The Old Woman of Beare

This is a version of a well-known story about the Cailleach, which can be found in many different forms. In some versions of the tale it is not a friar or priest who visits with the Cailleach, but St. Patrick himself. In the south-west of Ireland, it is often a local saint such as Gobnait who is the visitor, however. Either way, the end result is the same; the Cailleach is so old that it is impossible to count all of the bones.

This version is from Douglas Hyde’s “Legends of Saints and Sinners.” 

There was an old woman in it, and long ago it was, and if we had been there that time we would not be here. Now; we would have a new story or an old story, and that would not be more likely than to be without any story at all.

The hag was very old, and she herself did not know her own age, nor did anybody else. There was a friar and his boy journeying one day, and they came in to the house of the Old Woman of Beare.

“God save you,” said the friar.

“The same man save yourself,” said the hag; “you’re welcome,^[1] sit down at the fire and warm yourself.”

The friar sat down, and when he had well finished warming himself he began to talk and discourse with the old hag.

“If it’s no harm of me to ask it of you, I’d like to know your age, because I know you are very old.” [said the friar]

“It is no harm at all to ask me,” said the hag; “I’ll answer you as well as I can. There is never a year since I came to age that I used not to kill a beef, and throw the bones of the beef up on the loft which is above your head. If you wish to know my age you can send your boy up on the loft and count the bones.

True was the tale. The friar sent the boy up on the loft and the boy began counting the bones, and with all the bones that were on the loft he had no room on the loft itself to count them, and he told the friar that he would have to throw the bones down on the floor — that there was no room on the loft.

“Down with them,” said the friar, “and I’ll keep count of them from below.”

The boy began throwing them down from above and the friar began writing down [the number], until he was about tired out, and he asked the boy had he them nearly counted, and the boy answered the friar down from the loft that he had not even one corner of the loft emptied yet.

“If that’s the way of it, come down out of the loft and throw the bones up again,” said the friar.

The boy came down, and he threw up the bones, and [so] the friar was [just] as wise coming in as he was going out.

“Though I don’t know your age,” said the friar to the hag, “I know that you haven’t lived up to this time without seeing marvellous things in the course of your life, and the greatest marvel that you ever saw — tell it to me, if you please.”

“I saw one marvel which made me wonder greatly,” said the hag.

“Recount it to me,” said the Friar, “if you please.”

“I myself and my girl were out one day, milking the cows, and it was a fine, lovely day, and I was just after milking one of the cows, and when I raised my head I looked round towards my left hand, and I saw a great blackness coming over my head in the air. “Make haste,” says myself to the girl, “until we milk the cows smartly, or we’ll be wet and drowned before we reach home, with the rain.” I was on the pinch^[2] of my life and so was my girl, to have the cows milked before we’d get the shower, for I thought myself that it was a shower that was coming, but on my raising my head again I looked round me and beheld a woman coming as white as the swan that is on the brink of the waves. She went past me like a blast of wind, and the wind that was before her she was overtaking it, and the wind that was behind her, it could not come up with her. It was not long till I saw after the woman two mastiffs, and two yards of their tongue twisted round their necks, and balls of fire out of their mouths, and I wondered greatly at that. And after the dogs I beheld a black coach and a team of horses drawing it, and there were balls of fire on every side out of the coach, and as the coach was going past me the beasts stood and something that was in the coach uttered from it an unmeaning sound, and I was terrified, and faintness came over me, and when I came back out of the faint I heard the voice in the coach again, asking me had I seen anything going past me since I came there; and I told him as I am telling you, and I asked him who he was himself, or what was the meaning of the woman and the mastiffs which went by me.

“I am the Devil, and those are two mastiffs which I sent after that soul.”

“And is it any harm for me to ask,” says I, “what is the crime the woman did when she was in the world?”

“That is a woman,” said the Devil, “who brought scandal upon a priest, and she died in a state of deadly sin, and she did not repent of it, and unless the mastiffs come up with her before she comes to the gates of Heaven the glorious Virgin will come and will ask a request of her only Son to grant the woman forgiveness for her sins, and the Virgin will obtain pardon for her, and I’ll be out of her. But if the mastiffs come up with her before she goes to Heaven she is mine.”

The great Devil drove on his beasts, and went out of my sight, and myself and my girl came home, and I was heavy, and tired and sad at remembering the vision which I saw, and I was greatly astonished at that wonder, and I lay in my bed for three days, and the fourth day I arose very done up and feeble, and not without cause, since any woman who would see the wonder that I saw, she would be grey a hundred years before her term of life^[3] was expired.

“Did you ever see any other marvel in your time?” says the friar to the hag.

“A week after leaving my bed I got a letter telling me that one of my friends was dead, and that I would have to go to the funeral. I proceeded to the funeral, and on my going into the corpse-house the body was in the coffin, and the coffin was laid down on the bier, and four men went under the bier that they might carry the coffin, and they weren’t able to even stir^[4] the bier off the ground. And another four men came, and they were not able to move it off the ground. They were coming, man after man, until twelve came, and went under the bier, and they weren’t able to lift it.

“I spoke myself, and I asked the people who were at the funeral what sort of trade had this man when he was in the world, and it was told me that it was a herd he was. And I asked of the people who were there was there any other herd at the funeral. Then there came four men that nobody at all who was at the funeral had any knowledge or recognition of, and they told me that they were four herds, and they went under the bier and they lifted it as you would lift a handful of chaff, and off they went as quick and sharp as ever they could lift a foot. Good powers of walking they had, and a fine long step I had myself, and I cut out after them, and not a mother’s son knew what the place was to which they were departing with the body, and we were going and ever going until the night and the day were parting from one another, until the night was coming black dark dreadful, until the grey horse was going under the shadow of the docking and until the docking was going fleeing before him.^[5]

The roots going under the ground,
The leaves going into the air,
The grey horse a-neeing apace,
And I left lonely there.

“On looking round me, there wasn’t one of all the funeral behind me, except two others. The other people were done up, and they were not able to come half way, some of them fainted and some of them died. Going forward two steps more in front of me I was within in a dark wood wet and cold, and the ground opened, and I was swallowed down into a black dark hole without a Mother’s son or a father’s daughter^[6] next nor near me, without a man to be had to keen me or to lay me out; so that I threw myself on my two knees, and I was there throughout four days sending my prayer up to God to take me out of that speedily and quickly. And with the fourth day there came a little hole like the eye of a needle on one corner of the abode where I was; and I was a-praying always and the hole, was a-growing in size day by day, and on the seventh day it increased to such a size that I got out through it. I took to my heels^[7] then when I got my feet with me on the outside [of the hole] going home. The distance which I walked in one single day following the coffin, I spent five weeks coming back the same road, and don’t you see yourself now that I got cause to be withered, old, aged, grey, and my life to be shortening through those two perils in which I was.”

“You’re a fine, hardy old woman all the time,” said the friar.



Footnotes

[1] Literally, “He (i.e., God) is your life”; the equivalent of “Hail!” “welcome.”
[2] Literally, “the boiling of the angles-between-the-fingers was on me.”
[3] Literally, “before her age being spent.”
[4] Literally, “give it wind.”
[5] The fairies ride their little grey horse, and stable them at night under the leaves of the copóg or dock-leaf, or docking. But if they arrive too late and night has fallen, then the copóg has folded her leaves and will not shelter them.
[6] Literally, “man’s daughter.”
[7] Literally, “I gave to the soles.” Many people still say in speaking English, “I gave to the butts.” The Irish word means butt as well as sole.

 

In the dark season of the deep winter

A poem for the Midwinter:

Dubaib rathib rogemrid
robarta tonn turgabar
íar tóib betha blái.
Brónaig eoín cach íathmaige
acht fiaich fola forderge
fri fúaim gemrid gairg.

In the dark season of the deep winter
heavy seas are lifted up
along the side of the world’s region.
Sorrowful are the birds of every meadow-field,
except the ravens of dark-red blood,
at the uproar of the fierce winter-time.

From Kuno Meyer, Learning in Ireland in the Fifth Century, 1913.

 

Laa Boaldyn (May Day)

Here is a fairly modern poem from the Isle of Man, detailing one man’s memories of celebrating Laa Boaldyn, the Manx equivalent of “Bealtaine” or Bealltainn. It’s maybe a little out of season here in the northern hemisphere, but for those of you down south I’m sure it’s quite topical! The notes given at the bottom are by the author of the poem and help to explain some of the Manx terms or folklore smattered throughout

The season has returned again,
When the bwillogh is all in bloom,
By April’s sun and showers of rain,
And evening dew and midnight gloom.

I still remember days gone by,
When I was but a little lad,
We plucked the yellow flowers with joy,
And on May-eve we all were glad.

At eyery door we laid them down,
That fair Titania might see
The beauteous flowers scatter’d round,
And dance around with fairy glee.

The Fairy Queen—the old folk said—
Was going round on old May-night
When all mankind was gone to bed,
And in the flowers did delight.

She kindly blessed each little cot,
Where yellow flowers did appear:
If there were none – she blessed them not
But gave bad luck through all the year.

I still remember on May-day,
Those flowers scatter’d in Cregnaish,
But since the Queen is gone away
No flowers at the door we place.

No more among the trammon trees,
The little elves or fairies swing,
Hopping amongst the leaves like bees,
Or little birds upon the wing.

And branches of the rowan tree
Were carefully in crosses made,
And placed in holes where none could see,
To keep away each witching jade.

While bonfires blazed on every hill,
To keep the buitching crew at bay.
And some folks kindle fires still
To scare the witches—people say.

The little elves now dance no more,
Nor sing in Manx their midnight song
Among the flow’rets at the door,
And home to fairy-land are gone.

But these are now things of the past,
For witch alike and elf are flown,
From all the hills, save Crank Glenchass—
‘Tis said they claim that as their own.

Note. —The Bwillogh is the Caltha palustris, and a grand Manx fairy flower. The Trammon, or elder tree, is dear to the Manx elves and fairies. The Rowan Tree, or mountain ash, plays an important part in the celebration of May Eve and its berries, when placed on cow byres, and tied in the tails of cows, or hung over the threshold of the house, or worn by the milk-maids and fastened to the pails and milk vats, etc., acted as powerful agencies against witchcraft and evil spirits and their dark work. Cronk Glenchass, or the dry glen, was and still is supposed to be a favourite haunt of the Manx fairies, and I have a large collection of stories and legends referring to it.

C. Roeder’s Manx Notes, 1904.

 

Hounds, ale, horses and teams

Excerpted from Timna Chathaír Mor, The Testament of Cathair Mor, this short passage evokes imagery of Lùnastal, or Lúnasa.

Hounds, ale, horses and teams, women, well-bred fosterlings, a harvest of honey, wheat of the first reaping, mast for feeding goodly swine shall be in thy populous household, many women and pet animals, musicians for ale-feasts.

coin coirm eich is echrada banntracht dalta dualmaithi milchnuas cruithnecht cétbuana dairmes dail do deghmucaibh beit it chróthreibh coitechta ainnri imdai is eisrechta cerda ciuil fri coirmlindi

From Myles Dillon’s translation of Lebor na Cert (The Book of Rights), 1962, p158-159.

 

Selkies

There’s something about selkies that captures the imagination, and there are many modern reworkings and retellings of the typical selkie tale – often told as a tragedy where the human lover pines away ever more once the selkie lover inevitably finds their skin and returns to the sea. Personally I’m totally on the selkie’s side on this; being kidnapped and forced to bear children against your will ain’t so romantic…Nonetheless, the lore is interesting, and the tales do have a tragic duty to them. This following tale was collected in Orkney.

In Orkney, selkie was the popular name for seal. Seals were popularly divided into two classes; namely, first, the common seal, here called tang fish, which had no power to assume the human form. These, like other inhabitants of the sea, were called fish. To the other class belonged all seals larger in size than the Phoca vitulina; such as the great seal, rough seal, Greenland seal, crested seal, and gray seal, — all of which have been seen in Orkney waters. And it was this class of larger seals that were called “selkie folk,” because they had the power of assuming the human form. The believers in this myth were never at a loss to account for its existence; but the causes assigned for the origin of this amphibious human race, so far as known to me, must have been imagined since the introduction of Christianity. Some say the selkie folk were fallen angels, who, for a more trivial fault than that of those consigned to the infernal regions, were condemned to their present state. Others held that the selkie folk were human beings, who, for some grave misdemeanour were condemned to assume the seal’s form, and to live in the sea, and were yet allowed to take human form and shape when on dry land. “And who kens,” said one of my old gossips, “but they’ll maybe some day get leave to come back tae their auld state.”

It was believed that males among the selkie folk sometimes held secret and illicit intercourse with females of the human race. Sometimes these marine gallants became the paramours of married women. The ballad which I hope later on to give is an instance of such connection. And however ungainly the appearance of these gentlemen when in the sea, on assuming human shape they became in form fair, attractive, and in manner winning; and by their seductive powers the female heart seems to have been easily conquered. And if the selkie gentlemen were attractive in the eyes of earth-born women, the selkie females were no less charming in the estimation of men.

Indeed, to see a bevy of these lovely creatures, their seal skins doffed, disporting themselves on a sea-side rock, was enough to fire with admiration the coldest heart.

Let it be noted that the selkie nymphs always appear in groups; they never sit alone combing their hair like the mermaid; and, unlike her, are not represented as wearing long golden hair. And, unlike the mermaid, the selkie folk were never represented as dwelling in “Finfolk-a-heem.”

It was only at certain periods and conditions of the tide in which the seals had power to assume the human
shape. But these periods were a subject of dispute among my oral authorities.

Versions of the story I am now to tell were at one time rife in every Orkney island; and some of them have already appeared in print. The man who told me this tale was a native of North Ronaldshay, was well read in
English literature, and so familiar with Shakespeare that any six lines of that author you quoted he would tell you from what play your quotation was taken. Though above superstitious belief in, he possessed an inexhaustible store of old-world tales. He often assisted me in clearing up some difficulty in Orkney folk-lore.

The goodman of Wastness was well-to-do, had his farm well-stocked, and was a good-looking and well-favoured man. And though many braw lasses in the island had set their caps at him, he was not to be caught. So the young lasses began to treat him with contempt, regarding him as an old young man who was deliberately committing the unpardonable sin of celibacy. He did not trouble his head much about the lasses, and when urged by his friends to take a wife, he said, “Women were like many another thing in this weary world, only sent for a trial to man; and I have trials enouch without being tried by a wife.” “If that ould fool Adam had not been bewitched by his wife, he might have been a happy man in the yard of Edin to this day.” The old wife of Longer, who heard him make this speech, said to him, “Take doo heed de sell, doo’ll may be de sell bewitched some day.” “Ay,” quoth he, “that will be when doo walks dry shod frae the Alters o’ Seenie to dae Boar of Papa.”

Well, it happened one day that the goodman of Wastness was down on the ebb (that portion of the shore left
dry at low water), when he saw at a little distance a number of selkie folk on a flat rock. Some were lying
sunning themselves, while others jumped and played about in great glee. They were all naked, and had skins as white as his own. The rock on which they sported had deep water on its seaward side, and on its shore side a shallow pool. The goodman of Wastness crept unseen till he got to the edge of the shallow pool; he then rose and dashed through the pool to the rock on its other side. The alarmed selkie folk seized their seal skins, and, in mad haste, jumped into the sea. Quick as they were, the goodman was also quick, and he seized one of the skins belonging to an unfortunate damsel, who in terror of flight neglected to clutch it as she sprang into the water.

The selkie folk swam out a little distance, then turning, set up their heads and gazed at the goodman. He noticed that one of them had not the appearance of seals like the rest. He then took the captured skin under his arm, and made for home, but before he got out of the ebb, he heard a most doleful sound of weeping and lamentation behind him. He turned to see a fair woman following him. It was that one of the selkie folk whose seal skin he had taken. She was a pitiful sight; sobbing in bitter grief, holding out both hands in eager supplication, while the big tears followed each other down her fair face. And ever and anon she cried out, “O bonnie man! if there’s onie mercy i’ thee human breast, gae back me skin! I cinno’, cinno’, cinno’ live i’ the sea without it. I cinno’, cinno’, cinno’ bide among me ain folk without my ain seal skin. Oh, pity a peur distressed, forlorn lass, gin doo wad ever hope for mercy theesel’!” The goodman was not too soft-hearted, yet he could not help pitying her in her doleful plight. And with his pity came the softer passion of love. His heart that never loved women before was conquered by the sea-nymph’s beauty. So, after a good deal of higgling and plenty of love-making, he wrung from the sea-lass a reluctant consent to live with him as his wife. She chose this as the least of two evils. Without the skin she could not live in the sea, and he absolutely refused to give up the skin.

So the sea-lass went with the goodman and stayed with him for many days, being a thrifty, frugal, and
kindly goodwife.

She bore her goodman seven children, four boys and three lasses, and there were not bonnier lasses or statelier boys in all the isle. And though the goodwife of Wastness appeared happy, and was sometimes merry, yet there seemed at times to be a weight on her heart; and many a long longing look did she fix on the sea. She taught her bairns many a strange song, that nobody on earth ever heard before. Albeit she was a thing of the sea, yet the goodman led a happy life with her.

Now it chanced, one fine day, that the goodman of Wastness and his three eldest sons were off in his boat to the fishing. Then the goodwife sent three of the other children to the ebb to gather limpits and wilks. The youngest lass had to stay at home, for she had a beelan foot. The goodwife then began, under the pretence of house-cleaning, a determined search for her long-lost skin. She searched up, and she searched down; she searched but, and she searched ben; she searched out, and she searched in, but never a skin could she find, while the sun wore to the west. The youngest lass sat in a stool with her sore foot on a cringlo. She says to her mother, “Mam, what aredoo leukan for?” “O bairn, deu no tell,” said her mother, ”but I’m leukan for a bonnie skin, tae mak a rivlin that wad ceur thee sare fit.” Says the lass, “May be I ken whar hid is. Ae day, whin ye war a’ oot, an’ ded tought I war sleepan i’ the bed, he teuk a bonnie skin doon; he gloured at it a peerie minute, dan folded hid and led hid up under dae aisins abeun dae bed.” (Under the aisins — space left by slope of roof over wall-head when not beam-filled.)

When her mother heard this she rushed to the place, and pulled out her long-concealed skin. “Fareweel, peerie buddo!” (a term of endearment), said she to the child, and ran out. She rushed to the shore, flung on her skin, and plunged into the sea with a wild cry of joy. A male of the selkie folk there met and greeted her with every token of delight. The goodman was rowing home, and saw them both from his boat. His lost wife uncovered her face, and thus she cried to him: “Goodman o’ Wastness, fareweel tae thee! I liked dee weel, doo war geud tae me; bit I lo’e better me man o’ the sea! “And that was the last he ever saw or heard of his bonnie wife. Often did he wander on the sea-shore, hoping to meet his lost love, but nevermore saw he her fair face.

George F. Black, County Folklore Volume 3: Orkney and Shetlands, 1903, 170-176.

 

Summer has Come

I could hardly post one without the other…

Summer has come, healthy and free,
Whence the brown wood is aslope;
The slender nimble deer leap.
And the path of seals is smooth.

The cuckoo sings sweet music.
Whence there is smooth restful sleep;
Gentle birds leap upon the hill.
And swift grey stags.

Heat has laid hold of the rest of the deer-
The lovely cry of curly packs!
The white extent of the strand smiles,
There the swift sea is.

A sound of playful breezes in the tops
Of a black oakwood is Drum Daill,
The noble hornless herd runs.
To whom Cuan-wood is a shelter.

Green bursts out on every herb.
The top of the green oakwood is bushy.
Summer has come, winter has gone,
Twisted hollies wound the hound.

The blackbird sings a loud strain.
To him the live wood is a heritage,
The sad angry sea is fallen asleep.
The speckled salmon leaps.

The sun smiles over every land, —
A parting for me from the brood of cares
Hounds bark, stags tryst.
Ravens flourish, summer has come !

Kuno Meyer, Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, 1911, p52.

 

Song of Summer

A wonderful Bealltainn to you all! Whether or not you’re celebrating just now, or will do at a later date, I hope you have a good one. And if you’re in the southern hemisphere, then I hope you’re having a good Samhainn instead (if you reverse your celebrations to match the seasons).

This is a wonderful poem translated by the prolific translator Kuno Meyer, and it is attributed to Fionn mac Cumhail himself. The Irish is available here!

Summer-time, season supreme!
Splendid is colour then.
Blackbirds sing a full lay
If there be a slender shaft of day.

The dust-coloured cuckoo calls aloud:
Welcome, splendid summer!
The bitterness of bad weather is past.
The boughs of the wood are a thicket.

Panic startles the heart of the deer.
The smooth sea runs apace —
Season when ocean sinks asleep.
Blossom covers the world.

Bees with puny strength carry
A goodly burden, the harvest of blossoms;
Up the mountain-side kine take with them mud,
The ant makes a rich meal.

The harp of the forest sounds music,
The sail gathers — perfect peace;
Colour has settled on every height.
Haze on the lake of full waters.

The corncrake, a strenuous bard, discourses.
The lofty cold waterfall sings
A welcome to the warm pool —
The talk of the rushes has come.

Light swallows dart aloft.
Loud melody encircles the hill,
The soft rich mast buds.
The stuttering quagmire prattles.

The peat-bog is as the raven’s coat,
The loud cuckoo bids welcome,
The speckled fish leaps —
Strong is the bound of the swift warrior.

Man flourishes, the maiden buds
In her fair strong pride.
Perfect each forest from top to ground.
Perfect each great stately plain.

Delightful is the season’s splendour,
Rough winter has gone:
Every fruitful wood shines white,
A joyous peace is summer.

A flock of birds settles
In the midst of meadows,
The green field rustles.
Wherein is a brawling white stream.

A wild longing is on you to race horses.
The ranked host is ranged around:
A bright shaft has been shot into the land.
So that the water-flag is gold beneath it.

A timorous, tiny, persistent little fellow
Sings at the top of his voice,
The lark sings clear tidings:
Surpassing summer-time of delicate hues!

Kuno Meyer, Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, 1911, p53-54.