by J. M. Synge
A little later, when he went out for a moment, the people told me he beats up and down between Killorglin and Ballinskelligs and the Inny river, and that he is a particular crabby kind of man, and will not take anything from the people but coppers and eggs.
‘And he’s a wasteful old fellow with all,’ said the woman of the house, ‘though he’s eighty years old or beyond it, for whatever money he’ll get one day selling his eggs to the coastguards, he’ll spend it the next getting a drink when he’s thirsty, or keeping good boots on his feet.’
From that they began talking of misers, and telling stories about them.
‘There was an old woman,’ said one of the men, ‘living beyond to the east, and she was thought to have a great store of money. She had one daughter only, and in the course of a piece a young lad got married to her, thinking he’d have her fortune. The woman died after — God be merciful to her! — and left the two of them as poor as they were before. Well, one night a man that knew them was passing to the fair of Puck, and he came in and asked would they give him a lodging for that night. They gave him what they had and welcome; and after his tea, when they were sitting over the fire — the way we are this night — the man asked them how they were so poor-looking, and if the old woman had left nothing behind her.
‘“Not a farthing did she leave,” said the daughter.
“And did she give no word or warning or message in her last moments?” said the man.
‘“She did not,” said the daughter, “except only that I shouldn’t comb out the hair of her poll and she dead.”
‘“And you heeded her?” said the man.
‘“I did, surely,” said the daughter.
‘“Well,” said the man, “to-morrow night when I’m gone let the two of you go down the Relic (the graveyard), and dig up her coffin and look in her hair and see what it is you’ll find in it.”
‘“We’ll do that,” said the daughter, and with that they all stretched out for the night.
‘The next evening they went down quietly with a shovel and they dug up the coffin, and combed through her hair, and there behind her poll they found her fortune, five hundred pounds, in good notes and gold.’
‘There was an old fellow living on the little hill beyond the graveyard,’ said Danny-boy, when the man had finished, ‘and he had his fortune some place hid in his bed, and he was an old weak fellow, so that they were all watching him to see he wouldn’t hide it away. One time there was no one in it but himself and a young girl, and the old fellow slipped out of his bed and went out of the door as far as a little bush and some stones. The young girl kept her eye on him, and she made sure he’d hidden something in the bush; so when he was back in his bed she called the people, and they all came and looked in the bushes, but not a thing could they find. The old man died after, and no one ever found his fortune to this day.’
‘There were some young lads a while since,’ said the old woman, ‘and they went up of a Sunday and began searching through those bushes to see if they could find anything, but a kind of a turkey-cock came up out of the stones and drove them away.’
‘There was another old woman,’ said the man of the house, ‘who tried to take down her fortune into her stomach. She was near death, and she was all day stretched in her bed at the corner of the fire. One day when the girl was tinkering about, the old woman rose up and got ready a little skillet that was near the hob and put something into it and put it down by the fire, and the girl watching her all the time under her oxter, not letting on she seen her at all. When the old woman lay down again the girl went over to put on more sods on the fire, and she got a look into the skillet, and what did she see but sixty sovereigns. She knew well what the old woman was striving to do, so she went out to the dairy and she got a lump of fresh butter and put it down into the skillet, when the woman didn’t see her do it at all. After a bit the old woman rose up and looked into the skillet, and when she saw the froth of the butter she thought it was the gold that was melted. She got back into her bed — a dark place, maybe — and she began sipping and sipping the butter till she had the whole of it swallowed. Then the girl made some trick to entice the skillet away from her, and she found the sixty sovereigns in the bottom and she kept them for herself.’
By this time it was late, and the old woman brought over a mug of milk and a piece of bread to Darby at the settle, and the people gathered at their table for their supper; so I went into the little room at the end of the cottage where I am given a bed.
When I came into the kitchen in the morning, old Darby was still asleep on the settle, with his coat and trousers over him, a red night-cap on his head, and his half-bred terrier, Jess, chained with a chain he carries with him to the leg of the settle.
‘That’s a poor way to lie on the bare board,’ said the woman of the house, when she saw me looking at him; ‘but when I filled a sack with straw for him last night he wouldn’t have it at all.’
While she was boiling some eggs for my breakfast, Darby roused up from his sleep, pulled on his trousers and coat, slipped his feet into his boots and started off, when he had eaten a few mouthfuls, for another house where he is known, some five miles away.
Afterwards I went out on the cnuceen, a little hill between this cottage and the sea, to watch the people gathering carragheen moss, a trade which is much followed in this district during the spring tides of summer. I lay down on the edge of the cliff, where the heathery hill comes to an end and the steep rocks begin. About a mile to the west there was a long headland, ‘Feakle Callaigh’ (‘The Witch’s Tooth ‘), covered with mists, that blew over me from time to time with a swish of rain, followed by sunshine again. The mountains on the other side of the bay were covered, so I could see nothing but the strip of brilliant sea below me, thronged with girls and men up to their waists in the water, with a hamper in one hand and a stick in the other, gathering the moss, and talking and laughing loudly as they worked. The long frill of dark golden rocks covered with seaweed, with the asses and children slipping about on it, and the bars of silvery light breaking through on the further inlets of the bay, had the singularly brilliant loveliness one meets everywhere in Kerry.
When the tide began to come in I went down one of the passes to the sea, and met many parties of girls and old men and women coming up with what they had gathered, most of them still wearing the clothes that had been in the sea, and were heavy and black with salt water. A little further on I met Danny-boy and we sat down to talk.
‘Do you see that sandy head?’ he said, pointing out to the east, ‘that is called the Stooks of the Dead Women; for one time a boat came ashore there with twelve dead women on board her, big ladies with green dresses and gold rings, and fine jewelleries, and a dead harper or fiddler along with them. Then there are graves again in the little hollow by the cnuceen, and what we call them is the Graves of the Sailors; for some sailors, Greeks or great strangers, were washed in there a hundred years ago, and it is there that they were buried.’
Then we began talking of the carragheen he had gathered and the spring tides that would come again during the summer. I took out my diary to tell him the times of the moon, but he would hardly listen to me. When I stopped, he gave his ass a cut with his stick, ‘Go on now,’ he said; ‘I wouldn’t believe those almanacs at all; they do not tell the truth about the moon.’
The greatest event in West Kerry is the horse-fair, known as Puck Fair, which is held in August. If one asks anyone, many miles east or west of Killorglin, when he reaped his oats or sold his pigs or heifers, he will tell you it was four or five weeks, or whatever it may be, before or after Puck. On the main roads, for many days past, I have been falling in with tramps and trick characters of all kinds, sometimes single and sometimes in parties of four or five, and as I am on the roads a great deal I have often met the same persons several days in succession — one day perhaps at Ballinskelligs, the next day at Feakle Callaigh, and the third in the outskirts of Killorglin.
Yesterday cava
lcades of every sort were passing from the west with droves of horses, mares, jennets, foals and asses, with their owners going after them in flat or railed carts, or riding on ponies.
The men of this house — they are going to buy a horse — went to the fair last night, and I followed at an early hour in the morning. As I came near Killorglin the road was much blocked by the latest sellers pushing eagerly forward, and early purchasers who were anxiously leading off their young horses before the roads became dangerous from the crush of drunken drivers and riders.
Just outside the town, near the first public-house, blind beggars were kneeling on the pathway, praying with almost Oriental volubility for the souls of anyone who would throw them a coin.
‘May the Holy Immaculate Mother of Jesus Christ,’ said one of them, ‘intercede for you in the hour of need. Relieve a poor blind creature, and may Jesus Christ relieve yourselves in the hour of death. May He have mercy, I’m saying, on your brothers and fathers and sisters for evermore.’
Further on stalls were set out with cheap cakes and refreshments, and one could see that many houses had been arranged to supply the crowds who had come in. Then I came to the principal road that goes round the fair-green, where there was a great concourse of horses, trotting and walking and galloping; most of them were of the cheaper class of animal, and were selling, apparently to the people’s satisfaction, at prices that reminded one of the time when fresh meat was sold for threepence a pound. At the further end of the green there were one or two rough shooting galleries, and a number of women — not very rigid, one could see — selling, or appearing to sell, all kinds of trifles: a set that come in, I am told, from towns not far away. At the end of the green I turned past the chapel, where a little crowd had just carried in a man who had been killed or badly wounded by a fall from a horse, and went down to the bridge of the river, and then back again into the main slope of the town. Here there were a number of people who had come in for amusement only, and were walking up and down, looking at each other — a crowd is as exciting as champagne to these lonely people, who live in long glens among the mountains — and meeting with cousins and friends. Then, in the three-cornered space in the middle of the town, I came on Puck himself a magnificent he-goat (Irish puc), raised on a platform twenty feet high, and held by a chain from each horn, with his face down the road. He is kept in this position, with a few cabbages to feed on, for three days, so that he may preside over the pig-fair and the horse-fair and the day of winding up.
At the foot of this platform, where the crowd was thickest, a young ballad-singer was howling a ballad in honour of Puck, making one think of the early Greek festivals, since the time of which, it is possible, the goat has been exalted yearly in Killorglin.
The song was printed on a green slip by itself. It ran:
A NEW SONG ON THE GREAT PUCK FAIR.
By JOHN PURCELL.
All young lovers that are fond of sporting,
pay attention for a while,
I will sing you the praises of Puck Fair,
and I’m sure it will make you smile;
Where the lads and lassies coming gaily to Killorglin can be seen,
To view the Puck upon the stage, as our hero dressed in green.
Chorus.
And hurra for the gallant Puck so gay,
For he is a splendid one
Wind and rain don’t touch his tail,
For his hair is thirty inches long.
Now it is on the square he’s erected with all colours grand and gay;
There’s not a fair throughout Ireland, but Puck Fair it takes the sway,
Where you see the gamblers in rotation, trick — o’-the-loop and
other games,
The ballad-singers and the wheel-of-fortune and the shooting-gallery
for to take aim.
Chorus.
Where is the tyrant dare oppose it?
Our old customs we will hold up still,
And I think we will have another —
That is, Home Rule and Purchase Bill.
Now, all young men that are not married,
next Shrove can take a wife,
For before next Puck Fair we will have Home Rule,
and then you will be settled down in life.
Now the same advice I give young girls for to get married and have pluck.
Let the landlords see that you defy them when coming to Fair of Puck.
Cead Mile Failte to the Fair of Puck.
When one makes the obvious elisions, the lines are not so irregular as they look, and are always sung to a measure: yet the whole, in spite of the assonance, rhymes, and the ‘colours grand and gay,’ seems pitifully remote from any good spirit of ballad-making.
Across the square a man and a woman, who had a baby tied on her back, were singing another ballad on the Russian and Japanese War, in the curious method of antiphony that is still sometimes heard in the back streets of Dublin. These are some of the verses:
Man.
Now provisions are rising, ’tis sad for to state,
The flour, tea and sugar, tobacco and meat;
But, God help us I poor Irish, how must we stand the test
Ambo.
If they only now stop the trade of commerce.
Woman.
Now the Russians are powerful on sea and on land;
But the Japs they are active, they will them command,
Before this war is finished I have one word to say,
Ambo.
There will be more shot and drowned than in the Crimea.
Man.
Now the Japs are victorious up to this time,
And thousands of Russians I hear they are dying.
Etc., etc.
And so it went on with the same alternation of the voices through seven or eight verses; and it was curious to feel how much was gained by this simple variation of the voices.
When I passed back to the fair-green, I met the men I am staying with, and went off with them under an archway, and into a back yard to look at a little two-year-old filly that they had bought and left for the moment in a loose box with three or four young horses. She was prettily and daintily shaped, but looked too light, I thought, for the work she will be expected to do. As we came out again into the road, an old man was singing an out-spoken ballad on women in the middle of the usual crowd. Just as we passed it came to a scandalous conclusion; and the women scattered in every direction, shrieking with laughter and holding shawls over their mouths.
At the corner we turned into a public-house, where there were men we knew, who had done their business also; and we went into the little alcove to sit down quietly for a moment. ‘What will you take, sir,’ said the man I lodge with, ‘a glass of wine?’
I took beer and the others took porter; but we were only served after some little time, as the house was thronged with people.
The men were too much taken up with their bargains and losses to talk much of other matters; and before long we came out again, and the son of the house started homewards, leading the new filly by a little halter of rope.
Not long afterwards I started also. Outside Killorglin rain was coming up over the hills of Glen Car, so that there was a strained hush in the air, and a rich, aromatic smell coming from the bog myrtle, or boggy shrub, that grows thickly in this place. The strings of horses and jennets scattered over the road did not keep away a strange feeling of loneliness that seems to hang over this brown plain of bog that stretches from Carrantuohull to Cuchulain’s House.
Before I reached the cottage dense torrents of rain were closing down through the glens, and driving in white sheets between the little hills that are on each side of the way.
One morning in autumn I started in a local train for the first stage of my journey to Dublin, seeing the last of Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, that were touched with snow in places, Dingle Bay and the islands beyond it. At a little station where I changed trains, I got into a carriage where there was a woman with her da
ughter, a girl of about twenty, who seemed uneasy and distressed. Soon afterwards, when a collector was looking at our tickets, I called out that mine was for Dublin, and as soon as he got out the woman came over to me.
‘Are you going to Dublin?’ she said.
I told her I was.
‘Well,’ she went on, ‘here is my daughter going there too; and maybe you’d look after her, for I’m getting down at the next station. She is going up to a hospital for some little complaint in her ear, and she has never travelled before, so that she’s lonesome in her mind.’
I told her I would do what I could, and at the next station I was left alone with my charge, and one other passenger, a returned American girl, who was on her way to Mallow, to get the train for Queenstown. When her mother was lost sight of the young girl broke out into tears, and the returned American and myself had trouble to quiet her.
‘Look at me,’ said the American. ‘I’m going off for ten years to America, all by myself, and I don’t care a rap.’
When the girl got quiet again, the returned American talked to me about scenery and politics and the arts — she had been seen off by her sisters in bare feet, with shawls over their heads — and the life of women in America.
At several stations girls and boys thronged in to get places for Queenstown, leaving parties of old men and women wailing with anguish on the platform. At one place an old woman was seized with such a passion of regret, when she saw her daughters moving away from her for ever, that she made a wild rush after the train and when I looked out for a moment I could see her writhing and struggling on the platform, with her hair over her face, and two men holding her by the arms.
Two young men had got into our compartment for a few stations only, and they looked on with the greatest satisfaction.
‘Ah,’ said one of them, ‘we do have great sport every Friday and Saturday, seeing the old women howling in the stations.’
