Chapter III: Part 3

So the next day the wife brought out every bit of the beef, and she put a bit of it on the top of every head of cabbage was in the garden. Well, when the night came and they were in bed, there came a thousand dogs fighting for the meat was in the garden, and barking, and calling, and roaring. And when the husband went out they had it brought away, and all the cabbage destroyed and broken.

So he said then it was as good for them to go wandering, and he went out of the house, and the woman following him. ‘Let you draw the door after you,’ says he—that is, that she should close it. But what she did was to rise it off the hinges, and to draw it after her along the road till they came to a wood. And they went up into the branches of a tree to pass the night, and she bringing the board with her.

It happened there came some robbers under the tree, dividing a great deal of gold and silver they were after robbing from a castle. And when the man and the woman saw that, they dropped the door down on them with a great noise, and the robbers were affrighted and ran away, leaving all they had robbed after them. And the man and the woman got it for themselves, and they were rich from that day.

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THE DANES

I will tell you about the Danes, said the Poet’s son; and it was my father that broke down Raftery in the latter end.

There was a man one time set out from Ireland to go to America or some place; a common man looking for work he was. And something happened to the ship on the way, and they had to put to land to mend it. And in the country where they landed he saw a forth, and he went into it, and there he saw the smallest people he ever saw; and they were the Danes that went out of Ireland, and it is foxes they had for dogs, and weasels were their cats.

Then he went back to get into the ship, but it was gone away, and he left behind. So he went back into the forth, and a young man came to meet him, and he told him what had happened. And the young man said: ‘Come into the room within, where my father is in bed; for he is out of his health, and you might be able to serve him.’ So they went in, and the father was lying in the bed, and when he heard it was a man from Ireland was in it he said: ‘I will give you a great reward if you will go back and bring me a thing I want out of Castle Hacket Hill; for if I had what is there,’ he said, ‘I would be as young as my own son.’ So the man consented to go, and they got a sailing ship ready, and it is what the old man told him, to go back to Ireland. ‘And buy a small pig in Galway,’ he said, ‘and bring it to the mouth of the forth at Castle Hacket and roast it there. And inside the forth there is an enchanted cat that is keeping guard there, and it will come out. And here is a shot-gun and some cross-money,’ he said, ‘that will kill any fairy or any enchanted thing. And within in the forth,’ he said, ‘you will find a bottle and a rack-comb, and bring them here to me,’ he said.

So the man did as he was told, and he bought the pig and roasted it at the mouth of the forth, and out came the enchanted cat, and it having hair seven inches long. And he fired the cross-money out of the shot-gun, and the cat went away and he saw it no more. And he got the bottle and the rack, and brought them back to the old man. And he drank what was in the bottle, and racked his hair with the rack, and he got young again, a young as his own son.

And when there is a marriage among the Danes, they put down the land they have in Ireland with whatever else they have, for they expect to come back and to own the country again some day. But whether they will or not, I don’t know.

The Danes were surely small men, or how could they live in those little rooms and passages in the raths? I’d have to stoop myself down when I’d go into them. They had the whole country once, and they used to make beer out of the tops of the heather the same way the bees draw honey out of it. And it was on St. John’s Night the people lighted wisps and turned them out of Ireland, and that’s the reason the wisps are burned ever since.

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CAILLEAC-NA-CEARC

I think I didn’t tell you the story of Cailleac-na-Cearc, the Woman of the Hens, says the old man with the new wife; and how she committed sin.

It was one day they rose up, herself and her twelve children, and there was not bit or drop in the house, and the height of the door of frost and snow was in it; and she sent the husband out to see could he get firing with a little hatchet he had.

And when he went out he got directions to cut a certain tree. And there came out of the tree to him as much as he could carry of lumber of the best of stuff, and he brought it home to the wife.

Well, after a while she bade him go again to the tree and cut it. And there came from it the same lumber of provisions and gold and money and everything they wanted. And the third time she sent him to cut the tree, and the tree spoke to him that time, and it said: ‘You may take what you can this time, but let you never come near me again.’ And he brought back more than would fill the corners of the house. And he said to the wife, that was enough.

But she made him go the fourth time, for women is awful, and she wanted to get all that she could; and only for her bidding he didn’t like to draw back to the tree. And that time the tree spoke to him again, and it said: ‘You have full and plenty, and you’ll see the way your missus is, and you going back to the house.’ For she was covetous and had no patience, and it was by the Almighty God’s will he made a hen of her, and twelve chickens of her twelve children. And she went scraping in the face of the dunghill, and she never left doing that till the day of judgment, picking for her chickens that stopped small as they were always.

When she had too much she wasn’t pleased till she got more, and so she couldn’t keep it and had nothing at all left her in the heel of the hunt.

I suppose it was God that made the provision within in the tree. For the man was holy. Did he mind seeing his children turned into chickens? He did not. He was a born saint, and it is likely it was a saint talked with him abroad at the tree; and he had full and plenty while he lived; and the day he died the gates of heaven were open, and it was as a white pigeon that he went in through them. That now is a true story, and that is a thing that surely happened.

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THE GOATS

There was a girl had a sweetheart that was called Shawn Shamus. And through the crying of the Banrighean-na-breena he was brought away into a forth. The girl went to the forth looking for him, and outside of it she saw the Banrighean, the Queen, sitting and she combing her hair, and having a blue dress on her like those flowers that grow in the fields. ‘Will you give me back Shawn Shamus?’ says the girl. ‘I will not,’ says the Queen. And she went on talking for a while, the girl asking and the Queen refusing. And at the last the Queen said: ‘I will give him to you if you will bring me a hundred barrels of six-penny money, a hundred fillies all of the one colour, a hundred spotted cows, a hundred ganders and a fleet of geese; a hundred slips and a hundred pigs, a hundred goats that are without damage or roguery.’ So the girl went looking for all those, and she brought every one of them to the Queen of the forth except the goats, for she could not get one that was honest, they are all full of roguery. Everything else but the goats she brought. So the Queen gave up Shawn Shamus, and they married and lived happy.

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THE CURIOUS WOMAN

There will be no eating in the other world, says the red-haired man sitting at the door. ‘But there is a tree in it with twelve sorts of fruit, and what would that be for if we were not to eat it?’ Well, the first man that went eating fruit made a bad hand of it. He bethought of himself and it going down, and it stopped in his throat and gave us that lump in it ever since. Isn’t that a terrible thing for a man to have? But as to the woman, what she ate stopped down, and so it would if she ate another along with it. Women are terrible for eating things. Women are curious, and that is what led her to it. And besides that it was nice-looking, and women like to have nice things. A woman to see a lady, she would want all she would be wearing for herself—red stockings and shoes and dresses, and even to umbrellas.

There was an old couple were past working and they went travelling the roads, and they met a King that had a palace he had no use for, and he said they could have the use of it. So he brought them in and put them into a big room, and there was a big table with every sort of food on it, and he bade them use what they could of what was there. But there was a board of the table he bade them not to touch, and the reason was he had put a mouse under it that would tell him every word they would say.

Well, when they had ate all they could, the woman began to say she would look what was under that board. ‘Do not,’ says the man, ‘and the King after telling you not to touch it.’ ‘Sorra fear he to know of it,’ says she. But he wouldn’t let her do it that night or the next night, but the third night she put out her hand and rose up the board, and out ran the mouse. And they tried to catch it, but you may believe they were not able to come up with it. And so when the King saw they had the board shifted, he turned them out of the palace and they were as poor as before.

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NOTE.

I have not changed a word in these stories as they were told to me, but having heard some of them in different versions from different old people, I have sometimes taken a passage or a phrase from one and put it in another where it seemed to fit. _The Seven Fishers_ for instance, the beginning of which I have given as told by the old man of a hundred years, drifted into the adventures of _Shawneen_ and of _The Bullockeen_, and I took another ending for it; and the story of _Shawneen_, begun in a workhouse, was continued at my own door by a piper from County Kerry. I have only once, in _The Seven Fishers_, taken a few sentences from a story told, not to me, but to another. I tell this, because folk-lorists in these days are expected to be as exact as workers at any other science.

As to the substance of the stories, there is a hint in _Shawneen_ of Perseus and Andromeda, and in _The Three Sons_ of the Garden of the Hesperides, and of Eden itself in _The Curious Woman_. And who can say whether these have travelled from east to west, or from west to east, for the barony of Kiltartan, in common with at least three continents, holds fragments of the wonder tales told in the childhood of the world.

A. G.

Printed by Maunsel & Co., Ltd., Dublin

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Transcriber’s Notes

The full-page illustrations from the original text have been placed into the text. The page numbers in the list of illustrations are those in the original text and may not reflect where the illustrations are placed in this version. This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.

Itemized changes from the original text:

• Frontispiece: Added hyphen in “HE CAME DOWN SPREAD-LEGS” to match Table of Illustrations and reference in text. • Dedication: Added missing period after “R” in “R. G. G.” • p. 19: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after “…that is in that wood.” • p. 21: Supplied missing word “do” in “…all he had to do was to…” • p. 48: Changed “neek” to “neck” and supplied missing apostrophe in “hound’s” in “…that was around the hound’s neck…” • p. 48: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after “…till I know what is happening to Shawneen.” • p. 56: Changed “ocmmands” to “commands” in “And she laid commands on the King.” • p. 60: Changed comma to period at end of paragraph after “…she went home to her mother.” • p. 65: Changed “be” to “he” in “…he cut off as he was bade…” • p. 66: Changed “its” to “it’s” in “…it’s lonesome to be housekeeping alone.” • p. 96: Changed “a young” to “as young” in “…he got young again, a young as his own son.”