LATER DAYS
105 WICKLOW IN THE RISING OF 1798 Pádraig Ó Tuathail, “Wicklow Traditions of 1798,” Béaloideas (1935), pp. 155–187. The three extracts I lifted from Mrs. O’Toole’s narrative are found on pp. 155–157, 174–176, 168–174. Séamas Ó Catháin includes a different excerpt from her account in The Bedside Book of Irish Folklore (1980), pp. 29–31.
106 THE FAMINE Lady Gregory, The Kiltartan History Book (1926), pp. 77–80. The first of these two statements also appears in the first edition (1909), pp. 34–35. The dreadful tale of the Famine of 1846–1848 is told by Cecil Woodham-Smith in The Great Hunger (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1962).
107 VICTORY IN THE TIME OF FAMINE Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982), p. 518; Irish Folk History (1982), pp. 95–96. This tale is possibly a transformation of Aarne-Thompson international type 832. The late Alex McConnell, father of the great musician Cathal, recorded a version of this legend from Michael Boyle’s uncle for the Irish Folklore Commission. It is found in manuscript book 1403 (1955), pp. 26–27, in the archive at the Department of Irish Folklore of the University of Dublin College at Belfield.
108 RUINED BY POETRY Robin Flower, The Western Island (1945), pp. 19–21. Ó Crithin is Tomás Ó Crohan, author of The Islandman (1935).
FIRESIDE TALES
FENIAN TALES
109 THE BIRTH OF FINN MAC CUMHAIL Jeremiah Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (1906), pp. 204–220. In 1887, Curtin collected mainly in Limerick, Donegal, and Galway; my ascription to Donegal is but a guess. This tale begins as number 1 of Sean O’Sullivan’s catalogue of Tales of the Fianna in A Handbook of Irish Folklore (1963), pp. 589–590, then it swings out to embrace Aarne-Thompson international tale types 1137, famous from the Odyssey, and 300 (see tales 114 and 115 in this collection). Curtin’s tale brings Finn into the world. A good selection of tales of Finn at his peak awaits you within part 2 of Sean O’Sullivan’s Folktales of Ireland (1966). Finn at the end is amusingly, sadly portrayed in Flann O’Brien’s wonderful novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939).
110 THE HIGH KING OF LOCHLANN AND THE FENIANS OF ERIN Jeremiah Curtin, Irish Folk-Tales (1943), pp. 113–124. First published in the New York Sun, November 6, 1892. Much of Curtin’s work in 1892 was conducted in Kerry, but my attribution to Kerry is only a guess. In his notes to the tale (p. 163), James H. Delargy says this is a folk version of a literary tale, the earliest text of which dates to 1603. It has been found in oral tradition in Scotland and in Donegal.
111 USHEEN’S RETURN TO IRELAND Lady Gregory, The Kiltartan History Book (1926), pp. 20–22. This sequence of two tales does not appear in the first edition (1909). This is number 18 in Sean O’Sullivan’s typology of Fenian tales in A Handbook of Irish Folklore (1963), p. 593, and is O’Sullivan-Christiansen Irish folktale type 470*, known especially in Connacht and Munster and related to Aarne-Thompson international tale type 470*, most usual in northern and eastern Europe.
MATURITY
112 FAIR, BROWN, AND TREMBLING Jeremiah Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (1906), pp. 78–92. In 1887, Curtin collected mainly in Limerick, Donegal, and Galway; my ascription to Galway is but a guess. This is Aarne-Thompson international tale type 510, Cinderella, common throughout Europe, with type 403 as an appendage.
113 THE CORPSE WATCHERS Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (1866), pp. 54–57. Versions of Aarne-Thompson international tale type 480, The Kind and the Unkind Girls, are common throughout Europe. Kennedy wrote of this tale that it was the “one which was repeated oftenest in our hearing during our country experience. It probably owed its popularity to the bit of a rhyme, and the repetition of the adventures of the three sisters, nearly in the same words. It may seem strange that this circumstance, which would have brought ennui and discomfort on our readers, should have recommended it to the fireside audiences. Let it be considered that they expected to sit up to a certain hour, and that listening to a story was the pleasantest occupation they could fancy for the time. Length, then, in a tale was a recommendation, and these repetitions contributed to that desirable end.”
114 A WIDOW’S SON John Millington Synge, The Aran Islands (1911), pp. 78–84. After opening with a suggestion of Aarne-Thompson international tale type 1640, this settles into the usual Irish version of Aarne-Thompson type 300, the most common Märchen in Ireland. See Sean O’Sullivan, Storytelling in Irish Tradition (1973), p. 16. The distribution of this tale type is global. It is known in Africa and America, and it is particularly common in India, Greece, Russia, Hungary, Germany, France, Denmark, and Norway, though Ireland has yielded the largest number of versions.
115 JACK AND BILL W. B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight (1902), pp. 209–230. This story, combining Aarne-Thompson international tale types 303 and 300, came from the fieldwork Lady Gregory reported in Poets and Dreamers (1903). Her version of the tale appears in The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910), pp. 31–51.
116 THE MULE Lady Gregory, The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910), pp. 1–7. This story seems to gather Aarne-Thompson international tale types 550, 531, and 329 into a distinctly Irish form.
117 THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON Brendan Behan, Brendan Behan’s Island (1962), pp. 136–141. As can be seen from O’Sullivan and Christiansen’s Types of the Irish Folktale, pp. 116–117, the incorporation of Aarne-Thompson international tale type 329 into type 550 is frequent in Ireland.
WIT AND FAITH
118 HUDDON AND DUDDON AND DONALD O’LEARY Unpublished. Tape-recorded from Hugh Nolan, November 28, 1972. I also recorded this tale from Mr. Nolan on June 11, 1977. The history of this story provides us a good means for examining the creativity of the storyteller who must, Mr. Nolan said, repeat the tale accurately while using words of his own. Mr. Nolan learned the story from a Christmas number of the Fermanagh Herald, published in Enniskillen. Although the paper’s editor, Mr. P. J. O’Hare, could not find it when he generously searched his files for me, the story was surely reprinted from W. B. Yeats’ “Donald and his Neighbours,” in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), reprinted in Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (1973), pp. 270–273. Yeats got the story from a chapbook, Royal Hibernian Tales, published in 1825. Before that it had been in oral circulation in County Antrim, and it is Aarne-Thompson international tale type 1535, which is especially common in India and Germany, and which I have heard in the southern United States and once published: “Three Southern Mountain Jack Tales,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 30, no. 3 (1964): 88–102 (which also includes a version of type 300, Ireland’s most usual Märchen). Michael Boyle learned the story from Hugh Nolan, and their tellings made it the most popular “fireside tale” of the next generation in Ballymenone. Mr. Nolan’s story is longer and richer than his source. Here, for comparison, is the opening of the tale as Mr. Nolan would have read it: “Hudden and Dudden and Donald O’Nery were near neighbours in the barony of Balinconlig, and ploughed with three bullocks; but the two former, envying the present prosperity of the latter, determined to kill his bullock, to prevent his farm being properly cultivated and laboured, that going into the world he might be induced to sell his lands, which they meant to get possession of.” The whole text of the original is not only in Yeats’ anthology; it is in Béaloideas 10 (1940), pp. 184–186, and Séamas Ó Catháin, The Bedside Book of Irish Folklore (1980), pp. 51–55. You would find it fascinating to read Mr. Nolan’s oral performance against the entire written text from which he learned the tale.
119 THE THREE WISHES William Carleton, Tales and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1846), pp. 330–357. Here Carleton retells one of Ireland’s most popular stories, Aarne-Thompson international tale type 330, known throughout Europe.
120 WILLY THE WISP Michael J. Murphy, Now You’re Talking (1975), pp. 120–123 Hugh Nolan and Peter Flanagan both remembered this tale—Aarne-Thompson international type 330—as being the most popular story of their youth. Hugh McGiveney named one of his cats Willy the Wisp: see tale 40 in this collection.
121
THE BUIDEACH, THE TINKER, AND THE BLACK DONKEY Douglas Hyde, Legends of Saints and Sinners (1915), pp. 247–257. Structured like a Märchen, incorporating memories of Aarne-Thompson international tale types 531 and 580*, this story centers upon the supernatural to become something peculiarly Irish.
122 THE MAN WHO HAD NO STORY Séamas Ó Catháin, “An Fear nach rabh Scéal ar bith aige,” Béaloideas (1969–1970), pp. 55–59. Ó Catháin’s paper includes the text in Irish, and he reprinted the English text in The Bedside Book of Irish Folktale (1980), pp. 81–86. This is O’Sullivan-Christiansen Irish folktale type 2412B. Sean O’Sullivan’s Folktales of Ireland (1966), pp. 182–184, contains another version of this characteristically Irish story.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the authors, publishers, and other copyright holders for permission to reprint the following previously published material:
“Owen Roe O’Sullivan,” “The Horse’s Last Drunk,” and “Cats Are Queer Articles” from The Tailor and Ansty by Eric Cross. Reprinted by permission of Devin-Adair Publishers.
“The King of Ireland’s Son” from Brendan Behan’s Island by Brendan Behan. Copyright © 1962 by Brendan Behan and Paul Hogarth. Reprinted by permission of Hope, Leresche & Sayle.
“An Actual Saint” from Our Like Will Not Be There Again by Lawrence Millman. Copyright © 1977 by Lawrence Millman. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown & Company.
“Sarsfield Surrenders and Rory Takes to the Hills” from Heavy Hangs the Golden Grain by Seumas MacManus. Copyright 1950 by Seumas MacManus. Copyright renewed 1977. Reprinted by permission of Patricia MacManus.
“The Pious Man,” “The Coffin,” “The Blood of Adam,” and “The Feet Water” from Folktales of the Irish Countryside by Kevin Danaher; “Saved by the Priest,” “Terry the Grunter,” and “Magical Theft” from Irish Life and Love by Séamas Ó Catháin; “Columcille’s Coffin,” “The First Mirror,” and “Cromwell” from The Bedside Book of Irish Folklore by Séamas Ó Catháin. Reprinted by permission of The Mercier Press Ltd. “Terry the Grunter” and “Cromwell” also by permission of the Head of the Department of Irish Folklore, University College, Belfield, Dublin.
“Old Thorns and Old Priests,” “The Three Questions,” “Half a Blanket,” “A Hungry Hired Boy,” “The Lawyer and the Devil,” and “Willy the Wisp” from Now You’re Talking by Michael J. Murphy. Reprinted by permission of Michael J. Murphy and Blackstaff Press, Belfast.
“Hare and Hound,” collected by Michael J. Murphy, and “Grandfather’s Ghost,” collected by Ronald H. Buchanan, Ulster Folklife Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the collectors, and the Ulster Folklife Society. “Hare and Hound” also by permission of Prof. Bo Almqvist, Department of Irish Folklore, University College, Belfield, Dublin.
“How the Shoemaker Saved His Wife,” “The Blacksmith of Bedlam and the Fairy Host,” “The Fairy Shilling,” and “The Fairy Rabbit and the Blessed Earth of Tory” from Fairy Legends from Donegal by Sean Ó hEochaidh. Reprinted by permission of the Department of Irish Folklore, University College, Belfield, Dublin.
“The Baptism of Conor MacNessa,” “Saint Finbar,” and “Willie Brennan” from Legends from Ireland by Sean O’Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of Sean O’Sullivan.
“No Man Goes Beyond His Day,” “The Grave of His Father,” “Taken,” and “Ruined by Poetry” from The Western Island by Robin Flower. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
“Fairy Property,” and “The Cats’ Judgment” from Lovely Is the Lee by Robert Gibbings. Reprinted by permission of Laurence Pollinger Limited, and the Estate of Robert Gibbings.
“The Soldier in the Haunted House,” “Wicklow in the Rising of 1798,” and “The Man Who Had No Story” reprinted from Béaloideas by permission of the Folklore of Ireland Society, Department of Modern Irish, University College, Galway.
“A Clock Token,” “The Banshee Cries for the O’Briens,” “We Had One of Them in the House for a While,” “Dreams of Gold,” “The Air Is Full of Them,” “A Pig on the Road from Gort,” and “Biddy Early” from Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland by Lady Gregory. Copyright by Lady Augusta Gregory on April 23, 1920, and renewed on July 27, 1947, by Richard Graham Gregory, Anne Gregory, and Catherine Frances Kennedy. “Saint Patrick,” “Jonathan Swift, Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral,” “The Old Times in Ireland,” and “The Famine” from The Kiltartan History Book by Lady Gregory. Copyright 1909, 1926 by Lady Gregory. “Usheen’s Return to Ireland” by Lady Gregory from Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men. Reprinted by permission of Colin Smythe Limited on behalf of Anne de Winton and Catherine Kennedy.
“The Banshee Cries for the Boyles,” and “The Breaking of the Forth” by T.G.F. Paterson from Country Cracks, 1945. Reprinted by permission of Dundalgan Press Ltd.
“A Medical Expert from Lisnaskea” from The Stone Fiddle by Paddy Tunney. Reprinted by permission of Paddy Tunney.
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Irish Folk Tales Page 44
