day twelve months later he showed up at the fair, with the cow. An’ no one could ever know where he was, nor he never knew himself where he was. Jeez, the people ran from him at the fair. . . . He was carried, o’ course.”

  DRUMLINE, MARCH 14, 1990

  A Woman Dies . . . and Remarries

  THERE WAS THIS MAN; he got married. He was married for a bit, and his wife died. She was buried and all, and there was no more about her for a good bit after.

  So, there was a neighbor o’ this man, then, he was a cattle dealer and he went to the fair one day. And he saw her walking down the street, that same woman, now. And, by Jeez, he knew her, but he didn’t want to go talking to her, for I s’pose he got so stunned and surprised. How would it be that she’d be there in the street when she was dead and buried?!

  He left that day go. He didn’t go to talk to her at all.

  So he came on home that evening, and he went to this man’s house and told him his story.

  “By God,” says he, “I met your wife today in the street.”

  “God, don’t be joking me,” says the lad.

  He was talking away about it, and in the finish the man believed him. He knew then that he was telling the truth.

  So, the man asked then if he’d be going to that place again.

  “Oh, I will,” says he. “The next fair day I’ll be going there again.”

  “I’ll go with you,” says he.

  “Oh, all right,” says the neighbor, “we will. The two of us’ll go.”

  The two of ’em struck on to the fair, and they were there for a bit. They were going up and down the street, and didn’t they see her again, walking down the street. The two of ’em knew her, and she knew them.

  They went talking to her, and she was talking to them.

  So then, they went into the house where she was living. She was married again. And there was the two husbands then: the first man and the man she married the second time.

  The first husband asked her if she’d come home with him and she said she would. But the second husband, he wouldn’t agree to that at all. So the cattle dealer came between ’em and he said to have one o’ the husbands go out the back door and the other man to go out the front door, and whichever one of ’em she’d follow, she could go with that one.

  By Jeez, when they went out the two doors, one of ’em out each door, didn’t she follow her first husband. But when she did, a child inside in the cot had every yell and bawl and roar.

  “Oh,” says she, “I can’t go from the child.” She had to turn back in again and stay there.

  ’Tis the way she was carried, by the Good People. There was them kind o’ things there long ago, man.

  But how is it that she was carried, and dead and buried, and then, wherever she was carried, that she was married there again?

  Christ, there was awful strange things there long ago.

  I knew the man who told me this story for the last ten years of his long life (ninety-three years). He was tough-minded, levelheaded, the kind of farmer who would drive a hard ( but equitable) bargain at fair or market. He was not by nature a dreamer, yet he had a healthy respect for the Other Crowd.

  If I had to choose a sentence from this episode that sums him up—and his thought processes, too—it would be, “But how is it that she was carried, and dead and buried, and wherever she was carried, that she was married there again?”

  I can see him still, that so-called simple man, stroking his stubbled chin, trying to come to grips with what for most people, no matter what they profess to the contrary, is the unthinkable: that there really are two worlds, ours and another one that parallels it, and that we may, for no logical reason, be transferred from one to the other with consequences that are sometimes heartbreaking, as for the woman here.

  “Boys they used be more after than girls. That’s why they’d have petticoats on ’em till they’d be five or six years, ducking the fairies.”

  MILTOWN, JUNE 27, 1999

  Garret Barry and the Changeling

  A GOOD-LOOKING PERSON, it seemed, they had some great set on ’em. They wanted ’em. And they carried women more than men. And children. Sure, we heard the one about Garret Barry. Garret used go round to all the houses, and he’d be kept for a week, maybe, playing music for ’em.

  He was in this house, anyway, and they told him keep an eye on the cradle till they’d come in. They were gone out picking spuds or something.

  Garret was there, and he was playing away nice and easy on the pipes. The child was hardly two years old, and he sat up.

  “Garret,” says he, “you’re a good player, but I heard a lot better than you.”

  When they came in he told ’em about what the child said, and it seems they reddened the shovel28 and made for the cradle. Whatever was there vanished and the right child was left back.

  Stories of babies that appear to be human but which, in reality, are changelings are legion in Ireland. This one is reasonably typical.

  The applying of fire as an antidote to fairy “possession” could have tragic consequences, as was illustrated in the well-known case of the burning of Bridget Cleary in County Tipperary in 1895. She was believed by her husband and relatives to have been carried by the fairies, was held over a fire to drive them out, but died as a result.The subsequent trial and convictions made international headlines.

  Garret Barry was a famous blind piper who died in 1900. Many stories of his extraordinary music and sense of hearing are yet told in west Clare.

  “Why would the fairies want to take a human child?

  I s’pose to make the fairy crowd stronger. They used take ’em

  anyway. As time goes by, the fairy child that’s left

  don’t ever develop right, only decline away.”

  MILTOWN, JUNE 27, 1999

  Two Changeling Stories

  MY MOTHER’S FATHER used to have great stories. One of ’em concerned a young man coming home at nighttime, passing a ruin of a house, seeing a lady in white coming out the door. Then she spotted him. She had been at the open window and she came out the door and she ran. Then another lady inside handed out a baby—which he took, ’cause he’d arrived at the door at this point. The house was on the side o’ the road.

  He brought the baby home and the mother was waiting up for him. “Where on earth did you get the child?” she asked, and more like that.

  They made the baby as comfortable as possible and, “Well, ’tis twelve o’clock at night now so we’ll wait till morning.”

  They didn’t know where or how the baby came to be there, if it was being kidnapped, or what.

  But next morning, anyway, there was great crying and weeping in a neighboring house because the baby there was
found to have died. He went in to sympathize and he saw this wizened little baby.

  So he said, “Put down a good fire there, now. I’m going to burn this baby. This is not your baby.”

  And, as soon as he said that, the wizened baby quivered and, according to my grandfather, jumped out o’ the cradle and up the chimney he goes. Then the man went home and brought the real baby back to them.

  Now, my grandfather went further and said that baby lived, grew up in that village and she went to America when she was about twenty or twenty-two. I didn’t get her name or, if I did, I’ve forgotten.

  THE SECOND STORY had to do with a family in the same area who had a handicapped baby. But they were beginning to realize that the baby wasn’t as handicapped as they thought, or as he let on. And once or twice, when they came in suddenly, they found that he was out o’ the cradle but managed to kind o’ scramble back in. But he wasn’t supposed to be able to walk. Next thing, he was demanding more milk than he was getting.

  They had tried the priest, and they had tried praying, and they decided they would take him to the doctor. The nearest doctor was in Tuam, Dr. Bodkin. So, the father carried the baby on his back, and as he was passing Knockma, beyond Caherlistrane, the baby, the handicapped baby, began to get free of him, spoke for the first time and said, “Tá mo bhean is mo chlann thuas ansin”—“My wife and my family are up there.”

  And the father said to him, “Well, in that case, off you go with them,” and let him down, and he ran off.

  They knew ’twas a changeling then. But where the real baby was isn’t answered in that story.

  Now, my grandfather would really swear to this, because I remember putting the questions to him.

  In a society where child mortality was very high and belief in the otherworldly was strong, it was only to be expected that people would account for many of the sudden deaths or wasting diseases of children through fairy abductions.